[I take no credit for what follows. It’s part of a package of materials I was given last week after I volunteered to do one-on-one tutoring in English conversation for the Davis International Center at Princeton University. My international student for the next five months will be a visiting scholar from China, who has come to work at the Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory.
International students at the University must read and write English at an acceptable level or take a remedial course. Being able to speak so that others can understand is something else. And then there are the idioms! I’m meeting my student for the first time later this morning, and so won’t know what his conversational problems may be until then. In the meanwhile, however, here’s something for you to enjoy. We anglophones are so lucky!]
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I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead —
For goodness’ sake don’t call it “deed”!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)
A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose —
Just look them up — and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart —
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.
T.S.W. (Only the initials of writer are known)
ON BEING OLD 
I taught ESL to adult private students and enjoyed the experience very much.
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I understand from the man who coordinates the university’s tutoring program that it is indeed a lot of fun. How interesting that you taught ESL as a business!
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It’s a really quick way to check whether or not you lag behind too!
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And do you?
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Thankfully, no.
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Love it!
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Me too. There’s a companion piece in the packet. Maybe I’ll post that one too! 🙂
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Nina…
What a wonderful opportunity for our Woman of Words!
Your sentiments echo my post: ‘Tips for being a Good Patient’
… in a Saudi hospital where English is the 2nd language! 🙂
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I know it and love it, but had no copy – it’s a rotten language to learn and even worse to spell. Thanks
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You’re welcome. Happy to oblige. 🙂
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And pare a perfect pair of pears too. I am glad it is not my mother’s tongue. I am so grateful I was taught English in The Netherlands as a foreign lanuage. They don’t teach it very well here.
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As I’ve never been to Australia, Gerard, you’re the expert on that one.
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Many are taught to say; ‘and stuff like that’ or the even more complicated phrase, ‘you know?’
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It’s not that funny when you’re learning from a book, but fortunately, that belongs to the past for me…
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You must have been a top honor student, Shimon. I haven’t heard you speak, but your written English gets A+!
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thanks very much, Nina
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Have sent this one on to a friend who is an ESL teacher, thank you!xx
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You might want to send on the next one, too!
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