Welcome to Grammar Thought the second.

Here it is.

I've been wondering about this for years and finally got round to asking my Dad last week. When should it be 'due to' and when should it be 'owing to'?

Well, it's simple but perhaps tricky to put into practice.
Due to: adjectival
Owing to: adverbial

So 'due to' is there to describe a noun: if you wanted to describe the weather (noun), you might say, "This weather is due to a depression in the Atlantic."

'Owing to' is there to explain a verb: if you wanted to explain why Spud is limping (verb), you might say, "Spud is limping owing to his bad foot"

There is no logic to this one - they both mean the same thing - but it is a convention.

My friend Jack and I are very cool. We set aside a whole Friday evening for discussing Grammar. And we enjoyed it. To add to the coolness, I said that I would continue to impart the art of grammar to Jack by emailing her a grammar thought-for-the-week every Friday in my free. I honestly can't think why people think teachers are nerds.

Anyway, for the benefit of you all, here is my thought for this week.

Welcome to Grammar Thought for the Week. This week's thought is brought to you by the letters I, M and E.

People often think that they should use 'I' instead of 'me' all the time if they are to be absolutely correct. However, if they stripped the sentence down, it would not make sense to do so:

If I was to invite you out with me, I would say, "Come out with me tonight!" If I was to add Toby in, the sentence would remain the same but with Toby added: "Come out with me and Toby tonight!". There is no logical reason for changing the 'me' to an 'I' (as many people do because they have lost track of the flow of the sentence and they think they're being super-correct* - often, people say things like, "Come out with Toby and I tonight!").

What is correct, however is to keep the 'I' in a sentence where it would have originally been an 'I', e.g. "I will go" becomes, "Toby and I will go", not "Me and Toby will go"

So don't change the pronoun from its original state.

Incidentally, did you notice how 'me' feels more natural going before the other person's name and 'I' would feel positively wrong unless it was after the other person's name?

*There is, of course, no such thing as super-correct when it comes to grammar. When people try to be super-correct, they just reveal their ignorance and/or lack of imagination. E.g. "All persons must check-in," (instead of, "Everyone must check-in," or, "All [specific plural noun, e.g. 'passengers'] must check-in,") equals crap.

By the way, our Friday evening was a lot more soulful than this as it linked grammar to literature and culture. Although I don't think that's going to help me in the cool stakes.

I should blog. I've bought some paint today so I might finish my painting. I've gone back to acrylic because I used to enjoy it setting fast and making ridges. And you don't need linseed oil and white spirit. And the oils were expensive.

I have been neglecting my blog of late because I got fed up of it over the holidays. Sorry to the five people who read it!

Anyway. I have been saying (to myself) recently that everyone needs a Tobes. He is a good one. Just in general. He's a cheerer-upper and a sorter outer.

And then last night he was a good one in more specific terms.

1. He texted me to make sure I came home from work on time
2. When I got home, there was a HUGE bouquet of flowers for me. From my favourite flower shop. I've never had a proper bouquet before, I don't think.
3. We went to have a curry at my favourite Indian restaurant (the New Ash Green one, if you want to know. The naan breads are objects of beauty).
4. Then he gave me an iced Chelsea bun.
5. Then we went to see Borat. Which I did want to see, before you ask. Very funny apart from some disgusting nudity.

Anyway. He is lovely. Despite (some) appearances!

Photos coming soon.

I don't want to blog today.

Is that how you spell it? I don't care enough to check.

Anyway, I was wide awake til about 4 or 5 in the morning last night, presumably because I had drunk a cup of coffee in the morning and a cup of tea in the evening. I normally have no caffeine whatsoever.

It wasn't all bad because I didn't have that horrible tired-but-can't-sleep feeling; I was just wide awake. So I did my work. Quite well, too!

I was wondering if it has such a strong effect because I used to drink a lot of caffeine then went straight to having none. Would that make it worse? I don't know.

Blogger tells me that they have scheduled outage at 2PM PDT. I don't know what any of that means apart from 2pm. I can imagine 'scheduled outage' being something that Toby would make up to use when he's telling me that he's going to be out at a particular time.

I've become a bit addicted to this website which showcases the most beautifully designed websites it can find - 10 for every month since some time in 2005. Look at the archives to find the previous months.

It's not just the flair with which the designs are executed but simple things like the layout. A lot of it's done in flash but I think you could take some of the simpler layout stuff and do it in normal (whatever that is).

Here's a picture of my Dad being a lizard. It was a funny evening:


In a little bit we are going to go and see my Mum and Dad for a cup of tea. And that will be the most eventful thing that has happened all day. Toby has been working on some little designs and I have been finishing The Constant Gardener. Which was good. But in some ways I wish it had a cheesy ending where you get to read about justice being served to all the villains.

Tomorrow, my sister is coming round and we are going to watch the whole of series four of Scrubs. I think. Although I have to do some work, having not done it last week. When I was writing my dissertation, I realised that it was going to come together at the last minute so I should enjoy the times when I wasn't writing, free of guilt. Then I went on a course in June this year where they said that if you're a last minute person, you always will be, so just plan to have time and energy available at the last minute. It's a nice thing to realise. So I'm feeling very un-guilty about having done nice things on holiday so far and I feel much better about actually doing the work itself.

