Oh, so you think there’s a typo in the title, do you? Well, no, it’s written that way deliberately. And why shouldn’t it be hop-hip instead of hip-hop? The way you’ve reacted to the title, you’d think there’s a rule or something about this. Well, guess what. There actually is!

Way back some 6,000 years or more, there was a language which linguists now refer to as PIE, Proto-Indo-European. It was the mother tongue which gave rise to what we now call the family of modern Indo-European languages, from Hindi and Farsi in the East all the way to Irish and Scots Gaelic in the West.

There was a two-part phonological rule in PIE (which linguists can’t figure out a reason for) that has remained unchanged all these millennia and can still be found in modern English. It’s called ablaut reduplication, and it explains why we say hip-hop and not hop-hip. Following is a list of examples that show you this rule in operation. Let’s see if you can discern what the two parts of the ablaut reduplication rule are. (This is where you cover up what comes after this list so you won’t peek at the answers before trying to figure all this out yourself.)

splish splash                     tic tac toe                  spring, sprang, sprung

ping pong                         fiddle-faddle              Hi Ho!

dilly-dally                         tip-top                      zigzag

flim-flam                          chit-chat                   sing, sang, sung

ring, rang, rung                Big Bad Wolf              riffraff

tick tock                           singsong                   wishy-washy

pitter-patter                     sink, sank, sunk         shrink, shrank, shrunk

jingle-jangle                     ship shape                 bing bang bong

crisscross                         flip-flops                    clip-clop

ding dong                         hip-hop                     knick-knack

Well, are you scratching your head or have you figured out what’s going on? It’s amazing how we have a rather complex phonological rule that all native English speakers know how to use perfectly even though very few of us are aware that there’s actually a language rule going on. For me that’s a wow!

Ablaut Reduplication, Part 1: When there are two identical words in our phrase, the first one must have an i as its vowel and the second one either an a or an o as its vowel. Look at our first example. The first word has the i and the second word in this example has an a. Now look at the example under it. The first word has that i and the second word has an o. So the rule is that we must maintain the vowel order i-a or i-o when creating these two-word phrases, and if there are three words in the phrase, the order will be i-a-o. Check out all the other examples and you’ll see this rule holds true in every case.

Let me point out something, however, that I consider amusing. It’s the case of Big Bad Wolf. If you recall the rule for adjective word order in English, you know that we utter opinion adjectives before other adjectives. For instance, we say that beautiful, neon sign. We wouldn’t say that neon, beautiful sign. Well, bad is an opinion, so we really should say the Bad Big Wolf, shouldn’t we? Well, we don’t. But why don’t we? Because that breaks the rule of ablaut reduplication even though the two words involved here (bad and big) aren’t exactly identical. It just goes to show you that the rule of ablaut reduplication is so embedded in us and so strong that we’re willing to break the rule of adjective order to comply with ablaut reduplication; that’s why we say the Big Bad Wolf!

Ablaut Reduplication, Part 2: When there are three identical words as the components of strong verbs (irregular verbs) in which the only change in grammatical function is demonstrated by an internal vowel change, the order will still be i-a, but now instead of an o we have a u. Check out the fifth example down in the first column: ring, rang, rung. If you check out all the other strong verbs in the examples, you’ll see they follow the same pattern of i-a-u instead of i-a-o.

So there you have it. Can this phonological rule help you in teaching English? It certainly can! Since you’re now sensitized to the existence of ablaut reduplication, you can teach so-called irregular verbs by listing all those together that follow this rule and make a little rhyming song out of them to help your students avoid confusion as to which of the two words in these phrases goes first (the ones containing the i). And, of course, if conversation starts lagging during your next dinner party, ask your guests why we say ding dong for the sound of a doorbell and not dong ding. That’ll get the conversation going again!

The word “get” is hard to get.

It does not have a set definition. It frequently embraces new meanings as technology requires, expanding and enveloping to absorb new semantical shapes, much like a boneless sea creature manipulating its form to acquire a new source of food.

Its ubiquitous use proves how flexible the word is. Not only does the word “get” have multiple meanings by itself, it is also used in a variety of phrasal verbs. An ESL/EFL student trying to communicate with native speakers in authentic settings can become confused when native speakers use “get” instead of solid verbs, or those with firm meanings.

As usual, this post is prompted by a recent discussion with a student. The student specifically requested help on how to use the word “get.” Since she was in a low level class, shape-shifter words like “get” were not covered. I told her I would compile some information for her, and we would discuss the material after class.

I realized “get” has at least three possible definitions, not counting phrasal verbs (which I was not going to address since phrasal verbs are like the fantastical Kraken—a beast of its own nature). This is what I came up with. *Disclaimer: I am not saying these are the only definitions, just the ones I gave my student.

Get: Acquire. Perhaps one of its most elementary usage since we often ask “Did you get my email?” I explained to my student that “acquire” included both “obtain” and “receive.” My student worked at a fast food restaurant. She said she is often asked to “go get” something from the back. I also explained she “got” her high school diploma before coming to the United States to study. So “get” can mean either you retrieve something as requested, or you receive something from someone. It is easy to imagine a person obtaining a physical object or working hard to receive an object.

Get: Become. This definition seems a bit more abstract. “I am getting older” is hard to imagine if you are stuck on “get” as a physical action. “I am acquiring years of age” is a little clunky. This is a good example of the pervasive use of the word—it has been co-opted to the point that the meaning of the sentence it’s being used in loses its edge of reality. There comes a point when we “advanced” English speakers no longer use words as they were originally meant. Slang, anyone?

Get: Understand. Using “get” as a synonym for “understand” is a simple switcharoo for the most part. One trouble, though, is knowing if “understand” is the synonym the user is intending. “Do you get cold?” could be asking if you understand the idea of “cold,” the word “cold,” or if you actually ever feel cold.

As I explained to my student, context is everything in determining which “get” a person is using. Perhaps this is the crux of “get” and other words like it, such as “put.”

