Emilia's English Corner

Private tuition: Emilia Colacelli (Microfinance Consultant)

Lesson No.1                                                                                       materials (PDF)

Translation of 'A VER"

Lesson No.2                                                                                                        materials (PDF)

Listening with Argentinian Astrotnomist 

Lesson No.3                                                                                                    materials (PDF)

Writing with Santa Evita

Lesson No.4 

Parts of Speech Practice

homework

Lesson No.5                                                                                                             materials (PDF)

Revision

Lesson No.6                                                                                                             materials (PDF)

Reading with The World Bank

This month's crossword

Lesson No.7                                                                                                         materials (PDF)

Grammar/prepositions with The World Bank Conference

Useful Language for Conferences

Crossword answers 

The Torrents of Spring is a short novel written by Ernest Hemingway, published in 1926, and his first. Hemingway used the work as a parody of the world of writers at the time (and more directly of Sherwood Anderson's Dark Laughter).

Written in 10 days, its satirical sense of humour is directed subliminally at pretentious writers of the time. It is widely believed that Hemingway wrote The Torrents of Spring in order to break his contract with his publisher Boni & Liveright, and to make fun of his writing peer (and friend), Anderson.

While you're reading please post any questions or comments below – I will get a notification immediately and respond to you! (:

Jorge's English Corner

Private tuition: Jorge Zaiatze (Kidney Specialist, Co-founder & Director of Caseros Sanatorium) 

Lesson No.1 

General Fluency – Steve Jobs book discussion

Lesson No.2

Making Offers & Suggestions with cards

Lesson No.3

Speaking – Personal Details

Discover the magic word!

 

Lesson No.4

General Fluency – Steve Jobs

Lesson No.5 

Fluency with 2nd Conditional cards

Lesson No.6

GEneral Fluency

Lesson No.7                                                                                                              materials (PDF)

Fluency – Giving Directions

home-made listening text

Lesson No.8 

Role-play: renting a car

 

Lesson No.9

General fluency – TED talk discussion

Lesson No.10

General Fluency – crossword answers

Lesson No.11

General fluency – gap fill activity

Lesson No.12

General Fluency – this month's crossword

 

Lesson No.13                                                                                                   materials (PDF)

Reading

Lesson No.14

Lesson No.15

General fluency – Discussion with reading and useful language 

Jokes and the Linguistic Mind

commentary

Debra Aarons, who teaches linguistics, believes much of the knowledge we have about language is unconscious and that a very good way to explain a linguistic point, is through a good joke.

A linguistics lecturer is giving a class on negation . . .      

     'In some languages,' he explains, 'such as Italian, you need only one negative item for the sentence to have negative polarity. In some languages, such as Afrikaans, you require two negative items for the sentence to have negative polarity. Whereas, in some other languages, two negatives will give you a positive polarity, as in English. However, in no language do two positive items yield a negative polarity.' And then from the back of the hall comes the students' response, 'yeah, yeah,' and 'yeah, right!' . . . . . . 

(From Debra's book Jokes and the Linguistic Mind.)

She says that jokes can tell us something about the organisation of language in the mind.

Another. . .

     A [stereotypical] blonde walks into a library, walks up to the reference desk, and says, 'I'd like to get a double burger, a packet of chips and a diet coke, please.' The librarian looks at her in absolute horror, and she hisses, 'this-is-a-li-bra-ry!' The woman responds, 'Oh! I'm so, so sorry,' and whispers, 'I'd like to get a double burger, a packet of chips, and a diet coke, please.'

In practise, Debra uses this joke to teach pragmatics and speech act theory (an utterance considered as an action, particularly with regard to its intention, purpose, or effect) in order to point out that we have to recognise the intention of a speaker, not just the words. Above, the stereotypical blonde got the intention of the librarian: that she was being rebuked; she was doing something wrong. However, not being so smart, she didn't realise what she was doing wrong.

Debra comments that every time we speak we convey intention. Be it criticism, apology, demand, request or rebuke as with the joke above. She says that's called 'elocutionary force' and the point is we know how to respond to it. A text book example: someone walks into a room and says 'Ooh! It's hot in here,' not commenting on the weather per se, but suggesting someone open the window or turn on the air-conditioner. With this, Debra makes the point that speaking is something we do, rather than exchanging simply true or false propositions.

Candian English according to 'Canuck'*, Joe Clark

commentary

On Lingua Franca (ABC Radio National), Joe Clark from Toronto, journalist and author of an eBook on Canadian English, talks about Canadian English.

    According to Joe, the spoken language is a dialect that comes from the United States, i.e. it is classified today as American English. However, the accent is exceedingly neutral and one struggles to tell where a Canadian speaker might be from. Which is not true of English in the US, whose accents more readily denote a speaker's region, be it Texan, Jewish New Yorker, African American, northern, southern, eastern, western. The letter Z is pronounced 'zed' in Canadian English unlike the 'zee' of the US. The lexicon yields a few hundred uniquely Canadian words.

      Orthographically, there is a mix between American and British Englishes. Canadian English utilises Z in the spellings of suffixes -ise, -yse: organize, realize, paralyze, utilize. Whereas words that end in -our, 'honour', 'colour', 'ardour', 'fervour', and which end in -re, as in 'centre', 'theatre', 'litre' follow the British convention. Lexical sets are again shared between American and British Englishes and one can see that many words used for technology, trade and physical objects are of American English. For example: tire (tyre), curb (kerb), carburator (carburettor), truck (lorry), gasoline (petrol), trunk (boot). Whereas financial vocabulary, for example 'cheque' (not check), also follows the British convention. As do 'practise', the verb, and, 'practice', the noun. Likewise, 'licence' and 'license'. Double your consonants in 'travelled', not traveled, 'controllable', not controlable, 'counselling', not counseling. 

Why so?

     After the Revolutionary War when the yet-to-be United States declared independence from the United Kingdom, and when those remaining loyal to the British Crown were persecuted, belongings and land confiscated, refuge was sought in the remaining British colonies in the north of the continent. These Loyalists** brought with them their dialect, the American English of that time, an influenced British English, whose most influential feature was its post-vocalic Rs and a few vowel sounds. Owing to proximity, trade, television and more, for over two centuries Canadian and Northern American accents merged somewhat,  in affect diluting the British qualities of the language.
      In 1998, Oxford University Press, after five years of research, produced The Oxford Canadian Dictionary. Remarkably, it sold about 400, 000 copies and enjoyed 'best-seller' status, as did the second edition for several months. It helped Canadians to settle many arguments and to unify on issues related to spellings, pronunciation and language identity. 


      According to a survey by Joe, Canada's orthography is today largely consistent across Canada.

*Canuck: colloquialism for 'Canadian' 

**Loyalist: a colonist of the American revolutionary period who supported the British cause