I Encountered a Sparrow Bee

"The stranger that greeted me today had three eyes, two antennae, six legs, and a buzz whose pitch caused the whole air to stop."

Is that a sinister enough opening for this retelling?

How about this:

"I was exiting my car, finding the keychain button to lock it, and gazing with pride at my perfectly calibrated reversed parking manoeuvre when, suddenly, I saw movement…"

Okay, whatever, on with it.

For future reference.

A bee had landed on my side mirror. Well, it could've been a wasp; who am I to judge? It was large for a honey, small for a hornet; but the word ‘small’ doesn't enter in the Japanese bestiary, so I'm going with the former. Anyway, this bee remained on the mirror for a good half minute, staring at itself, not exactly pleased with its yellow tan, and during this bout of self-deprecation undulated its abdomen in that way that bees and/or wasps can’t seem to stop doing - and for which reason they’d still be just as disturbing even without those hypodermics we call stingers.

But I would not be stung by this one. Soon, bored of its own face, it detached from the glass and disappeared into the air. Meaning I was alive. It was also alive, but unlike me was clearly mad at its own untanned existence. Perhaps its flight into the sky was to be an endless flight. Perhaps that’s why bees unhinge their stingers: they have a good look in the mirror and decide they can’t take it anymore. The undulating is probably a constant indecisiveness about whether to end it then and there, or wait to find an unsuspecting victim to take down with them.

We’re giving this one the benefit of the doubt. We’re saying it was a bee, and bees, as we know, deserve some sympathy. In fact, I’d be quite happy to befriend our humble honey suppliers if they would only stop that constant undulating. I once saved a bee from a spider’s web, which I felt quite good about until, fallen and too weak to fly, it began to, you know, undulate. In the end I felt worse for having deprived the poor, innocent spider of its dinner.

Which brings me back to the present story.

Free from the threat of bee undulation, I locked my car. Yet I'd no sooner pocketed my keys when I saw another sting-laden spawn whiz by from right peripheral to left. There was no mistaking this for the earlier bee: this creature took up three times the airspace, sported a far deeper tan (orange, so it could’ve been fake tan; I can imagine a bee of this size quite comfortably holding up a convenience store and stealing as many cans of the stuff as it felt the need for. Of course, no store owner would admit to this – to think, the shame!), and the beating of its invisible wings created gusts that messed with my hair and composure both. At first I was grateful - in this humidity, the breeze was a welcome one - but this breeze carried with it the smells of a thousand mutilated bees (death and blood and honey). Bittersweet it was, like the ending of a Christopher Nolan film.

You see, Suzumebachi (sparrow bees/Japanese giant hornets) hunt honey bees. And (from this point forward I’m no longer exaggerating) 30 hornets can murder 10,000 bees. This one, I was soon to find out, was on the hunt.

At this point, I still wasn’t certain of the insect’s identity, so I followed it to the garden. It was not a nice garden; granted, the bushes and trees were, like other bushes and trees, fine; but the space between was an indecipherable network of shimmering silk. Droplets of rainwater trailed from leaf ends to tightrope threads, down one and then the next, to bump, but not to disturb, the statues that were the Joro Spiders. Like bees, these spiders are striped: yellow, black, but also with a bit of red. But more than bees, their heads resemble human skulls. If you’re familiar with Skulltulas from Zelda, you’ll know what I mean. True to Japan, these spiders are large. They’re also cousins of the golden orb web; thus their silk is nylon strong. Of this garden, there wasn’t a space left unchecked; their traps covered every square inch.

Still, somehow, as if it had every web memorised, the hornet bobbed and weaved between them, searching the trees and the bushes, yet never tripping the wires that would’ve certified its death. By now I was more intrigued than afraid, waiting, hoping for a battle between two large and poisonous creatures – perhaps more than two, given the sheer infinity of rain-washed spiders that graced the air like Christmas ornaments.