If I was going to teach “get” with the above meanings, I would use a listening activity since our students are more likely to come into contact with the word during casual conversation. I would write two to four words on the board, depending on students’ level: obtain, receive, become, and understand. Assuming students are already familiar with the words I put on the board, I would model the activity for students by reading a sentence strip. “I hope I _____ a great TOEFL score!” Students would have to choose the missing word from those on the board. This allows students to focus on just two to four definitions.

In partners, students would read similar sentence strips, choosing the missing word. For additional practice, you could use a variety of verb tenses.

The next step would be for students to read additional prepared sentence strips, but this time the word “get” is used in the strip instead of a blank. Students must decide which definition “get” is using in each strip.

Finally, students could write their own sentence strips about topics they talk about every day, such as “Did you get the homework assignment from Ms. Fielding?” and then have another set of partners discuss the meaning of “get.”

As a homework assignment, students could watch a video clip of a conversation and count how many times “get” or its variations are used. After counting the “gets,” students could paraphrase the conversation so the teacher can check for understanding.

As a native speaker, I do not often think about the intricacies of English; however, as an ESL teacher, I find distilling the basics of English a rewarding challenge. My student who asked about “get” had a better understanding of how the word is used after our conversation. Success!

“Just do it!” is a slogan used by one of the world’s biggest makers of sportswear and sports equipment. Wherever you live in the world, you have probably seen it on T-shirts, on signs, on posters, and in many advertisements and TV commercials. It is simple, catchy, and memorable—all the things that make a great slogan.  Generally speaking, “Just do it” is great advice for life. It reminds us that we should do what we want to do (or what we know that we need to do) without overthinking or procrastinating. As clever as this slogan is, however, it is actually not very good advice for language learners. Or rather, it is somewhat incomplete. Let me explain what I mean.

In order to achieve a long-term goal or outcome, there are three steps that need to be taken:

1. Decide to do something.
2. Do it.
3. Keep doing it.

The first two of these are relatively easy. People who fail in their attempts to achieve a long-term goal do not usually stumble at either of these hurdles. Even if we think of something like running, “just doing it” is actually not that difficult. Of course, step 2 takes a bit more commitment than step 1, but it is still not a particularly hard target for most people to achieve.

When people fail to achieve their goals, it is usually number three that trips them up. Pretty much anyone can decide to run every morning and then do it for a couple of days. The problem comes when the weather turns cold, when you are tired or sick, or when your motivation starts to flag. In a similar way, I don’t think anyone has ever had much trouble starting a diet; the problem is staying on that diet for long enough to see the desired results.

Language learning is exactly like this. What you decide to do matters much less than how long you continue to do it. In my last article, I talked about getting the most “bang for your buck” from your studies, but no matter how potentially beneficial a study method or material might be, its effect will be zero unless you keep doing it. Does extensive reading really bring all the benefits that researchers tell us about? Not if you give up after a week, it doesn’t!

Going back to the topic of weight loss, there is no mystery at all about what we need to do to lose weight. I call it the ELEMentary method: Eat Less, Exercise More. So why do people have to try so many different diets until they find one that works for them? Actually, all of the diets would “work for them” if they kept them up, so what this phrase really means is diets that they are able to stick to. When people say, “This diet worked for me,” what they mean is “This is the diet I was able to continue for long enough to see results.”

I was listening to a podcast the other day in which a UFC fighter was talking about his training program. He was saying that the most important point for him is that he never trains at 100%. The interviewer was surprised and ask him why. The fighter explained that his goal is to maximize the amount of training he does over the long term, and that training at below his maximum level allows him to keep himself motivated and avoid injury. He said that a fighter who pushes himself to the limit every time he goes into the gym is going to get tired of the pain and eventually start to lose motivation and look for excuses to miss training. This means that over the course of a year, a fighter who trains at below the maximum level will end up doing far more training.

I think that exactly the same thing happens in language learning. If you start out at full pace and push yourself too hard, or if you adopt a method of studying that you do not really like, you are going to end up dropping out of the race altogether. Just as the person who runs three kilometers every morning for six months is going to end up running far more than the person who runs ten kilometers every morning for two weeks before getting sick of it and giving up altogether, the person who studies steadily for six months is going to improve a lot more than the person who studies like a maniac for two weeks before finding something else that they would rather be doing.

In my opinion, continuity is the most important factor in language learning, so the primary factor to think about when deciding what you are going to do is how long you think you will be able to keep it up. It is a good idea to try lots of different approaches and materials, but always keep in mind the following rule:

 Anything will work if you keep it up for long enough, and nothing will work if you don’t.

Of course, there are people who can keep doing things they don’t enjoy over long periods, but this is a rare talent. For regular people, the most important thing to think about is making your study enjoyable, or at least not making it so unenjoyable that you start to dread it and look for excuses to stop.

To return to the sportswear company’s slogan, “Just do it!” is great advice for people who want to start something, but for people who want to succeed in reaching a long-term goal like learning a foreign language, the correct slogan should be “Just keep doing it!”

I taught ESOL for over 35 years before I retired. During those years I was a classroom teacher, associate director of a university English language institute, and author of a number of textbooks both for students and teachers. I’m mentioning this because I want you to know how relieved I am that I’m now retired and not forced to deal with what I see going on in English these days.

Being retired, I have the luxury of time to observe how everyday native speakers are using the language in a variety of settings and contexts, and I have noticed some remarkable things going on that have taken hold where 20 years ago they never would have. The thing is, how does an ESOL teacher deal with what’s going on in grammar? Does the teacher stick strictly to what the textbooks say is standard English grammar in her/his lesson plans, or does the teacher incorporate into lesson plans the grammar changes that have taken hold even though those changes are contrary to what textbooks say? Mind you, I’m not talking about stylistic matters, only grammar.

