Thứ Hai, 15 tháng 6, 2015
Hip- Hop Slang
06:01
HOST: Hip-hop music -- born in the rough and tumble of America's predominantly black inner city neighborhoods -- is one of the most successful musical styles in popular culture today. But music is just one face of the hip-hop phenomenon. Hip-hop has also had a significant impact on youth slang. For this Wordmaster segment, VOA's Adam Phillips went to a hip-hop gathering to learn about the lingo.
Listening online or download (link1);
Listening online or download (link2).
ADAM PHILLIPS: In Newark, New Jersey, one of the East Coast cities where hip-hop began, teenagers like Dancette still like to dance to the latest hits with their friends -- right on the sidewalk. She says hip-hop slang is a big part of the fun. She especially enjoys the way hip-hoppers sometime invest mainstream American words with new meanings.
DANCETTE: "Like when some people say 'phat.' It's not really 'fat,' like 'not small.' Phat is good. I don't know why they do that, but it's a street thing. Something cool to say."
AP: "Give me another example."
DANCETTE: "'Gangsta.' Usually when people say or when I say gangsta, it's more street, more underground, and not too preppy like 'straight' [conventional]. It's more relaxed. It's more down. That's what gansta is."
AP: "Down?"
DANCETTE: "When you down, it's like being a part of something."
AP: "You go along with it."
DANCETTE: "Yes."
AP: Dancette's friend Jett, one of the more free-spirited dancers on this street corner, loves the word "crunk."
JETT: "And crunk really means just let loose [relax], be your own person, have fun and do what you do -- not worrying about what anyone thinks about you."
AP: "So getting 'crunked' is just being natural?"
JETT: "Yeah. Being natural and having fun."
AP: As in any living language, hip-hop words keep evolving. But this young woman says the meaning of some hip-hop slang words can change -- literally overnight.
WOMAN: "One thing I always liked about hip-hop -- you could use a word one day and the next day it's something else. That's the beautiful thing about hip-hop. Three are new inventions for the hip-hop generation every day. So you gotta keep up!"
AP: She and her friend say that "off the chain" is one phrase they've heard quite a bit lately.
FIRST WOMAN: "Off the chain -- it's 'off the hook.' It's cool. It's good. So extraordinary. You could go to a concert and it just be off the chain. It just means 'wow' and 'it was fun' and exuberant and everything."
SECOND WOMAN: "Some words we take and reinvent it. Like 'crazy' could mean something good. Crazy, something spontaneous. 'That was crazy!'"
FIRST WOMAN: "Our language is cool. It's a hip-hop language. It's just us. It's a way of our life. That's what we do every day." AP: Hip-hop speech isn't just for teen-agers. Adults use it to express themselves as well. (MUSIC)
That's Ameen, a young man from Oakland, California, rapping his own hip-hop number for his friend Rudy Corpus Junior and another buddy. RUDY CORPUS: "He's talking the [San Francisco] Bay in the house. We hold the dam from the O to the 'sco. Huh! We put it down like four flats on a Cadillac. Huh!
AP: "What are the words you're using?
RUDY CORPUS: "It's slang. It's words that was borrowed from the ghettos, you know what I mean? Cats come up with different types of slang just to tell you how they feel or just to express emotions. And it just comes naturally. Because we was born into this, we wasn't sworn into this." AP: Some hip-hop slang is used as a sort of secret code.
FRIEND: "You don't always want people to understand exactly what you talking about anyway, you know what I mean? You could be talking about something illegal. And you don't want to be saying 'oh yeah, I got the elbow,' you know what I'm saying? You don't want to tell everybody what you got and what you're working with. So you want to have a way to talk to your people and get the message across without everybody knowing what's going on.
AP: Indeed, many hip-hop words originate in prisons. Rudy Corpus.
RUDY CORPUS: "I'm gonna give you a word, 'merkin.' Yeah, merkin means choking somebody out, man. Grabbing them from behind the neck and just choking them; someone who is 'out of pocket,' someone who ain't respecting you, someone who isn't coming at you properly, you gonna have to merk his ass out. You feel [understand] me? Like the police merkin people out all the time. You know what I mean?
