The ManicaPost
I receive numerous feed-back responses from keen readers of my education column in The Manica Post. Thank you very much. And as many from listeners of my radio English lessons! Thank you all! Continue to read and learn . . . listen and learn! Continue to give me feedback. The shorter they are, the easier they are to publish, which I will do from time to time. Here are a few of them:
Hello Radio Teacher:
My name is Oswald Timire. I am an English teacher in a rural secondary school around Mutare. I am an avid listener of your programme, The Radio Teacher. Since I started tuning in to it, my knowledge of English language has grown leaps and bounds and my interest in teaching it, remarkably higher. You reveal a lot of errors we have been making even as teachers for a very long time. Thank you very much MM. For me the commonest I have been making is, “She has a fine structure.” You said it must be “She has a fine figure.” I did not know this myself. Thank you for this one and many more. We now buy The Manica Post every week for your English and I tune in to the Radio Teacher every Thursday night.
MM REPLIES:
Dear Mr Timire
You flatter me with your remarks. Thank you sir! You are one in a million teachers. You are open to new knowledge acknowledging good teachers are keen learners. Most English teachers I know don’t want anyone to open up to new ideas and knowledge and hate being corrected. Continue to be in touch with me and let me know if there are any other areas of English language teaching or learning you may want me to pay attention to.
Hi MM
Thanks for scintillating columns in The Manica Post and The Radio Teacher Programme on Diamond FM. You love the word ‘‘scintillating.’’ It is now my word too. Why don’t you give us one hour of the radio teacher?
I have learnt a lot of English from you and have encouraged my biological children and those that I teach to follow and like you in The Manica Post and on radio. My name is Florence Tuso. I am a teacher in Rusape.
MM REPLIES:
Thank you Miss or Mrs Florence Tuso. Indeed scintillating to hear you are scintillated by the word ‘‘scintillating’’. Above all that, I feel extremely grateful that I have been so much influence on your career. Don’t stop reading The Manica Post and listening to The Radio Teacher. I do not tell my Radio ‘‘boss’’ (He does not want to be called boss), the time I want on my programme. But you are free to request more time from him directly. I will be there all for you. So far I love the 30 minutes . . . short and sweet!
Dear Radio Teacher
I am an English teacher privately furthering my studies in English and Communication. I am awed by your Manica Post English columns and have been for a very long time. Now you are teaching on radio! What a fantastic idea! I now know about ‘‘irregardless.” Thank you very much. The error is abundantly clear. I was listening to your explanation on radio. Did you also say we cannot say ‘‘Spellings’’? There is no word like ‘Corrections’ as well? Please explain. I am Morris (your namesake) Munditorawo. I am an English teacher. (Name of school given). Please don’t publish the name of my school.
MM REPLIES:
Hello Sazita! If you are my sazita you ought to have known answers to your questions. Not exactly! Listen Morris, and listen hard hey! The process of making pupils learn how to spell words by writing them down as a test of this ability cannot be “Spellings”, but spelling. Why? Because, what are they doing? They are spelling. (Active . . . verb ‘‘spelling’’) They are not spellings. It simply makes no sense. Of course there is a word ‘‘Corrections’’ but these are made by the teacher using his or her red pen to indicate in the exercise book or on a student’s script what is wrong and perhaps how to correct it, not the pupil. These, made by the teacher, are ‘‘corrections’’.
The process of correcting what is wrong is simply ‘correction’, not ‘corrections’. So when the pupils correct the wrong tenses, spelling etc, they are doing correction. They must therefore write as their heading, CORRECTION, not CORRECTIONS . . . the same way they would write REVISION, not REVISIONS.
I hope this makes sense. If it does not, don’t worry; one day it will. May be you need to ask a knowledgeable friend to assist you to understand this.
Enjoy learning English. It is a lot of fun, is it not?