This hornet gained its respect with every dodge of web, every start-and-stop, each decision to fly under rather than through. But the suzumebachi is an assassin; what else did I expect? By now I was sure of its calibre; though, in case there were remaining doubts, it landed on a branch to flaunt its size, its orange black jacket, its quarter-inch-long stinger. It was clear now: the thing was hunting for bees not unlike the one that eluded death (although, as we learned, wished it were dead) moments before.

Soon, like the honey bee before it, the hornet took to the air again and flew on. And the search for 10,000 bees continued.

Some more facts: When one of these hornets finds a hive, it drops a beacon in the form of pheromones. Doing so summons all other hornets within several kilometres. There's a raid, and after having their fill, they dismember the bees’ bodies and take their parts to feed to their hornet larvae. Pleasant.

But here’s where it gets cool. The Japanese honey bees (specifically them, not other countries’ honey bees) have adapted. When a hornet pays them a visit, they enshroud it in a blanket woven of 100% bee. In fact, it’s more like an electric blanket, because - hear this - they beat their wings so fast that it heats the centre of the blanket to exactly 47 degrees Celsius (one degree above that which hornets can withstand), cooking the hornet! The bees, meanwhile, are content up to 50 degrees. Crazy, right?

Right, so that’s where the story ends, because then I walked up the stairs to my apartment and did boring things like have a shower and iron shirts. Things totally unrelated to the title of this blog post. But, um, the cliff hanger ending is… let’s see here.

"This was but my first encounter. It would not be my last."

Good enough?

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At School I am Matt-sensei, but you can call me Tatami-san

As I sit at my staff room desk, writing this blog and sipping iced coffee, throngs of school children bottleneck at thresholds in their eagerness to die in the summer heat and have their corpses carried away by suzumebachi (Japanese hornets, or, literally translated, sparrow bee, because, you know, their size). Really, though, they’re preparing for sports day.

View of Gotsu from the aquarium

As a sidenote, these hornets, which I have had multiple pleasures of seeing, murder 40 people in Japan each year, and they hospitalise far more. So, I’ve no idea why these children are so eager. But this is a sidenote.

Today is my first day; I taught my first class; and I write for the first time on this blog in two years. I don’t mean to remain on this blog (a new site is in the works), but I can no longer not write. I’ve been itching to write – and yet not writing – for five weeks! Why would anyone do this to themselves? It’d be like, I dunno, having a hot coffee instead of an iced coffee right now. The word is masochistic.

Well, not all the time. This room, for instance, is air conditioned. As is every room. They can’t not be; we’d all be dead. Here in mid-year Japan, air-conditioned spaces are like bubbles of life, and venturing outdoors is a mission of negotiation – that is, negotiating one’s way to the next nearest bubble. Cars are moving bubbles: we thank God for moving bubbles.

Fortunately, the teachers here are lovely. They showed me the fridge, the iced coffee inside the fridge, the glasses in which to pour the iced coffee inside the fridge – for, as well as life bubbles, a man needs his coffee.

“Kohi-ga daisuki-desu.” This means I love coffee. I say it when introducing myself. There have been a lot of introductions; and afterwards a lot of people asking me what my hobbies are. I lie: I say writing, movies, and making strange decisions like going to Japan to teach kids how to English. My actual hobbies are bowing and yoroshiku onegaishimasing (nice to meet you, ing). Here’s a fact: everyone in Japan has the same two hobbies.

And there seems to be an art to bowing – a technique, like nailing a harmony, or knowing how far to turn the steering wheel so as to remain on the road yet not converge with that obnoxious cyclist. There’s a sense of pride when you do so successfully. A bloody mess when you don’t.

In my apartment, which is large in width but small in depth, much bowing has been had. A refusal to bow means a head-butt to the doorframe. But what my apartment lacks in height it more than compensates in square metres and cheap rent. Just one of the perks of rural Japan.

But rural Japan isn’t like rural New Zealand. New Zealand’s towns and small cities are devoid of life, their deathly silence broken only by the occasional baaing of a sheep. Japan has – how do I word this – people. Moving figures. These moving figures have jobs, drive cars, occupy aisles at grocery stores. They unload coinage at vending machines and make pedestrian crossings relevant again.

