One of the things I have done whilst I was away from (other than to get a lot better in my health!) is that I undertook a course to qualify as a teacher of English as a Second language. I did the Cambridge Certificate 4 course (CELTA)
I have to say that I have never studied/worked so hard in all my life. University postgraduate studies included. The problem? Grammar! Now I have "perfect" grammar book in my head. Emails excluded, I write and speak well but I have had no formal English grammar education (it was going out of fashion in the early 50s) But I had no idea how to put labels on all the various parts of speech that I had to learn in order to teach! I rose at 5 am and went to bed at 12.30 am for a month and did nothing but study and prepare. One thing I did learn was that infinitive splitting is acceptable, slang is now part of our language and spelling is less important than it once was. (was once? :) ) When I was taught to teach "gonna" instead of "going to" I nearly died. But then if we are to teach new English speakers to understand what we native speakers actually say, then perhaps it's OK. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
