It's/Its you're/your Turn!

I haven’t written in a while now, so Arashi has set me a very interesting edublogging challenge to prompt me to sharpen the virtual pen yet again and thus make up for lost time. It involves covering a 20 day journey through teaching and (why not?) learning experiences, regular as well as cross-curricular. Just to keep you on your toes, I won’t be disclosing all topics at once. Instead, I’ll dive directly into Day 1:

Tell about a favorite book to share or teach. Provide at least one example of an extension or cross-curricular lesson.

Upon reading this first challenge, I thought I wouldn’t be able to decide. However, Day 18 has provided me with a loophole (and that’s about the only spoiler I’m giving you). Suffice it to say that, for now, I’ve narrowed it down to Lynne Truss and her Eats, Shoots and Leaves (+ the workbook Can You Eat, Shoot and Leave?, designed by Clare Dignall). Not only because I am fond of unconventional approaches to (teaching) grammar, but also because a couple of weeks ago, I organized a workshop based on the book and I’d like to draw on that particular training session.

Once every two Business English classes, my students and I focus on General English, either in terms of grammar and vocabulary, or developing various sub-skills, such as improving our pronunciation and dealing with language varieties.

Since punctuation is, more often than not, a trigger of humor, puns and (intentional?) ambiguity (especially online!), I decided to broach the subject during class. Naturally, Lynne Truss and the “punctuation workout” she puts forward popped in my mind almost immediately. In an amusing, witty and learner-oriented manner, the author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves touches on a number of topics, ranging from commas, colons, hyphens, brackets and other “regular” punctuation marks, while also poring over the whims of emoticons and italic writing.

However, most non-native speakers of English tend to brood over the apparently elusive nature of the apostrophe. Hence the implacable wars, waged on 9gag or the like. All in the name of the infamous “your/you’re” duo, defended by voracious (and equally mutinous) readers. So, without further ado, I went for the Apostrophe.

Below, the main points we covered during our workshop:

Students' Examples