The highways in between cities are also different. Unlike New Zealand’s vast spaces of nothingness where featureless hills fold over each other like golden oceans caught in a frame (okay, when I put it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad), Japan has variety. Countryside and civilisation are unified; townships are spread out; nature is lush and diverse. And the ever-changing terrain necessitates extravagant infrastructure. Countless mountains mean countless tunnels, and countless rivers mean countless bridges. Simultaneously, Japan is both city and wild.

Also countless are the aforementioned vending machines. Ah, but I’ll save food for next time; the kids are going to the gym for a lecture on school cleaning. And I’ve a mind to follow them.

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How to tackle any English essay question

--UPDATE-- 
I've made a new site dedicated solely to teaching academic writing! Click here to check it out! Every week you'll find a new tutorial, and every tutorial will be easy to read and easy to learn. I'm also writing an ebook that I'll give away free to anyone who subscribes. I hope the site proves useful!
Sadly, I will probably no longer be updating this site. But the new site is better. In every way. 

In my template for how to write an English essay, I used a rather straight forward essay question, i.e. 'Show how a character in a text presents a main theme'. This is a rather basic essay question, perhaps too basic; and while the structure of an essay may be easy for you, the essay questions you're told to answer might not be. In fact, if you read that last post, you were probably sitting there screaming, "But my essay question has nothing to do with character! And worse, it has nothing to do with theme! GIVE ME WHAT I WANT!"

So I wrote this post as well. It's really long.

Important: main theme, main idea, central idea, author's purpose, and all other such phrases mean the same thing. Feel free to put them into the 'theme' box.

To start, you should know that one of the most important rules for writing an English essay is that you should connect your essay question with a main theme, even if your essay question doesn't contain the words 'main theme'.

Why:

1. The goal in any essay is to show how something in the text conveys something relevant to society.
2. Themes are relevant to society.
3. Use a theme.

Q: What's a theme?
A: A theme is a recurring idea in a text, such as courage, discrimination, or something a little more specific, like kingship vs tyranny. (Hint: if you aren't sure what themes are present in your text, google them.)

In short, no matter your question, always talk about theme (with tight reference to the text) for the sake of making your text relevant. Make sense?

Let's pretend you've been given the following question:

First things first: substitute specific details for the general ones in your essay question.

The tricky part about this question lies in those last two words: 'surprised you'. Ugh.

Don't worry. It's easy. All you have to do is replace those dumb words with the reason that Lennie's death surprised you (even if, in truth, you weren't all that surprised).

Not all reasons are useful. Here are some examples:

GOOD reasons:
1. Lennie's death surprised me because it exposed the predatory nature of mankind.
2. Lennie's death surprised me because it reinforced the punishing nature of life on earth.

BAD reasons:
1. Lennie's death surprised me because it was unexpected.
2. Lennie's death surprised me because he killed Curly's wife by accident, and the others should forgive him.
2. Lennie's death surprised me because he was my favourite character. Sniffle.

There's a very important difference between a good reason and a bad reason. Good reasons, you'll notice, are themes! Bad reasons are not themes, and they trap you into talking about something that nobody cares about. Pick a GOOD reason, and you'll see that the words 'surprised you' have been conveniently substituted for a theme. Magic!

Note: even though the essay question doesn't contain the words 'main theme' or 'main idea' or whatever, that doesn't mean you can't discuss a theme. And if you can discuss a theme (which is always), you should discuss a theme. Why? Because a theme makes your essay, and the text, relevant to society. It answers a sort of "Why does this essay matter?"-type question, which is a very important question to answer.

You might be thinking, "But my teacher said to 'stick to the essay question'. Isn't talking about theme, when 'theme' wasn't specifically mentioned, bad?"

Nope! By talking about theme, you're simply answering the essay question - whatever it is - in the way it was designed to be answered. It's an essay, remember, not a plot summary.

Think about it. If your essay question didn't state the words, "With reference to a text you've studied..." would that mean "don't reference a text you've studied"? Of course not. You'd fail every time - EVERY TIME - if you avoided referencing a text.

