Two Tours in Champagne

Although neither my husband nor I are Champagne experts, we do like a glass of bubbly from time to time. So, over a recent long weekend, my husband and I drove to the Champagne region of France. Our first stop was at the famous Tattinger Champagne house in Reims. There, we took a tour of the caves lead by an English-speaking guide. We learned where the grapes for Champagne are grown, how the bottles are turned periodically, and how they get the bubbles into the bottle.

After our tasting, we left the city of Reims and began to drive along the touristic Champagne route described in our guidebook. It is a beautiful drive, peppered by plenty of smaller Champagne houses along the way. After passing a few of them, we decided to stop at the Bernard Chauvet et Fils Champagne house. Our experience was completely different at this Champagne house. The tour was shorter, the tasting was free, and the proprietor spoke no English whatsoever. The tour and demonstration was entirely in French.

Now, as you might know if you are a regular reader of this blog, I have sporadically been studying French. However, my vocabulary is certainly not technical enough that I would have been able to understand what the proprietor of the smaller Champagne house was saying had I not seen a similar demonstration at the Tattinger house earlier that day.

My Teaching since Champagne

So, what does this have to do with language learning? Well, that day I had one of my long held suspicions confirmed; if a student learns about a subject in their own language, it will be infinitely easier for him/her to comprehend details about that subject in English. It seems so obvious when I write it, but it took my own experience before I fully realized how powerful knowledge in my native language can increase knowledge in a new language.

So, what impact can this have in our lesson planning? I currently teach English to students who are preparing to enter mainstream secondary school classes. For instance, after the winter holidays, one of my students is going to enter a year 9 Geography class. So, I need to make sure she has the language she will need to be successful in that class. In the past, I might have focused on teaching and reinforcing vocabulary and certain grammar, reading and writing skills. Since Champagne, however, I have decided to also include some time for her to use the internet and research specific topics in her language, French, as well. This will give her more ‘hooks’ upon which to hang the information she will get in English.

Another change I will make is with my students who are preparing for TOEFL exam. Many of the readings and listenings in this exam (as well as others like it) are academic and focus on subject specific topics. For instance, in the Longman Preparation Course for the TOEFL Test by Deborah Phillips, there is a listening passage about whales and echolocation. That listening is far easier for students who already know something about whales than for those who don’t. Of course, it is impossible to predict what subjects will appear on the exam; however, it seems to me that it is good practice to encourage students to read up on a number of different academic subjects in their first language, especially on topics they are not already familiar with.

Many of you may have figured long ago that when students are familiar with a topic in their language, it is easier for them to access the information in English. Our students come to us with a (long or short) lifetime of experience and information. It makes sense to use that to our advantage as language teachers. I would be interested to hear how this affects your teaching. How do you actively encourage students to make use of their native language knowledge in your classes?

If you’re like I was in the classroom, you’re always looking for fun ways to teach something about English that your students need to recognize, understand, and internalize if they’re to master the language one of these fine days. It doesn’t matter if you’re teaching elementary school kids or adults; everybody wants to have fun while learning, just as we teachers want to have fun while teaching.

So let’s take a look at one of the most daunting items of English, the prepositions. “Oh, no! Not those!” you say with a shudder. “Anything but prepositions!” Yes, I know how confusing they can be and how exacting they can be.

Well, I’m here to tell you that there are indeed fun ways to introduce, demonstrate, and successfully teach English prepositions. The way I used to enjoy the most was teaching those little bugaboos with hands-on activities, one of which was preparing food. Sounds weird, eh? Well, not so weird. For the following lesson, the prepositions that I’m going to target are at, down, in, into, off, on top of, over, to, under, and up.

