One of my favorite columnists, E. J. Dionne, wrote a great analysis of President Obama’s Inaugural speech. It’s titled A Radical Inaugural Speech.

I think it offers an excellent political analysis but, particularly important for my teaching English Language Learners, it highlights several words and phrases that I’m using with my students as both an opportunity to build vocabulary and to also develop higher-level thinking skills.   It’s been a hectic week with semester exams, and I just haven’t had the time to think about the speech carefully.  Dionne’s discussing, for example, the phrase “tolerance and curosity,” reminded me how useful those and other words in the inaugural are for follow-up activities.

The English Blog also wrote about what might be a longer analysis of the speech by the Chicago Tribune. I’m at school now, and both his blog and the Chicago Tribune site are blocked, so I can’t provide direct links. But if you go to that blog it will be easy to find the information.