AP: Many hip-hop words have entered the world's working vocabulary. The words chillin' (pronounced without the g), meaning relaxing or taking it easy, and bling-bling, meaning fancy and expensive goods, are just two examples. Still, Ameen says that true hip-hop slang will always be rooted in the local neighborhoods where one's friends are and where life is lived.
AMEEN: "It's like being a part of that brotherly bond. And that's the thing that feels good about it. It's your people, and you hear other people using it, it's kind of flattering, you know what I'm saying? Even if they don't give the recognition like they are supposed to! It feels good to hear people out there 'biting' [using] your slang, basically. It's communication, you know what I mean? It's communication."
AP: For Wordmaster, this is Adam Phillips reporting from Newark, New Jersey.
Listening online or download (link2).
ADAM PHILLIPS: In Newark, New Jersey, one of the East Coast cities where hip-hop began, teenagers like Dancette still like to dance to the latest hits with their friends -- right on the sidewalk. She says hip-hop slang is a big part of the fun. She especially enjoys the way hip-hoppers sometime invest mainstream American words with new meanings.
DANCETTE: "Like when some people say 'phat.' It's not really 'fat,' like 'not small.' Phat is good. I don't know why they do that, but it's a street thing. Something cool to say."
AP: "Give me another example."
DANCETTE: "'Gangsta.' Usually when people say or when I say gangsta, it's more street, more underground, and not too preppy like 'straight' [conventional]. It's more relaxed. It's more down. That's what gansta is."
AP: "Down?"
DANCETTE: "When you down, it's like being a part of something."
AP: "You go along with it."
DANCETTE: "Yes."
AP: Dancette's friend Jett, one of the more free-spirited dancers on this street corner, loves the word "crunk."
JETT: "And crunk really means just let loose [relax], be your own person, have fun and do what you do -- not worrying about what anyone thinks about you."
AP: "So getting 'crunked' is just being natural?"
JETT: "Yeah. Being natural and having fun."
AP: As in any living language, hip-hop words keep evolving. But this young woman says the meaning of some hip-hop slang words can change -- literally overnight.
WOMAN: "One thing I always liked about hip-hop -- you could use a word one day and the next day it's something else. That's the beautiful thing about hip-hop. Three are new inventions for the hip-hop generation every day. So you gotta keep up!"
AP: She and her friend say that "off the chain" is one phrase they've heard quite a bit lately.
FIRST WOMAN: "Off the chain -- it's 'off the hook.' It's cool. It's good. So extraordinary. You could go to a concert and it just be off the chain. It just means 'wow' and 'it was fun' and exuberant and everything."
SECOND WOMAN: "Some words we take and reinvent it. Like 'crazy' could mean something good. Crazy, something spontaneous. 'That was crazy!'"
FIRST WOMAN: "Our language is cool. It's a hip-hop language. It's just us. It's a way of our life. That's what we do every day." AP: Hip-hop speech isn't just for teen-agers. Adults use it to express themselves as well. (MUSIC)
That's Ameen, a young man from Oakland, California, rapping his own hip-hop number for his friend Rudy Corpus Junior and another buddy. RUDY CORPUS: "He's talking the [San Francisco] Bay in the house. We hold the dam from the O to the 'sco. Huh! We put it down like four flats on a Cadillac. Huh!
AP: "What are the words you're using?
RUDY CORPUS: "It's slang. It's words that was borrowed from the ghettos, you know what I mean? Cats come up with different types of slang just to tell you how they feel or just to express emotions. And it just comes naturally. Because we was born into this, we wasn't sworn into this." AP: Some hip-hop slang is used as a sort of secret code.
FRIEND: "You don't always want people to understand exactly what you talking about anyway, you know what I mean? You could be talking about something illegal. And you don't want to be saying 'oh yeah, I got the elbow,' you know what I'm saying? You don't want to tell everybody what you got and what you're working with. So you want to have a way to talk to your people and get the message across without everybody knowing what's going on.
AP: Indeed, many hip-hop words originate in prisons. Rudy Corpus.
