Category: humor

  • A Silly Joke

    Here’s a silly old language-related joke, which I suppose many younger students wouldn’t even get (not that I’ve ever sent a telegram): A dog goes to a telegraph office and dictates the following message to the clerk: “Woof woof woof woof woof woof woof.” “That’s seven words,” says the clerk. “You get eight for the…

  • Simpsons Linguistics

    Sometimes a single-link post is worth it: Over at HeiDeas, “Beyond beyond beyond beyond ‘Beyond embiggens and cromulent’” is Heidi Harley’s fifth annual collection of linguistics jokes culled from The Simpsons, TV’s richest trove of wordplay and jokes about language! (well, other than QI, I suppose, and more prolific anyway.) The best part of these…

  • English with “Father Ted”

    Since my current work is entirely one-on-one tutoring, I get to try crazy things because I only have to deal with one student. It’s pretty easy for me to judge the student’s receptiveness to whatever unusual approach in mind, especially once I know the student well. This is a lot harder to do in a…

  • English-Teaching Zombies

    No, no, not me and my mentor-teacher after we graded a stack of 30 multi-draft essays–we’re talking about a videogame. English of the Dead is not a joke, but an honest-to-goodness game produced in Japan for all those gamers who would like to work on their English and destroy a few zombies. You can even…