Tweet Round-up: Thursday 17th June 2021
A short round-up for this week, after a week off. It’s so hot! So le’s talk about some useful phrasal verbs…
This is the month where things start to slow down. Working becomes hard. English Classes for the Masses had a little break. However, we’ve just been back on Twitter to see what interesting English tweets have appeared over the last week. First out of the gate:
It’s one of my favourite phrasal verbs on a hot day: to “wear out.”The example in the tweet above gives you a very clear example. I am not sure exactly how other teachers like to teach phrasal verbs, but for me, it’s more useful to focus on the preposition and what it could suggest, rather than focus on the verb itself — for example:
“To wear out” (for something to come to end through use)
“To take out” (to remove something or someone)
“To phase out” (to end the continuation of something)
“To work out” (to realise something through work or effort)
It’s not that every single example of a verb plus “out” will give you a similar meaning, but very often “out” with the verb suggests that something is ending, or finishing.
Thanks for the post @PhrasalFanatics!
Now I’ve seen this tweet going around several times before, reposted here by @MissAWaters1. It’s interesting in fact because it not only is it showing the problem with exceptions to rules, it also points out a lot of the different ways we pronounce the “ei” in English. And our relentless irregularity:
- “Sleighs” has the same vowell as the second vowell in “caffeinated,” but not with “caffeine” which has the same second vowell sound as “keith.”
- “Feisty” has the same vowell sound as “mice” and “rice.”
- “Weird” rhymes with “beard.”
- “Counterfeit” has the same third vowell sound as “hit” does.
If this doesn’t give learners a headache I don’t know what does. It is indeed, quite weird.
And now for something quite different, in the form of this tweet from @mdrechsler Language apps have obviously gained popularity over the last decade or so, with Duo Lingo and Busuu taking off and helping thousands of learners to get to grips with a new language. But about using AI to hone our language learning?
It seems to me AI has a range of interesting potentials…why not use it in this way? At the same time, where does this leave teachers in this digitised environment? Is there a point where the role of a language teacher completely disappears? We are moving to that point in sci-fi imagination where automatic translators help you understand another language, but also teach you how to use it better. It’s exciting, but also daunting.
If you want to know more, read the article here.