Picture this: Your students come into your room at the start of class and start taking their seats. While doing so, they notice a long table in the front of the room, and on that table they see two large salad bowls and platters full of some common veggies used to make a tossed salad: two small heads of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, celery stalks, mushrooms, and scallions (green onions). There are also small bowls of pitted olives, crumbled, crisp bacon, and crumbled feta cheese. There are a couple of bottles of salad dressings, a knife¹ to cut up the veggies, a cutting board, and a salad fork and spoon to toss the goodies after they’ve been placed into one of the large bowls. Last but not least, there’s a stack of disposable salad bowls on the side. And make sure to have a roll of paper towels handy, too. Wow! I’m honestly getting hungry just writing this!

Begin your lesson by explaining to your students what prepositions are. Then you tell them they’re going to watch as you prepare a salad, and have them gather around the table.

Make sure to use only half of the veggies and toppings. You’ll see why later. Here’s a list of sentences that you can be saying as you describe what you’re doing while preparing the salad. Note that these sentences are deliberately kept short:

• I’m going to cut up all the vegetables.
• I cut the bottom off a head of lettuce.
• I tear the lettuce leaves into small pieces and put them into the bowl.
• I cut the cherry tomatoes in half.
• I add them to the lettuce at the bottom of the bowl.
• I cut the cucumbers in half lengthwise.
• I cut the halves into thin slices and put them into the bowl.
• I do the same thing with the mushrooms.
• Then I slice the celery and scallions into thin pieces.
• I put the mushrooms, celery, and scallions on top of the other veggies.
• I cut up the olives and sprinkle them and some bacon over the veggies.
• Now everything is in the bowl.
• I mix up all the veggies. How?
• I get under the veggies with my salad fork and spoon.
• I bring them up and let them fall down. I keep doing this until all the veggies are mixed.
• I sprinkle some feta cheese over the salad, and it’s ready to eat!
• I dig my salad fork and spoon into the salad.
• I pick up some salad and I place it into this small bowl.
• I take the lid off² a bottle of salad dressing.
• I pour some dressing over my salad.

As you describe out loud each action you’re doing, ask a couple of students to repeat what you’ve just said. Then repeat the sentence yourself so that the group has heard the preposition used four times.

Now that you’ve made your salad, ask for a volunteer to prepare a duplicate salad. Have the student describe what he/she is doing each step of the way just as you did. Once again ask two other students to repeat what your “salad sous-chef” says to reinforce the prepositions. Once your student’s salad is done, invite the class to use the disposable bowls and help themselves to some salad and dressing.

After the class has placidly munched on their salads, review each step you went through to prepare the salad and write the sentences on the board for your students to copy into their notebooks so they can review the lesson on their own at a later time.

You’ll find that a lesson like this will be lots of fun and will be quite meaningful for your students because it’s applying language to a real-life activity. This kind of lesson will go a long way to having your students internalize these basic uses of the targeted prepositions, and you’ll be able to answer any questions they may have after the demonstration with extra visual reinforcement if necessary.

So try out this culinary creation or think of other dishes that can be prepared easily in class and that give you the opportunity to use prepositions just was we have with the salad. How much more fun can a lesson get? You’ll find that hands-on demonstrations are a great way to teach these little bugaboos we call prepositions.

1. In many schools these days it’s against policy to allow a metal-bladed knife in a classroom for security reasons. If your school has such a policy, I’m sure you’ll still be allowed to use a plastic knife from the school cafeteria. Most of these are still adequate for cutting up veggies.

2. There’s always been an argument about whether or not it’s grammatical to say off of, e.g., I take the lid off of a bottle of salad dressing. The fact is that if you’re a prescriptivist, you’re going to say that of is not correct after off, but if you’re a descriptivist, you’re going to point out how commonly off of is used, especially in American English, thereby making it grammatical. Even though I don’t particularly like saying off of, I suppose it’s acceptable because it’s used so frequently, the same way I absolutely hate hearing the reason why, but have come to accept it in others’ speech because it seems that just about everybody goes along with that outrageous redundancy.

I always felt cheated as a child because my mother would never follow the advice of that lovely nanny, Mary Poppins. (She also refused to fly, too, to my great irritation.) In the movie, Mary Poppins has asked her charges to clean their room. The boys don’t want to, but she convinces them that a little fun can make a dull task palatable by singing that “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Well, I am no flying nanny, but I can certainly appreciate Ms. Poppins’ message now that I am teaching young learners.

