Archive for the ‘Teaching vocabulary’ Category

“A dollar a day”

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“Virtual water”

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Don’t know how new it is actually, but the BBC presenter on this week’s Digital Planet podcast didn’t seem to have heard of it either. The word is:

Voxel

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Even the name of this dictionary is a kind of pedantic trick (it’s actually huge, and only “shorter” because it’s shorter than the actual Oxford English Dictionary- which is 12 volumes if I remember correctly), and I have a feeling most of the words below are just as uselss as that distinction. Fun to know though…

I knew all these:

arctophile (a person who collects or is very fond of teddy bears)
izzard (a term for the letter Z)
pi-jaw (a moralizing lecture)
muffin-worry (a tea party)
struthious (like an ostrich)
twiffler (a plate or shallow dish)
webinar(a web-based seminar)
bidie-in (a live-in partner)
biffy (an American term for a toilet)
smoosh (squash or crush)
darknet (a kind of illicit computer network)
smart dust (miniaturized sensor/transmitters that are sprinkled onto an area such as a battlefield and used to analyze the environment)
size zero (more…)

I thought I was creating the ultimate draw on the Net for you vaguely left wing, still dress like a student when you can, try to be vegetarian but keep eating bacon when you are drunk, try to be liberal in the classroom but grammar mistakes annoy you too much, Guardian reading TEFL teacher types. But no, your version of online games addiction is waiting for you here:

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Sorry there hasn’t been a lot going on the blog page of my blog. It’s all going on elsewhere though: (more…)

When I first came to Japan, I was confidently expecting not to understand a thing, having already heard how fiendishly difficult the language and its writing system were and having experienced how difficult the Japanese found speaking in English. From the moment I landed, I was pleasantly suprised how much English I saw and heard everywhere- but I quickly found that it was at least as difficult to understand ‘Japanese English’ as it was to work out how many syllables there were supposed to be in ‘Irrashaimase’. And there started a little obsession with Japanese English that hasn’t finished 4 years and two books on Japanese English later. Here are my excuses for my continued fascination:
· Understanding Japanese English can help you to communicate at least as much as the Japanese you find in the ‘Japanese for Busy People’ textbooks. In fact, up to 10% of words in everyday Japanese conversation are in some way derived from English (more…)

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

Couple of other nice little game based worksheets (though I say so myself) to liven up your accountants:

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-common-business-english-verbs-present-simple-present-continuous/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-politeness-competition-game-requests-indirect-language/

And if you can see an accountant smile once a week you know you have made the world a better place….

This one was hiding at the back of my hard disk somewhere. If I’m not mistaken, it’s one of the first articles I ever wrote. Game ideas here and full article on the pages on the right (Article- More word bag activities)

More ‘Word Bag’ Activities

(NB. A “word bag” is a bag or box that is filled with new vocabulary that comes up during classes that students want to learn, each word written on one slip of paper. The vocab can then be recylcled every lesson, but you need lots of game ideas like this to keep it interesting )

1) ‘Categories’
Groups of three of four students have to divide the vocab up into a specified number of categories. The challenge lies in grouping together seemingly unrelated vocabulary from different classes. The categories must be meaning, not grammar, based. For example, one class of mine responded to the challenge “put these 30 unconnected words into 3 different columns” with the incredibly creative categories ‘Cats like’, ‘Cats hate’ and ‘Cats don’t understand’
When the groups have sorted out their vocabulary, they can then go around the class guessing which categories the other groups have come up with by looking at their columns of vocab. You can also link this to the next activity in class by then giving them the new vocab (e.g. pre-teach for a reading) and seeing whether they can fit it into their existing categories.

2) ‘Any Which Way Matching’
In pairs, students are given a group of vocab cards. One student lays down the card, asking a question using a fixed form given by the teacher, e.g. ‘Why were you……’ and the word or expression on one of their cards e.g. ‘Why were you (hitting a chimpanzee at the zoo the other day)’. The other student must give a possible (if bizarre) answer using one of their cards, e.g. ‘Because (he had stolen my prescription from my pocket)’. Students score one point for each answer accepted by their partner. This is always great fun, and you’d be amazed at what students with ‘no imagination’ come up with.

3) ‘Strangers on the train’
Students write a sentence including one of the Word Bag words or expressions. This is then handed to someone on the other side of the room. In pairs, students have to pretend that they have just met each other on a long train journey and are trying to make conversation. During their conversation, they must try to slip the sentence they have been given naturally into the conversation. When the teacher stops the game, they have to guess what their partner’s sentence was. NB. It is worthwhile discussing strategies for starting conversations before you start the activity, e.g. asking for permission to open the window.

4) ‘Taboo’
For a class that has already played some kind of definition games and have plenty of confidence, this is a nice variation. Each student takes three or four slips of paper from the Word Bag. On a slightly larger piece of paper they write the Word Bag word and 4 words that the person defining the word will not be allowed to say when defining it, e.g. for banana the 4 words could be ‘yellow’, ‘fruit’, ’slip’ and ’skin’. As well as being more challenging, this variation also means that students are thinking about the meaning very closely as they make up the Taboo cards.

Originally published in IATEFL Issues Magazine