RUDY CORPUS: "I'm gonna give you a word, 'merkin.' Yeah, merkin means choking somebody out, man. Grabbing them from behind the neck and just choking them; someone who is 'out of pocket,' someone who ain't respecting you, someone who isn't coming at you properly, you gonna have to merk his ass out. You feel [understand] me? Like the police merkin people out all the time. You know what I mean?
AP: Many hip-hop words have entered the world's working vocabulary. The words chillin' (pronounced without the g), meaning relaxing or taking it easy, and bling-bling, meaning fancy and expensive goods, are just two examples. Still, Ameen says that true hip-hop slang will always be rooted in the local neighborhoods where one's friends are and where life is lived.
AMEEN: "It's like being a part of that brotherly bond. And that's the thing that feels good about it. It's your people, and you hear other people using it, it's kind of flattering, you know what I'm saying? Even if they don't give the recognition like they are supposed to! It feels good to hear people out there 'biting' [using] your slang, basically. It's communication, you know what I mean? It's communication."
AP: For Wordmaster, this is Adam Phillips reporting from Newark, New Jersey.
(Source: VOA/WORDMASTER)
Thứ Sáu, 12 tháng 6, 2015
Văn hóa tuyển dụng của công ty Nhật
08:18
Trong loạt bài viết ngắn rất hữu ích này mà tôi nhận được chia sẻ từ Vietnamworks.com, thiết nghĩ nó một mặt giúp chúng ta tích lũy kinh nghiệm tìm việc từ đội ngũ chuyên gia uy tín của Nhật, mặt khác các nó cũng giúp nâng cao kỹ năng viết tiếng Nhật. | Hôm trước trong phần Q&A trên JapanWorks, tôi đã nhận được câu hỏi “Vì sao các công ty Nhật lại đưa ra quyết định tuyển dụng dựa trên yếu tố đã tốt nghiệp đại học hay chưa? Và tại sao người Nhật quan trọng việc tốt nghiệp đại học nhưng lại không quan trọng tốt nghiệp ngành nào?” Trước tiên, có rất nhiều công ty Nhật không quan trọng bằng cấp. Nhưng với một số công việc hấp dẫn, có nhiều người ứng tuyển thì rất khó để xem hết tất cả các hồ sơ nên công ty sẽ giới hạn người đã tốt nghiệp đại học. Ngoài ra, câu hỏi “tại sao người Nhật quan trọng việc tốt nghiệp đại học nhưng lại không quan trọng chuyên ngành” có liên quan đến văn hóa làm việc lâu năm khá phổ biến ở các công ty Nhật. Ở Nhật, một người làm việc nhiều năm hoặc cả đời tại một công ty là chuyện bình thường. Vì người đó không chuyển việc nên công ty có thể dành thời gian để đào tạo họ. Tại thời điểm vào công ty, dù không có kiến thức chuyện môn về ngành học nhưng họ sẽ được trang bị những kiến thức chuyên môn cần cho công việc. (Tôi có một vài người bạn hiện làm lập trình viên nhưng lúc mới vào công ty họ không hề biết gì về lập trình). Tôi nghĩ vì ở Nhật là xã hội không chuyển việc nên nhiều công ty Nhật vẫn giữ quan điểm này. Ở Việt Nam không giống ở Nhật nên có lẽ nhiều người không chấp nhận việc này. Tuy nhiên, nếu biết được thực tế cũng như văn hóa tại công ty Nhật thì bạn sẽ dễ dàng PR bản thân thông qua resume hoặc trong buổi phỏng vấn. Bạn hãy nhớ điều này nhé. Morio Nakatsuka (JapanWorks Career Advisor) | 先日JapanWorksのQAページで「 まず最初に、 それから、「大学卒かどうかは気にするのに学部は気にしない」 ベトナムでは状況が違うので、 中塚森生 (JapanWorks キャリアアドバイザー) |
(Theo Vietnamworks.com)
Thứ Năm, 11 tháng 6, 2015
The Innovator's Dilemma of Clayton Christensen - Best selling book
00:45
The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business! Here are some best comments:
“Absolutely brilliant. Clayton Christensen provides an insightful analysis of changing technology and its importance to a company’s future success.”
