Hey, Mensa, you’re fuckin’ retarded

I am quoting from this URL of the Mensa website:

“There are Mensans for whom Mensa provides a sense of family, and others for whom it is a casual social activity.”

This is one of the most fucked grammatical constructions my poor 95 IQ brain has ever encountered.

It’s easier to analyze this convoluted sentence if the “for” prepositions are placed at the end of the relative clauses, where they would normally appear in informal speech:

There are Mensans whom Mensa provides a sense of family for, and others whom it is a casual social activity for.

I have highlighted the two relative clauses. Now that I have identified the relative clauses, I can pluck them out of the sentence without harming the structure of the sentence. Removing the relative clauses reveals that this is an incomplete sentence:

There are Mensans, and others.

Since “and” is preceded by a comma, it indicates that it is a coordinating conjunction.

The clause after the coordinating conjunction has no verb, only the subject “others.” In addition, “others” refers to non-Mensans, which is not what these einsteins intended.

There are significant problems with the writing on the Mensa website. I fear the day when the Mensans breed a super race of people with high IQs. The linguistic atrocities committed by this race of intellectual giants will surely bring about a language apocalypse.

(Original Mensa source.)

Teaching House Boston: A better class of illiterate CELTA trainers

Here is the photo of Boston that Teaching House Boston shows on its web page. I come from Boston. Boston is not a beautiful city, but it is not ugly. I am somewhat awed by how ugly this school managed to make Boston look. I am not completely sure that this is Boston.



(The quoted text from Teaching House Boston is in red. Here is the original source.)

“Offered in Boston (in the heart of the historic district,) Teaching House's CELTA training course is hosted at Faneuil Hall…”

The comma should not be placed inside the parentheses.
There is this remarkable invention that tells people where to put things like commas. It’s called a style guide. Teaching House Boston might want to consider buying one.

They all hold a CELTA and either the DELTA (Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults) and/or a Master’s degree in Education.”

They all hold certificates or degrees that one is supposed to be impressed by, but can they all use conjunctions? The above sentence uses a either…and/or correlative conjunction. Maybe this type of conjunction exists on planets in the far reaches of the galaxy, where the members of the staff of Teaching House Boston probably come from, but on earth, English does not have such a conjunction.

“The combination of our rigorous course standards and the accreditation provided by the University of Cambridge ensures that our teachers go on to obtain desirable teaching jobs whether they choose to teach English in the United States or teach English abroad.”

The authors do not understand what the word “ensure” means. There is absolutely no guarantee that course graduates will obtain “desirable teaching jobs.” The only thing that Teaching House Boston can ensure about its CELTA course is that students will be $2,500 poorer after they pay for the course.

Get the prestigious CELTA certificate in San Francisco and murder the English language

 
“Our English Language School in San Francisco have earned an enviable reputation for providing their program participants and graduates with a wide range of professional Job Guidance Services.” (Original source for this quote)

‘[E]nviable reputation?’ Maybe among the illiterate, English Language School San Francisco’s reputation is enviable.

The quote above has agreement problems. “School” is a singular noun, and it is being used with the verb “have.” You can’t do that! In addition, the pronoun standing in for singular “school” is plural “their.”

The teaching experts at English Language School San Francisco might also want to keep in mind that in the United States we have this thing called the serial comma. The teaching experts at this school might have heard about this comma; it’s all the rage. In fact, it’s fairly standard. Accordingly, the teaching experts at English Language School San Francisco might want to think about using this comma in their advertising, so they do not look like limey trained idiots being shipped in from overseas to teach a formulaic EFL training course to Americans at the bottom of the food chain.

Good job, English Language School San Francisco. Keep churning out those CELTA certified English language teaching experts! And good for you, Cambridge, for pissing on the legacy of Newton and Darwin and Hawking by letting these chuckleheads use your logo. Good job selling my language as if it were a cheap whore.

(This is a copy I made of the original source on July 21, 2012:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=1zcSSrFUYXhHgruVveLLyTJ4XK-5XGUYoj24Lxd-gZ2hi9W5BrEUGs7PtzTualLjCuyFgZkyxwXSpOv1R)

Steve Oakes, author, and biggest joker on the planet

Here is Steve Oakes, the professional. He is the author of Speakout, a comprehensive six level general English course. He is also the Head of Teacher Training at the prestigious International House Budapest in the heart of beautiful Budapest.

Steve Oakes is an English speaking expert. Just give this smooth-talking son-of-a-bitch a listen:


Yet, Steve Oakes, professional English training guy, cannot write a fucking grammatical sentence:

https://sites.google.com/site/celtaexposed/steve-oakes

Good job, Steve Oakes. You have successfully hoodwinked just about everyone into believing that you are not the nervy, ignorant piece of shit that you really are.