Archive for the ‘Teaching writing’ Category

More bits and pieces that I didn’t know, had never thought about or had doubts about from The Cambridge Grammar of English:

- The reason why you don’t double the p in “developing” is because the previous vowel isn’t stressed. Ditto for “delivered” and “opener”, but lots of words ending in -l in BrE and others such as handicapped and programmed don’t follow the rule
 
- Doubling consonants when adding -ed and -ing is part of a more general rule when “a suffix beginning with a vowel is added”, e.g. -ish, -ence and –er

- The “i before e except after c” rule only counts for the /i:/ pronunciation like “brief”, so most of the “exceptions” are because other pronunciations are spelt “ei”, e.g. neighbour, weigh, reign, leisure. Real exceptions include financier, species and examples of -cy changing to -cies, e.g. democracies.
 
- The final e making the preceding stressed vowel long, e.g. hat/hate, also works for -le, hence able, fable, bible etc.
 
- The plural of bus can be buses or busses. Ditto with biased/biassed, focusing/focussing, gases/gasses.

I’m continuing to learn from and ponder on the information in the Cambridge Grammar of English, and as before testing the matters I’ve been chewing on against your native speaker intuitions would be appreciated (sorry for the very unpleasant mental picture from that metaphor first thing on a Monday morning!)

The (modern?) name for & is “and” (not ampersand)
{ } = chain brackets (they’ve always been squiggly brackets to me!)
< > = diamond brackets
 
American English uses commas before and or but more frequently than British English
 
“Subordinate clauses can be separated by a comma from a preceding main clause, especially when the relation between them might be obscured because the clauses are long.” (pg 842), so “We can get there for around six, if there are no problems with the traffic on the motorway” is okay with or without the comma, despite being in the reverse position of the usual first conditional with a comma
 
Colons are used to indicate subtitles, and to mark a clause in which reasons are given: “We decided against it: it wasn’t lightweight enough”
 
Single quotation marks are becoming more widespread in direct speech
 
Colons may be used to introduce direct speech when it is particularly long
 
There are apostrophes (becoming optional) in “for goodness’ sake” and “for appearance’ sake”
 
In informal writing multiple dashes may be used:
 
“Just got back from Mallorca— we really loved it.”

If punctuation is your thing, or really isn’t you or your students’ thing but should be, here are some links:

Wikipedia on the ampersand

Info on Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss- a funny book on punctuation!

A whole list of punctuation books on Amazon

Punctuation worksheets on ESL Printables.com

And that is all I could find of interest. For classroom activities, one thing that works well, especially with FCE and CAE classes, is for students to take a text that is correct and add spelling and punctuation errors for another team to find.

Another good game is to put a text on the board including punctuation and get them to read out the whole text (including punctuation) over and over as you delete it one word or punctuation mark at a time until they can no longer remember it or the whole text has disappeared.

The game above works well with kids too. A more physical game for kids on the same point is to write up a sentence with one piece of punctuation missing in large letters on the board, and get them to take turns throwing a sticky ball (= sucker ball) at the place they think the punctuation mark should be.

For those of you who haven’t been on the Worksheet pages yet (although surely no one would waste their time reading the blog when they could save planning time by using the worksheets??) and the many more of you who are going to end up here after the error messages because I’ve shortened lots of html names (because good names are good apparently), here is where the worksheets are now:

Medical and Pharmaceutical worksheets

Business English and ESP Games and Worksheets

Telephoning Games and Worksheets

Technical English and Numbers Games and Worksheets

EFL Exam games and worksheets- IELTS, TOEIC etc.

Travel English, Tourism and Study Abroad worksheets

Writing Games and Worksheets

Vocabulary Games and Worksheets

Functional and Social English Games and Worksheets

Video worksheets

Song worksheets

Cultural training worksheets for EFL classes

Grammar games and worksheets

“Is “becuase”, with its 4,950,000 hits on a famous web search engine, the commonest typo in the English language? (more…)

Looking for TEFL Xmas activities is like writing the list of presents you want from Santa- once you start there seems to be no end…

One really nice real-life task (because Santa exists in real life!) - sending emails to Santa. Students will also get a reply, apparently:

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As I mentioned below, am planning on getting all the video worksheets I have written over the years up on the Worksheets part of the blog. All the first bunch I put up a few days ago use a nice little technique I either created or borrow (can’t remember which now) for pre-teaching vocab and making sure the students notice how it is being used in context and have the meaning reinforced, while at the same time practising the use of expressions like “one” and “it” for refering to things elsewhere, a skill that comes up in reading a lot and is also specifically tested in one of the Cambridge exams (CPE?? Again, slipped my mind I’m afraid). Sounds boring, but actually means teacher and students have a good excuse for watching Frasier, Edward Scissorhands, The Life of Brian and Friends in class.

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Not completely TEFL-related, this one, so TTV doesn’t stand for Test Teach Vegetate (the alternative to Test Teach Test for students with limited attention spans like teenagers and kids whose additive and sugar fixes are starting to wear off). No, this is the newest addition to my list of “Linguistics that don’t put you off your breakfast” resources, Teachers’ TV.

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After rather a long break, the Alternative TEFL Jargon Dictionary is back!

Defective modals- This somewhat negative expression for modals that do not have a seperate past or future form (e.g. must) is now being replaced by the expression “modal with special future and past needs”

Mixed abilities- Strictly speaking, this means classes where students have a differing ability to pick up the language or differing prefered ways of doing so, although it is often used to mean classes where students have a different starting level. Recent test have shown that teachers who mix their sandwich ingredients, especially those that add crisps and/ or peanut butter to everything, or more likely to be able to deal with and enjoy mixed ability classes.

Morpheme- A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language and a morpheme cannot be broken down further. It can however change shape at will, jump through a solid table and pester you when you are trying to draw something on “Take Hart“.

