Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
22 August 2010
Budding Poet?
Check out this 3-year-old reciting Billy Collin's poem Litany. Guess I better start replacing a little Eric Carlisle and Dr. Seuss with Frost, cummings, and Collins :)
03 June 2010
Redonkulous
If you've read Freakonomics: The Hidden Side of Everything (and liked it, I guess), then you'll enjoy his blog to. Being a logophiliac (is that a real word or did I just make it up by combining a couple roots?), I enjoyed this post and thought I'd pass it along.
Redonkulous huh?
Redonkulous huh?
20 March 2010
Phantonyms and Loose Usage
I was browsing the archives of On Language today and learned something while reading an article entitled Phantonym. Apparently enormity doesn't mean enormous (as I thought it did). It means great wickedness. I'm glad my students didn't know that last week when, referring to the state reading test, I said something like, "Don't be overwhelmed by the enormity of the test because we're going to spread it out over four day." While I, along with many other teachers, believe many of the standardized tests to be a great wickedness, I certainly didn't want my students going into the test with this thought in mind.
Other words I was using incorrectly? - disinterested and fortuitous.
So, though fortuitous, it was a fortunate wandering that led me to this article, for I believe that many teachers miss the enormity of the effect our language misuse has on students (and children in general) and being reminded by someone disinterested in education is a good prompt to reflect on this.
Isn't phantonym a great word? Any others come to mind?
Other words I was using incorrectly? - disinterested and fortuitous.
So, though fortuitous, it was a fortunate wandering that led me to this article, for I believe that many teachers miss the enormity of the effect our language misuse has on students (and children in general) and being reminded by someone disinterested in education is a good prompt to reflect on this.
Isn't phantonym a great word? Any others come to mind?
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