Here’s a case in point, something that really did happen to me. I’d taught my class a lesson straight from their textbook about how certain foods are uncountable nouns, e.g., ‘bread’, ‘water’, ‘coffee’, ‘lettuce’, etc. I explained that in order to count these things, we must say ‘a loaf of bread’, ‘two glasses of water’, ‘three cups of coffee’, ‘a head of lettuce’. And then the next day two students who were in that class raise their hands in class and say, “Mr. Firsten, we ate dinner in a restaurant last night. We heard the waitress say, ‘So you want two coffees, right?’ Did she use bad grammar?” Yes, my face turned slightly red. Yes, I was at a loss for words momentarily. But then I realized I’d heard phrases like that a thousand times. So why was I teaching that my students must say ‘two cups of coffee’ and only ‘two cups of coffee’? Why wasn’t I giving them an alternative that the textbook failed to mention?

Language evolves; we all acknowledge that. But when so much is evolving in such a short period of time, it can make an ESOL teacher’s job much more challenging than it already is. All the changes highlighted here are ones that are used consistently and used by many different kinds of native speakers in many different settings. It’s important to remember this. It’s also important to remember that I’m not talking about slang or catch phrases that are here for a while and then gone sooner or later. You dig? Groovy!

Here is a list of grammatical items I have observed over a long period of time, items that have evolved thanks to their consistent use by native speakers of different educational and social levels. After you look at this list, you’ll come upon a couple of questions I’d like you to mull over. Perhaps you’ll consider how your answers may affect your future lesson plans. So let’s get started.

1a. This is the first photo taken of Mike and I.

1b. We read the report about he and his daughter.

The use of ‘somebody and I’ instead of ‘me’ where the object form of this personal pronoun should be used is nothing new, but it’s become a common occurrence. I don’t hear this with other personal pronouns, though. For example, I don’t hear things like “This is a photo taken of Mike and she..,” but where this kind of phrase that follows a verb or preposition has a person or animal and the 1^st person singular personal pronoun, the object form is disregarded even though it’s the object of the preposition or verb. This phenomenon probably started as a hypercorrection, when native speakers thought saying ‘… and I’ sounded more formal or educated than saying ‘… and me’.

As a side note, I have to tell you that I remember the backlash that Betty Azar received from conservative grammar teachers who were absolutely aghast that she mentioned the phenomenon shown in 1a in one of her grammar books. How dare she write about what was really happening in the language and not just what ideally should happen in the language!

The more amazing thing is how often I now hear educated people saying not only what you see in sentence 1a, but also what you see in 1b in which the subject form of a personal pronoun and another person is used even though both are the objects of a verb or preposition. I remember how my jaw dropped the first few times I heard this.

2a. These type of shoes aren’t suitable for hiking.

2b. Those kind of marinades work best with chicken and pork.

2c. These sort of excuses just don’t seem believable.

For some reason, many native speakers are averse to using the plural form of these three nouns (type, kind, sort) after these two plural demonstratives (these, those).

3. I see you’ve chosen to not do the homework assignment.

There is no intrinsic rule in English grammar that says you cannot split an infinitive. We began thinking that was a no-no when Bishop Robert Lowth wielded tremendous influence over English grammar in 18^th century England and tried forcing Latin grammar rules onto English, which is a Germanic language, not a Romance language. But now it’s the norm to split this infinitive. What would Shakespeare say? (“To be or to not be, that is the question.”)

4. What would have happened if you went instead of me?

He cheated on her and then ended up in jail. If those things didn’t happen, do you think they’d still be married?

The past perfect, which used to be used in past subjunctive/conditional sentences and past sentences contrary to reality such as those beginning with ‘wish’ is disappearing. The simple past and past progressive are taking over even though they are also used to represent the present in subjunctive/conditional sentences and those contrary to reality (What would happen if you went instead of me?). I would still say What would have happened if you had gone instead of me? and If those things hadn’t happened, do you think they’d still be married?

5. My cat brought a dead bird into the house and drug it all across the living room floor.

Even though this form of the simple past of ‘drag’ is hard to find in dictionaries, it’s being used more and more even among educated speakers. I even heard Mitch McConnell, the current US Senate Majority Leader, use it the other day! If so many native speakers say ‘drug’ instead of ‘dragged’, should it be taught as an alternative form the way ‘dived’ is taught as an alternative past tense of ‘dove’?

6. We want to have more women employees in the company than we do now. We have a disproportionate number of male employees at this time.

Here’s an example of inconsistency which can actually be found in the name of a long-existing American organization called the League of Women Voters. We don’t normally say phrases like ‘men voters’, do we? We say ‘male voters’. We say ‘a male nurse’, not ‘a man nurse’, so shouldn’t we say ‘female voters’ and not ‘women voters’? After all, it’s ‘male and female’, ‘men and women’. You’re probably comfortable saying ‘female nurses’ but not ‘women nurses’, ‘female flight attendants’ and not ‘women flight attendants’, but what about ‘female journalists’? Are you comfortable saying ‘women journalists’? If so, why? Think about it. This phenomenon is so inconsistent!

I wonder if there are times when ‘female’ sounds like a loaded word, that is, one with a negative connotation, whereas ‘women’ doesn’t carry any extra baggage, so to speak, and that’s why it’s not called the League of Female Voters. Hmm . . .

7.  Plaintiff: Your Honor, I’m suing the defendant for the damages to my car.

Judge: What are the damages?

Plaintiff: The back bumper is twisted and there’s two big dents on the back left side.

We have two items to discuss here. The first is a change in the noun ‘damage’. It used to be exclusively an uncountable noun with no plural form and meant some form of harm or  destruction to something. Now, however, native speakers use it in the plural for the same meaning when there is more than one occurrence of harm to the same thing.

(This is not to be confused with the existing plural noun ‘damages’ that’s used in lawsuits to mean money that a plantiff claims is owed as punishment against a defendant for harm done to the plaintiff.)

The second item is the use of the existential phrase there + be. It’s nothing new that in this existential phrase the 3^rd person singular form of ‘be’ (there’s / there was) has been used followed by a plural as well as a singular noun in informal speech, e.g., There was five stray dogs just roaming the streets. / There’s three people waiting to see you. But nowadays this form is used in formal speech and in writing as well. That is a real change. (It’s important to keep in mind that the written language is more conservative than the spoken language and changes more slowly than the spoken language, so when a change like this one appears more and more often in written form, not just spoken form, it signals a change that’s becoming accepted.)