I'm reading The Constant Gardener by John le Carre. It's good. You probably all know that as everyone else read it last year. I didn't feel much sympathy for any of the characters for the first quarter of the book though, which was a bit odd. It's all so shrouded in secrecy that you don't know whether any sympathy you may have is misplaced. But it's ok now because it's all starting to unfold. As these things do.

What meaning do you bring to this picture?



I just watched a programme on some of the symbolism associated with The Da Vinci Code (not just the film, the real stuff too.) It made me a bit sad because the program ended saying that there wasn't any symbolism/pattern/extra meaning behind various works of art.

BUT THERE MIGHT BE! Who knows what was in the artist's head? And what about the meaning that readers bring to the text? It was not a very soulful programme, I thought.

I hate The Daily Mail because it pretends to be good journalism and it isn't. I don't mind The Sun and The Mirror so much because it's obvious that they're full of rubbish but everything about The Mail (layout, photograph style, banners, language) makes it appear decent.

Blogger is being wierd.

Life with Tobes is funny and fun.

I am making Lemon Surprise Pudding in a minute and, as Delia says, the suprise is that there's a lemony sauce underneath the spongey pudding. I don't think that's a very big surprise but maybe it was to the first person who made it.

I also need to make a summer pudding to use up some defrosted berries that I've got. Summer Puddings always remind me of the opening to The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. Daisy's mother dies of pre-eclampsia whilst making something like a summer pudding. It's horrible in a way because the raspberry juice is like blood and the bread is like her soft white skin. It's a sad book, I think. It's really a kitchen sink movement style book based on Daisy's experience of domesticity. It starts with love, passion even, between the summer pudding lady and her husband but ends with nothing.

From In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman

It is perhaps strange and perhaps not so strange that this breed of racism goes unchallenged in many (most? all?) countries.

Some obvious comments we all enjoy making are on the subjects of the choice of president, the gung-ho foreign policy, globalisation, insincere cheerfulness, apparent arrogance/ignorance, bible-bashing... These obvious comments do, of course, have obvious roots which we can all remember with self-righteousness in our own heads.

I at least dislike, if not despise, all of the above but there are surely a couple of important points to bear in mind:

1. Not all Americans reflect all of these criticisms in their everyday lives. Obviously. In fact, I haven't met one American whose life reflects any of these aspects significantly. Just as we would hope to avoid judging Muslims, Scots, Germans, etc. on the grounds of their countries' actions, perhaps we should think twice before doing so to Americans.

2. There are some understandable reasons behind the stuff we like to criticise. Look at Britain in the first few hundred years of being an established country and power. (When I say understandable, I do not mean correct!)

This might be a silly thing to get on my soap box about - America doesn't really need defending: it's quite big. It is just that this racism seems to have been over-looked and I'm a bit concerned about the impact that this might have have on our pure and tolerant hearts and minds (!) and about the negativity Americans may have aimed at them through no fault of their own.

Done.

10 minutes to go before I fail to post every day on just the second day...quick!

So, as I promised, a tribute to Abbey. Although perhaps it will be a bit shorter than I intended with the deadline looming and all.

Anti-Americanism is an interesting form of racism. I'll leave that comment hanging because I have no time to unpick it. Suffice to say, though, that most of us are anti-American in some way.

Well, if you fit into that bracket at all, you need to meet my friend Abbey (who is an American). She is all American but in such a way that you have to repent for all your anti-Americanism. She wants you to have a nice day and will make sure that you do.

So there you go. Hope that sounds like a tribute because it really is.

Hope I make it before midnight...agh, the suspense!

Working that extra week in August is paying off now! I've got a two week half term holiday and it's already great. I'm staying with my friend Abbey who I will write more about when I can post a picture of her. It will be a tribute to Abbey.

Anyways, I am resolving to write every day of the holidays unless I stay away from home.

That is it.

Just to confirm, I won't be 40 soon. I was making a point.

Matt is over and we're talking about blogs. Toby's is nice to look back on but I think mine will just be boring when I read it in the future.

Life is flying by very quick. October already. It's nearly half-term. Kerazy. And apparently it keeps getting quicker. Which is quite a scary thought considering how much quicker it's started going in the last few years. I will actually be 40 soon.

Oh well

I had such a funny dream the other day. I actually woke up laughing to myself. It goes like this...

I was in my classroom and I got an email asking me to send all the small people down to the hall. I sent them down then wondered what they were doing so I went in to have a look. They were all sitting on chairs, swinging their legs because they were too small. I went and looked at the questionnaires they were filling in and they had questions like:

"When it's windy, do you get blown over?"
"Does this interfere with your learning?"

How funny! Even funnier that my mind made all that up. Once, in a dream, my mind made up a four or five page long booklet all about birds and I read it word for word. I don't even know anything about birds!

