The more I teach the English language, the less I seem to know about it.

It's challenging when it comes to languages, be it English or anything else. It's constantly evolving and changing to meet the needs of people and periods. Conventions come and go. What's acceptable a few years ago may be deemed inappropriate now. Especially with the advent of technology and the internet, languages are evolving faster than ever.

In the past, I used to listen to English sentences and decide on whether they were gramatically correct by how they sounded. It was more of a gut feeling. I didn't need to memorise grammatical rules.

Now, I've had to unlearn and relearn everything. When a student asks me a question, I can't say it's wrong cos it sounds strange. I have to back it up with an explanation that requires me to understand the intricacies of the language.

And so as they are learning, I'm learning too. Resources include the internet, dictionaries and grammar books. I find myself questioning long-held beliefs of how words should be used. I also often find out that I've been using certain terms incorrectly all this time. Every now and then, an alien word pops up that sends me scrambling to find its meaning on Cambridge Dictionary Online. The handy thing with going online is that some websites have icons you can click on to hear the word read out to you.

Then there's the great British English and American English divide. When I read that LKY warned that we might eventually have to adopt American English, I did a facepalm. Honestly, after all those hours of drilling into students the difference between "colour" and "color", this was the last thing I wanted to hear.

Like I said before, the more I learn, the less I seem to know. I'm a student myself.