"Yeah, all right," you say, "so that question wasn't so bad. But there are worse ones!"
And you're right; there are worse ones. Let's take a look at one of them.

Such a stupid question, right? Who cares? (The person who hands out grades, that's who.)

It's difficult even to substitute stuff; but don't worry, you don't need to. All you have to do is describe a main incident and how that incident shaped future events. Then, explain what that shaping of events meant for the text as a whole (but secretly with reference to a theme).

To do this, it's important to remember why you're writing this essay. You're writing this essay to make a point that readers should care about. In this sense, it's kind of like writing a persuasive speech, or having an argument with your mum. You're right, they're wrong. Prove it.

So, for an essay to work, you need to have something that the marker should care about, and you need to know why they should care about it. In the first essay question (above), the marker isn't going to care that Lennie is your favourite character, but they are going to care that John Steinbeck used Lennie's death to convey a theme. This theme is a much better foundation for your essay, rather than, "Uh, he was my favourite character."

It works the same for the second question. With regards to the shaping of future events, the marker isn't going to care that the death of a mouse led to the death of a man, but they are going to care if John Steinbeck used this death of mouse/man to show something, like, I don't know, a theme.

Look at the question again. It's an annoying question because it doesn't look theme-able. But to make it theme-able, all you need to do is apply that unspoken question I revealed earlier. "Why does it matter?" This is the underlying question that any essay question is and isn't asking you. You need to answer it because it makes your essay relevant to society. I keep saying that.

Anyway, the answer to the question "why does it matter?" is this:
It (the shaping of future events) matters because it presents a theme (or themes). It impacts the text as a whole because it helps the text present the theme. And it's this theme which you can use to relate the text to society.

In other words, what the essay question is really saying is this:

Admittedly, this is a trickier essay question to manage than one of those 'character to theme' or 'setting to theme' or 'relationship to theme' ones. So, below you'll find an essay I prepared earlier (It will help if you've read the book, Of Mice and Men). In it, I chose to a) describe the incident that changed the course of future events first, and then b) explain the themes presented from the impact that this change had on the text as a whole.

Note: This (a) then (b) process is recommended when answering two-part questions such as this one. It's also recommended that you answer the essay question in the order that it's given. Do the describing, then do the explaining. (If your essay question just says 'explain' or 'analyse' or 'discuss', then don't worry about describing anything.)

Here's the essay:

(Unsure about how to structure an English essay? Click here)

At the heart of every essay is a message to society. In other words, you get marks for making the text relevant to today. The easiest way to make a strong case for why your text is relevant to today is through theme. Therefore, theme-ify your essay question. Next, find proof from your text (examples - ideally with quotes and/or techniques). Finally, explain how your proof is evidence of your theme.

© Matthew Ferri 2014 (no plagiarising)

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The mobile phone: my closest friend

Literally. I take him everywhere I go because I feel vulnerable without him. He sleeps beside me, wakes me up, tells me that it’s raining outside. During the day, he sits squarely in my pocket. Perhaps you have a similar friend?

Every now and then I teach him a new skill. He learns it in seconds, kind of like how Trinity in The Matrix learnt how to fly a helicopter. Only, unlike Trinity who’s human and will grow old and stop learning things, this companion of mine will continue to learn until the day his heart stops beating - or battery stops charging. 

But I can’t teach him everything;  this one has a limited knowledge capacity. Nonetheless, he’s sturdy, cheap to run, fast. You might as well say that he’s… no; he isn’t perfect. He gets close.

When I introduce him to friends, I say he’s this super nice internet-connected gizmo who does amazing things. The downside is that he occasionally buzzes and wants me to talk to someone. I’m not fond of those moments. Not fond at all.

We’ll be hanging out, he and I – writing things, reading other things, playing games – when all of a sudden: Vvvvrrrrnnngggggg! The name of a person I probably know interrupts my aloneness, and my friend here sings a song – loudly – to break the silence. It’s a song I’ve grown sick of. In fact, I’ve grown sick of every one of his songs.

