One of the most fequently asked questions is, 'How can I improve my speaking quickly?' The simple answer is, that unless you live with native English speaker, 24 hours a day, you can�ft!�h there one, however, things that you can do to help yourself.
You need to speak English regularly every day. It is often suggested that students might speak English socially, amongst them selvelves. Realistically, I don't think that�fs a prodical option. Naturally, Chinese students are going to speak Chinese when together. It was even suggested at one student where I worked, that it should be made a rule. Thats not an option either, as it is important to police. Students playing on a sports field, may comply with a regulation for a fleating few movemenst as a patroling teacher passes by, but when they have gone, students will naturally revet to their native tongue.
A practical solution is to speak as much English as you can in class. Ask your teachers to speak only English. It is more convenient to explain problems in Chinese.
When you were a child, growing up, you learnt to speak Chinese by talking to your mother, relations and friends. Your parents didn't give you a book and say � 'There you one. Learn to talk!' You didn't say, 'Fine thanks, and you? when they asked if you were alright. You said, �'I'fm hungry.' 'I've hurt my finger', or 'I want to go to the toilet', and other sentences.
The solution to learning to speak a foreign language should be the same. Collect words to communicate with natural conversation.
Listening, is , I think, the biggest single problem students face. It requires a great deal of conventiation, which is why I say, close the textbooks are look and listen to your teacher!
Listen to English as much as possible, for a short time everyday. A useful source in a small radio with short-wave-SW and you can listen to broadcasts from native English speakers. BBC world Service in excellent, but reception in often indiistiuct or poor, VOA(voice of America ) is also very good although the dialogue if frequently very fast and masked by background music. VOM( voice of Moscow ) has good reception and is very clear with British English pronunciation. It's contant tends to be rather more formal.
You won't understand everything you hear because of the difficult vocabulary. However, you should be able to get a general idea or precture of what in being saiol. If you don't understand something, then guess! Generally speaking, if your guess makes sense, it is probably more or less career.
You need to feel confident , conortable, warm, and relaxed. The place which fulfils all uese conditions is when you are in bed, before you go to sleep.
With both speaking and listening, be confident! Li Yang (Crazy English) a man I greatly admire, says, 'If you think you can, you can!' In my views also, t think it generally to be true.
Presentation Skills from Stanford University. CA.
Strong communication and presentation skills are essential in relating thoughts and ideas effectively. Whether delivering a laboratory presentation or interviewing for a job, the overall success of the presentation relies heavily on the speaker’s ability to confidently impart information in a concise and interesting way.
Personal Preparation
The best way to confront fear of public speaking is effective preparation. Before you begin organizing the content and details of the talk, clarify your purpose in giving it. Ask yourself: Who is my audience? What are the most salient points to make? Why is this information important? And, you should know well in advance what your expected format, time frame, and space/technology limits are.
Next, practice “dress rehearsal” style, meaning that you should go through the speech using the slides and technology tools you will have on the day of delivery. Plan ahead for questions you expect to receive and prepare slides and/or other supportive materials to support your answers. Finally, arrive early at the presentation site on the day of your talk to ensure proper set up of technology aids and to take time to acclimate to your surroundings before beginning.
Slide and Technology Preparation
The purpose of using slides and other technological devices in talks is two-fold: to provide a visual aid which explains a concept and to introduce an idea you will talk about.
It is important, therefore, to present one idea or concept per slide and expound on it verbally as opposed to presenting materials cluttered with lots of details. Make sure you provide at least one slide which outlines what you plan to talk about and slide formats should be the same throughout the talk. It is also advisable to bring back up materials just in case your first plan does not work.
Delivery
All presentations begin with a brief introduction, continue with content development and explanation, and end with conclusive, summarizing details and/or question and answer opportunities. Your talk should include smooth transitions between these stages to keep your audience engaged and clear about program objectives.
Introduction: Start your presentation with a brief introduction of yourself, the context for your talk, and your agenda for it. You will want to begin on time and speak confidently, even if you are nervous. Remember: it is not just what you say, but how you say it that makes for a good first impression and effective speech.
