by Heather Chetwynd | Feb 17, 2022 | Culture and Values
A former student of mine got a job in northern Quebec years ago. The weather is pretty harsh there and, being quick witted, he wrote the following few paragraphs with common weather idioms. I felt it was so well written and the idioms used so naturally, I decided to...
by Heather Chetwynd | Feb 17, 2022 | Accent Modification
This poem has many names and can be found on the internet under a number of titles. I like this one – BRUSH UP YOUR ENGLISH. The author is also in debate but I found one name – T.S Watt – with the date posted as 1954. The relationship between...
by Heather Chetwynd | Sep 27, 2021 | Language Training
Most cities have their landmarks. In Toronto, we have one that was sold after the death of its owner, Ed Mirvish. A poor immigrant to Toronto in the 1920s, he built a discount store in 1948 that catered to immigrants and the working class, delighting passersby with...
by Heather Chetwynd | Jun 10, 2021 | Language Training
I love vocabulary and English has a lot – the Websters Third Dictionary lists over 470,000 words, although many are obsolete. Of course, most native speakers know roughly 20,000 words and commonly use around 8,000. According to Andrei Tapalaga, in his article,...
by Heather Chetwynd | Jun 1, 2021 | Language Training
Many of us have our pet peeves – minor annoyances that particularly irritate us, more so than would be normally expected. Well, one of my pet peeves is messing up an expression. Sometimes referred to as an “eggcorn,” the more technical word for this error is...