—Michael R. Bloomberg
—Michael R. Bloomberg
“This book ought to chill any executive who feels bulletproof —and inspire entrepreneurs aiming their guns.”
—Forbes
—Forbes
The Innovator’s Dilemma is the revolutionary business book that has forever changed corporate America. Based on a truly radical idea—that great companies can fail precisely because they do everything right—this Wall Street Journal, Business Week and New York Times Business bestseller is one of the most provocative and important business books ever written. Entrepreneurs, managers, and CEOs ignore its wisdom and its warnings at their great peril.
(ST&TH)
Thứ Ba, 9 tháng 6, 2015
Common Sentence Errors - English Grammar
22:51
AA: I'm Avi Arditti. Rosanne Skirble is away. But with me from Los Angeles this week on Wordmaster is English teacher Lida Baker. LB: "What we're going to talk about today is four types of common sentence errors, the kinds of mistakes that I see in my students' writing all the time. And I'm going to give some examples, and it might be easier for the listeners to follow along with me if they could write down the examples that I give. So the first type of error is called a sentence fragment. Now what is a fragment?"
Listening online or download (link1);
Listening online or download (link2).
AA: "A little piece of something."
LB: "A little piece of something. So a sentence fragment is a little piece of a sentence. It's not a complete sentence. So let me give you the most common example of a sentence fragment that I see in people's writing all the time. It goes something like this: 'I never eat chocolate. Because I'm allergic to it.' Do you see the problem?"
AA: "Yes. That really should be one sentence."
LB: "That really should be one sentence, right. Now the first part -- 'I never eat chocolate (period)' -- that's fine, because that is a sentence. It has the subject 'I', and then it has the verb part 'never eat,' OK? So that's a complete sentence.
"The problem is the second part, 'because I'm allergic to it.' That can't stand alone as a sentence. What you have to do is you have to connect it to the complete sentence that came before it. When it stands by itself, it's called a dependent clause, or a subordinate clause. And the way that you fix a problem like this is that you take that dependent clause and you attach it to an independent clause, which is the same thing as a full sentence."
AA: "Wouldn't some people say there should be a comma in there, between those two clauses?"
LB: "No, no, no. Because if you put a comma in there, what you're doing is creating a different kind of sentence error, which is called a comma splice. In a comma splice, you have two sentences, two complete sentences that are separated by a comma. But what they should have in between is a period. So an example would be something like this: 'I never eat chocolate, I'm allergic to it.' Do you see how each of those parts is a complete sentence? So according to the rules of punctuation, we cannot use a comma to separate those two parts of the sentence."
AA: "So now we've gotten through the fragment and the comma splice. So what's next?"
LB: "Next we have what's called a run-on sentence. A run-on sentence consists of two independent clauses. And, remember, an independent clause is the same thing as a sentence. So it's two independent clauses that are not separated by any punctuation. So you have something like: 'I never eat chocolate I'm allergic to it.' In that case you can even hear that it's wrong. Because to say 'I never eat chocolate I'm allergic to it' doesn't even sound right. If we say it this way, though, 'I never eat chocolate (pause) I'm allergic to it,' you can actually hear where the period is supposed to go, right?"
AA: "Right."
LB: "It goes in the middle, between the two sentences."
AA: "OK, we've got fragment, comma splice, run-on sentence, and the fourth kind of sentence error is ... ?"
LB: "The stringy sentence. Let me give you an example of a stringy sentence: 'I never eat chocolate because I'm allergic to it, and I don't like nuts either, so I never eat them, but I'm not allergic to them, so last week I went out and I bought some nuts.' Now what do you think is wrong with that?"
AA: "Is that all one sentence?"
LB: "Yes, that is a stringy sentence. What we have there is a whole string of sentences, of independent clauses. All of them are separated by a comma and a conjunction: and, so, but. And as long as you punctuate it correctly with a comma and a conjunction, it isn't wrong. But you can hear that it just doesn't sound right. It sounds like somebody who's just babbling. And it's not considered good writing.