Presentation of Content: Your content is best when presented in a relaxed, conversational style. Avoid reading directly from your slides or notes; rather, you should be adding to slide content. Provide relevant, concise, and interesting stories or examples to illustrate key or complicated points. Walk around a little, if possible, and make eye contact with audience members. If they appear disengaged or confused, try to reconnect with them by explaining information in a different way or by asking if they need clarification.
Conclusions, Questions and Answers: You will want to end your presentation by restating your original point and by summarizing your supporting arguments. Listen carefully to audience members’ questions and repeat them back, should you need clarification. End on time and provide opportunities for future follow-up and questions by providing references, resources, and your contact information.
Discussion Topics.
posted: 2006.09.14.
One of the most effective ways to get students practicing English is to use Discussion Topics in groups of 2, 3 or 4 students. We all have things we want to say. We all have our own opinions on a variety of matters.
In my classes, we don't use text books, we talk as much as possible during a 90 minute lesson. There are three primary reasons for this. The first is obviously, to speak English as much as possible in the limited time available. The second is that text books tend to restrict thought and classroom activity with oral English. The third is a practical fact that, if a student is shy, perhaps embarrassed or does not want to get involved due to poor skill level, they can 'hide' behind a text book and, as a teacher, I am not able to decide whether the person is taking part in the lesson, or whether they are getting anything out of the lesson.
At first students are alarmed that they don't have a book to hold on to as an anchor, but they soon relax, and come to terms with their situation. They help each other if they get stuck with a question or idea. That creates a busy working environment and classromm buzz. It works like this;
Given a topic to discuss, the class splits into small groups, usually their friends, and talk about the topic in English. One writes down notes, another has a dictionary or electronic dictionary to translate unfamiliar words.
After a brief introduction, the discussion period lasts for about 25 minutes, leaving 5 - 10 minutes for the group to assimilate (take in), the notes and make a summary. When the class resumes after a break, the note-taker makes the presentation to the rest of the class. Students in the 'audience', ask questions.
This rotates round the class from week to week, giving everyone in the group the opportunity to address the class with the groups opinions. It also gives students confidence and a sense of caring for each other. There is no 'loss of face', even for the student who has the most difficulty. The class is supportive, because they know just how harrowing the experience of making a presentation to their classmates, especially for the first time, can be.
There are frequently differing ideas within the group, in which case the introduction should begin with, 'We think...' and not, 'I think...'. It may need to be qualified with something like, '...but we couldn't agree, so...'. This is quite normal. How boring life would be if we all agreed about everything all of the time! If you make a statement, it is good practice to qualify what you say anyway.
With discussions or Debates - an argument where two opposing sides discuss a topic, there is not a right or a wrong answer. In asking for your opinions on a topic, I want to hear what you think, not what you think you want me to think! Is that clear?
It is not the place of the teacher to criticise or argue with the presenter about their group's thoughts. It is OK to make a summary at the end of the lesson. The teachers job is to encourage discussion, at whatever level of competency the speaker has, encourage confidence in the speakers and encourage the group to think for themselves. Mistakes don't matter, as they can be corrected, but if students don't make a concerted effort and contribution to a lesson, their competencyand fluency in the language is unlikely to improve.
Teaching is not just about imparting knowledge or factual information. It is about encouraging confidence and success, individuality, how and where to find more information and how to use it.
Below are a number of topics which are useful for starters. Others will be added from time to time, with your help and suggestions.
1. Youthfulness has nothing to do with age, it is a state of mind.
2. China! - take the title and discuss it from any perspective (angle) you like.
3. Only two countries in the world retain the death penalty for serious crimes - some states in the USA and Japan. Should all lives be treated as equal?
4. Celebrities such as film and pop starts, are often the target of gossip in the press. Should we care about groundless gossip?
