Grandiose Grammar

Hello folks!It’s been a while since I last produced some content for this website and my podcast. Last week, I had some very interesting feedback from a friend regarding a comment I made about the salutation Dear Sirs towards the end of episode 43. Anna K. informed me that her language school teaches students that the salutation Dear Sirs should be used when addressing a legal entity. I had never come across this before and so I decided to do a little reading and investigating. This is a link to an article from The Guardian. If you’d like to check out Ken Adams’ article, you’ll find it here. It’s very informative and definitely worth a read. Have a look at this to find out what the UK Law society has to say and here is a link to an announcement by the Irish Law Society on the same topic. Blog RSS

Hello folks, this week while preparing a lesson for one of my grammar classes I stumbled across a footnote in a grammar book on cognate objects. The topic is absolutely fascinating from both a grammar perspective and a cognitive linguistic perspective. If anyone is interested in reading more about this topic, I highly recommend this article. In particular, chapters 4 and 5 of this dissertation are worth reading if you have some time on your hands. Blog RSS

Hello folks! This week I’m chatting with you about how to address people in emails. In this episode I have things to say about honorifics and mention the conversation about gender-neutral titles. If you are interested in reading more about that, check out this link. Blog RSS

Hello folks! I’m back with more from my interview with Anna. In this episode we talk about the impact of Covid-19 on teaching and what the future might bring. We also spoke about how a digital future could impact our work. Another topic that came up was the idea of global English or English in an international context and how the subtleties of hedging require a human teacher/trainer. During our chat we referred to some news articles we had read that claim that native English speakers are poor communicators. Here’s one from the BBC. And here’s a link to the SAP News Center article on Digitizaton vs. Digitalization. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics. Feel free to leave a comment below. Blog RSS

Hello folks!This week I’ve got another interview; this time it’s with my friend Anna. She works in adult education and has lots of really interesting insights into teaching. This week we talk about teaching, imposter syndrome and Anna shares her method of teaching Germans how to use the present perfect - of course that led to a bit of grammar geekery.  There’ll be a part two for this interview, so be sure to come back and listen in to the second half of this conversation. Thanks again to Anna for sharing her time and insights with us! I really enjoyed this conversation. Blog RSS

Hello folks!This week I’ve got part two of my interview with Anja. In particular, we discussed how Covid-19 has impacted our teaching. Anja brought up the topic of teacher bashing and the widespread mis-conception that educators are unwilling to embrace modern technology when in fact the real problem is a lack of investment in educational infrastructure. This series of interviews will continue into the autumn of this year. If there’s someone you’d like me to interview, leave a suggestion in the comments. If there are questions you’d like me to ask, leave those in the comments too. Blog RSS

Hello folks!This week I’ve got part one of an interview with my friend Anja who is a teacher in Bavaria. This week Anja introduces herself and tells us a little about her work before we start digging into topics like fun over fear and fluency over accuracy and then we start really digging into the meaty of topics of edutainment, learners as consumers and what that might mean for independent thought and further education.  Come back next week for part 2! We’ll be discussing topics like open book exams and how societal changes impact our classrooms and what that could mean for the future. If you have questions you’d like to hear answered in future episodes, leave them in the comments. This interview series is going to carry on over the summer and early autumn. I’d love to ask your questions: share them with me. Blog RSS

Hello folks!This week I’m going to talk you through the processes I follow when I see a verb phrase that my English-native-speaker gut feeling tells me is wrong and I automatically know how to correct it but I want to really understand what’s driving the correction. This episode was inspired by one of my students who will remain anonymous and the use of the verb phrase have been arising. Here’s a link to the dictionary definition that I refer to in the episode.If you want to read more about stative verbs, check out chapter 5.3 of Biber, Douglas, et al. Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English, which I also reference in this episode. If you have verb phrases you suspect are “wrong” but can’t figure out why, leave them in the comments below and we can investigate them together. Blog RSS

Hello folks, This week I’m back with another episode of say this, not that. I’ll be talking you through two errors that my students frequently make in written English and one transfer error from that German that really amused me recently. If you have suggestions for expressions you think should appear in a future episode of say this, not that… leave them in the comments below. Blog RSS

Hello folk!This week I have part of my interview with Victoria Gath. In this week’s episode we discuss whether or not native English speakers make better English language teachers. Victoria speaks from personal experience about raising children bilingually and about language acquisition in general. We also tackle the tricky subject of error correction. If there are questions you would like me to pose in future interviews, leave them in the comments for me.

