TEFL

Neck-Verse

Niall O'Donnell 13 Comments

I had the increasingly rare pleasure of learning a new expression today: neck-verse. Continue reading →

Audit

Niall O'Donnell 6 Comments

I saw the word audit recently, and had one of my usual Eureka! moments. Surely, I said to myself, that’s related to the concept of hearing, with its similarity to words like audio, auditory, audience etc. Continue reading →

Once, Twice, Three Times…

Niall O'Donnell Leave a comment

I was wondering this morning why we say once and twice as alternatives to one time and two times in English.

It’s one of these things learners of English find it hard to remember to use. Partly it’s because there’s no greater pattern at work, as for every other number after one and two we just say three times, four times etc. It’s also because most other languages use the equivalent of one time and two times.

So why does English have to be awkward, once again, and not just use one time and two times? Continue reading →

2019

Niall O'Donnell 4 Comments

It’s that time again already: it’s next year! It seems like only yesterday that it was last year.

I’d set out my goals for the coming year and so on, but I don’t really do that, not on a yearly basis. I do have one hope for this year though, and that’s that this is the year we finally go back to saying the names of years as though they’re two separate numbers. You know, like ‘twenty-nineteen’ and ‘twenty-twenty.’ Continue reading →

Storytime

Niall O'Donnell 6 Comments

Hav you ever read a story that wasn’t told in the past tense? Maybe a few here and there were in the present tense, but it’s safe to assume most short stories or novels you’ve read have been told in the past tense. I was thinking about this today while reading (specifically I think a shift from past simple to past perfect simple to talk about something that happened earlier in the story triggered it).

It’s something that’s true across many languages, and we’re so used to it we don’t really notice. But if you think about it, most stories would work just as well in the present tense. And some writers do use the present tense, for certain sections of their stories at least, to provide a sense of immediacy. So why not use that for the whole story then, and for every story? Continue reading →

Then!

Niall O'Donnell 1 Comment

Yes, before you ask, I did just choose this title because the last post was called Now? Though it’d probably be more logical to have written this one first, as it’d appear below the other post. Ah well, nothing I can do about that now.

Anyway, even if my motivation for choosing this title was rather flippant, looking into it, then is quite an interesting word. Continue reading →

Now?

Niall O'Donnell 2 Comments

A pretty simple word, really, but a couple of months ago I began to think about how nuanced it is. Continue reading →