5. Do you think teachers should be held to a high moral standard, even outside school.
What your accent says.
with some contribution from Gillian Murdoch '21st Century' Staff - 2005.12.28.
TV hosts’ accents have been a hot topic in China since August’s re-affirmed official ban on Hong Kong or Taiwan accents on CCTV.
In England , meanwhile, broadcasters have been moving in the opposite direction. Regional accents are back in fashion for broadcasters, but are still arousing passionate debate.
Accent have traditionally been seen as important in people’s chances to succeed, says Dr Bronwyn G. Evans, 27, linguistic researcher from University College of London. “If you don’t speak properly, you wouldn’t get on in life”.
Accents communicate background, education and birthplace. Let’s face it, people with a Liverpool accent sound whiney, and people with Birmingham accents sound stupid,
In England , everyone has an opinion on regional accents. Researchers have even found the country’s ducks have accent. Cornwall’s countryside ducks made longer more relaxed sounds and London ’s ducks sounded like Cockney’s cross between a shout and s laugh.
To avoid any controversy, the first Director General of the BBC, Lord Reith, wanted a broadcast English that was impersonal, impartial and inoffensive. He called the BBC standard Received Pronunciation (RP) accent, modeled on the educated speech of south eastern England , “the very best that we could do “.
The advisory Committee on Spoken English, set up in 1926, also backed uniformity, as it believed that whenever a language is spoken, there is a right way of speaking it. By the mid-1990s, this 'right way' was being openly questioned. In 1994, Liz Forgan, then managing director of BBC network radio, claimed parts of the BBC were beginning to sound a bit antique.
Another radio presenter said that he has a strong Yorkshire accent, which was rare on the BBC in the early days. He saw the trend towards regional accents when doing voiceovers at the World Service. However, some British accents are still more acceptable than others, he noted.
Evans agrees major changes are occurring: “How Edwards who reads the 10pm news is Welsh, another newsreader has a slight West Indian accent, Sara Cox on Radio 1 is from the north of England and doesn’t make any attempt to speak old-style BBC English. People are becoming much more aware of their local identity and are keen to preserve this in their speech.
Heather Purdey, 52 , vice-chair of the Broadcast Journalism Training Council, which validates broadcast journalism courses in the UK , attributes the greater tolerance to wider social changes:
'In broadcasting, accents reflect the diversity of a population. Accents are good! They give life and character, but', she adds: 'The really important aspect in clarity, not an accent'.
Methods to fight against language anxieties
with contributions from Liu Jun
Many students have anxieties in studying English. Psychologists usually distinguish between trait anxiety (a person’s inborn tendency to be anxious) and state anxiety (temporary fear of a particular situation, such as an exam or speaking in public).
Language anxiety is, however, unique. It can be defined as the fear or apprehension that occurs when people have to use a language in which they are not proficient.
Researchers generally agree that language anxiety has a negative effect on learning a second language. Language anxiety can lead to academic failure, being uncomfortable in a social setting, or a painful emotional experience. Anxious students tend not to do well academically in their grades and proficiency testing. Additionally, anxiety may make students work harder to make up for a lack of linguistic ability in the language they are studying, but, they often achieve little out of the increased effort.
Anxious students tend to have a slower rate of vocabulary learning and retrieval than relaxed ones.
Language anxiety can cause a person to avoid classroom participation, communicating with others, or social interaction, which could remove the opportunity to get the assistance of a teacher, other students, or native speakers that is needed to develop the language. Worse still, high levels of anxiety can lead to lack of motivation and self-confidence.
Since language anxiety is harmful, what can be done to help reduce it and increase learning? We can of course create a less stressful language learning environment and help students cope with anxiety. But, I would like to offer a few other suggestions:
1.Form a support or study group. This helps you share your thoughts as well as your frustrations. It will allow you to understand that you are not alone, thereby boosting your confidence and allowing you to learn from others.
2.Be realistic. Anxiety sometimes comes from unrealistic expectations. Learning takes time. It is impossible to learn to speak perfect English overnight. You need to identify irrational goals if you have them and see what makes you nervous and develop ways to be more realistic and productive.
