The Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills was told by Parliament that its annual report makes no sense. Specifically, the report uses too much jargon and ambiguity to hide the fact that the Department has no idea what to do. Others One piece of bureaucratese was singled out as being completely incomprehensible, even to the Department itself:
“An overarching national improvement strategy will drive up quality and performance underpinned by specific plans for strategically significant areas of activity, such as workforce and technology. The capital investment strategy will continue to renew …Continue

Barack Obama attended Columbia University and then Harvard. He is well-known for his eloquence and his intelligence. But it turns out he has a nasty habit of abusing personal pronouns. According to someone who worked for his campaign, the President-Elect likes to say “for Michelle and I”.
As everyone knows, or should know, prepositions take the object form of pronouns. It should be “for Michelle and me.” Many people do have trouble with the point when there is a proper noun (someone’s name, for example) between the preposition and the …Continue

On director and writer Kevin Smith’s Facebook page I noticed a comment and I couldn’t tell if the poster was joking or not: “Love you films let me know if you need and editor…” I’m not sure he’d make a great editor.
1) you should be your2) This is a run-on sentence. Try: Love your films. Let… 3) and should be an4) It is unclear why the sentence ends in an ellipsis. A simple period would do.
I suspect the poster was making a joke, but possibly not.

An amusing little interview about university students. Acclaimed saxophonist and composer Branford Marsalis occasionally spends some time in the classroom. Here’s what he had to say about a lot of his students:Read a transcript at: Rate Your Students.

I just read a fascinating post on English in Singapore. Specifically, how they love to use modal verbs.
For example, answering requests with “can”:
Could you please get me a copy of this document when you return?’‘Can!’
‘Would you be able to make it for dinner tonight?’‘Can!’
That’s actually kind of wonderful in its literalism. It reminds me of the old joke teachers and older siblings often play.An unsuspecting student asks, “Can I go to the bathroom?”“I don’t know. Can you?This eventually results in the more polite and accurate question: “May I go to …Continue

The problem with learning anything is that you need proper motivation. A natural talent for languages will help you learn English for example, but if you don’t dedicate time to studying you will never master the language. And frankly studying languages can be extremely boring. So how about if you could pick up new vocabulary by learn interesting facts about the history of words? Not enough fun? What if you could learn new vocabulary, learn interesting facts about new and old words from the girl pictured on the right?Marina Orlova, …Continue

In my post on terms for mistakes in English, I left out a whole category: Mondegreens or misheard lyrics (Mondegreens actually refer to mishearing and misunderstanding any phrase). The name comes from the American writer, Sylvia Wright who recalled how when her mother used to read her the 17th century ballad “The Bonnie Earl O’ Murray.”, she thought one line was: “And Lady Mondegreen.” In fact it was, “And laid him on the green.”
One of the most popular mondegreens is the hearing “Excuse me while I kiss this guy” from …Continue

So Lindsey Lohan wrote a post on her Myspace blog denouncing some comments by her father. I’m not going to get into details and the gossip. However, as the AP News reported, the post is “dash happy”. It uses way too many dashes and not at all correctly.
Here’s an excerpt:
If you have something to say to me, say it to my face- that’s what i have believed my whole life- don’t be a coward and say it to others first, let alone all the media in the world- i think …Continue

A British professor faced with horrible spelling by students, suggests if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. In other words, professors should accept incorrect spellings as variants
He notably cites among the most common misspellings he sees:ignor for ignore, occured for occurred, thier for their, truely for truly, speach for speech, twelth for twelfth and teh for the (Just kidding about the last one!)
There are acceptable variants in language–particular when it comes to foreign words: Koran or Qu’ran, Kazakhstani or Kazakhstany or Qazaqstany. And professors should probably allow either American …Continue

Like everyone in the world, last night I watched the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing. I’m sure unlike everyone else in the world I was also eagerly waiting for the Kazakhstan team in the parade of national teams. As an expat I now have to root for two teams: the US and Kazakhstan. Well I was shocked to see their controversial choice of colors–turquoise and bright orange. Just like my color scheme here and on my homepage! Obviously, they’ve been reading this blog, using my lesson plans to …Continue

China has been taking great strides preparing for the Summer Olympics which open today. (In fact, why am I blogging when I should have the TV on, waiting for the Opening Ceremonies?) They’ve been cleaning the streets and the air, training the population on how to be polite to tourists and visitors, and teaching service professionals English. Even the private sector is showing great initiative in trying to make visitors welcome and also make a buck. So we should give this restaurateur an A for effort. In order to …Continue

In an awesome summary of the situation, John Edgell, a public relations consultant, noted that “The country is probably 10 percent more productive today.”. Why?Scrabulous, a game on Facebook that closely resembles the board game Scrabble, has been taken down pursuant to a copyright law suit by Hasbro, makers of Scrabble. I guess Scrabulous is a little too close to Scrabble. Until further notice, users in the US and Canada are unable to play. But those of us in Kazakhstan are good to go.
That’s right. Scrabulous works just fine for …Continue

This is a list of some expressions that befuddled my students in recent classes. All of them are tied together by the fact that they are idiomatic and that they are all humorous, or have a degree of sarcasm or irony attached to them.
Note that most of these phrases are slightly informal. You might use them with colleagues or friends, or in an informal meeting but not in a formal setting.
Ass-backwards means to do something in the wrong order, to do the logical first step second as in:“They’re spending money …Continue

Just a Joke!