Perfect- Perfect tenses are made from the verb have plus the past participle. The names of the “Present Perfect” etc. come from a groundbreaking psychological study of student errors that show that students who overuse the Past Perfect tend to idiolise the past etc.

Person- In linguistics, this refers to the use of the “first person” (me), “second person” (you) and “third person” (he/ she etc.). However, some American university Liberal Arts academics believe that these terms perpetuate the selfish individualistic tendancies of right wing society and propose the alternative terms “equal first person”, “also equal first person” and “just as equal as all the others first person”.

Phatic language- Language used for social purposes such as chit chat rather than to acheive a particular task. Derived from the street word “phat“.

Phoneme- This is the technical linguistic term for the gesture of holding your hand up to the side of your head with thumb and little finger extended while you wave at someone in a train that is pulling away from the platform.

Polyseme- Something with many semes.

Polysemy- Many semies.

Portfolio- A portfolio is a method of testing where students are given marks for a selection of work they have put together rather than/ as well as a final test. The difference between a project and a portfolio is that with a portfolio the teachers give more credit for being in a nice leather binder.

PPP- Presentation Practice and Production. This is a natural form of language learning that was based on how babies naturally learn. For example, presenting the language is like showing a baby a lovely Playdoh model of a banana you have just made and handing it over to them. Students practicing that language is like when the baby randomly massages the yellow Playdoh, occassionally coming up with something that looks vaguely like a banana but then mangling it again straight after. When students are given the chance to produce that language in free communication is like when the baby hands you back 10% of the yellow plasticine (the rest being all over the floor and their clothes) in a random shape with a proud look on their faces, and you try your best to look pleased and say “What a nice banana!”

Prediction- When you make a prediction about something in the future you are talking about something that, unlike an arrangement (Present Continuous) or a plan (Going to), is somehow out of your hands. Language used to give predictions include the verbs “will” (e.g. “If I teach ‘will’ for the future first, all the students will talk about things which should be used with ‘going to’”).

Present Simple- The tense used in English to talk about routines, habits etc. It is called “simple”, because it is very easy for students to understand that you only time you change it is when you add the “third person s” with “he”, “she” or “it”. Anyone who fails to use this correctly in the first few weeks of English instruction can therefore safely be told to give up.

Priming- The way in which words are stored in the mind by forming associations with other words. The word comes from how watching a student trying to trace back through their memory to find a word they studied in week one until it finally dawns on them looks just like watching a fuse on one of those comedy bombs burning down until it sets off the flash of an explosion.

Process writing- Teaching students to enjoy the process of writing so much that they never actually want to finish a piece of writing, because that would mean they have to stop.

Word class- A word class is a group of words that act in the same way, for example eat peas in the same way or buy the same kinds of things in Marks and Spencers.

You can see some older entries below or on the “the Alternative TEFL jargon dictionary” article on the Articles page.

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/archives/100

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/archives/130

A student has asked me for telephoning stuff tomorrow. Although none of you lot did, only time for one thing today so that means you get telephoning too… And here are the treats we have for you:

Answerphone messages worksheet with a nice game that involves recording their own voices (very very popular)

A worksheet I wrote in an attempt to practice emailing, telephoning and comparatives in a low level Elementary short course that needed to revise all those. Amazingly, it worked! Adapted from an idea in English File Elementary Teacher’s Book (highly recommended).

And at the other end, a telephoning and emailing pairwork worksheet I wrote for Upper Int and above students who use English everyday full of their most common mistakes and misunderstandings.

And more on the Telephoning Worksheets and Games page.

Hope that hasn’t made you too tired to answer the questions from readers below, because I must admit it’s had that effect on me and I won’t be able to help them until the weekend- so it’s up to you. Go on go on go on. Go on go on go on go on go on go on go on. Go on….

It’s all getting a bit “TEFLtastic with no irony intended” round here with all these fun and games I’m putting up. Maybe I’m too tired to even be sarcastic…

 Anyway, here is my latest attempt to make none of us fall asleep during Business English classes. I’ve slipped in lots of emailing vocab and have tackled some common Japanese mistakes such as confusing “memo” and “note”. It also includes the most important factor for any classroom speaking exercise, which is to give the other people a reason to listen- in this case to decide if they were successful in solving the problem. The board with rules is below. A link to a full version with rolecards is also given, but please note that this is for quite a high level class that have covered most of this language before so you might need to make a different version of the cards for your class.

Business Problems Mini Roleplays

Rules of the game
Shuffle the pack of cards and put them face down on the top left box. The first person takes the top card and chooses how they are going to communicate and who they are going to communicate with to solve the problem. The options are to:

·          Write an email

·          Send a text (= a text message= an SMS)

·          Phone someone

·          Pick a time when you know someone is not available and leave a phone message

·          Go and see the person and speak face to face

·          Leave someone a note (e.g. put a post it on their computer screen)

·          Write a memo for your whole team/ section/ department/ company to read

They should then tell their partners what they are going to say or write, or roleplay the conversation with someone. After that the other members of the group decide whether they managed to find a successful solution. If so, they can keep the card and score one point. If not, their card goes to the bottom of the pile. Play passes to the person on their right. The person with most cards when the teacher stops the game is the winner.

Useful language to play the game
“Who’s next?”= “Whose turn is it?” “It’s your turn”= “Take a card”

“Who are you going to contact (to solve the problem)?”

“How are you going to contact them?”

“What are you going to say/ write?”

“Who is going to play the other role?”

“I think that would work because…”

“I don’t think that would work/ I’m not sure that would work because…”

 “Let’s ask, shall we?”= “Shall we check with the teacher?”

“Who has the most cards?”/ “Congratulations, you are the winner”