8a. I’m so tired, I’m going to lay down and take a nap.

8b. When she got home, she found her dad laying on the floor.

These days, only the staunchest conservative native speakers will insist that ‘lie’ is the intransitive verb which should be used in the two example sentences above. But it’s apparent to any observer of how native speakers use English that the majority now use the transitive verb ‘lay’ in place of ‘lie’ and that they reserve ‘lie’ to mean ‘not to tell the truth’. In other words, ‘lay’ is now considered both transitive and intransitive. So whereas conservatives will say ‘lie down’ and ‘lying on the floor’, most people are very comfortable saying ‘lay down’ and ‘laying on the floor’. We need to consider this acceptable now.

9a. A: Who was home at the time?

      B: Myself and my husband.

9b. A: Hello, Bob! How are you?

      B: Fine, thanks. And yourself?

9c. People such as yourselves are real angels for doing so much to help the homeless.

9d. Workers like ourselves deserve raises and better working conditions.

It used to be that reflexive pronouns were used when the subject and object of a sentence were one and the same (Vampires don’t see themselves in a mirror) or to show emphasis (Little Darla baked the cake herself). That still holds true, of course, but the use of these reflexive pronouns has expanded. We now use these forms as some kind of honorific when referring to ourselves or to others. At one time, it was a commonly used, slightly amusing form in Irish English replacing ‘he’ and ‘she’ (And when do you think himself will finally get out of bed?) Now, at least in North American English, the reflexive form in the singular and plural is commonly used in place of ‘I’, ‘you’, and ‘we’.

10. The floor caved in because too many people were allowed on the dance floor. There should have been less people out there.

As much as conservative speakers want to fight against this, the distinction between using ‘fewer’ and ‘less’ is disappearing with ‘less’ winning out over ‘fewer’. That’s just the way it is. As time goes by, more and more native speakers don’t seem to care much about whether they’re dealing with a countable or uncountable noun, so ‘less’ is becoming the word of choice in both instances.

11a. Sorry, but I’m not believing anything you just told me.

11b. She thinks the massage feature on her new bed is great. She’s loving it.

11c. I know you haven’t heard from me in a while. I’ve been wanting to get in touch, but …

We have a small class of verbs called stative verbs and a much larger class called active verbs. Stative verbs are ones that don’t actually have any action involved, such as ‘believe’, ‘love’, ‘know’, ‘want’, etc. The rule has been that stative verbs only use the simple forms of the tenses and aspects, while active verbs can use the simple forms as well as the progressive forms. Nowadays we’re witnessing a trend to make more and more stative verbs act like active verbs, as you can see in the examples above. This trend will likely continue, perhaps to the point where there won’t be that distinction anymore between stative and active verbs.

12. We live in an era where it’s often difficult to discern facts from falsehoods.

The time is approaching where gender equality will be a reality in all developed countries.

This is so illogical yet common among native speakers to use ‘where’, which is a word about location, instead of using ‘when’, a word about time, and of course, ‘era’ and ‘time’ are words that should go with ‘when’, not ‘where’. Why this is so commonplace, I can’t begin to figure out, but I do find that nine out of ten times you’ll hear ‘where’ used when ‘when’ should be the word of choice.

So now we’ve looked at the last item on my list of consistently used changes which a great many native speakers have adopted into their use of the language. Well, what are you ESOL teachers to do? Do you ignore these changes, simply brush them aside, and just stick to what traditional grammar textbooks contain?  Or do you think you owe it to your students, especially your intermediate and advanced students, to incorporate these changes into your lesson plans and give your students these alternative forms?

I’m not going to offer my opinion on this issue; that’s up to each of you to decide what’s better to do. But I would certainly welcome feedback from you and I encourage you to discuss this issue with your colleagues as well as your program administrators.

What do you do when you are teaching a grammar concept only to find that your students don’t understand a vital underlying idea? This happened to me a few weeks ago when I was teaching level 1 students where to place adverbs of frequency in a sentence.

As you recall, AoF go before an action verb and after a “be” verb. As I was demonstrating this with sentences on the board, students seemed confused. Though we had covered the two types of verbs in a previous lesson, and then followed that lesson with other lessons practicing verbs, students seemed unsure of themselves when it came to identifying types of verbs. In order to proceed with my lesson, a small detour was required.

However, this unexpected side trip could have easily morphed into an adventure across the grammar galaxy. Verbs are their own wormhole within a wormhole. You have the 12 tenses, which can become confusing in their patterns and usage and nuances, but when you add on gerunds and infinitives, it’s almost like you’ve stepped into another dimension. Verbs acting like nouns and adjectives?

I quickly decided that the idea students really needed to know was “be” verbs (only three in present tense, which is what we were focusing on) and the seemingly endless list of action verbs. Later, I could go back and address verbs in more depth as needed. But to steer us back in the right direction, I improvised.

I made a T-chart on the board and labeled each side as “Be Verbs” and “Action Verbs.” Then I listed the three simple present “be” verbs on the board and then asked students to tell me things they do every day, like “go to work,” and “drive home.” I wrote the verbs from their phrases on the board under “Action Verbs.” (Asking students to tell me about their routines was handy because our topic for the day was “Daily Routines.”)

Then I told students we were going to play a game. I was going to say a verb. If I said a “be” verb, students should raise their right hands. If I said an “action” verb, students should snap. I did a short demonstration, and then we played.

After ten successful responses from students, I asked students to listen for the verb in a sentence and respond with a raised hand or a snap. For example, “I am a student” would elicit a raised hand. “Bob runs every day” would receive a snap. After ten successful responses from students, I added an adverb of frequency to each subsequent sentence without telling students I was going to.

Finally, after ten successful responses, I ended the game by writing the last four sentences on the board. I asked students to identify the verb in each sentence, then classify each as either a “be” verb or an action verb.

Then I asked students to identify the adverb of frequency from the list that was already on the board from the beginning of the lesson. Once students did this, we discussed the placement of each AoF.