3.Use an anxiety graph. Keep a record of your anxiety levels. You can measure the highest level of anxiety in a specific situation and get more information on how to approach the same situations in future.
4.Keep a journal. This is a good way to reduce language anxiety. In your journal, you can describe your feelings of inadequacy to find a more realistic, positive way to make progress. In general, language anxiety can only be reduced if a person has a reasonable sense of the situation, and if the teacher tries to create a non-threatening study environment and offers good instruction.
Problems With Reading Comprehension.
Too many difficult words is a common vocabulary problem which is dealt with under the 'Vocabulary' section - see 'The Little Black Book'.
The main problem with constantly stopping to check vocabulary, in a text book, newspaper article or novel, is that it is distracting, and very easy to lose the thread of the narrative.
The easiest immediate solution is to underline the word and 'guess'. You can check it later. However the most important thing, is to ensure that you are reading material which is just slightly above your reading level. Don't bother to take Reading Tests - you will 'know' whether or not a book or text is too difficult, by the amount of vocabulary you don't understand.
'21st Cntury' has some passages which are marked 'easy' . Abridged (shorted) versions of Classic English novels, are available in a bi-lingual form - English and Chinese, which can be useful providing you don't 'cheat' and read the Chinese version first.
It might also be helpful to keep a blank piece of paper in your novel as a bookmark and lexicon. Whenever you find a new word, write it on the paper and look it up in the dictionary later.
2.If you have difficulty remembering the names of foreign characters, their relationship to each other, and place names, or situations; make a list, with brief notes for quick and easy reference.
3. Some students comment that they think they read too slowly, or have difficulty remembering what they read several days ago.I read too slow. Nothing wrong with that! I always read slowly for pleasure, but scan for professional work. If a passage is of relevance or interest to my task, I go back and re-read it s-l-o-w-l-y. I do, however have a very high rate of retention, if it interests me.
A sensible solution to that problem is to write a brief summary after you finish each chapter, or make a brief note at the end of the chapter. Take a quick look for reference purposes, before you begin to read on. You will surprised just how much you remember.
4.The books or passages you have to read are sometimes too long. You really have no other choice but to divide the book into several sections, make a study plan and set goals for yourself. Five pages a day is a recommended speed for starters.
5.Reading can make us tired. Many people in the west read in bed, before they go to sleep. It is a practice which helps them relax You can accompany your reading with soft backgreound music - not songs. Adjust your position and make yourself comfortable. If you fall asleep, what does it matter... there's always tomorrow.
Explore the language of movies
WATCHING classic Western movies is a good way to learn colloquial English. They are set in certain historical periods, and often show social problems and various customs.
However, some viewers find them hard to follow. One reason is a lack of historical back-ground. Another problem is that actors often speak too fast. They also use old phrases, figure of speech, slang, and dialects.
Not all English movies are useful to practice listening. So, it is important that you choose something suitable. The English is easier to understand if it is standard. It is better to start with family movies like 'The Sound of Music', The Lion King' or 'Sleepless in Seattle' . These movies have simple plots and not so many characters, which is useful for getting used to the pronunciation.
Here are some ways to understand the dialogues in English movies better:
1). Following fast English.
A knowledge of sounds can help us a lot in understanding the English of movies. This is essential for correct pronunciation to understand dialogue. Word association is important in understanding a dialogue, for example that between Rochester and Jane, in 'Jane Eyre'. Rochester is used to giving orders and says, 'You must allow me to give orders, Miss Eyre. If, for no other reason than that I am 20 years older. Would you not agree?' She answers, 'Surely, sir, that depends on what use you made of your time.'
The pronunciation of “what use” is/w tju:s/instead of /w t//ju:s/, so it is hard to get it.