"Good writing is writing where you have a lot of variety in your sentences. Some of them are short. Some of them are long. Some of them are simple. Some of them are compound. Some of them are complex. So it's not static. It isn't symmetrical, OK? There is a lot of variety and a lot of different rhythms. This is what we consider to be good writing."
AA: Lida Baker writes textbooks for English learners, and she teaches in the American Language Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Internet users can find all of her previous segments at voanews.com/wordmaster. And the e-mail address for Wordmaster is word@voanews.com. I'm Avi Arditti.
(Source: VOA/WORDMASTER)
Listening online or download (link2).
AA: "A little piece of something."
LB: "A little piece of something. So a sentence fragment is a little piece of a sentence. It's not a complete sentence. So let me give you the most common example of a sentence fragment that I see in people's writing all the time. It goes something like this: 'I never eat chocolate. Because I'm allergic to it.' Do you see the problem?"
AA: "Yes. That really should be one sentence."
LB: "That really should be one sentence, right. Now the first part -- 'I never eat chocolate (period)' -- that's fine, because that is a sentence. It has the subject 'I', and then it has the verb part 'never eat,' OK? So that's a complete sentence.
"The problem is the second part, 'because I'm allergic to it.' That can't stand alone as a sentence. What you have to do is you have to connect it to the complete sentence that came before it. When it stands by itself, it's called a dependent clause, or a subordinate clause. And the way that you fix a problem like this is that you take that dependent clause and you attach it to an independent clause, which is the same thing as a full sentence."
AA: "Wouldn't some people say there should be a comma in there, between those two clauses?"
LB: "No, no, no. Because if you put a comma in there, what you're doing is creating a different kind of sentence error, which is called a comma splice. In a comma splice, you have two sentences, two complete sentences that are separated by a comma. But what they should have in between is a period. So an example would be something like this: 'I never eat chocolate, I'm allergic to it.' Do you see how each of those parts is a complete sentence? So according to the rules of punctuation, we cannot use a comma to separate those two parts of the sentence."
AA: "So now we've gotten through the fragment and the comma splice. So what's next?"
LB: "Next we have what's called a run-on sentence. A run-on sentence consists of two independent clauses. And, remember, an independent clause is the same thing as a sentence. So it's two independent clauses that are not separated by any punctuation. So you have something like: 'I never eat chocolate I'm allergic to it.' In that case you can even hear that it's wrong. Because to say 'I never eat chocolate I'm allergic to it' doesn't even sound right. If we say it this way, though, 'I never eat chocolate (pause) I'm allergic to it,' you can actually hear where the period is supposed to go, right?"
AA: "Right."
LB: "It goes in the middle, between the two sentences."
AA: "OK, we've got fragment, comma splice, run-on sentence, and the fourth kind of sentence error is ... ?"
LB: "The stringy sentence. Let me give you an example of a stringy sentence: 'I never eat chocolate because I'm allergic to it, and I don't like nuts either, so I never eat them, but I'm not allergic to them, so last week I went out and I bought some nuts.' Now what do you think is wrong with that?"
AA: "Is that all one sentence?"
LB: "Yes, that is a stringy sentence. What we have there is a whole string of sentences, of independent clauses. All of them are separated by a comma and a conjunction: and, so, but. And as long as you punctuate it correctly with a comma and a conjunction, it isn't wrong. But you can hear that it just doesn't sound right. It sounds like somebody who's just babbling. And it's not considered good writing.
"Good writing is writing where you have a lot of variety in your sentences. Some of them are short. Some of them are long. Some of them are simple. Some of them are compound. Some of them are complex. So it's not static. It isn't symmetrical, OK? There is a lot of variety and a lot of different rhythms. This is what we consider to be good writing."
AA: Lida Baker writes textbooks for English learners, and she teaches in the American Language Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Internet users can find all of her previous segments at voanews.com/wordmaster. And the e-mail address for Wordmaster is word@voanews.com. I'm Avi Arditti.