From here, we continued with our lesson. This “interruption” took about ten minutes, but it quickly clarified a confusing idea (“Why does English have different types of verbs and different tenses and how do they work with adverbs of frequency?”). Students felt successful because they had participated in an activity that showed them they could identify types of verbs.

On a side note, like most classes, my class has high and low level students. To keep the high students from zoning out, I created interesting sentences. For example, I started out with “I am a student,” but moved to “I am an amazing student from New York,” or “Bob usually eats pineapple with potato chips and mustard.”

As my class progresses through other verb tenses and their negative forms, I will incorporate a review of AoF and placement.

As a deeper expansion lesson, we could explore verbs that belong to different categories but are often used the same way, such as “I feel sick” and “I am sick.” This would give students yet another chance to identify action and “be” verbs while learning a little bit about verb nuances.

As teachers, we can plan each lesson meticulously, but we can’t predict hiccups or detours. Sometimes we just have to improvise, and that doesn’t mean we have been any less successful. If we stray from our lesson plan to benefit students, then we have achieved our objective.

“Bang for the buck” is an English idiom that means the return you get for spending a fixed amount of money, time, or effort on something. It is similar in meaning to “value for money.” Bang for the buck was originally used by politicians to talk about getting the maximum amount of firepower from military spending. Some people do not like this idiom because of its history, but I think it can work as a useful metaphor for language teachers and learners.

In my experience, a lot of people focus on the question of whether a particular teaching method or study technique is “useful” or “beneficial.” However, this question is setting the bar very low (another idiom that means not aiming for a high enough target or goal). Strictly speaking, any form of teaching or study can be described as being “useful” if its effects are more than zero.

For example, if an English speaker wanted to learn French, they might choose to do so by spending three hours a day comparing the French and English translations of the Bible. Would this kind of study be beneficial to them? Undoubtedly. In fact, throughout history, more people have probably learned languages from the Bible than from any other text.

Even if we accept that there is some benefit to this kind of study, however, most language teachers and learners would feel instinctively that it would be possible to achieve better results by spending those three hours doing other things as well as (or instead of) reading the Bible. The question we should ask of any study or teaching method, then, is not “Is it useful?” but rather “How much bang am I getting for my buck?” To put it more simply, we need to ask, “If I am going to spend $X and Y hours on this, what can I do that will give me the best possible results for that level of input?”

In the field of TESOL, there are so many techniques, methods, and special learning systems that it would be impossible to count them all. Each of these has its proponents, some of whom argue the merits of the object of their admiration with something akin to religious fervor. A point these people often overlook is that almost anything you do is going to be successful if you do it with religious fervor, but it’s usually the fervor that is bringing the success, not the activity. Learning a language through studying translations of the Bible is a very literal example of this!

Two examples of this that I come across often in Japan are extensive reading and “Speed Learning.” Both of these are popular study methods, largely because of successful marketing on the part of publishing companies and the people they hire to promote the methods. I am not suggesting for a moment that these types of study are ineffective, but I do think that people sometimes ask the wrong questions in order to determine exactly how effective they are.

For example, if someone told me that reading extensively can improve every aspect of a learner’s English, I would not dispute that claim. A great deal of research has shown that extensive reading is indeed a highly effective way to learn a language. I would, however, have two questions. The first is this:

How many hours of extensive reading would be required to see the kinds of improvement you are talking about?

Let us suppose that their answer is XXX hours. My next question would then be:

Can you be sure that extensive reading is the best possible use of those XXX hours?

Once again, I am not saying that extensive reading would not be the best way to spend those hours, simply that we need to make sure we are asking the right question when we assess the merits of any form of study.

In Japan, there is a very popular method for studying English called Speed Learning. It is promoted by the golfer Ryo Ishikawa, and a considerable amount of money has been spent on its marketing. I do not actually know very much about this system, except that almost every Japanese learner of English that I meet asks my opinion about it! However, their question is always the same: “Does it work?”

My answer usually goes like this:

If you mean “Will it provide you with any benefits?” then the answer is undoubtedly yes, but I think you are asking the wrong question. Given that this system will require a significant investment of both time and money, your question should be “If I am going to spend this much money and this many hours studying English, will this system lead to more gains than anything else I could do with that same input of time and money?”

Again, I want to be careful to stress that I am not saying anything negative about the Speed Learning system. What I want to focus on is the fact that learners, and all too often teachers, ask the wrong question when it comes to assessing the effectiveness of any method or type of materials used in the learning process. Pretty much anything you choose to do will have some value or benefit, but that is not a sufficient reason for you to choose it over the other options that are available to you. It is not just benefits we are looking for, but maximum benefits for any given input of time, money, and effort.

The question of whether a choice that you make is maximizing your learning (or teaching) potential is one that is impossible to answer, since the only way to know for sure would be to try every single possibility and compare the outcomes. Even if you were able to do that, however, the answer would probably be different for every learner and every teacher, and even for the same learners and teachers at different points in time. In other words, it is impossible to know for sure which choice will give us the most “bang for our buck,” but even if we cannot provide perfect answers, it is important to make sure that we are at least asking the right question.

Tamara Jones

One of my all-time favorite ELT quotes comes from Keith Folse’s 2004 book, Vocabulary Myths. He is summarizing Lewis (1993) when he points out that “[w]ithout grammar, little communication may be possible; without vocabulary, no communication is possible.” (25) This quote always reminds me of when I lived in Korea and wanted to buy rice at the little corner store. I knew the word for rice when I ordered it in a restaurant, bap, but I didn’t know that Koreans use a different word for a bag of uncooked rice. The shopkeepers kept saying they didn’t have bap. I did not believe that a corner store in Korea did not sell rice, but because I didn’t know the right word, I eventually left frustrated, perplexed and empty handed. Clearly, words are absolutely necessary for language learners.

