Archive for the ‘Dictionaries’ Category

More making up for the fact that Dr Johnson was never lucky enough to be a TEFL teacher, this time with one of my favourite TEFL games ever, Call My Bluff. In the classroom version you get the students to make up the wrong definitions to try and fool the other student or team with, but even on my last day in my previous job I wasn’t slack enough to get my students to write my blog for me so you have to choose the real definition from Dr Johnson’s dictionary via Henry Hitchings, not being fooled by the fake definition made up very quickly by me to stop wasting any more time on the TEFL otaku topic… (answers at the bottom of the page)

1. Is an amatorcultist (a) a little insignificant lover, or (b) a lover of the art of gardening?
 
2. Is a bellygod (a) one who makes a god of his belly, or (b) a drug that calms the troubled gut?
 
3. Is deosculation (a) the art of kissing, or (b) losing an eye or part of an eye?

4. Is kissingcrust (a) a crust formed when one loaf in the oven touches another, or (b) a soreness upon the lips caused by an excess of kissing?

5. Is gazingstock (a) a person gazed at with scorn or abhorrence (related to ‘laughingstock’), or (b) cattle that stare at you as you pass?

6. Is potvaliant (a) heated with courage by a strong drink, or (b) culinary adventurousness?
 
7. Is subderisorious (a) scoffing or ridiculing with tenderness or delicacy, or (b) contemptuous of someone below you?
 
8. Is vaticide (a) a murderer of poets, or (b) a murderer of popes?
 
9. Is rhabdomancy (a) divination by a wand, or (b) Scottish witchery?
 
10. Is suppedaneous (a) placed upon the feet, (b) connected to the evening meal?
 
11. Is anatiferous (a) producing ducks, or (b) the burning of phosphor? (more…)

Even with all the things written about Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, I think I might be the first to try adding some TEFL-style pointless elicitation. And so here goes… Try to work out which word he was defining in each case then scroll down the screen to check (it’s a bit like the classroom activities The Definition Game and Taboo):
 
1. belonging to an ass
—————
—————
————–
asinine
 
2. a hog dressed whole, in the West Indian manner
—————
—————
————–
barbecue

3. a stone in the bladder
—————
—————
————– (more…)

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…)

David’s English Teaching World lays into the endless debate about L1 in the language classroom:

http://elt-teaching.blogspot.com/2007/08/teaching-approaches-using-l1-in-class.html

Some interesting points. I’d never thought about the link to the publishing industry of an English only policy before. In the majority of cases, though, non-native speaker teachers are using too much L1 in the classroom, not too little, and the case for using more L1 is again a native-speaker-based elitist argument that could easily be picked up as justification for outdated translation-based teaching in state schools, even though that is not the intention.

I have experimented with limited use and no use of L1, and I have never found the use of L1 to be a good thing in either the adult or children’s classes I have taught. The classic example given for useless avoidance of L1 is explaining something for a long time in English that could be translated in seconds. However, if your students see that you need to resort to Spanish to explain something to them, how are they going to believe they can explain themselves in English to you? Ditto for trying to get them to use a monolingual rather than a bilingual dictionary and write words to learn down in English rather than as translations- all great training to stop translating in your head.

Rather than choosing to translate by when it is quicker than using English, a much better choice is to translate when it is more accurate than using English. For example, a translation of the word into Spanish might be more accurate than a synonym in English, as there are never really two words in English with the same level of formality etc. I also use it when explaining plants and birds and when contrasting things like false friends. Even then, I prefer to show them the entry in a bilingual dictionary rather than use their language myself, so that they retain the illusion that they always need to use English to communicate with me- just like the best approach for the parent of a bilingual child.

That is it for use of L1- and certainly never to give the instructions for an activity, as this is the only language that is constantly recycled in class and so likely to be picked up naturally.

By the way, I think it’s very interesting how “Using L1 in the English classroom” sounds much more positive than “Speaking Spainish in the English class”, even though they mean the same thing.

One more little bugbear- why should I need to join Google blogs to comment on some blogs? Now that Bill Gates has gone good, Google are the new James Bond villians of the Internet, I reckon, trying to take over the world…