I get it, he’s warning me – like your dog yapping to warn you that someone’s on your property. And that someone will keep coming back unless you deal with him now. It’s a universal truth that it’s better to deal with him now. But as that damnable song screeches through the pores of that tinny speaker, I’m less inclined to appease it and more inclined to question why I live in a society that insists on answering - answering doors, answering questions, answering phones - and why I have a problem with it. Actually, why do I keep a device whose fundamental purpose is to make answering stuff easier? Why would I do that to myself?

I’m an introvert; I choose my friends carefully. But this friend – this closest friend – isn’t so good at discriminating. He sings for everyone. Every single one. If only I could live without him.

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The be-all rule for using apostrophes

Correct usage of the apostrophe is a lot more straight forward than most people think, despite all the evidence otherwise (see: internet). In fact, one friendly rule can be used to solve every apostrophe crisis, and that rule is:

**Apostrophes are tags**

Seriously. That’s all they are. If you think of apostrophes as tags, you'll never be confused again.

Basically, when you’re tagging (attaching) a word to another word, add an apostrophe. When you aren’t, don’t.

Here’s how it works:

Tagging to indicate possession
Rule: When tagging to indicate possession, put the apostrophe on the end of that word. If there isn't an 's', add one of those, too.

Case 1:
Kirin the Enquirer: “Hi there. So, I have this sentence. It goes, ‘The laptop belongs to Matt.’ I want to attach the word ‘belongs’ to the word ‘Matt’ in order to make them one word.”

Hello, friend, and how very resourceful of you. Sure thing; simply tag the words ‘belongs to’ to the word ‘Matt’ using an apostrophe and adding an ‘s’.

Case 1b:
Kirin: “Sweet rolls. Thanks! What about this one? The food belonging to the cat has gone stale.”

Same thing, partner. Merge’n’tag!

Case 2:
Kirin: “Right, but what if there are two or more cats, and the food belongs to all of them?”

Ah, a tricky question – not! Just go right on ahead and tag’em!

Kirin: “Whoa! You put the apostrophe after the ‘s’. What’s up with that??”

Nothing, squire. It’s the same idea as before. We took the word you wanted to use – cats – and tagged it with an apostrophe on the end of the word. But because 'cats' already has an 's', we didn't need to add one. Here’s a breakdown for you:

Word: Cat (without s)
Tagged form: Cat’s

Word: Cats (with s)
Tagged form: Cats’

Word: People (without s)
Tagged form: People’s

Word: Peoples (with s)
Tagged form: Peoples’


Case 3
Kirin: “Okay, got it, but what about possessive pronouns? Words like its, yours, his, hers. Why don’t they get apostrophes?”

Haven’t you been paying attention? You only add an apostrophe when you want to tag words together. However, possessive pronouns are words on their own. None of them consists of two words being joined together (tagged), so the apostrophe is unneeded.

Think about it. You wouldn’t write, “I think this laptop is your’s” because that expands to: “I think this laptop belongs to your.”
Yours, by itself, has already done the work of combining ‘belongs to’ and ‘you’.

Also, the opposite of yours is mine. If yours had an apostrophe, mine would need an apostrophe as well. Mine’. Min’e. Mine’s. You see my point.

In other words, because possessive pronouns are words on their own and not tagged words, and because they already do the apostrophe’s job by themselves, possessive pronouns don’t need an apostrophe – ever!
(Possessive pronouns include: yours, mine, his, her, theirs, ours, its*, whose*.)

*Examples in which you would use 'its' and 'whose':
"Shae, whose car was written off last week due to its engine disintegrating into dust, is going to the auction today."
"Whose car did you say it was?"
"Shae's; it's the car with its engine missing."

Kirin: “Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But aren’t there, like, other itses and whoses, which are tags?”

Yes, there certainly are other itses and whoses, which are tags, but they're different. They come under contractions.


Tagging to indicate a contraction
Case 4
A contraction is an informal word that results from meshing two separate words together. An example of a contraction is the word doesn’t. It’s the contracted - and tagged - form of does and not.

