Do You Need Help With English? Do You Know Somebody who does?

We are increasingly communicating with others overseas who are keen to get help with the English language.

Angela Lansbury Punctation prepares you to read aloud, also prepares you when reading silently to yourself to prepare your expectation and make sense of what follows. Commas are to tell you to pause before an exclamation or short sentence. When reading aloud, you use a different tone of voice than that of the narrator. The colon or double period tells you to take a deep breath before a long sentence or several sentences. 

Punctuation is different in other languages. So is sentence structure. 

The easiest way to correct your work is to use grammarly.com

Many people join Toastmasters groups to learn English. At Toastmasters meetings there is a Grammarian or Language Evaluator who comments on the good use of language and introduces a word of the day, sometimes some grammar rules, and uses of language.

Angela Lansbury, English tutor, and Language Evaluator (Grammarian) at Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Club, Singapore, and other clubs worldwide.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a travel writer and photographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a language evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting every Wednesday, on zoom the first Wednesday of the month but the other Wednesdays are workshops on app 

learncool.sg

Or quicker to type and easier to remember: 

 tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev_Fashion_Park

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/gallery/2014/sep/01/londons-book-benches-readers-photos

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/ilanacohensella/book-benches/

https://www.facebook.com/angela.lansbury.121

https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reduplicated_place_names

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reduplicated_Australian_place_names

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reduplicated_New_Zealand_place_names

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogs

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-say-thank-you-in-several.html

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/05/introducing-yourself-in-english-spanish.html

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/01/second-set-of-portuguese-words.html Please share links to your favourite posts

https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club

translate.google.com

duolingo.com

Explaining and Teaching English To Foreigners and Translating Americanisms

I have been Language Evaluator or grammarian, a cross between an English Language Coach and member of the dreaded Grammar Police at several Toastmasters International clubs in Singapore. I was recently challenging myself to find alternatives to phrases such as it sucks. I thought this colloquial phrase was an Americanism.










I was right.

I Sucked - Did I Really?
I went into online dictionaries looking for an explanation and was surprised by what I found. I had imagined that it was some kind of sexual reference. It turns out that the phrase 'it sucks' is to do with playing jazz on a horn. He blows is good, but he sucks means he lacks skill. It has become a common saying, a metaphor, not to be taken literally, like 'he can't tie his own shoelaces'.

So what is the British English equivalent? If the speaker says, I tried ice skating and singing and learning Mandarin but I sucked at all three, ...?  I was poor, useless, lacked skill, had no talent, was a dismal failure, had two left feet, had no green finger.

What of the phrase my life sucked? My life was miserable, unfair, a bad situation, troubled, joyless,
lousy, hopeless, going nowhere.

My Bad
What if the speaker says my bad? Definitely another Americanism. I would never say that. I am British. My bad translates into British English as my mistake or my fault.

Today's discoveries:

Wikipedia makes rhetoric very complicated. Try simple wiki.

Wiki's list of Rhetorical devices is comprehensive and alphabetical but very academic and used out of date English.  I wonder how much of it is cribbed or copied from out of date, out of copyright editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica using articles written by highbrow academics.
s
My latest discovery is a simple to understand on the web extract from a book, with modern examples, words you could actually say or read aloud.

I also liked the amusing titled: It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences. By June Casagrande.

For anybody who doesn't know the original quotation, the book title is a parody of the well known opening line to Charles Dickens book A Tale of Two Cities, which starts, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. that's rather on oxymoron, a contradiction.


Useful Websites
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric

https://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm#Self

https://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric6.htm#Alliteration

An amusing modern best seller on absurd punctuation (and spelling) with an ambiguous title:
Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
You can look inside it on Amazon.
ps://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/

 https://www.amazon.com/Was-Best-Sentences-Worst-Crafting/

You can look inside this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Eloquence-Secrets-Perfect-Phrase/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and English speaker.