2). Understanding ellipsis
Ellipsis is the omission of a word or short phrase easily understood in context. In movies, subjects or direct objects are often left out. This is especially true with dialogue. So, we need to guess the implied meaning of that ellipsis. We can do that with the help of context. In 'The Sound of Music', the ellipsis is obvious when the Baroness Schraeder (the Captain’s friend) and Max Detweiler (also a friend) are talking about the possible marriage of the Baroness and the Captain.
Detweiler asks her, 'Have you made up Gerald’s (the Captain’s) mind yet? Do I hear wedding bells?' and she responds with 'Pealing madly.' What she means is, that wedding bells are pealing (ringing) madly (already). In this dialogue, the subject 'wedding bells' is left out.
3). Understanding figures of speech
Figures of speech are used in movies to liven up dialogue and make the language real. Similes and metaphors are used most often. Sentenced with figures of speech have hidden meanings which you need to discover. Let’s have a look at the dialogue between Jenny and Oliver in 'Love Story', when Jenny is dying:
Jenny: 'It doesn’t hurt, Ollie, really it doesn’t. It’s like falling off a cliff in slow motion, you know. Only after a while you wish you’d hit the ground already, you know'.
Oliver: 'Yeah'.
Jenny: 'Bullshit. You never fell off a cliff in your whole life'.
Oliver: 'Yes, I did, when I met you'.
When Jenny says…'like falling off a cliff', she compares waiting to die with the feeling of falling off a cliff, but as seen in slow motion. This is a popular simile. When the second 'fell off a cliff' appears, it becomes a metaphor, that says Oliver never took a risk in his life. The metaphor continues when Oliver says, 'Yes, I did, when I met you.'
His meaning is that he fell completely in love with Jenny. And, great changes took place in his life because he broke off from his family. The difference between simile and metaphor is that simile always has 'like' or'as' surrounding the phrase..
4). More slang, idioms and some bits of dialect
One of the things that makes movies English difficult is the use of slang. Slang is informal English for everyday use. For example, when you hear someone say that he needs some cash, or bread, or dough, he is using American slang words for money.
Idioms are also common.
Using 'Double Indemnity' as an example, during the second meeting between Neff and Phyllis, Neff realizes that Phyllis plans to get rid of her husband. So, he warns her 'Look, baby, you can’t get away with it.' To 'get away with something' means to succeed in doing something bad or illegal. When Phyllis pretends she doesn’t know what Neff is talking about, he asks, 'You want to knock him off, don’t you, baby?'. To 'knock somebody off' is to 'kill somebody'.
Non-standard English is sometimes used to represent uneducated people in movies. For example, 'ain’t' means 'am not', 'are not', 'is not' or 'have not'. Also, 'wanna' means 'want to', and 'gonna' is 'going to'.
To sum up, it is difficult for Chinese to understand English movies. The only shortcut is to watch them, listen to them carefully, and think about the speech repeatedly, while bearing the above in mind. Remember, 'Practise makes perfect.' As long as you get used to the language used in movies, you will enjoy them more!
Apostrophe catastrophe! The rogue apostrophe is spreading like measles. It's time to fight back...
This all started with a drink. But it very nearly didn't because when I looked at the cocktail list in the otherwise swanky Charlotte Street Hotel in London and discovered that martini's (sic) were £10.50 and classic's (sic) £10.50 I momentarily lost my thirst.
The price was bad enough. But did you have to pay extra if you wanted to have your drink correctly punctuated? And would a martini - mine's made with Plymouth gin, please, very dry, shaken with a twist - taste as good if it also contained a stray apostrophe?
Caught up in a spasm of punctuation-rage I, perhaps slightly aggressively, asked the poor waitress what those two utterly extraneous apostrophes were doing there. She backed away hurriedly and sent over the assistant bar manager.
Mariusz Szymecki may have been Polish but his English was fluent. Or almost fluent.
'Both spellings - martini's and martinis - are correct,' he said firmly. 'I know this is right because, when I heard what you wanted to know, I checked it on Google.'
