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GOLDEN RULES FOR WRITING IN ENGLISH

1. Never use a preposition to end a sentence with. Winston Churchill, corrected on this error once, responded to the young man who corrected him by saying: 'Young man, that is the kind of impudence up with which I will not put!'

2. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.

3. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

4. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.)

5. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.

6. Be more or less specific.

7. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.

8. Also, too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies endlessly over and over again.

9. No sentence fragments.

10. Contractions aren't always necessary and shouldn't be used to excess, so don't.

11. Foreign words and phrases are not always apropos.

12. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous and can be excessive.

13. All generalizations are bad.

14. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.

15. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake (unless they are as good as gold).

16. The passive voice is to be ignored.

17. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words, however, should be enclosed in commas.

18. Never use a big word when substituting a diminutive one would suffice.

19. Understatement is always absolutely the best way to put forward earth-shaking ideas.

20. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed. Use it correctly with words' that show possession.

21. Don't use too many quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: 'I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.'

22. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a billion times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly. Besides, hyperbole is always overdone, anyway.

23. Puns are for children, not groan readers.

24. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

25. Who needs rhetorical questions? But what if there were no rhetorical questions?

26. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

27. Avoid 'buzz-words'; such integrated transitional scenarios complicate simplistic matters.

28. All grammar and spelling rules have exceptions (with a few exceptions).

29. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

30. The dash - a sometimes useful punctuation mark - can often be overused - even though it's a helpful tool - some of the time.

31. In good writing, for good reasons, under normal circumstances, whenever you can, use prepositional phrases in limited numbers and with great caution.

32. Avoid going out on tangents unrelated to your subject -- not the subject of a sentence - that's another story (like the stories written by Ernest Hemingway, who by the way wrote the great fisherman story The Old Man and the Sea).

33. Unless you're an expert, don't try to be too cool with slang to which you're not hip.

34. If you must use slang, avoid out-of-date slang. Right on!

35. Your writing will look poorly if you misuse adverbs.

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The Bluffer's Guide To TEFL

Despite some appalling pretensions to the contrary, TEFL is dead easy. As Chomsky once said in a fit of pique, 'Anyone who can press the button on a photocopier can be a TEFLer.' With this guide to TEFL jargon, you too can bluff your way to the top in TEFL.
 

AIMS Let's get this clear from the start. Your aim is to fill up the lesson time. If this aim remains unfulfilled, your sub-aims are merely pissing in the wind. Keep on your guard for waffly arguments concerning the difference between aims and objectives. These, as with most TEFL discussions, lead nowhere. If ever requested to comment on someone's lesson you have observed, the TEFL bluffer should pipe up 'But do you feel you have achieved your aim?' In response, you will receive a pitiful justification for all manner of guff.  BUZZ GROUP Usually employed in a WORKSHOP when the TRAINER has a degree in sociology from Essex  University. A nasty little  device employed by the  legendary IH TRAINER who unfurled a giant roll of paper, announced 'You're going to create the biggest mind map you've ever seen' and promptly headed for the bar. Twaddle in extremis and a fine example for all TEFL bluffers. COMMUNICATION  TEFL's most sacred word and the barometer for all classroom atrocities. The Communicative Approach was designed for those who can't handle grammar and  who never grew out of Blue Peter. To win the hearts of your TEFL buddie look critically at any coursebook activity and intone: 'Hmmm, not very communicative is it?' Communicative is such a vague woolly term that it can be exploited to advantage on numerous occasions. Even though no one can  adequately define it, it is of course 'a jolly good thing'. THE ECLECTIC APPROACH Cluelessness elevated to an art form. The bluffer will naturally adopt an eclectic approach to everything. ELICIT This means 'get an answer'. TEFLers do not like asking, because: 1) 'ask' has only one syllable (sorry, is monosyllabic) and therefore sounds insufficiently pseudoscientific, 2) 'eliciting' wastes more time than asking and 3) a bona fide TEFLer has no answers as he/she is a FACILITATOR and has nothing of value to impart. FACILITATOR Remember at all times that you are a facilitator, a counsellor, an elicitor - anything but a teacher. Teaching is definitely a no-no in TEFLspeak. Avoid the term at all costs. ERROR CORRECTION Current orthodoxy has it that error correction is much neglected. This is the line of argument a bluffer should take. In truth, however, it is highly knackering and totally ineffective, so no one bothers with it. Nonetheless, a good time-wasting activity is a bit of 'creative error correction' - the technique of inventing errors for on-board correction. A useful sleight of hand to follow MONITORING. FEEDBACK In the good old days, 'feedback' was what happened when Jimi Hendrix put his guitar near an amplifier. In TEFLspeak, however, it involves embarrassed students reporting back with mind-numbingly dull information like, 'We found that 5 people have never climbed Everest, 4 people have eaten octopus and everybody thinks the teacher is a cretin.' FILLERS Everything in TEFL is a filler. Officially declared 'fillers' are simply less successful (i.e. less time-consuming) than other twaddle. INDIVIDUALISATION A useful buzz word easily dropped into TEFL conversations. Instant justification for sloping off to have a fag and a cup of coffee while the fee-paying customers become autonomous. If you're really lucky, they might even leave the building. LEARNER TRAINING Everybody knows, but naturally refuses to admit, that this is a completeoad of drivel. LT has been flavour of the month for over a decade which is a highly depressing thought in itself. Nevertheless, it is a cardinal sin for the TEFL bluffer to knock LT in any shape or form because otherwise you will become embroiled in the sort of tedious argument best avoided. Should the subject of LT raise its ugly head, nod sagely and say something enigmatic like 'Learner Training is all right in theory. The problem lies in the methodology.' Do not expand on this. LT comes in handy for scoring TEFL brownie points in a WORKSHOP. Regardless of the subject under discussion, bang your fist down firmly on the table and declare: 'Don't forget the Learner Training!' Your audience will be suitably impressed. LESSON PLANS Nobody in their right mind writes lesson plans unless they are being subjected to an OBSERVED LESSON. You can easily justify a lack of lesson plan by arguing that your lessons are flexible and needs-responsive. Hence, they cannot be mapped out in advance. In this context, you can espouse the ECLECTIC APPROACH.   MINGLERS Time-wasting par excellence. Not only does the student ask the same dull questions to his neighbour, he has to ask 18 other people as well. Why waste 2 people's time when you can waste 20? OBSERVED LESSON TEFLers often panic needlessly about these. The TEFL bluffer should have a standard observed lesson up his/her sleeve to wheel out whenever observation threatens. Bluffer's tip: teach them something they already know hence making your AIMS a fait accompli. Should your part in this farce be that of an observer, your first comment should (in true post-coital fashion) be 'How was it for you?'   SELF-ACCESS Always bear in mind that self-access is ipso facto a 'good thing' because it is associated with INDIVIDUALISATION. The cognoscenti know that the proliferation of SA centres is tacit recognition of the fact that TEFLers are dispensable. TEFLers know nothing about language because they have degrees in geology. SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS A complete misnomer. Should really be entitled 'self-interest groups'. For really dedicated brown-nosers and terminal cases only. STUDENT-TEACHER INTERACTION This is a charade associated with LESSON PLANNING and involves drawing pathetic little arrows from T to Ss or vice versa. Naturally, these have no connection with reality and serve a purely decorative function