Misinterpreting Creativity for Verbal Irony

While the teacher was establishing the classroom rules at the beginning of the school year, he seized the opportunity to draw the students’ attention to the importance of doing homework in time.  He clearly stated that “Any student who fails to do homework has to write an apology e-mail giving at least three reasons why the homework was not done, and the e-mail is to be considered a substitute for the homework, and it will be corrected and graded”. As the students hate writing, they decided never to forget about their homework whatever it takes. And that’s exactly what the teacher aimed at.

            One day, after he had taught the students the use and usage of “too and enough”, as usual the teacher gave them homework to do on the weekend. The homework was an easy receptive exercise. The students have only to fill in the blanks with the appropriate adverb of degree, and it goes something like this,

*// Fill in the blanks with “too” or “enough” appropriately

1. This exercise is _______ easy to do.

2. I think Mr. Baker is good ________ for the job.

3. The workers don’t work quickly ___________

4. John is _______ smart to be fooled.

5. The manager is ________ busy to meet you today.

6. etc

Adam, who is actually a good student, didn’t do the homework, so he had to write the e-mail, and here is what the teacher read,

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To say or not to say, "I'm sorry". Is that a question, too?

Startup

            Communication is the pupils’ major in most schools. It focuses on exchanges that make sense. It consists of interacting positively in various situations simulating real life. Normally, there must be a great amount of etiquette and politeness in conversations that are supposed to happen in real life. Among the things the pupils learn are how to communicate civilly. They learn how to ask for anything and how to respond respectfully. They also learn how to apologize when they feel they have done something wrong. Well, this is great. What if the learners learn to behave first? They should learn their rights and duties vis-à-vis their entourage and their community. They should learn how to conduct themselves correctly and respectfully according to the norms of the community in which they live. They should remain inside their circle of liberty and never invade others’ either physically or verbally. This way, they won’t need to keep apologizing all the time.

            There are situations in life that the kids are not prepared for, and they almost don’t know how to cope with, but if they are prepared to be active citizens, they would easily find an outlet. They need to admit it when they feel guilty and apologize for any harm they could have caused to the others. This is the only way they will learn not to be outraged and abide by the rules and customs of the society in which they live. Once they are not brought up correctly, they will never be aware when they do wrong. They have no background knowledge about the rules to rely upon in dealing with life diverse situations.

            They have to learn to be good communicators, extroverted and sociable. They should learn never to be ashamed to say, “I am sorry” when they have to. Apologizing is not easy for most people, it needs courage and self-confidence. Despite all, before teaching kids how to apologize, teach them how to avoid situations in which they would be obliged to say sorry. They should learn to gain control of their behavior. This is how the loose “I’m sorry” would gradually vanish except for courtesy or for showing compassion.

It’s usually too late when one says, “sorry!”

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The Passive Voice, the easy way

It is true that the passive voice is most talked about by our students. I think we can go beyond the formal grammar rules and deal with it in the funniest way. That's -between us- a sort of word games. Let's enjoy talking about the passive voice in the absence of Mr R.G.R (Rigid Grammar Rule). We will be back biters for a while, yet I hope in the benefit of both The Passive Voice and our students.

Let's make one of the old so missed rules our starting point. The rule says: the object of the active sentence is always the subject of the passive one. But before all let's see what does the active sentence look like before the operation then go to discuss the process the doctor follows during the operation and examine the patient after the operation. It is not an easy work to do, I admit it.

<<The passive voice of any transitive verb is made by combining its past participle with the appropriate tense of the verb "to be" >>, the teacher said. He means that the verb “to be” is always the doctor who can operate on the sentence successfully in a "passive voice" surgery. Take this so called the patient active sentence, for instance,

Someone plays the piano every night

             This sentence is composed of a subject: (someone), a verb: (plays), and an object (the piano). And the latter is the organ that gears the whole operation. It is the most important part of the utterance to make the operation feasible. 

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The question of using the passive voice in writing

Introduction

Many teachers are not resolute vis-à-vis the question of using the passive voice in writing. Most of them even avoid mentioning the passive voice style while teaching writing. This is either because they regard it as a minor issue and argue that there are other focal things in writing which disserve much more concentration, or because they wouldn’t like their students to be ‘politicians’ for the reason that politicians are said to be known for the excessive use of this dead style. Still, there are teachers who advise their students to avoid using the passive voice while writing because they deem it is redundant and bulk. Nonetheless, they keep silent about the “why not?” To my mind, they would at least let them know that this self-imposing style on the students is confusing and message breaking down when the reader cannot decide who did what?! It brings about ambiguity and misunderstanding.

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From One Paragraph Writing To Five-Paragraph-Essay

Introduction

         If the students could follow the gradual evolvement of their temptation to write, they would surely come out with quite good production. Their problem is that they want things done quickly. Writing in particular is known for its toughness for the learners; that’s why they need to be patient and systematic in their endeavour to master this complicated skill. Engaging in writing is preparing oneself for consuming extra time and energy.

         Extending a paragraph into a five-paragraph essay needs some steps to follow. When a student learns how to write a paragraph, he normally could extend it to make it an essay. Each paragraph has got only one idea to talk about. Generally the topic sentence should state it plainly, and all that remains are supporting details about the topic. If the readers are not interested in the idea stated in the topic sentence, they have only to skip reading the whole paragraph. However if the topic of the paragraph interests the readers, it is quite imperative for them to examine the details, I mean the whole paragraph.

          This paper intends to show how to develop an action plan and how to manage writing a more detailed five-paragraph-essay. It is a practical way to make the transition from one paragraph to an essay very smooth, concentrated and effortless. Still, writing remains a long recursive process and a relatively tough skill. Writing is known for its exigency in terms of time, concentration, background knowledge, patience and savoir faire.

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Emojis for improving skimming and scanning skills

Abstract

           Emojis have already had a widespread influence on the teens’ evolving new culture today, so it is really out of hard-headedness to resist and reject them pretending they are only good for pointless chat sessions on social media.

            Emojis can be of great assistance in facilitating skimming and scanning for better understanding, as well as controlling the amount of time spent on reading comprehension assignments.

            In connection to a previously published article on using “Emojis for teaching English as a foreign language », this paper comes to question the ability of emojis in boosting reading comprehension skills.

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Which teaching method for which Learning situation?

Joseph Novak (1998) points out that every educational act consists of five elements:       (1) learner,

            (2) teacher,

            (3) knowledge,

            (4) context,

            (5) evaluation

            Nobody actually is willing to learn lessons that are not inspiring; so this generation Y of learners particularly is. They are not ready to accept anything that does not motivate them? The worst of all is that it becomes tougher to motivate them. This situation zooms and inflates the overlooked question notably “What would ever be inspiring for them?” Taking what they come across daily on their digital gadgets into consideration, nothing is so attractively new to stimulate them. They have almost had enough of everything so quickly that their concentration has been lost in the tiny details of trivial information. How to mend this and start reformulating their perception of the world beneficially is what school nowadays has to focus upon. Methods come and go, but the students are always going to school for learning. Don’t you smell the paradox here? Such is the nature of this era.

            Within this messy interwoven net of information and disinformation, everybody is trapped. What happens is that the learners realize that school is incapable of lending them a salvage hand. With its archaic tools of rescue, school has become unable to pull them out of the moors of social media where the obscurity or diversion is pitch black though it looks as bright as daylight especially for teenagers.

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