Hello folks!In this episode, I bring to you an interview with my friend, and colleague, Victoria Gath. In this episode Victoria introduces herself and tells us about how her own experience of language learning informs her approach to teaching.  We also discuss testing and things we’d change in the classroom if we had a magic wand.If you have questions you’d like to hear future interviewees answer, leave them in the comments below. Blog RSS

Hello folks!I’m back with an episode on the as and when introducing adverbials. I’m slightly perplexed by a translation error lots of my students made in a recent piece of work. In an effort to untangle my thoughts, I’ve decided to make as and when the focus on this week’s episode. If you’d like to join the discussion, feel free to leave comment on why you think my students used as instead of when in their work. Blog RSS

Hello folks!As promised, I’m back with an episode on mixed conditionals. This is a very dense topic and I’m sure it’s one that I’ll revisit in the future. Please note that while I’ve talked about a lot of possible mixes, I’m sure that the list is not exhaustive. If you want to read more about conditionals, I recommend the following resources:“Chapter 11.2 Conditional Meaning.” A Student's Advanced Grammar of English, by Peter Fenn, Francke, 2010, pp. 386–404.“Part Two: Grammar in Use; Section B Information, Reality and Belief.” A Communicative Grammar of English, by Geoffrey N. Leech and Jan Svartvik, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2002, pp. 145–154.“Section 22 If.” Practical English Usage, by Michael Swan, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 238–248. Blog RSS

Hello folks! It’s good to be back! This week we have a topic that many people find tricky, namely conditionals. I’m starting off with the zero, first, second and third conditionals. These are all pretty clear cut and fairly easy to use. Next week I’ll be back with the trickier mixed conditionals. Blog RSS

Hello folks!Welcome back to another episode of say this, not that! This week I’m tackling some false friends from German. The first item that we’re taking a look at this week is the locative adverbial next to vs. the linking adverbial in addition to. I’ll also be explaining the genesis of two prepositional errors which come from direct translations from German into English. As you know, errors arising from first language interference are very difficult to remedy. If any of the errors in today’s episode are fossilised in your English or that of your pupils, you need to keep correcting them until they vanish. Blog RSS

Hello folks!This week I’m back with some errors that I routinely hear in my classes. While the present simple can be used to refer to the future in both German and English, Germans (or at least my students) use it far more frequently than English native speakers do. Am I the only person who thinks that the German Präsens is slowly replacing the Futur 1? If this is the case, does it explain why my students frequently use the futurate in instances that call for the will-future in English. Let me know what you think in the comments. Blog RSS

Hello folks!This week I’m making a start on future time reference. As you know the linguists out there view the future as a tense but many grammarians think of future time as a semantic category. Today I’m going to chat to you about the five most commonly used ways to talk about the future.If you are interested in reading up on this topic in more detail, check out chapter four of Geoffrey Leech’s Meaning and the English Verb For practical exercises, check out chapters 9-14 of Martin Hewings’s Advanced Grammar in Use. Blog RSS

Hello folks!This week I’m correcting errors mainly with the prepositions of and for. And we’ll be taking a look at a false friend which has turned up in my inbox quite a few times recently. If you want to practice prepositions, I recommend the exercises in the book English Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy as a good starting point. Blog RSS

Hello folks!I’m going to take a look at how the German word sondern messes up your English. This is an error that I see fairly frequently in work produced by my students even at a very advanced level. That is of course because this is an ingrained error and you know what I have to say about fossilised errors: identify; correct; correct some more; rinse and repeat until you don’t make that mistake any more.  Blog RSS

Hello folks! This week it’s another episode of say this, not that. In this episode I’m focussing on errors that are made with interrogatives. All of these errors are a result of first language interference meaning they are classic transfer errors from German to English. We all know these are the kinds of errors that most easily become fossilised. As always, I’m asking you to correct these errors whenever you hear them. If you can think of any other typical errors that Germans make when asking questions, write them in the comments below. If you have suggestions for a future episode of say this, not that…, I’d love to hear them! Blog RSS