Unfortunately, however, there is often precious little time in class devoted to vocabulary development. In fact, one of the eight myths discussed in Folse’s (2004) book is Teachers, textbooks, and curricula cover second language vocabulary adequately. Research clearly shows that if we are to help our students become more capable communicators, we need to provide them with more exposure to and practice with new words. In a previous blog, I summarize one of Folse’s TESOL presentations on the topic (Words, Words, Words) that contains some practical suggestions for helping students build their word banks. However, I also wanted to share a couple of fun games I’ve used with great success in my classes.

Joanne’s Line Up Game

Years ago, I used to work with a woman named Joanne, and I was observing a lesson of hers once in which her students played this game. I loved it so much, I’ve been using it ever since.

Before the Class

1. Write target vocabulary (at least 1 or 2 words per student) on the board.
2. Make sure you have several colored markers.

During the Class

1. Divide students into teams.
2. Have the teams line up facing the board, like this:
   
3. Designate a colored marker for each team. (Hold on to the markers. They just differentiate the teams. The students don’t do anything with them.)
4. Call on the first student in the first line. (In the picture, this would be the student with the red number 1.) Give the student a few seconds (you decide how long based on the difficulty of the words and the proficiency level of the student) to choose a word off the board and use it in a sentence.
5. Judge the sentence for accuracy. Is it grammatically correct? Is it used correctly? Is it pronounced correctly?
   – If the student’s use of the word is correct, cross the word off the board with that team’s marker. In the picture, if the speaker was the red number 1 student, you would cross off the word with the red marker. Have the speaker move to the back of the red line and the others move forward, so that red number 1 student becomes red number 3 student and red number 2 student moves up into the red number 1 spot.
   – If the student makes a mistake, the student still moves to the back of his or her team’s line, but the word is not crossed off. If it’s an interesting mistake, I make a note so we can discuss the error after the game.
6. Call on the first student in the next team. (In the picture, that would be the students with the blue number 1.)
7. Repeat the steps above, crossing words off the board with the team colors as students use the words correctly in their sentences.
8. When all the words have been crossed off the board, count the colors of the Xs. The team with the most words crossed off with their team color is the winner.

Words on the Wall

In 2010, JJ Wilson delivered a wonderful presentation at IATEFL in 2010 about listening instruction. He demonstrated several activities, but one really stuck in my mind, and I have had a lot of fun using this game in my classes. Technically, it is a listening activity; however, the focus is on helping students to develop anticipatory listening skills, which have roots in collocations and lexical chunks. For instance, if I say, “Would you like a cup of …” and you have to guess what word will come next, you might guess tea or coffee, because those words have strong collocations with the word cup. You might also guess soup, though that probably wouldn’t be your first guess because cup of soup is a weaker, though still possible, collocation. You probably wouldn’t guess thumb tacks, lotion, or sand, even those words would be grammatically correct and would technically fit into a cup. So, the idea is that when proficient English speakers are listening, we don’t just listen word by word. Our minds are always formulating theories about what will come next based on what we know about the world and which words go together more often. To me, this is not just a listening challenge, it’s really a vocabulary challenge because part of knowing a word means knowing what words collocate with it.

Before the Class

1. Find a level-appropriate text that contains chunks of language. (You won’t need to really search far and wide for this. This is just how English is, so pretty much any old text will do.) For intermediate level students, I like a story from Chicken Soup for the Couple’s Soul:
   
2. Select several words from the text and write them on big slips of paper or larger Post It notes. These words should be part of collocations and be stressed, content words. There is no point in having students struggle to listen for unstressed function words because we don’t say they clearly in English anyway. From the above story, I have pulled: highway, gas, station, attendant, oil, legs, conversation, admitted, dated, lucky, married, dear.
3. Create enough sets of the words (on paper or post its) so that there are enough sets for groups of 3 or 4 students. I usually put the sets on different colored paper, so I might have 3 sets of the words: 1 on pink, 1 on blue, 1 on green. That just makes things more organized for me when I set up the game in the classroom.
4. Mix up the words in each set.
5. Before the class starts, stick up the slips of paper in sets on walls around the room. If I have 3 sets, I might stick the pink set up on the wall by the door, the blue set up on the white board, and the green set up on the wall at the back of the room.

During the Class

1. Put students into groups of 3 or 4.
2. Tell students you will be reading a story and their job is to pull the word off the wall as they hear it or, even better, slightly before. (They will have already been introduced to the notion of anticipatory listening.) Stress that they are working with their teammates and competing with the other groups, but they are actually competing within their group. So, it doesn’t matter how the other teams are doing; they need to be faster than the people in their group.Have each group stand by the sets of words on the wall.
3. Read the story somewhat slowly, but not word … by … word. Try not to laugh as the students grab at words. The winners are the people in each group with the most words by the end of the reading.
4. If time permits, have the students work in their groups to put the words in order and recreate the story.

So, these are a couple of activities I really like to use to help my students build their English word banks. If you’ve ever tried either of these, I’d love to hear whether or not you like them as much as I do. I’m also curious about your “go to” vocabulary games. What do you do in class that works for you?

Folse, K. (2004). Vocabulary Myths. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Lewis, M. (1993). The Lexical Approach. Hove, UK: Language Teaching Publications.
Wilson, J.J. (2010). Great Speakers Need Great Listeners. Paper presented at the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) Conference, Harrogate, UK.

Let’s face it, writing classes don’t usually scream “fun and games.” I mean, in real life, writing is usually a solitary activity. Even when I collaborate on a project with a colleague, we don’t often actually sit side by side and write. Also, writing can feel deeply personal, even when it’s academic or professional. Whenever I send off any writing I’ve done to my publisher, I always feel a bit vulnerable. And, that’s when I submit work in my L1. Imagine the bravery it takes to write in a new language, much less have a classmate peer review your work.

Clearly, getting students to relax enough to interact and write in a new(ish) language can be a tall order for any writing teacher. So, I heartily embrace any ideas for making writing lessons more engaging and fun for my students. Luckily, many years ago, when I was teaching TOEFL Prep, I stumbled upon a game that I have played with students of all ages and at all levels since then.

Before Class:

1. Find an error riddled passage or set of sentences. For my Pre-Beginners, I wrote simple sentences, like these:
   
2. For my TOEFL Prep students, I scanned sample written responses from the old purple Longman TOEFL Preparation Course for the iBT textbook.
   