On Google? Who in the name of a thousand question marks would rely on Google to be an authority on anything, least of all a grammatical matter? The internet is awash with misspellings and punctuation solecisms. Nor is it much better out there in the real world. And the poor apostrophe is the subject of more abuse than any other dot, dash or squiggle.
For decades the nation's pedants have sighed and tutted over the so-called greengrocer's apostrophe - the one you find on piles of fruit and vegetables advertising the fact that apple's and banana's are for sale by the pound or kilo when no apostrophe is required to complete the plural. If only apostrophe errors were confined to market stalls! Instead they have spread like a contagion, infecting public signs and notices, literature from reputable institutions, menus and shop signs - not to mention press releases, letters and emails.
According to a new study, the apostrophe causes more problems than any other punctuation mark. Almost half of 2,000 adults who sat a simple test were unable to use it properly. But is anyone really bothered? On Newsnight last week even the great interrogator Jeremy Paxman seemed prepared to shrug off the apostrophe problem, saying: 'Maybe it's redundant now.' Or if Paxo had his way, 'maybe its redundant now'.
Nonsense! It may be under threat, but we should stand up for the simple apostrophe. We should defend its honour - as the Daily Mail's own Keith Waterhouse has done for some time, with his organisation the AAAA ( Association for the Annihilation of the Aberrant Apostrophe). I decided to spend a day policing apostrophes. Surely if people realised the error of their ways they would be moved to do something about it, wouldn't they?
I am barely awake when I stumble on my first howler, on the sandwich board outside the Shiraz Cafe, a greasy spoon on Hammersmith Road, West London, between my flat and the office, advertising 'pasta's, jacket potato's and panini's'. Inside, Roshi, the Iranian proprietor, smiles beatifically when I inform her of the problem.
'I don't care,' she says mildly. But I do, I say. I don't add that the sight of an airborne curl of black where there should only be the white of the page stirs in me feelings of biliousness. I had worried that this might be a bit of an overreaction, until I read popular grammarian Lynne Truss on the subject.
If you still persist in writing: 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by lightning according to author Lynne Truss
'No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice,' writes Truss in her bestselling Eats, Shoots And Leaves. 'If you still persist in writing: 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.'
Goodness. Fortunately, wandering around Hammersmith, Kensington and Notting Hill I don't find a single aberrant it's. I do, however, find wheelbarrows full of greengrocer's apostrophes. There is one at an odds-and-ends shop advertising 'Pashmina scarf's' for £3 each. 'Yeah,' says a shop assistant when I take him to task on it. 'I know it's wrong. But someone else did that sign. He left about a month ago. We might get round to changing it.'
There are several more offenders on the menus of nearby cafes and bars. There is even one, threatening to 'copy plan's', plastered on the window of Copywell, a printing and copying centre. Surely it should be incumbent on a printer to put his apostrophes in the right place. I drag a charming young graphic designer called Anam Islam out on to the pavement to show him the problem.
'Yeah, that is wrong,' he admits. 'And I did that one. It's funny because I was watching a documentary on apostrophes the other week and thought that I always got them right.'
Perhaps one of the reasons we remain so confused about the apostrophe is that it is relatively new to our language. The last punctuation mark to be standardised, it has been around in its present form for about 150 years. The Oxford English Dictionary says the first record of the actual word 'apostrophe' in English is in Shakespeare's late 16th century play Love's Labour's Lost and that it is rooted in the Greek for ' turning away, or elision'.
This makes perfect sense: originally an apostrophe's job was merely to indicate the omission of letters, and this remains one of its most basic - and easily understood - tasks. You need only think of contractions such as can't and daren't, dates such as the '80s or poems such as A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns - 'Till a' the seas gang dry my dear/ And the rocks melt wi' the sun' - to see how it works.
And yet for some reason many people seem to find it tempting beyond belief to apply apostrophes to a word as if they were visual garnish. It's not just fruitsellers who do this: a barrister friend shows me a letter to a judge positively strewn with extra apostrophes.
Plurals of abbreviations or acronyms are particularly prone to this treatment. How many times have you seen a sign offering CD's? And another friend, a policeman, tells me he often comes across ASBO's.
