Popular New Book Provides Good Laugh For Teachers This Christmas
If you're looking for a good Christmas gift for a teacher, then we recommend the popular book Funny English Errors and Insights: Illustrated* ("Funny English"). We recommend Funny English for teachers this Christmas for several reasons.
First and foremost, Funny English is a fun read. Funny English is a collection of 301 accidentally humorous uses and misuses of written English, including hilarious student bloopers. The book is a good gift book for not only English teachers but also science teachers, religious education teachers, and other teachers, because of the many subjects that Funny English covers, including science, religion, geography, law, government, history, and mathematics.
The second reason Funny English is a good Christmas gift for teachers is that the book provides a fun teaching tool. To understand much of the book's humor, the reader must have a good working knowledge of English and good general knowledge; thus the book provides an extra, fun incentive for a student to improve their vocabulary and to expand their general knowledge.
For example, to understand the humor in the following exchange between a teacher and a student, the reader must know the meaning of "expensive": The teacher asked the class for a synonym for "pensive"; the student answered: "cheap".
The third reason Funny English is a good Christmas gift for teachers is that the book provides lessons not only for students but also for teachers themselves. Perhaps some of the student bloopers could have been avoided had the teacher used a visual presentation in addition to oral instruction. For example, had the teacher written the phrase "malice aforethought" on the blackboard, then the student would not have misheard that phrase as "mallet and forethought."
A fourth reason Funny English is a good Christmas gift for teachers is the book's optimism. The book's author has deliberately chosen extracts that put a positive spin on life. Given that teachers have one of the most important and sometimes most stressful jobs of all, a teacher can do with a good dose of childlike optimism — especially at Christmas.
Funny English Errors and Insights: Illustrated (ISBN 9780642277138) retails for $14.95 and is available from all good bookstores. As at 12 October 2010, Funny English was the top pre-order in humour at Borders and one of the distributor's top-10 bestsellers across all categories. Order your copy of Funny English from Borders here.