(Source: VOA/WORDMASTER)
Chủ Nhật, 7 tháng 6, 2015
Nihongo Namachuukei 2 - Tiếng Nhật Tự nhiên 2
02:21
Nihongo Namachuukei là 1 bộ sách gồm 3 cuốn : 初~中級編 Sơ Trung cấp gồm 2 cuốn (Vol 1-2) và 中~上級編 Trung Cao cấp gồm 1 cuốn.
Bộ sách tổng hợp những tình huống thực tế, sử dụng ngôn ngữ đơn giản và gần gũi, chất tự nhiên được chạy xuyên suốt trong giáo trình, cảm giác như là các bạn đang thật sự ở trong sân ga, trên tàu điện, trên điện thoại hay ở sân bay... vậy.
Xem online or download Ebook (pdf);
Nghe online or download CD1 (mp3).
Nghe online or download CD2 (mp3).
Mục đích là thông qua những bài nghe trong sách chúng ta sẽ nâng cao được khả năng giao tiếp và mở rộng được vốn từ vựng để có thể nói tiếng Nhật trong đời thường một cách tự nhiên như người Nhật bản xứ.
Hy vọng cuốn sách sẽ đáp ứng được kỳ vọng nâng cao khả năng nói tiếng Nhật của nhiều bạn !
Lưu ý: Khi gặp khó khăn trong việc download nhiều files cùng 1 lúc bằng công cụ Google Drive, các bạn Xem hướng dẫn download nhiều tập tin tại đây
Bộ sách tổng hợp những tình huống thực tế, sử dụng ngôn ngữ đơn giản và gần gũi, chất tự nhiên được chạy xuyên suốt trong giáo trình, cảm giác như là các bạn đang thật sự ở trong sân ga, trên tàu điện, trên điện thoại hay ở sân bay... vậy.
Xem online or download Ebook (pdf);
Nghe online or download CD1 (mp3).
Nghe online or download CD2 (mp3).
Mục đích là thông qua những bài nghe trong sách chúng ta sẽ nâng cao được khả năng giao tiếp và mở rộng được vốn từ vựng để có thể nói tiếng Nhật trong đời thường một cách tự nhiên như người Nhật bản xứ.
Hy vọng cuốn sách sẽ đáp ứng được kỳ vọng nâng cao khả năng nói tiếng Nhật của nhiều bạn !
Lưu ý: Khi gặp khó khăn trong việc download nhiều files cùng 1 lúc bằng công cụ Google Drive, các bạn Xem hướng dẫn download nhiều tập tin tại đây
(Nguon: Japan, My Love)
Thứ Bảy, 6 tháng 6, 2015
Nihongo Namachuukei 1 - Tiếng Nhật Tự nhiên(Sơ cấp)
00:51
Nihongo Namachuukei là 1 bộ sách gồm 3 cuốn : 初~中級編 Sơ Trung cấp gồm 2 cuốn (Vol 1-2) và 中~上級編 Trung Cao cấp gồm 1 cuốn.
Bộ sách tổng hợp những tình huống thực tế, sử dụng ngôn ngữ đơn giản và gần gũi, chất tự nhiên được chạy xuyên suốt trong giáo trình, cảm giác như là các bạn đang thật sự ở trong sân ga, trên tàu điện, trên điện thoại hay ở sân bay... vậy.
Xem online or download Ebook (pdf);
Nghe online or download CD1 (mp3).
Nghe online or download CD2 (mp3).
Xem or download MP4
Mục đích là thông qua những bài nghe trong sách chúng ta sẽ nâng cao được khả năng giao tiếp và mở rộng được vốn từ vựng để có thể nói tiếng Nhật trong đời thường một cách tự nhiên như người Nhật bản xứ.
Hy vọng cuốn sách sẽ đáp ứng được kỳ vọng nâng cao khả năng nói tiếng Nhật của nhiều bạn !
Lưu ý: Khi gặp khó khăn trong việc download nhiều files cùng 1 lúc bằng công cụ Google Drive, các bạn Xem hướng dẫn download nhiều tập tin tại đây
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(Nguon: Japan, My Love)
Thứ Sáu, 5 tháng 6, 2015
Sentence Structure- English Grammar
02:02
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster, we meet an English teacher who plays our program to his students, much to our delight. RS: What's surprising is that Brian Backman teaches right here in America, and his students are mostly native-born English speakers. Brian teaches at Anacortes High School in Washington State, in the Pacific Northwest.
