Watershed lexis vocab...

driver training an illustration

And so on.

I get inspired to write in many different ways. Sometimes it is questions from internationals. Sometimes it is an expression in the news.

This week I read "watershed" as a news headline. That can mean 2 entirely different things:

watershed

/ˈwɔːtəʃɛd/

noun

1. an area or ridge of land that separates waters flowing to different rivers, basins, or seas.

2. an event or period marking a turning point in a situation.

   "these works were a watershed in the history of music"

When we have a watershed moment, things change, we may go an entirely different directions just like the waterflow as in the other definition.

Recently I wrote a paper for a client who was interested in American history regarding WWII and Vietnam. I told my family's personal experience as I remembered it. He read the paper and asked why I used "would go..." in a sentence.

My writing is so automatic after many years I had to think about it. "Would" is a modal verb. Modal verbs can express possibility and may be used to make a statement less direct and more passive. In my mind I can compare my use of this format and not remembering the rules to driving a car. We do a lot of writing and driving automatically until we need to teach someone else. Our safety in driving depends on being able to tell the student all the ways to drive so the driver trainee and trainer both live. Fortunately, language is not nearly as critical most of the time. I remember a time when I was doing driver training with my teenager and I forgot to mention something important. The light was green at a large divided highway intersection and she was turning. She stopped in the middle of the divide. "What are you doing?" I asked in a panic. "Looking for anyone coming," she logically replied. "Go and go fast!" I exclaimed while looking to make sure no one was about to rear-end us. When you have a green light you don't need to stop and look unless you think another vehicle might run their red light. She listened and we lived. Now she corrects my driving. ;D

Lexis refers to all the words and expressions of a language. English has a lot of confusing vocabulary expressions, so you need to learn them in context. Teaching vocabulary can be fun and challenging so it's like eating an elephant, do it one bite at a time. For you techies their are 8 bits in a bite. Chew on that for a bit. ;D Chew here means to think. And we don't really eat elephants in the USA. (Just a little American humor at the end...If that is confusing, please ask for clarity.)

Eat your vocab one bite at a time and one day you may have a watershed moment when it suddenly makes sense! ;)