New courses begin every Monday from May through October: mini-group classes (maximum 4 students with 1 teacher), private lessons, sharing our small-town community life, excursions, family-style meals with teachers – everything you need to improve your English rapidly.

Join us this spring, summer, or fall for a memorable learning vacation!

Teacher Maureen O’Keefe, who has a master’s degree in Teaching of English as a Second Language and a University of Cambridge certificate in Teaching of English as a Foreign Language, spent 23 years living and teaching overseas before coming to live in midcoast Maine in 2003. In Oman she taught at the British Council, in Sri Lanka she was a teacher trainer and teacher at an English school, and in Peru she taught language arts to Peruvian students. In her spare time she gardens, dances, plays tennis,  and runs a small antique bead and jewelry business.

During Acadia Center’s summer and fall English immersion courses – offered from May through October - twice-weekly excursions led by experienced teachers give students a chance to practice their English conversation in small groups while exploring Maine’s beautiful bays and mountains.

English immersion courses are offered from May through October. From November through April, sign up for online English lessons in conversation and/or writing.

We look forward to a great new season in 2013!

Carried away, in its possible sense of emotion getting the better of reason, can also carry a more negative meaning, as in this quote from the Catholic writer and mystic Thomas Merton.

The idiom swept away has a similar meaning to carried away, with perhaps a dash more vigor. It appears in one of the best (and longest) movie titles ever, Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August – the English translation of the Italian title of Lina Wertmuller’s 1974 film and shortened to just Swept Away in the 2002 remake starring Madonna.

New English immersion courses begin every Monday from May through October in 2012. Join us in Maine this summer or fall!

In his entertaining podcast Lexicon Valley on the online news website Slate, Mike Vuolo presents a satisfyingly thorough and often funny discussion of the confusion provoked by this expression.

Although most accept between you and me as the correct standard usage (following the rule of using the object pronoun, not the subject pronoun, after a preposition), champions of the form between you and I make the argument that if it was good enough for Shakespeare (in Merchant of Venice), it’s good enough for them.

Which one does singer Jessica Simpson favor? Listen for yourself.

Here is some vocabulary from the podcast that might, without explanation, stump (be too difficult for) even advanced students of English:

hypercorrection - a mistake in grammar caused by a false analogy with another rule that is commonly ignored

smartass – someone who is obnoxiously self-assertive and impudent

high dudgeon  – intense indignation

up for grabs – available to the first person who wants it or tries to get it

roll my eyes – express exasperation

persnickity – placing too much emphasis on trivial or minor details; fussy

cottage industry – a small, loosely organized flurry of activity or industry

from your lips to God’s ears - when used sarcastically, a pessimistic way of dismissing another’s naive hope