Serial offender: Greengrocers are regular offenders when it comes to putting apostrophes in the wrong place
But worse than that, after popping into Nationwide Building Society to pick up a leaflet on savings, I find it blithely expounding on the subject of ISAs (fine) but also ISA's (not fine). I phone the press office to remonstrate. 'The apostrophe shouldn't be there, no,' admits a jolly man on the end of the line. 'It would appear to be human error, though rogue apostrophes do seem to be increasingly prevalent. We'll try to remember to take it out on the next print run.'
By now I have been staring so hard all day at apostrophes that I am beginning to lose it. I can see them when I close my eyes, crawling like dark, specky insects across my retina. And I haven't even tackled their possessive use yet.
According to the latest study, this is where people really struggle. Most of us are fine with the fact that, as well as missing letters, apostrophes are used to indicate possession. So, the bike belonging to the boy could be written as 'the boy's bike'. But what if the boy's name is James? Do we refer to James' bike? Or to James's bike?
It started with a drink: Victoria Moore's rage about misplaced apostrophes began when she saw martini's (sic) were £10.50 on a hotel menu
And what if there are several boys, all with bikes? When brain is engaged, most people are happy that the correct answer is 'the boys' bikes'. But for some reason we are not entirely comfortable with this end-of-word apostrophe, particularly when it falls at the end of a sentence.
It's an aesthetic objection and we deal with it by. . . just missing off the apostrophe. Because we feel like it. Here are two examples: Visitors Toilet (seen in a hospital); Parents Association (countless schools).
As I am musing on this, an email arrives from a PR contact inviting me to a Ladies Social Evening. Just as I finish emailing prissily back, 'Dear Ellie, Shouldn't it be Ladies' Social Evening?' my friend Tanya phones. 'Oh God, who cares about apostrophes?' she says, 'I think people who are uptight about them probably make terrible lovers.' Is there a chance I am taking this too far?
John Richards does not think so. Based near Boston in Lincolnshire, he is a retired journalist with bushy eyebrows and an absolute intolerance of misplaced apostrophes. 'It makes me feel despair more than rage,' he confides. 'I set up the Apostrophe Protection Society four years ago. I have tackled people in person. Usually offenders just get letters. I've sent out thousands. You can only plug away.'
Mr Richards blames ignorance and laziness for our troubles. He is engaged in a minor squabble with the proprietor of a local teashop who insists on offering customers tea's. 'When I asked him about it he said he wouldn't change it because he thought it looked better with one in. What can you do? Needless to say, I haven't been in there for a tea or coffee.'
But what's this? Mr Richards has also written a letter of complaint to the sainted Lynne Truss. He claims she has got something wrong. Before I tell you what it is, perhaps you could try to answer the following question. Which is correct?
(a) Dos and don'ts (b) Do's and don'ts (c) Do's and don't's The answer, according to Ms Truss, is (c). She says that for plurals of letters and certain words then an apostrophe is required.
For example, if you were asking how many s's there are in Mississippi or talking about the noise a crowd made on bonfire night - 'There were lots of oooh's and ahhh's.'
The answer according to Mr Richards is (a). He says: 'Lynne Truss can write what she likes but she's got to justify why you might use one when there are no missing letters and no possessive sense. 'There is no role for the apostrophe in plurals at all.' Who will arbitrate?
Well, David Crystal, professor of linguistics at Bangor University, isn't one for taking sides but he does believe that apostrophes in plurals are sometimes necessary. 'What if I ask you to dot your i's and cross your t's? How will you spell that? If you didn't use an apostrophe you'd have the word 'is' instead of i's.'
As he puts it in his book The Fight For English: 'Inserting an apostrophe is as good a way as any of showing there is an unusual plural.'
But Crystal goes further, and makes a good case for there to be a little more leniency in tricky circumstances. 'Punctuation has always been a matter of trends,' he says. 'Commas, hyphens, semicolons, apostrophes - all have been subject to changes in fashion.
