{"id":3904,"date":"2006-10-12T20:54:49","date_gmt":"2006-10-13T03:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2006\/10\/12\/dangerous-feet-and-good-diction\/"},"modified":"2019-12-20T11:21:34","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T19:21:34","slug":"dangerous-feet-and-good-diction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2006\/10\/12\/dangerous-feet-and-good-diction\/","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous Feet and Good Diction"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:6233,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.northseattle.edu\\\/services\\\/loft&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20100904012933\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.northseattle.edu:80\\\/services\\\/loft\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 22:37:32&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-06 21:40:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-06 21:40:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:6221,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/click.linksynergy.com\\\/fs-bin\\\/click?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941.10000170&amp;type=4&amp;subid=0&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>My Work Study job at NSCC is as a tutor in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northseattle.edu\/services\/loft\/\" title=\"The Loft\">The Loft<\/a>, the school&#8217;s writing center. Many of the students we have stopping by are ESL and foreign language students, sometimes working their way through ESL classes, sometimes in the standard English classes.<\/p>\n<p>As English is their second (sometimes third or fourth) language, we do a lot of work helping them navigate their way through the various intricacies and oddities of the English language&#8230;of which there are <em>many<\/em>. It&#8217;s fun to do, and at times, it can be quite funny, as well. Nothing makes you really think about just how goofy our language is until you&#8217;re trying to explain it to a non-native speaker.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, it wasn&#8217;t until I was working on deconstructing part of a girl&#8217;s paper where she had written about people who were being murdered by their feet that I really thought about how nonsensical the phrase &#8220;my feet are killing me&#8221; really is. The best part was that her usage was perfect, describing how people felt after a long day standing in lines &#8212; but it only works if you use the phrase <em>just so<\/em>. Move it around and reword it, and it turns into something entirely different.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also running into an issue that I certainly wouldn&#8217;t have predicted beforehand, in that at times I speak a little <em>too<\/em> precisely. Yesterday I had an ESL student in who was working on hearing the difference between &#8220;can&#8221; and &#8220;can&#8217;t&#8221; when listening to spoken English. One of the key points her teacher had touched on and that her exercise mentioned was that most people tend not to pronounce the final &#8216;t&#8217; in &#8220;can&#8217;t&#8221; &#8212; rather, it&#8217;s usually just a very brief pause after the word. She had a list of sentences that she wanted me to read, some of which used &#8220;can&#8221; and some of which used &#8220;can&#8217;t&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The only problem was that my diction is unusually good. Between having parents who share a love of the English language and spending years in a professional children&#8217;s choir, I speak far more precisely than most people do, and I was pronouncing the &#8216;t&#8217; every single time. &#8220;No, no,&#8221; she would say. &#8220;I hear the &#8216;t&#8217; &#8212; do it again.&#8221; Eventually, we were both laughing, as I had to try to explain how difficult it was for me to intentionally mispronounce the word. It&#8217;s <em>incredibly<\/em> difficult for me to do. In the end, I had to suggest that she find a different tutor to work that particular exercise with.<\/p>\n<p>On the flip side, though, I&#8217;ve had a couple of the other students <em>quite<\/em> happy to work with me, precisely because my diction is that good. Apparently I&#8217;m easier to understand than many other English speakers, as long as I don&#8217;t go too quickly. I see a <em>lot<\/em> of pronunciation drills in my future&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/click?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941.10000170&amp;type=4&amp;subid=0\" title=\"Get iTunes\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"iTunes\" border=\"0\" width=\"61\" height=\"15\" src=\"http:\/\/images.apple.com\/itunesaffiliates\/logos\/iTunes_sm_bdg61x15.png\" \/><\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/ad.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/show?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;bids=78941.10000170&amp;type=4&amp;subid=0\" alt=\"\" \/> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/stat?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941&amp;type=3&amp;subid=0&amp;tmpid=1826&amp;RD_PARM1=itms %253A%252F%252Fphobos.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZSearch.woa%252Fwa%252Fcom.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction%252FadvancedSearchResults%253FartistTerm%253DScissor Sisters%2526songTerm=Everybody Wants the Same Thing%26partnerId%3D30\" title=\"Search for 'Everybody Wants the Same Thing' on the iTMS\">Everybody Wants the Same Thing<\/a>&#8221; by <a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/stat?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941&amp;type=3&amp;subid=0&amp;tmpid=1826&amp;RD_PARM1=itms%253A%252F%252Fphobos.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZSearch.woa%252Fwa%252Fcom.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction%252FadvancedSearchResults%253FartistTerm%253DScissor Sisters%26partnerId%3D30\" title=\"Search for 'Scissor Sisters' on the iTMS\">Scissor Sisters<\/a> from the album <em><a href=\"http:\/\/click. linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/stat?id=xLsJkztrnNY&amp;offerid=78941&amp;type=3&amp;subid=0&amp;tmpid=1826&amp;RD_PARM1=itms%253A%252F%252Fphobos.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZSearch.woa%252Fwa%252Fcom.apple.jingle.search.DirectAction%252FadvancedSearchResults%253FartistTerm%253DScissor Sisters%2526albumTerm=Ta-Dah%26partnerId%3D30\" title=\"Search for 'Ta-Dah' on the iTMS\">Ta-Dah<\/a> <\/em> (2006, 4:22).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It wasn&#8217;t until I was working on deconstructing a girl&#8217;s paper who had written about people who were being murdered by their feet that I really thought about how nonsensical the phrase &#8216;my feet are killing me&#8217; really is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[6,13],"class_list":["post-3904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-humor","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}