Etcetera: A Lesson in Language

When teaching students today, educators quickly learn that they oftentimes use the phrase, "Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera" when they want a subject to be terminated, feel they have too much information thrown at them or simply want someone to stop talking. They use this phrase almost as often as "whatever" and with the same amount of not having a clue as it's correct meaning, thus sending it into what educators I work with call "language hell".

And in truth, the youth today aren't much different than their elders in that matter.To yours truly, "etcetera" is just a fancy term for post whatever comes to mind, whenever the urge hits! Of course that's a definition the younger folks on the site can relate to. It is a term for all that detris and extra information which we all hold within ourselves. For those of us who wore platform shoes the first time they were popular, it really means, "let your mind ramble and wander and say or do whatever, where it will be accepted as commonplace".

But seriously, when teaching kids to use nuances of the English language other than the words "whatever" and "dude", it is always a positive to teach the core definition of words that are heard but are not often known.

After teaching the class the definition of a word such as etcetera, it is often good to ask the class to take a word that they use in everyday life, look up the correct definition and the compare how the correct definition and how slang differ yet are the same in their use. To make this classroom lesson even more in depth, students can be sent out to a crowded hallway, lounge or lunchroom and told to keep track of how many times the word they have chosen is used in proper definition terms and how many in terms of slang, later reporting back the class their find.

They can take this one more step and ask their peers, elders and even another generation removed for their favorite or most often (keep them G-rated please) phrases used that have no real connection to correct Webster dictionary meanings. This lesson can take as long or as short an amount of time to complete but I have found more times than not, when students begin, they are hesitant to end.

After a lesson such as this, students are more aware of how use of language differs and how misuse can change one's perception of the speaker as well. It is in truly seeing language as it is, that students learn how important and impressionable language really is in life around them.