Listening online or download (link1);
Listening online or download (link2).
AA: His special interest is sentence structure. So we thought this would be a good chance to go over some of the basics.
RS: One kind of phrase that Brian Backman finds his students sometimes have trouble with is called a participial phrase.
BACKMAN: "A participial phrase is simply where you take a verb and you use it as an adjective to describe a noun in your sentence. And that causes some problems sometimes because students throw that into a sentence without understanding that it's got to modify something, like an adjective modifies a noun. Let's say you take a sentence like 'Reading a magazine, my dog ran up and began to lick my face.' That sentence makes it sound like the dog is reading the magazine, when what the writer intended to say is 'I was reading a magazine when the dog came up and licked my face.' So 'reading a magazine' is called a participial phrase -- it's a verb, an action, but it describes a person, in this case the person reading the magazine."
AA: So how would he recommend his students rewrite a sentence like that?
BACKMAN: "I would look at that sentence and I would probably say 'While I was reading a magazine, my dog ran up and began to lick my face.' You could also say 'Reading a magazine, I was licked in the face by my dog.' You get into a little bit of passive voice there, which isn't terrible, but you just don't want to overdue too much of that."
RS: ... or start every sentence the typical way, with the subject. That, Brian Backman tells his students, can sound boring.
BACKMAN: "So by having some ways of starting a sentence -- for example, with a participle, it adds some action to the sentence and it also adds some variety. You could also put the participle after the verb. For example, 'Joe, laughing at a joke, almost choked on his pizza.' I could have started it with 'Laughing at a joke, Joe almost choked on his pizza.' And that's the kind of thing writers do, is they play around with their sentences and they understand where things go and where things are clear and where they're not clear, and it just gives you more variety. It also shows you the amazing thing about the English sentence is, there are so many different ways of saying the same thing."
RS: Yet, some ways that sound perfectly fine in spoken English might seem too casual in writing. Brian Backman runs into this issue with his students.
BACKMAN: "You want them to be able to capture that power of spoken language, that freshness that we have, that colloquial quality of the English language, but you also want them to write standard English. And it's oftentimes this struggle of getting them to understand when you write a sentence it has to be understood by somebody who can't ask you a question. So it has to be clear, the syntax has to be clear, read it aloud, make sure there's only one meaning based on what you wrote, and not some unintended meaning or some silly meaning like the dangling modifier or dangling participle. But still you don't want it to sound like a computer wrote it, or a bureaucrat wrote it. You want it to still be your sentence."
AA: "Now, for the 11 years that you've been teaching English, that's sort of tracked the time of the rise of electronic mail communication, e-mail, instant messaging, and this sort of language that we've seen spring up of kids writing back-and-forth in a very sort of abbreviated shorthand. Are you seeing that creeping into their writing at all?"
BACKMAN: "I think probably because students write a lot of e-mail and things like that, and instant messaging, they tend to condense the language. Some English teachers see that as a bad thing, I see it as enlivening the language, really, because it's adding new words and a freshness to our language. Just like, you know, students have forever been using slang. Some of those slang terms and phrases we use today, without even realizing that at one time they were slang and they were seen as non-standard English, and I see it as something that's constantly enlivening our language. And that's the great thing about English is we don't have an academy like the French do."
AA: But he says it's a challenge to get students to know when it's OK to use slang and when it's not.
BACKMAN: "We talk about audience, think about who you're writing to, whether it's a speech or whether it's a piece of writing, an essay, think about who your audience is and make it appropriate. And that's just a lesson that I have to continue to reiterate to students, that you just cannot talk the same way to everybody. And that's a problem, because in our culture we've become more comfortable with speaking to everybody the same."
RS: Brian Backman teaches at Anacortes High School, north of Seattle. He's written a book called "Building Sentence Skills: Tools for Writing the Amazing English Sentence," published just this week by Teacher Created Materials.