My father-in-law:
My husband (a self-portrait years ago):

As you probably know, most governments are under immense pressure to raise standards of literacy and this government has responded by introducing The National Literacy Strategy. Which is not all bad, it has to be said. Although quite a lot of it is bad. The NLS, which does just has a recommended status (although recommended in the sense that if you don't follow it you've got to prove you're doing it better), instructs teachers to spend a significant amount of time on grammar teaching, some at word level and some at sentence level. There are so many opinions that everyone has on this but here's a fact for you...

The government introduced this recommended grammar on the basis of research that showed that grammar teaching improves writing. And that's what we all want, isn't it? HOWEVER, this is the state of that research:

The EPPI-Centre and English Review Team (an independent team who review vast quantities of research) searched their comprehensive database and came up with 4566 studies that had looked into the value of teaching grammar, specifically syntax, to improve children's writing. They then applied four criteria to each study to work out if they were thought out carefully enough and relevant enough. This slashed the figure of appropriate studies down to 58, only 33 of which were primary studies (as opposed to reviews). They then studied in depth the 10 best studies (according to their criteria) and only three of these were of medium-high quality. The review team concluded that all three were inconclusive.

This leaves teachers in a tricky position. Especially as the call for better functional literacy comes around year after year alongside all the debate surrounding exam results and standards.

There's more to say but I don't think you'd read it! I'll post a link to my essay one day and here's a link to the review that I was writing about. Enjoy!

I've just been reading everyone's blogs (literally all the links working from Toby's) and everyone does a "sorry I haven't blogged for ages" post. This is mine. I feel a bit self-conscious about what to write. That's why. I don't have Toby's way with words when it comes to writing about nothing.

Well, I love my new job. Actually LOVE it! It's a good feeling.

I'm really trying to think of something interesting to say but it's hard.

Ok, Romeo and Juliet... Shakespeare uses anthithesis in the form of oxymorons to describe how love is never simple. Romeo describes his love for Rosaline by saying things like "bright smoke" and "cold flame". So love is always tainted. We can conclude.

Oh, this is cool: A Shakespeare insult generator. Everyone wants an insult.

Toby's got a new iPod thanks to consumer rights and YOU need to know about them...

European law states that ANY electrical good that fails because of a fault with the product within two years of the date of acquisition (i.e. when it got delivered as opposed to when you paid for it) must be replaced or repaired.

The Sales of Goods Act says that consumers should expect goods to work for a reasonable amount of time. If the company says their product should last for at least five years then you have a case for demanding a repair or replacement if it breaks down within that time. In fact, you have a case whether or not they say it should last for that long. I imagine it's harder to get repairs/replacements on these grounds as they're a bit vague. The European law seems pretty solid though.

A friend in retail did say that companies can get round it by saying that it was clear at the time of purchase that the product was only guaranteed for, say, a year - something from the Office for Trading Standards helps them there - but I don't think the European law actually specifies anything about that; it's just a straightforward law that it must be repaired or replaced if it goes wrong.

Lots of companies only give a one year warranty - even for products like washing machines and ovens. This is caused by the concept of extended warranties where you pay the company to guarantee your product for longer. But don't, at least for the first two years, because they have to repair/replace it anyway.

Anyway, nice Apple people

I have had nothing to write recently as I have been very good tidying and cleaning and, as everyone knows, virtue is boring.


Virtue quotes...

"He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire" (Winston Churchill)

"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue" (Albert Einstein)


...and a less cynical one

"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one." (Marcus Aurelius)


Anyway, back to school on Wednesday so can't keep it up much longer. I should have some more interesting things to say then.

Elbs

The sun is shining, the birds are singing and Toby is washing up.

I've had a very busy day today. I have sorted out every single teaching resource that I have on my computer into categories and renamed all the files so they make sense.

I have also researched the Great Vowel Shift...something that I should have known about prior to becoming an English teacher. Perhaps I did one day. It goes like this:

You know we have such problems with spelling in English. Well this is all because of the Great Vowel Shift (which, I think, is much cooler with those capitals - it's how it's written). From the 1400s to 1700s, there was a major change in the way that people pronounced their vowels. The reasons behind this are very complicated but the interesting thing is how it affected spelling. During the GVS the printing press was invented and so began the standardisation of English. English spellings, then, became standardised before the pronunciation had finished developing; our spellings relate much more to the way things were said in the 15th and 16th Centuries.

The following url has some recordings of the different pronunciations. (I don't know how to hyperlink yet):
http://alpha.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/dialogue.htm

So now you know. Have pity on your English teachers.

Also, I found lots of Cockney Rhyming Slang on a great BBC encyclopedia website (h2g2):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A649

Now I have to do a bit more research and reinvent upstairs.

I went to the gym for the first time ever today. It was good.

Also I went to my new school to sort out my classroom:

I've given myself a blog. I read everyone else's all the time and I like it so I'm joining in.

But I should be tidying up. So I'm not really joining in quite yet. Cos I'm gonna tidy.

Yes, yes I am. Although I've been saying that since 8am and it's now 8:21pm.

Elbs