I WENT tothe INTERNET becauseiwas LOOKING fora METHOD

I've been applying for lots of weird little jobs, and to just to make my random freelance life official, last night I posted some ads on craigslist advertising myself as a tutor and editor . . . well, today I got an email from an adult looking for ESL tutoring, asking--perfectly reasonably, I might add--about my "method."

So I went online in search of a method, and I discovered a couple of interesting thoughts about English.

1. Spoken and written English are so different that they should be considered separate dialects. Whoa! I'd never thought of that but I guess it might be true. So now we can all feel good because we're fluent in at least two dialects.

2. English speakers say "function words" (prepositions, articles, all the little words) EIGHT TIMES FASTER than we say "content words" (nouns, verbs, etc). I love the idea of the researchers sitting there with a stopwatch timing, I don't know, their friends? Or "Friends"?

Obviously, these have implications for ESL instruction, but they are also pretty relevant to writing poetry and creative prose. I'm going to think about them more.