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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 05/12/2025

I have two dogs: Taco and Queso. Queso paid me a visit during a break between classes. "To pay a visit" is a lovely English idiom that means "to go and visit someone / some place." We generally use it in a positive, pleasant context. The visit is happy and enjoyable. youtu.be/FoCn5DZ2H_0

youtu.be

Queso Visit

YouTube video by The Chicago English Corner

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 15/09/2025

One of my students just used the expression "to hold your horses" in a nonchalant way and entirely unprompted. We last reviewed this equine image more than a year ago. It made my day! :)

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 10/06/2025

A student and I just had a good laugh about their word choice. While he was describing his small farm, he used the word "carcass" to describe a wooden structure he had built. I let him know that -- yes -- definition existed but native speakers would never use it that way.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 19/05/2025

I would love to see a series of this: What They (Don't) Teach You At NASA / The USDA / Girl Scouts.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 18/05/2025

We teachers so often learn from our students. Today, I was coaching a student through an upcoming work presentation. He's really good at his job (software development) and uses a lot of jargon. I understand about 90% of it but today, he used one I had never heard: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levensh...

en.wikipedia.org

Levenshtein distance - Wikipedia

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 12/05/2025

Happy Monday, everyone. I spent yesterday cleaning my office and was so satisfied with the newly tidy space that I wondered how everyone else's teaching area looked. So, if you're feeling a bit voyeuristic about your work space feel free to share in this thread. #edusky #academicsky #teachersky

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 10/04/2025

I agree entirely. This is a dogma that leads away from creative thinking and towards dominance / control.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 08/04/2025

This is how I've managed to explain the tariffs: a bully attacks one child? That's bad for the child. A bully attacks two children? That's bad for two children. A bully attacks 80 children? That's very, very bad for the bully. #AcademicSky, how are you making sense of this for your own students?

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 04/04/2025

A beautiful morning in #Chicago. I'm at a favorite café trying to finish an essay. Writing is always challenge, but even more so when doing it in Spanish -- which is not my native. The added anxiety of knowing that my retirement fund is disappearing by the minute does not help. #AcademicSky

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 31/03/2025

NYU’s current motto is “Perstare et praestare.” Perhaps it should become whatever the Latin is for “complying in advance with fascism.”

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 26/03/2025

The government kidnapped this student. Where is Tufts’ statement calling for her release? #Academicaly

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 26/03/2025

A student just said, "see you next Tuesday!" and an internal war waged about whether I should have told him what that specific phrase meant. :) I saved it for... well, next Tuesday.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 17/03/2025

This would work really well in a few of my language exercises. Thanks, M-W!

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 16/03/2025

Reading “Don’t Go,” a collection of first hand stories about the racial segregation we impose upon ourselves in #Chicago. What are you reading tonight, #AcademicSky?

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 14/03/2025

A student recommended Natural Reader to me, so I checked it out. Red flags appeared right away. The male voices are "confident, engaging, and formal" while the female ones are "calm, emotional, and soft." Gender stereotypes are generally unhelpful but nefarious when applied to educational tools.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 11/03/2025

The vocabulary (and joy) of Spring Cleaning. Check out this "Before" and "After" video of my living room. What 5 objects and what 5 verbs can you identify from the video? youtu.be/HFFs4v_kmHA

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Spring Cleaning Part 2

YouTube video by The Chicago English Corner

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 20/02/2025

The third new logo. God, I love this one.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 20/02/2025

I left behind my IT career in 2022; but, all that I learned remained with me. And a good thing! Launching the Chicago English Corner has been a one-person IT Project. I'll sit and think -- after working for hours -- about how much more difficult this would be without all that technology experience.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 14/02/2025

I asked why students of color didn’t work in our department. I learned that we had never recruited or reached out. Baffled, I made connections with the Black Student Union and relevant administrators. By the end of the year, the applications flowed in as did the job offers. #academicsky #highered

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 11/02/2025

New logo! Well, first of three new logos. :)

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 09/02/2025

This is a useful metaphor. It explains the absurdity of the outcome: that Americans knew exactly who these people were and what they intended... and voted for them anyway. This was not some political legerdemain. It was open and direct.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 07/02/2025

So... fess up,. Who from #writingcommunity slipped the word "cocky" past the Kellogg Marketing Department? Further: has this word been used previously on breakfast products?

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 31/01/2025

It's refreshing to hear other teachers describe the same struggles and successes as my own. Another teacher and I were talking shop earlier this morning. She's Mexican, working in Mexico yet our stories were similar. Especially the stories about writing. Students are gonna student! #academicsky

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 28/01/2025

I've been code-switching between English and Spanish all day. At one point, I had to ask one of my bilingual students to tell me the English word for "la traición." I honestly couldn't remember the damned word.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 27/01/2025

Every Monday morning, I have a class with a teacher in Poland about Walt Whitman. She adores him. We have been reading through "Song of Myself" when, today, the conversation jumped to Alan Ginsburg's "Howl" which ineluctably led us to our current cultural moment. I get paid for this! I love it.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 26/01/2025

As the orange menace widens his war against decency -- now against Colombia --, I encourage everyone to (re)read this seminal text about colonialism and imperialism. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Ve... #academicsky, #writingsky

en.wikipedia.org

Open Veins of Latin America - Wikipedia

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 26/01/2025

@rudyfraser.com can count on my financial support when the ability to do so returns. This is the that work we need which creates the access to ideas that people deserve. -- A rando in Chicago.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 26/01/2025

This is for you, #writingcommunity and #academicsky: "Your obligation / is not discharged by any common rite. / What you do you must do on your own. / The main thing is to write / for the joy of it." James Joyce (as Seamus Heaney imagined him, Virgil-esque), in The New Yorker September 9 2024.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 23/01/2025

Oh my God. I use this same image. A student thought it was hilarious when I explained it this way to them. I even drew teeth on the symbol because that's what our teachers did.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 22/01/2025

God, I love my students. We had a conversation that led us to the word "bully." He asked where that word came from. I wasn't entirely sure so we looked together. It comes from the Dutch verb "boele" meaning "lover." We learned together that bully had come from courtship / the wooing of a woman.

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The Chicago English Corner @chicagoenglishcorner.com · 20/01/2025

The Chicago English Corner launches on 1 March 2025. I'll be working my ass off on the transition from the previous site until then. :)

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