AA: Brian found our program on our Web site, and you can too. It's voanews.com/wordmaster. And our e-mail address is word@voanews.com. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.
Listening online or download (link2).
AA: His special interest is sentence structure. So we thought this would be a good chance to go over some of the basics.
RS: One kind of phrase that Brian Backman finds his students sometimes have trouble with is called a participial phrase.
BACKMAN: "A participial phrase is simply where you take a verb and you use it as an adjective to describe a noun in your sentence. And that causes some problems sometimes because students throw that into a sentence without understanding that it's got to modify something, like an adjective modifies a noun. Let's say you take a sentence like 'Reading a magazine, my dog ran up and began to lick my face.' That sentence makes it sound like the dog is reading the magazine, when what the writer intended to say is 'I was reading a magazine when the dog came up and licked my face.' So 'reading a magazine' is called a participial phrase -- it's a verb, an action, but it describes a person, in this case the person reading the magazine."
AA: So how would he recommend his students rewrite a sentence like that?
BACKMAN: "I would look at that sentence and I would probably say 'While I was reading a magazine, my dog ran up and began to lick my face.' You could also say 'Reading a magazine, I was licked in the face by my dog.' You get into a little bit of passive voice there, which isn't terrible, but you just don't want to overdue too much of that."
RS: ... or start every sentence the typical way, with the subject. That, Brian Backman tells his students, can sound boring.
BACKMAN: "So by having some ways of starting a sentence -- for example, with a participle, it adds some action to the sentence and it also adds some variety. You could also put the participle after the verb. For example, 'Joe, laughing at a joke, almost choked on his pizza.' I could have started it with 'Laughing at a joke, Joe almost choked on his pizza.' And that's the kind of thing writers do, is they play around with their sentences and they understand where things go and where things are clear and where they're not clear, and it just gives you more variety. It also shows you the amazing thing about the English sentence is, there are so many different ways of saying the same thing."
RS: Yet, some ways that sound perfectly fine in spoken English might seem too casual in writing. Brian Backman runs into this issue with his students.
BACKMAN: "You want them to be able to capture that power of spoken language, that freshness that we have, that colloquial quality of the English language, but you also want them to write standard English. And it's oftentimes this struggle of getting them to understand when you write a sentence it has to be understood by somebody who can't ask you a question. So it has to be clear, the syntax has to be clear, read it aloud, make sure there's only one meaning based on what you wrote, and not some unintended meaning or some silly meaning like the dangling modifier or dangling participle. But still you don't want it to sound like a computer wrote it, or a bureaucrat wrote it. You want it to still be your sentence."
AA: "Now, for the 11 years that you've been teaching English, that's sort of tracked the time of the rise of electronic mail communication, e-mail, instant messaging, and this sort of language that we've seen spring up of kids writing back-and-forth in a very sort of abbreviated shorthand. Are you seeing that creeping into their writing at all?"
BACKMAN: "I think probably because students write a lot of e-mail and things like that, and instant messaging, they tend to condense the language. Some English teachers see that as a bad thing, I see it as enlivening the language, really, because it's adding new words and a freshness to our language. Just like, you know, students have forever been using slang. Some of those slang terms and phrases we use today, without even realizing that at one time they were slang and they were seen as non-standard English, and I see it as something that's constantly enlivening our language. And that's the great thing about English is we don't have an academy like the French do."
AA: But he says it's a challenge to get students to know when it's OK to use slang and when it's not.
BACKMAN: "We talk about audience, think about who you're writing to, whether it's a speech or whether it's a piece of writing, an essay, think about who your audience is and make it appropriate. And that's just a lesson that I have to continue to reiterate to students, that you just cannot talk the same way to everybody. And that's a problem, because in our culture we've become more comfortable with speaking to everybody the same."
RS: Brian Backman teaches at Anacortes High School, north of Seattle. He's written a book called "Building Sentence Skills: Tools for Writing the Amazing English Sentence," published just this week by Teacher Created Materials.
AA: Brian found our program on our Web site, and you can too. It's voanews.com/wordmaster. And our e-mail address is word@voanews.com. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.
(Source: VOA/WORDMASTER)
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