Bad Habits
Last evening, my husband and I were treated to dinner by two gentlemen from England who my husband knows from work. Given their heritage, it is immediately clear that they speak quite differently than any native to America. It also doesn’t take very long to realize that a person could easily pick up words or accents after being around them for awhile. These new habits may make you stand out a bit, but they wouldn’t be considered bad habits.
However, bad language habits can be acquired in much the same way. For example, the word, “like” seems to be inserted nowadays into nearly every part of speech. College and high school students seem to be especially prone to this incorrect use of the word. My sister-in-law, who is twenty-two, uses it at least once in every sentence, and my older son has begun to mimic her pattern.
So how do you break these bad language habits? In our case, we have simply been explaining where the word “like” is correctly used in sentences. However, it is difficult to explain the concept of comparisons to a five-year-old so we have also been giving him a lot of examples. He is definitely catching on because he is already starting to correct his aunt. I, of course, think this is “brilliant”. (My new favorite British word!)
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Written by Laura on July 19, 2010
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