Figleaf language

Excuse my French!

Figleaf language

Short link to this page:

http://bit.ly/maelt_figleaf_lang

Embrace the Parsnip,

an article by Luke Meddings

Michelangelo chipped away long and hard to find a naked man with dispro-portionately large hands imprisoned in a chunk of Carrara marble. See what we lose when this master-piece is ’figleafed‘!

Correcting and cleansing texts according to some social mores is, by definition, the very antithesis of studying authentic language. No-one in their right mind, with the exception of language teaching publishers, would think that language can be faithfully represented through anodyne, innocuous, figleafed texts.

Topics that are not traditionally welcome in foreign language textbooks form the lovely acronym PARSNIP. Click the parsnip to find out what they are.

Is it reasonable to expect that language learners are well-equipped to function in a foreign language without the vocabulary of these topics? Maybe if they are under 12 years old. Most ELT students aren't, and those that are are not for long.

Woe betide the teacher who announces to a class of teenage boys that today’s topic is pollution. And Always is a brand of tampon, and tampon in some European languages means rubber stamp and rubber in American English refers to condom which in some languages is preservative which could really get you in a jam!

On a n

Scott Thornbury (left) and Luke Meddings (mid) receiving their ELTons award for Teaching Unplugged from Ken Wilson (right) in 2010.

ew route to work this morning, I came across a spunk shop. While I can honestly say I didn't put my foot in it, I did take a photo of the eye-catching sign.

In the New Model Corpus, the word spunk occurs 32 times, only once as a verb. Eight times it refers to semen, 22 times to courage and twice indeterminable. In the British National Corpus, which is about the same size as the NMC, it occurs much more frequently - 84 times.