3. Put the text into a project-able format. Back in the good old days, I used to copy the text on to a transparency (I am that old), but nowadays, I scan the text and put it into a PowerPoint slide.
4. Make sure you have several white board markers that are different colors.
5. Right before the class begins, prepare the projector so that it is projecting on the white board or a big piece of paper. The idea is that the students will be writing where the slide is projecting, so the game won’t work if the PPT is projecting on to a wall or a pull down screen.

In Class:

1. Divide the class into groups so there are the same number of groups as you have white board marker colors. For instance, if you have 4 colored markers (red, blue, green and black) then you will divide the class into 4 groups. Give each group a different colored whiteboard marker.
2. Explain the rules to the students. Tell them that they will see a text with many mistakes and that they will take turns with their teammates (while racing against the other teams) to find and correct the mistakes. The team that corrects the most mistakes (correctly) is the winner.
   – Only one teammate can hold the marker at a time. Only the students with the markers can approach the board and write.
   – If the students are not holding the marker, they should be seated. (This will be hard for them. Even my dignified adult students want to stand up so they can more easily rush the board.)
   – The team members have to take turns correcting the mistakes. It’s a bit like a relay, in that one person can’t hog the marker. But, as they are waiting for their turn with the marker, they can help each other and strategize.
   – They can correct any error they find. They don’t have to go in order.
   – When the person with the marker corrects the error, he or she rushes back to the group and hands the marker to the next student.
3. Project the text and watch the madness ensue.
   
   (If the game gets off to a slow start, encourage the class. Say things like, “Oh, look! Mehri corrected sentence number 3. The red team has earned 1 point!” Sometimes, it takes students a few seconds to figure how how to play the game the first time around.)
4. Monitor the game. While the students are racing the other teams to correct the errors, things at the board will get a bit crazy. If you have 4 groups, there will be 4 students at the board at any given time, jostling to correct an error. Given the pace of the game, it can be hard to monitor the students, but it’s important to be watching like a hawk because sometimes they will correct things incorrectly. If they do that, they still have to hand over the marker to the next person on their team, but I erase the incorrect correction. Sometimes they also “correct” things that aren’t wrong. I also erase those “corrections” as well. I use an answer key, even when the text is very simple, to help me stay on top of all the corrections.
5. When all the errors have been corrected, have the students sit down and read through the sentences as a class. Discuss the corrections. Then, count the corrections according to color. If the green team made 5 corrections, and the red team made three corrections, then the green team is declared the winner.

After the Class:

1. Give the students paper copies of the original, uncorrected text and have them correct the mistakes and rewrite the sentences for homework.

I really like using this game in my classes. From true beginners to my most advanced learners, they all have fun, work together, and practice revising writing. It’s guaranteed to get the students out of their seats and smiling while talking about grammar. And, what can be better than that?

Kristine Fielding teaches ESOL at Lone Star College in Houston, TX.

“If I gave you one million dollars that you had to spend in one day, what would you buy?”

A question like this is typical in a simple game reviewing second conditional statements or subordinate clauses. One student reads the question, another student answers it using the grammar form that is being reviewed, then asks the next student a variation of the question. A class may even see how fast they can repeat this process for an added thrill. A simple game like this is found in nearly every ESL/EFL class.

Playing games is one surefire way to increase student engagement. Jane McGonigal quotes Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in her book Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (2011). The quote reads “One way or another, if human evolution is to go on, we shall have to learn to enjoy life more thoroughly,” (p. 17). It stands to reason that students enjoy class more if we play games, as any experienced teacher knows this. The quote comes from Csíkszentmihályi’s 1975 book Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: The Experience of Play in Work and Games.

Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture by Swiss author Johan Huizinga was originally published in German in 1944 then in English is 1949. He says, “[C]ulture arises in the form of play, that it is played from the very beginning…In the twin union of play and culture, play is primary” (p. 46). This is often demonstrated in our basic language classes where the lingua franca is still in its infant stages. Students can still play a game, even if they cannot formulate a simple sentence yet. From this game, the class culture is born.

My point is that games should be more central in our classes. They inspire enthusiasm, engagement, and creativity. With this in mind, I recently tasked my students with a project: Each had to create an original game using whatever props needed, but the game had to let everyone in class play at the same time. Every student had to present their game on a certain day, and then we played each game as a class. Truly, I saw some ingenious creations.

To build background knowledge prior to this assignment, I showed students how to play Go Fish. The next day, we played Hang Man. The following day, we played Monopoly. After three days of playing different types of games, I asked students to choose one of the games we played and write down what they remembered from each game. While students read to the class what they wrote, I wrote the game words they used that would be helpful when students had to write their own game instructions, such as “turn,” “cards,” “pass.” This way, I established a working vocabulary; I also filled in as needed, adding words such as “deal” and “shuffle” they may not be familiar with but could describe.

In pairs, students brainstormed what characteristics the three games had in common. After sharing these and writing them on the board, students created their own version of game theory. These are the elements they discovered:

• A person could win.
• A person could lose.
• You had to be near the other players to play (you couldn’t step out in the hall to make a phone call and still be playing).
• You didn’t have to play if you didn’t want to (but why wouldn’t you?)

These elements are supported in McGonigal’s book. She says games have four main qualities. They are voluntary, they have a system to tell you how you are doing (points, money, cards…), there is a clear objective (how to win), and the rules are clear (2011, p. 20-21). Huizinga includes additional characteristic of play that apply to games: There is a clear beginning and end, and there is also a designated space for it. Though Huizinga’s book was written before video games, I assert that virtual space is still a designated space since you have to be logged on to play (p. 9-10). All of these elements created our class’s game theory.

When I assigned the project, I gave students parameters that you may find useful if you decide to try this in your class:

• I requested students write in second person, though I could have requested they write in third.
• The instructions had to be written statements, and imperatives were not permitted (since we hadn’t covered those in class yet).
• Instructions had to be complete, meaning they had to include contingencies. What if a player doesn’t have the correct card/answer/number? Can she pass or choose again?
• I also recommended students beta test their games with friends so they could make improvements as needed.