Similarly, the word it’s is the tagged form of it and is or it and has. It’s (with the apostrophe) always means either 'it is' or 'it has', as in, “It’s really unfortunate that your car engine disintegrated into dust.”
So, if you put an apostrophe onto its in the *examples above, then you're indicating that the word has been tagged - that it is a combination of two or more words. That sentence will no longer make sense, and it will be in some serious need of proofreading.
Its = possession (belongs to it)
It’s = contraction (it is/it has)

The only other contraction worth noting is the word who’s – the tagged form of 'who is', or 'who has'.
Ask yourself, "Which two words am I tagging?" If the answer is you aren't, then use whose (see the *example above).
Whose = possession (belongs to someone)
Who’s = contraction (who is/who has)

Kirin (drunk): "Choice, thanks! One more thing. Can apostrophes be used to make singular words plu--"

No! Apostrophes cannot be used to make singular words plural. That’s what the letter 's' does. Apostrophes are, however, used to tag - either for possession, or for a contraction. That's all they're used for. That's all they will ever be used for. In other words, when you aren’t tagging, you shouldn’t be apostropheeing.

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"It's not instant enough!"

Snappy and passion-filled, these were the words of a friend speaking on the subject of reheating food in the oven as opposed to the microwave.

The oven, I'd argued, retains the crispiness of a pizza base or the stability of a pie pastry - and we all know that a pie's pastry is make-or-break, literally. I said if we didn't have to contend with time, the oven would win.

But she was quick to remind me that we are always contending with time, and so, whenever we juxtapose the quick-start blitzer with the oven's knobs, fan-force and backlight, most of us will simply give shrug to the latter and declare, "It's not instant enough."

Little did I know then, but she had it right. In another time I was content with waiting for my dial-up internet connection to load my Neopets profile or that Homestar Runner episode, even though the latter's audio would run ahead of the video by dint of, you know, the dial-up. Things like this were far from instant, but they were more than enough.

In another time, there was this thing called 'patience'; and even when it came to technology - even when a web page would load in its stop-motion-style unveiling as each bit by literal bit of content appeared onscreen - I remained content.

Now, jump forward to last week: I did not remain content. There was an internet outage - or rather, an internet hissy fit - and it just wouldn't sit still. I tell you, the web of 2014 was as sporadic as a flickering dim light swinging on a cord in a horror film, and had this fit lasted any longer than it did, I would've had a case of hissy to call my own.

See, I'd been promised broadband with download speeds that made one's face alight. But on that day, during that bout of internet indecision, it was more akin to dial-up, albeit without the electronic scratching noises that many of us can play by ear. This wasn't right, I said. This wasn't instant enough!

Even when the connection appeared to have fixed itself, web pages would load in a jittery slowness. It was like coming early to the airport, expecting it to be empty, and finding an impossibly long queue leaking into the foyer because everyone else had had the same idea. It was the bane of the first world, and I was its unsuspecting victim.

But yet, in this moment of strife was an afterimage of reminiscence. I recalled my old dragon from Neopets - now starving to death from a lack of sausage omelette - and asked him, "At what point did this all start to change?"

Coffee will never be instant enough. Not ever.

Technology is meant to help, not hinder; it's the magic of the modern world; it's there to astound and to surprise us on a planet which grows increasingly destitute of wonder. And indeed, it does astound - once. But following that, it becomes common place - so much so that even wonder itself may soon wither into novelty.

Somehow, over the last two decades, our expectations have become so inflated that they now coincide with basic rights. Our soons have been superimposed onto nows, and our needs and wants have become so interlaced as to remove all difference. The time bracket has become our worst enemy, and technology's best selling point. Wonders are no longer appreciated but expected.

However means through which this change has occurred, it's been slow and insidious, a usurper who for years we never knew was king. And if we are the masters of ourselves, then we have only ourselves to blame. Ironic, isn't it, that in many ways my twelve year-old self was more mature than I am now at twenty-five? A small part of me knows that this isn't how life is meant to work.

We are mammals; we adapt; and we adapt far faster than it does us good. We rip the extraordinary into its constituents, but the re-assemblage thereafter is a chore that takes too long. A web page used to take thirty seconds to load; now, if it asks for more than three, my instinct is to hit refresh repeatedly and with increasing violence, rather than give it the time of day.

