Draw your mind back to your English lessons: dwell on all those dubious book choices you were dragged though and all the amazing novels you couldn’t wait to get to class to learn more about; remember all of those frustrating red marks scuttling across your essay; recall the fairly meaningless comment scrawled at the bottom of the creative paper you’d spend a week writing; consider the utter confusion you felt when your teacher tried to explain the difference between a comma and a semi-colon, when they quite clearly didn’t have a clue themselves (“a comma is where you take a breath”, “a semi-colon is where you take a longer breath or change the subject slightly . . . no, not like a full-stop” for Goodness sake!).

Surely in all those years of English lessons we learnt something useful, something that sticks with us.

 

Do you have a gem that you DO remember from your English lessons?

Do you have a particularly wonderful/amusing English class story to share?

What lesson do you remember...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

Efficiency is the aim for most people, is it not? Even if you’re not aware of it and don’t rate it as top of your agenda you’d far rather get something finished (unless it’s a holiday!) as quickly and accurately as possible, wouldn’t you?

So the same should apply to your business writing. 

Would you rather read:

It is incumbent upon management to display appropriate behaviour and verbalise what is consistent with the messages that are being conveyed via your business communication methodologies. (when did you stop reading?!)

or this:

As a manager, you should always demonstrate the communication methods of your business.

It is easy to get so rapt in what you’re writing that you end up not making your message clear. So concerned in showing off your excellent vocabulary, you turn your reader off. The pace of communications has stepped up in just a couple of years, with Facebook and social networking status updates allowing just a small box to write in; Twitter have even...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

I bet every single one of you has written a haiku at least once in your life; but can you remember what one is?



The haiku originated in Japan and is a non-rhyming poem written in three lines setting a mood or scene or portraying a feeling.

The entire haiku is composed in 17 syllables....

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

You have to love this poem. Have a read and you’ll realise just how difficult English is to learn when you weren’t born into it!

The Chaos by G. Nolst Trenite' a.k.a. "Charivarius" 1870 - 1946 Dearest creature in creation Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse I will keep you, Susy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye your dress you'll tear, So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer, Pray, console your loving poet, Make my coat look new, dear, sew it! Just compare heart, beard and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it's written). Made has not the sound of bade, Say said, pay-paid, laid, but plaid. Now I surely will not plague you With such words as vague and ague, But be careful how you speak, Say break, steak, but bleak and streak. Previous, precious, fuchsia, via, Pipe, snipe, recipe and choir,...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

The best one I’ve found yet!

 

Ingredients

Serves 4

· 1 1/4 cups long-grain brown rice

· 1/4 cup cornstarch

· 1 pound snow peas, trimmed and halved crosswise

· 4 garlic cloves, sliced

· 2 teaspoons fresh ginger, grated and peeled

· 3 tablespoons light-brown sugar

· 2 tablespoons soy sauce

· 1/2 teaspoon red-pepper flakes

· 2 large egg whites

· Coarse salt and ground pepper

· 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces

· 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, such as safflower

Directions

1. Cook rice according to package instructions. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, stir together 1 tablespoon cornstarch and 1/2 cup cold water until smooth. Add snow peas, garlic, ginger, sugar, soy sauce, and red-pepper flakes; toss to combine, and set aside.

2. In another bowl, whisk together egg whites, remaining 3 tablespoons cornstarch, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper....

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English Pro Blog Recipes

I woke up this morning with the image in my head of the cover of a book I read when I was a teenager : The Chocolate War  by Robert Cormier. Having looked it up this morning to find the cover, it seems it’s now over 30 years old – having been released in 1974 and acclaimed as a text leading the way for a new genre – young adult literature. Goodness me. At the time it was just a book to me! A book about power, bullying and intimidation in a Catholic school in New England. Whatever made me remember it this morning is a mystery, but I’m glad I did! It also reminded me of some of the other books I enjoyed in my youth: The Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield, which I read several times over, and the Swallows and Amazons series that fired my imagination for several summers. Of course...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

So what exactly IS the difference? Quite often these two, apparently similar, jobs are understood to be one-in-the-same. But they’re not!

Proofreading is pretty much what your school teacher did for you when she marked your work: checked that spellings, punctuation and grammar were correct and highlighted areas that could be improved if you wanted to spend more time on the document. After having your document proofread, you know that you have a correct, technically accurate text. It is your work, they are your words.

To have your text edited means you’re having a proofread with knobs on. Beyond doing a proofread for accuracy, an editor will offer suggestions for weaker words and phrases; s/he will research every word that raises a question for them; and ensure that the entire text is well-structured and consistent.

For...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

Of course there was not a date in history when someone said “Right ho, we’re all going to start speaking English today…All of us, and yes, that means you too Alfred”; English has been evolving for hundreds, nay thousands of years.

Researchers at Reading University cite I, we, two and three as words that have been around for tens of thousands of years based on results their clever ‘word analysing’ computer spewed out (after several years of their own research as well!). Having focussed on word patterns and how long words stick around, they predict that squeeze, guts, stick and bad could soon join the legions of words that we have stopped using, in whose great numbers count fabulous words like: billingsgatry, succubus and galligaskin.

Whilst those words are currently...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

 

Would you believe it? Forty years’ worth of fledglings have delighted in the highs and delights of Jim Henson’s colourful, exciting characters teaching something that had previously been mind-numbingly boring and remarkably repetitive.

From those humble beginnings, born into a world that still assumed human brains were fully formed at birth and that completely neglected to allow that pre-schoolers (they were called babies at the time as far as I’m aware!) could harbour any kind of intelligence whatsoever, Sesame Street burst onto the screens with the aim to teach this forgotten age-group how to count to ten. And they did!

It soon became very clear to the organisation funded in part by the US Department of Education that children were in fact capable of counting far beyond 10, and at a much younger age than was previously believed. Kindergartens started to see children coming through their doors capable of counting and reading – all thanks to Big Bird, Bert and Ernie…and friends. Even Richard...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing