Language

Teaching English

When I decided to start a site on English, I had no idea what I was getting into. The lessons on English difficulties are fairly easy – I just write down what I know, double-check in the dictionary, and voilà. What turned out to be much harder is writing the ESL lessons. I thought I’d be clever and offer them not just in English, but in French and Spanish as well. That is, there are ESL lessons written in French from the French speaker’s perspective, and the same thing in Spanish. These sound quite tricky, but in fact they’re pretty easy too – since I have studied both French and Spanish, it’s not difficult to approach each issue “backwards” and see it from that language’s point of view.

So it turns out that the really tough features are the ESL lessons written in English! Trying to explain my native language using only my native language, without anything to compare it to and while trying not to use overly complicated vocabulary, that’s the hardest part. I would have thought it would be the easiest – you just never know. 🙂

Distraction

The other night my husband was in the kitchen cutting a lime for a gin and tonic, and as I was a bit stuck on the Spanish lesson I was writing (on the perfect infinitive), I decided to take a little break from work and pick his brain at the same time (his Spanish is much better than mine).

While pouring my tonic, I asked him for some examples of the Spanish perfect infinitive. He thought a moment and then started rattling off sentences as he picked up his glass and went to sit down. Meanwhile, my brain frantically tried to keep up with the Spanish as well as to find the rest of the lime, which seemed to have disappeared. A few seconds later I laughed as it was right in front of me but I’d been too distracted to see it. But my husband went one better: he returned to the kitchen to add both gin and tonic to his drink – he’d been so distracted by the Spanish question that he’d done nothing more than squeeze a wedge of lime over the ice in his glass! I couldn’t stop laughing for more than 10 minutes, and I’m laughing again as I write this.

English Mistakes

I can’t help it – it just makes my skin crawl to see certain errors, like “between you and I” and “this program has it’s own spellchecker.” It’s one thing for non-native speakers to make these kinds of mistakes and for the occasional typo to slip through, but writing (and speaking) well really isn’t that difficult. Though I’m not an English teacher, I’ve always had a certain knack for grammar and spelling, and I hope that my English site can help cut down on obvious mistakes.

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