Depressing news in The Independent this week: Overseas students are better at English than British students. According to Professor Bernard Lamb, who carried out the research, British undergraduates are nearly three times more likely to make errors in written English than those from overseas. Depressing? Yes. Surprising? No. After spending a year studying the written work of his students, Lamb was appalled by...
Today is National Poetry Day. This is my favourite poem and I learnt it off my heart when I was six. (Yes, that is a long time ago.) Furry Bear If I were a bear, And a big bear too, I shouldn't much care If it froze or snew; I shouldn't much mind If it snowed or friz - I'd be all fur-lined With a coat like his! For I'd have...
Yuppies. Who can forget them? As synonymous with the 80s as mobile phones the size of bricks; gloopy hair gel; and Gordon ‘lunch is for wimps’ Gekko. Yuppies was an acronym (sort of) for Young Urban Professional. Those upper-middle class, upwardly mobile twenty-to thirty-somethings that barked into their phones, carried a Filofax and wore red braces. And that was the girls. But using...
There’s a scene in Lynsey Lohan’s brilliant Mean Girls movie where she’s introduced to various social groups in the school cafeteria. Who can forget The Plastics, Cool Asians, Varsity Jocks, Desperate Wannabees and Girls Who Eat Their Feelings? Now Scott Baradell has put together the bloggers cafeteria. Hmmm...