You can sit on a seat thirty thousand feet in the air and travel at over 900kph, and that was wondrous, too, once. Now, along with the cramped seating and the lacklustre movies, human flight is an age-worn oven. It's not instant enough.

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Matt defies standardised grammar and teaches a new grammar - part two

If the whole thing about split infinitives wasn't convincing enough that adherence to strict rules can be stupid, here's another:

Which of these sentences is correct?

1. The pack of wolves is hunting the chickens.
2. The pack of wolves are hunting the chickens.

Answer: both. You can decide. The rule is that there is no rule! (But there should be.)

Part two: group nouns are fiddly
What's a group noun?
Words like 'pack' are called group nouns. 'Faculty' is a group noun; 'group' is a group noun. There are thousands of group nouns.

British English tends towards treating group nouns as being plural, and therefore using 'are' in the case above rather than 'is'. Americans favour the opposite. In either dialect, no firm rule has been decided on. While one may be preferred, either is correct.

Personally, I favour logic, and therefore I think that there should be a rule for all cases in which group nouns are used. For the example above, I think Americans have it down pat, but their reasoning (none) is stupid.

Logic begins here.

Like everything in grammar, it's not the exact word choice (is or are) that makes you correct; and it's not really to do with what sounds right, either. Instead, it's what you mean by your word choice - what you're really trying to convey - that determines which word, which rule, you should use. Remember, language is a road, not a destination; so, when you're trying to get somewhere smartly, it's always right to take the smoothest road.

With that said, here is the rule that should exist for the above example:

The phrase 'of wolves' is prepositional; it describes the word 'pack'.
"The pack [of wolves, not potatoes, or fun-size Snickers] is/are hunting the chickens."

Prepositional phrases can be removed without harming the grammatical integrity of the sentence. So, which word would you prefer if we were to remove the prepositional phrase?

"The pack is hunting the chickens," or, "The pack are hunting the chickens?"

An interesting example: "Leonard's family is very big; Leonard's family are very big."
Different meanings entirely, no?

Still unsure about the is/are conundrum? Don't worry; it's less unreasonable than it looks.

Aside from omitting the prepositional phrase 'of wolves', we can also replace the first word of the sentence, 'the', with another, more convenient-for-Matt's-argument, word.

FOR INSTANCE, say we chose to use 'are' rather than 'is'.
"A pack of wolves are hunting the chickens."
"This pack of wolves are hunting the chickens, but that pack are not."
"One pack of wolves are hunting the chickens."

One pack are hunting the chickens.
'One pack are'
ONE, AND ONLY ONE, ARE!

Hmm.

Here's a helpful illustration:

Straight forward, right?

Now, please understand that, while I believe that the 'is' rule applies to this example, it only applies because the intended meaning of the sentence is better conveyed with the word 'is'. The 'is' road is far smoother than the 'are' road for this one.

Now, here are some exceptions that give the 'are' argument, or are-gument, some dignity:

"Leonard's family are real-estate agents," sounds better than, "Leonard's family is real-estate agents."

"The team are conversing amongst themselves," sounds better than, "The team is conversing amongst itself."

But there's a subtle difference between these examples and the one with the wolves. The 'are' works better here because we aren't really talking about the family or the team as a unit; we're talking about the members within the family and the team.

We're really saying: "Leonard's family [members] are real-estate agents," and, "The team [members] are conversing amongst themselves."

So, the rule should be that, when you're talking about members, you should count the number of members to figure out if it's better to use 'is' or 'are', but when you're talking about packs or groups, it's better to count the number of packs or groups instead.

In other words, if you're talking about each wolf within the pack, use 'are', but if you're talking about the pack itself, use 'is'. Therefore, the pack of wolves [regarding the pack itself, as in, "Look at that pack go!"] is hunting the chickens.

Sadly, this isn't the rule. There are no rules. But I guess it doesn't matter too much. After all, we still have common sense, right? I mean, there's no law that says, "Slow down when you see flashing lights ahead," but you'd still be the fool if you didn't.

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Part One

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