Thinking about these issues as a two-part solution (correct vs incorrect) doesn't help. 'As with many linguistic issues, there are three solutions - correct, incorrect and optional (i.e. can't decide!). Pedants forget about context, which is what removes ambiguity in most cases.
For example, in the case of the Parents' Association, there could be no such thing as an association for one parent, so the apostrophe is simply unnecessary, which is why most people leave it out. 'The other thing people forget is that when the rules were drawn up 150 years ago, it was by printers who forgot about exceptions - such as some plurals - that had been in the language a long time.'
This is the point at which I decide I have had enough of apostrophes. Yes, it will still distress me to be offered a list of martini's or cocktail's. But I think in future I may require a more niche challenge. It's time to protest against the split infinitive.
The teens who can barely talk - they only have an 800 word vocabulary. By Luke Salkeld 11.01.2010.
Teenagers have been warned they are becoming unemployable because they use a vocabulary of just 800 words.
The limited linguistic range also consists of many made up words and 'teenspeak' which has developed through modern communication methods such as text messaging and social networking sites.
Today Jean Gross, who advises the Government on children's speech, said urgent action was required to prevent children failing to find jobs because they are unable to communicate.
Limited vocabulary: Teenagers who speak like the infamous Catherine Tate character Lauren are hurting their chances of securing a job
Mrs Goss, who last week issued a stark warning over the effect of television on children's development said yesterday: 'Teenagers are spending more time communicating through electronic media and text messaging, which is short and brief.
'We need to help today's teenagers understand the difference between their textspeak and the formal language they need to succeed in life — 800 words will not get you a job.'
The majority of teenagers should have developed a broad vocabulary of 40,000 words by the time they reach 16.
Linguists have found, however, that although they may understand thousands of words, many choose to limit themselves to a much smaller range in regular conversation and on a daily basis could use as few as 800 terms.
Mrs Gross said her concerns were increased by research by Tony McEnery, a professor of linguistics at Lancaster University who analysed 10 million words of transcribed speech and 100,000 words gathered from teenagers' blogs.
He found that the top 20 words used by teenagers, including 'yeah', 'no' and 'but', account for about a third of all words used. Others included 'chenzed', meaning tired or drunk, 'spong', meaning silly, and 'lol', the internet shorthand for 'laugh out loud'.
The research was sponsored by Tesco whose chief executive, Sir Terry Leahy, recently raised concerns about the 'woefully low standards' in schools that cause employers problems.
Mr Gross plans to launch a campaign next year and targeting primary and secondary schools. She said: 'I want teenagers going into workplaces and making videos of how people communicate and then putting them on YouTube for others to study.'
She also wants parents to limit children under the age of two to half an hour of television a day, because she says that it crowds out conversation.
John Bald, a language teaching consultant and former Ofsted schools inspector, told a Sunday newspaper: 'There is undoubtedly a culture among teenagers of deliberately stripping away excess verbiage in language.
'When kids are in social situations, the instinct is to simplify. It's part of a wider anti-school culture that exists among some children which parents and schools need to address.'
According to a recent study from Sheffield University, a teenager actually knows about 40,000 words and a graduate knows 60,000 or more. And Mrs Gross said the invented language of teenagers was not a new - or negative - phenomenon.
She said: 'Teenagers have always had their own language. It is their way of saying 'We are different'. It is inventive, ever changing and brilliant. 'My fear is that some disadvantaged children don't know that there is a different way of speaking in a job interview.'
Last week research released by Mrs Gross, who has two grown up children, claimed that thousands of children are struggling to learn to talk because their families keep the television on constantly.
Research found almost a quarter of boys and one in seven girls develop speech problems - often due to TV background noise which makes it difficult for babies to understand adults around them.
The study found that three per cent of infants go on to develop 'significant' problems with talking.
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Limited vocabulary: Teenagers who speak like the infamous Catherine Tate character Lauren are hurting their chances of securing a job
