new middle school class???

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:23 PM -0400 4/6/05, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>
>And do use Allan Metcalf's very readable paperback, _How We Talk: American
>Regional English Today_.  Middle schoolers can handle that nicely.

Some can, anyway.  Depends on the middle school, I'm afraid.

>And
>frankly, I think they'd be more interested in the variety of things
>included in that book more than they would enjoy looking up word
>etymologies and origins out of context.  One more good small book is Peter
>Trudgill's _Language Myths_,

actually edited by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill (I like it too)

Larry

>  good for debunking prescriptive notions
>drilled into the kids in their first eight years of school.
>
>Beverly Flanigan