English As A FIRST Language???

Forget English as a second language, which by the way, I used to teach at a local college.

What about English as a FIRST language????

I used to tell my ESL students not to worry too much about English speaking Americans. After all, ESA's slaughter the King's English on a regular basis.

Example: Most people have difficulty with verb-noun agreement. You would think figuring out which word is a person, place, or thing and which one shows action would be fairly simple! But when you add to it trying to decipher whether it's a single or plural subject so that you can decide what verb would agree...then comes trouble.

And so the story goes.

Life Example: I was in an At&T store the other day. A young Asian lady suddenly corrected her grammar. Verb-noun agreement. I had to chuckle. I told her most Americans would have never caught that she said it wrong, much less said it correctly themselves! She giggled.

So to get to a simple start, take a stroll over to the side-bar. Check out the new gadget (English Self-Test). Some of it is voice activated, so you'll need to click on the upper left icon. Just for fun. Or is it?

The truth is English isn't the easiest language to master. And just when you think you have it figured out, someone goes and changes the rules! Welcome to the 21st century.

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