Grandiose Grammar

Aoife

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Grandiose Grammar

Grandiose Grammar is a podcast on all things English grammar by Aoife.

03/01/2021

Episode 45 Salutations

Hello folks! It’s been a while since I last produced some content for this website and my podcast. Last week, I had some very interesting feedback from a friend regarding a comment I made about the salutation Dear Sirs towards the end of episode 43. Anna K. informed me that her language school teaches students that the salutation Dear Sirs should be used when addressing a legal entity. I had never come across this before and so I decided to do a little reading and investigating. This is a link to an article from The Guardian. If you’d like to check out Ken Adams’ article, you’ll find it here. It’s very informative and definitely worth a read. Have a look at this to find out what the UK Law society has to say and here is a link to an announcement by the Irish Law Society on the same topic. Blog RSS
15/11/2020

Grandiose Grammar Ep 44 Cognate Objects

Hello folks, this week while preparing a lesson for one of my grammar classes I stumbled across a footnote in a grammar book on cognate objects. The topic is absolutely fascinating from both a grammar perspective and a cognitive linguistic perspective. If anyone is interested in reading more about this topic, I highly recommend this article. In particular, chapters 4 and 5 of this dissertation are worth reading if you have some time on your hands. Blog RSS
01/11/2020

Grandiose Grammar Ep 43 Titles/Honorifics

Hello folks! This week I’m chatting with you about how to address people in emails. In this episode I have things to say about honorifics and mention the conversation about gender-neutral titles. If you are interested in reading more about that, check out this link. Blog RSS
04/10/2020

Episode 42 Interview with Anna K. 2

Hello folks! I’m back with more from my interview with Anna. In this episode we talk about the impact of Covid-19 on teaching and what the future might bring. We also spoke about how a digital future could impact our work. Another topic that came up was the idea of global English or English in an international context and how the subtleties of hedging require a human teacher/trainer. During our chat we referred to some news articles we had read that claim that native English speakers are poor communicators. Here’s one from the BBC. And here’s a link to the SAP News Center article on Digitizaton vs. Digitalization. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics. Feel free to leave a comment below. Blog RSS

30 min
20/09/2020

Interview with Anna K. 1

Hello folks! This week I’ve got another interview; this time it’s with my friend Anna. She works in adult education and has lots of really interesting insights into teaching. This week we talk about teaching, imposter syndrome and Anna shares her method of teaching Germans how to use the present perfect - of course that led to a bit of grammar geekery. There’ll be a part two for this interview, so be sure to come back and listen in to the second half of this conversation. Thanks again to Anna for sharing her time and insights with us! I really enjoyed this conversation. Blog RSS

24 min
30/08/2020

Episode 40 Interview 2 with Anja

Hello folks! This week I’ve got part two of my interview with Anja. In particular, we discussed how Covid-19 has impacted our teaching. Anja brought up the topic of teacher bashing and the widespread mis-conception that educators are unwilling to embrace modern technology when in fact the real problem is a lack of investment in educational infrastructure. This series of interviews will continue into the autumn of this year. If there’s someone you’d like me to interview, leave a suggestion in the comments. If there are questions you’d like me to ask, leave those in the comments too. Blog RSS

23 min
16/08/2020

Grandiose Grammar Episode 39 Interview with Anja (a grammar school teacher in Bavaria) Part 1

Hello folks! This week I’ve got part one of an interview with my friend Anja who is a teacher in Bavaria. This week Anja introduces herself and tells us a little about her work before we start digging into topics like fun over fear and fluency over accuracy and then we start really digging into the meaty of topics of edutainment, learners as consumers and what that might mean for independent thought and further education. Come back next week for part 2! We’ll be discussing topics like open book exams and how societal changes impact our classrooms and what that could mean for the future. If you have questions you’d like to hear answered in future episodes, leave them in the comments. This interview series is going to carry on over the summer and early autumn. I’d love to ask your questions: share them with me. Blog RSS

24 min
02/08/2020

Episode 38 How I figure out verb phrase errors

Hello folks! This week I’m going to talk you through the processes I follow when I see a verb phrase that my English-native-speaker gut feeling tells me is wrong and I automatically know how to correct it but I want to really understand what’s driving the correction. This episode was inspired by one of my students who will remain anonymous and the use of the verb phrase have been arising. Here’s a link to the dictionary definition that I refer to in the episode. If you want to read more about stative verbs, check out chapter 5.3 of Biber, Douglas, et al. Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English, which I also reference in this episode. If you have verb phrases you suspect are “wrong” but can’t figure out why, leave them in the comments below and we can investigate them together. Blog RSS

6 min

Grandiose Grammar is a podcast on all things English grammar by Aoife.

Creator

Aoife
Years Active

2019 - 2021
Episodes

45
Rating

Clean
Show Website

Grandiose Grammar