Has anyone else noticed that "first of all" has, for many students,  
morphed into "first off"?

Peter Adams


On Apr 19, 2009, at 8:20 AM, Craig Hancock wrote:

> Scott,
>   It has been called "meta-discourse", discourse about the text as a
> text. It orients the reader to the text itself (rather than the
> subject.) My problem with "first of all" is that it tends to be used
> mechanically.
>   I had a handful of students coming out of the same English as a  
> Second
> language program in a New York city high school who used the term
> "firstable". I thought that was conceptually interesting. Not
> everything is able to be first.
>   Does being first mean most important? Is it background necessary  
> before
> understanding the rest? A preliminary orientation? An arbitrary
> starting point? I usually find it productive to ask those questions.
>
> Craig
>
>>
>
>
> List,
>>
>> What would you call and how would you explain "First of all" (and  
>> similar
>> constructions) as a sentence opener marking the relationship of the
>> following sentence with a previous statement?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Scott Woods
>>
>>
>>
>>
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