rodserd

A tie between a Christmas Carol and a Tale of Two Cities

Bad words typically have connotations that are very negative, or the words themselves are considered impolite. 

I'm really not certain what the longest word I have used in a conversation is, but I imagine it was a doozy.

In my mind, this is caused by cultural differences and misunderstandings.

My spelling has gotten progressively worse over the last few years.  This is a combination of typing quickly and relying on Word to make things red and angry when I do something wrong.

My sentence structure is also usually overly complex (and I use multiple adverbs and non-traditional things like parentheses).

Yes, the above sentence was an example of both of those points.

SWAG actually used to be an acronym for "Stuff We All Get". Some number of years ago it was used to describe things people used to get for free. Nowadays it's been re-purposed as a shortening of "swagger". Funny how one word gets recycled for a new catch phrase. It will have its time and pass, like all colloquialisms, and maybe one day we'll see it used anew for something completely different.

this is a great example of a backronym, a word that is retroactively given an acronym even though it has been in use before that (another fun example is NASA's COLBERT module, which was named after Stephen Colbert and only later given a meaning Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill). 

Swag and other ghetto words are entering the common lexicon because ghetto culture is becoming mainstream with young people (and unfortunately so are gangs and violence as being acceptable behavior).  Slang is always in flux, so in ten years this will change.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder?  Not sure if that's an idiom or not.

"When it rains it pours"  saying usually related to something bad getting worse.

Ray Bradbury is my favorite science fiction author. I read his The Illustrated Man twice already and it's even better than the first time. Kaleidoscope is probably the best short story I have ever read, The Long Rain is also an amazing story.

Can't forget Fahrenheit 451....everyone should read that book.  Not sure if it is truly Science Fiction or not, but it is close.

I have read Anita Blake series, which isn't bad considering the series is quite interesting. I don't usually have specific authors or books that I dislike because I am very picky when comes to books. I would do the research before I go ahead to read the books, which it's less likely that I will dislike the books. I believe one book I didn't quite like was the Twilight series, which I only read the first page of the first chapter before I decided to let it go.

That is because Twilight is horribly written and should be burned.

I find Asian women very attractive, particularly Japanese women.

I've always wanted to learn Japanese but the difficulty of it has kept me away.

Moby....frickin....Dick.  I HATED that book when I had to read it (in college during a Masters level course....and I'm an English major, so that should tell you something).  However, after reading it (and it has been years now) I still think about it, and discover new and interesting things I hadn't thought of before.  It is such a titanic work of literature....

I was going to recommend Guns Germs and Steel, but you beat me to it.  I think non-fiction is very interest-driven.  I can read anything about WW2, but most other things bore me to death (though antrhopology is interesting at times, hence Guns Germs and Steel).

There's a movie based on Frankenstein that I just saw a preview of.  By "based on" I mean that they have a guy in it stitched together from corpses called Frankenstein....that's about it.

More on topic, Frankenstein can get pretty deep.  It is very much an examination of the human spirit, including the darkest parts of it, and often the monster is more human than Dr. Frankenstein (Victor?  I want to call him Victor).  One way to read it is to think of the Dr and the monster as the same person, Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde style.  Doesn't work all the way through, but it is interesting from a psychological standpoint.

Add Gunpowerd Empire by Harry Turtledove to the alternative history list.  I think that is AH "lite" enough for a younger person to appreciate....

jeez, now I sound old.

There are so many that it is hard to pick.  Can I pick a series? 

Harry Turtledove's "Darkness" series (Into the Darkness, etc).  Its WW2 with magic and giant dinosaurs instead of tanks and dragons instead of airplanes.  It gives you some shocking realizations about people.  Anything by Turtledove is an amazing alternative history writer, all of his stuff is good.  Not sure how it would be for a ESL person, however.

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.

Link

Hey look , its a list of all the books English teachers force you to read and you hate because of it.

Before recommending a bunch of books, what are your interests?  Seventeen year olds come in a wide variety.

There are too many to even begin to list.  One book I wish I could find again is called The Game, and it was about a group of teenagers in a dystopian future where robots were replacing everyone and there were no jobs, so they lived in essentially ghettos.  They then got selected to play a game, they would go, get plugged in and explore this world.  In the end, the game was a simulation to prepare them for being dropped on an unpopulated world with a bunch of other teenagers as an attempt to colonize/escape the polluted Earth.  It was an interesting concept I didn't fully appreciate when I was younger, hence wanting to read it again, but I can never find it.

You should have a good sense of humor, and not be easily embarrassed.  This is not so much for the language parts, but because of the culture differences.  I had an Iranian roommate once, and he would put his used toilet paper in the trash can instead of flushing it.  It took me a long time to be able to talk to him about this because I was embarrassed about the subject matter. 

Consequently, for those who don't know, this is a common practice in places where there is poor plumbing, because toilet paper can clog the toilets.  However, not a problem in America.  Simple conversation later and it was no longer an issue and I learned something.

I think that the biggest misconception is that an English class is just about writing the language.  Reading the language, and its associated rich history of literature, is just as important, if not more-so.  People who read a lot are much more interesting to talk to, because they have a deeper experience brought in by books.

I wish penmanship was something that was taught in school.  My handwriting is horrible thanks to the fact my leftie mom tried to teach me (I'm a rightie).  So I write like a left handed person with my right hand.  My print is terrible and my cursive is worse.  It really looks like a 5 year old wrote it.

In corporate American there are dozens of words that make you sound like a corporate tool who does nothing useful but make up stuff.  Thins like "Action-oriented" and "people-centric"  Basically concatenate two words that sound businessy together and you have a new buzzword. 

Or just google corporate buzzwords.

Knowing latin roots helps a lot for english. 

For example: interlocutor (these are from memory, so sorry if they aren't 100% accurate)

inter means between

the locu means speech

tor typically signifies that it is a person or thing that performs the action.

So we have a person who speaks between/to another person

Latin roots help SOOO much with english, but they are not 100% either (because english is fun that way).