Perhaps libelling rather than slandering.

Uh-oh... There's that ring again!

Incidentally, when Edwin says "You will probably find the first occurrence most illuminating", he means the first on the list chronologically, not the hit at the top of the page (unless he's just trying to tease you :-).

Yes. Thank you for clarifying, Erik, and correcting slandering illuminating.

Sorry to return to this thread but I was thinking about this subject the other day.

A few years ago I was visiting a French friend of mine in Provence. He introduced me to an EFL teacher he had met in his village. This guy had obviously been teaching English too long as he started getting on my case about a certain lesson plan that had recently become popular on EFL websites. The lesson plan was called ‘The daily routine of monsters’ and encouraged children to write about the daily actions of vampires, zombies and other creatures. I had used the lesson myself with school children in Italy and always found it a great success; kids love gore. This EFL teacher argued that it was a pointless lesson as kids don’t need to know vocabulary such as blood, guts, zombies etc. At the time I argued that anything that got school kids interested was useful, and anyway, the core vocabulary were actually action verbs.

This memory came to mind the other day while I was playing with my two year old. It struck me the number of books, toys and games available to teach kids the names of animals. Kids are bombarded with programmes telling them about dinosaurs, tigers, space creatures but not things like office furniture. It also got me thinking, how often do I use words for exotic animals? When I’m in the zoo, teaching my children perhaps. It also got me thinking, when was the last time I used the word ‘guts’…hmmm, ‘you’ve got guts’, ‘I feel gutted’, ‘that film was all blood and guts’. What about ‘zombie’…’zombie banks’, ‘I feel like a zombie today’, ‘zombie satellites’.
I came to the conclusion that if I were to follow the logic of this embittered EFL teacher I would throw out the animal books and start teaching my kid the IKEA catalogue whereas I want my child to know the names of animals, planets, dinosaurs, though they will be almost useless to him in later life.

.. PhilH may I recommend to you the wonderful collection of Richard Scarry books .. for example The Best Word Book Ever or What People Do All Day .. although he couldn't spell, he was an American, (naughty, naughty WoZ), his books contain page after page of diorama like drawings where he draws absorbing pictures with small furry animals as the actors, then labels everything in the picture .. children are drawn in by the pictures then can see the words in a kind of natural environment .. they are also available as foreign language books to give children an early introduction to a foreign language .. my granddaughter in particular still likes to read the French version Pop and Yaya gave to her and her brother ..

WoZ who is a furry animal

My wife has a copy of one of his books in Italian. I've used it myself. Very nice.
When my son is old enough to have a sense of British irony I'm going to start him on the books of Edward Gorey (even though he's an American). The Gashlycrumb Tinies is a favourite of mine.

couldn't spell, he was an American
Isn't this a bit redundant/ent?