Today as I was just about to leave work, one of the Japanese English teachers stopped me to ask a question I found myself completely unable to answer. I hate it when they do that. Sometimes I wonder if they're doing it on purpose.
Today's awkward question was this:
"What is a dinkum, and why is it fair?"
To which my answer was, intelligently,
"Er. Um."
I felt less stupid after coming home and looking it up. Apparently I am not the only one without a clue.
In other news, the weather has become cooler, and the leaves have started to turn.
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About Me
- Badaunt
- I'm from NZ, and now live in Japan, teaching English to reluctant university students. Email me: badaunt at gmail.com
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Links for language teachers
I have noticed that I get a lot of hits from people searching "present simple" and "ESL," and assume that this is language teachers looking for ideas or lesson plans. The following links are good places to start.
ESL Lounge Here you will find lesson plans organised by level. A fantastically useful site for busy teachers, and easy to navigate.
British Council Here lesson plans are organized by topic. There are more teaching activities in the 'downloads' section.
The Internet TESL Journal
They have not updated this page for a while, but there is still a lot you might find useful.
Humanising Language Teaching
This is an online journal, good for ideas, inspiration, and especially good towards the end of semester when you're feeling not quite human.
Dave's ESL Cafe
Almost too much to wade through, but a very useful resource. Lots of links to other sources.
Karin's ESL PartyLand
This is a page specifically dealing with teaching simple present and present progressive. I have not tried any of these, but there are a lot of ideas here, and they look good. At the very least you will be inspired.
Good luck!
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6 comments:
In America we are the leaders for idiomatic expressions that have long since lost their meaning as the media grabs them up and sprinkles them liberally in every news report. When it is your mother tongue it is embarrassing not to be able to explain it!
"Fair dinkum" I lay at the feet of the British.
Now, what's with the late autumn? Just how much winter do you plan on having there? I mean, you're running late now, if you want to start winter by December and have it last only till March.
Actually, I've read that the expression is an Australian slang. Hehe.
I still don't know what it means though. What does it mean anyway?
The most typical piece of Australian slang - and thus passing out of use, except by stand-ups & politicians.
Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary of 1896-1905 has dinkum as an English dialect word for work, hence the phrase means a fair (day's) work. An alternate source from goldfields Chinese is din gum, true gold. Don't have a Mandarin speaker at hand but the Japanese 'kin' for gold is suggestive of 'din', so this could be so...
But you'd have to be a real raw prawn to go around saying fair dinkum today! I mean, stone the crows, mate...
When asked a question that you don't know how, or care, to answer the BEST answer is to reply..... "Google is your friend."
BTW Your blog's header is a most beautiful and amusing photo.
Uh, didn't see BA's button - which shows the very site I found (in Google, yep); and didn't say what the phrase actually means!
Fair dinkum = really true, honest, reliable, trustable. I suppose in some far northern fishing port up there above Capricorn there's some old gnarled bloke who still uses it... ;-)
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