When the day to present arrived, students seemed nervous. Some just brought dice or playing cards; others brought elaborately drawn game boards. Each student presented her game and shared the instructions. Then we played each game until there was a winner.

As technology advances, games permeate new parts of our lives, such as job training and shopping. We can use this as inspiration for devising new ways of engagement. As from this example, we don’t have to be the source for all engagement, either. Our students are bright and creative; giving them a chance to create games inspired them to reach beyond our usual classroom activities.

References

Huizinga, J. (2016). Homo ludens: A study of the play-element in culture. Kettering, OH:
Angelico Press. (English edition originally printed in 1949.)
McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change
the world. New York: Penguin Books

This past academic year, I taught a class that was brand new to me. It’s always weird to be doing something completely different when I’ve been teaching ESL for as long as I have (25ish years now), and that’s one of the things I love about this field. You never know where you’re going to find yourself if you say yes to stuff on a regular basis.

My instructional sweet spot is high intermediate, but I’m one of the administrators of our English Language Center, so I teach what is needed. This past year, what was needed was a teacher for a brand new academic pre-beginning all skills class. We’re talking students whose English proficiency is so limited that they can’t say where they are from, they don’t know colors, they may not be able to decode letters the alphabet, and they can’t understand basic commands. Gulp. So, way back last August, I panicked for a bit, and then I attended a professional development session, googled “teaching true beginners,” talked with my generous mentor, took a deep breath and jumped in.

It’s been quite a year. I am painfully aware that I still have a lot to learn about teaching true beginners. In my experience, pretty much any first pass with a class is destined to be a bit of a train wreck, as I experiment with supplemental materials and figure out what works and what bombs. True to form, I made lots of mistakes. But, that’s how we learn, right? And, even though I am admittedly not an expert in this area at all, I wanted to share some of my observations about the differences between teaching true beginners and teaching higher level students.

1. Deliberate Teacher Talk is Key!

Obviously, people who don’t speak any English have a hard time understanding a stream of well-meaning teacher talk. Teacher talk is something I struggle with (see a past blog series, The Gift of Gab? for more on all that) and I knew it would be something that I really needed to keep in check with my pre-beginners. But, even though I was conscious of this and prepared visuals and other supports, the first day of class really hit it all home for me. After several instances of blank stares, I very quickly realized that every single word that came out of my mouth had to be carefully chosen. Every. Single. Word. Every time I spoke, I had to consider if the students had the proficiency to be able to understand it, and if (inevitably) not, was it crucial enough for me to be willing to spend time helping them understand.

This had two consequences for me. First, I wasn’t able to build rapport with chit chat and humor the way I usually did with my students. I had to work harder on body language to reassure my nervous, shy students. My face hurt from smiling after the class. Second, I wasn’t able to explain to students why we were doing activities. Normally, I think it’s important for students to understand the purpose of everything we do in class (see another blog post, Starting with the WHY in Teaching and Learning); however, how can you simplify the language sufficiently to explain to a group of true beginners that we are using rubber bands to feel the stress of words, and this is important because this is how proficient English speakers store words in their brains and when L2 learners miss-stress words, we have a really hard time understanding them? I had to forgo a lot of the explaining I tend to do. Luckily, however, the students were content to trust me (I think) and gamely pulled on their rubber bands every time we learned new words.

2. Modeling is Essential!

When I teach an intermediate level class, I tell students what they’ll be doing before they engage in an activity. I also model it, but that part might be a bit rushed. I mean, who wants to listen to me when we could all just get on with the activity already? Usually, as soon as a scant majority of the students gets what the task is, we are off and running and the others figure it out as they go along. But, with pre-beginners, I had to spend a lot of time (way more than I had ever imagined) modeling an activity with my teaching assistant before the students got up to do it. If we didn’t model a new activity at least a couple of times, the activity tended to dissolve into chaos. Simple activities like board games, running dictations, card matches and surveys all had to be modeled. In hindsight, it’s clear that the ones who understood right away what they were supposed to be doing didn’t have the English to explain to their confused classmates. In the end, I don’t think there was a day I didn’t over plan for my lessons. Everything always took a lot longer to set up and get going than I anticipated.

3. Play it Again, Sam!

Because learning a new class activity was such a drawn-out process, once activities became familiar, they tended to resurface at a pace that I wouldn’t even consider in a higher level class. The students were more comfortable with predictability and repetition than my higher level classes appeared to be. They liked playing the same games again and again. Usually, I recycled old activities with new content. I think we did card matches every single time they learned new vocabulary. But, sometimes we even did the exact same activity again the next day because it was difficult and they needed another pass with it. Again, in retrospect, it’s clear that the monotony was actually comforting to my true beginners because they could easily figure out what was expected of them and they could get on with the business of practicing the target language.

4. Learning is Fun!

After years of teaching grumpy high intermediate and advanced level learners, it was a genuine pleasure to teach pre-beginners. They were happy every day to be in class and they never once rolled their eyes or challenged a grammar explanation. This isn’t because they were nicer people than any students I had taught before. It was because at the true beginning level, everything learners do in class teaches them something new. They learn new things all the time. The words and grammar structures are useful because they allow my students to communicate things they couldn’t before. They are delighted to memorize all the vocabulary I could throw at them and they always (truly, always) do their homework. In contrast, my crabby higher level students aren’t learning as many new things; rather they are mostly tweaking and fine tuning things they already know. Even learning a new verb tense, like the past perfect, is an exercise in frustration because it’s hard to distinguish from other past tenses and it communicates nuance, not the main message. It seems to be a bit hard for many people to get excited about focusing on the finer points of a language when they are able to communicate their main ideas pretty well already.

So, the semester is over and my students are on their summer vacations. I won’t see most of them again in my classroom unless my teaching assignment changes for the fall, but I hope they learned a lot in my class and that they feel more confident about their ability to interact in English. I also hope they enjoyed the class. I certainly did.