Grammar?!? Again?!?
After years of teaching adults who masochistically yearn for the pain of English verb tenses and the passive voice, I assumed that everyone cared as deeply about grammar. Not so! Have you ever tried to convince tired tweens and teens that the answer to their prayers lay in memorizing the simple past form of irregular verbs? Let me tell you, it is easier said than done. I tried everything from practice worksheets to tests to flashcards and more. Nothing could make these students learn their lists of irregular verbs. Nothing, that is, until I broke out the dice and the markers. Apparently the nanny was right all along; turning grammar into a game makes learning easier. The trick is to make the games as easy on the teacher as possible; no one wants to be cutting flashcards at 3:00 in the morning, that’s for sure! Following are some of the easiest games I know that have tricked my students into learning grammar again and again.

The Dice Game
First, give students a long and boring grammar handout. Then, divide the class into teams of 4 or 5. Pose the first question from the handout to the first students from the first team. If the student answers it correctly, he or she can roll the dice and the team gets the points shown. If the student is incorrect, the turn moves to the first person from the second team, and so on. For this game, a little dice will do, but it is much more fun when played with a big dice (I make mine from cardstock and stuff with tissue paper), especially when the dice goes from 0 to 5 instead of 1 to 6. Imagine the thrill of knowing that even though the other team just answered the question correctly, they still might not get a point! The winner is the team with the most points at the end of the exercise.

The Snakes and Ladders Game
First, give the students another long and boring grammar handout. Depending on the size of your class, you might divide students into teams and give each team a marker or just give each student a marker. Again, ask the first student to complete the first question on the handout. If correct, the student gets to roll the dice and move around the board. If incorrect, the student has to stay in place. Then, move on to the next student. The winner is the student or team that finishes the game first. I use Snakes and Ladders, but you can use just about any board game out there that involves moving around a board with markers and a dice. I just like the element of chance involved in Snakes and Ladders.

The Dot Game
Again, give the students another long and boring grammar handout. Then, draw a grid of dots, 5 across and 5 down, or more or less depending on the number of questions you have on the handout. You’ll need more dots than you have questions, but it’s a pretty imprecise science. If you realize halfway through that you have too many, cross a row out. If you realize you have too few, add a row. Again, divide the students into teams of 4 or 5. If the first student from the first team correctly answers the question, he or she draws a horizontal or vertical line connecting two of the dots. Then, move on to the first student from the second team, and so on. The lines don’t necessarily need to be connected. The goal of the teams is to make a box by drawing 4 lines. However, students aren’t confined to using their own lines, they can make boxes from another team’s lines. (It may take a while for students to catch on to this, but successful teams will quickly realize that they don’t want to leave a box with three sides for the next team to finish.) After a team makes a box, they write their team name in the box and they have to draw another line. If that line makes a box, too, they continue until they can’t make another box with their line. The winner is the team with the most boxes when the grid is finished.

I know the biggest criticism that can be leveled at using games like this in the class is that it makes for a teacher fronted activity. Yes, that is certainly true. It is a price I am willing to pay to bamboozle my students into enthusiastically completing a grammar practice activity that would normally been a struggle. After all, the kids are all engaged, they are all writing the answers in their books, and they are all learning. What more could I ask for?

I can’t remember who said it (I have a feeling it may have been Penny Ur), but I remember hearing a quote about teaching listening once that really made me stop and think:

We don’t really teach listening; we just keep testing it.

Whoever it was, I think he or she had a very valid point. Our standard methodology for teaching listening is a cycle of giving listening tasks and then asking questions in order to test the learners’ comprehension of what they have heard. In our defence, of course, it is difficult to see how we could do otherwise. Like reading, listening is a receptive skill that can only be developed through repeated practice, so there are good reasons for teaching it the way we do. Anyway, I was recently asked to do a presentation on this topic, and I started thinking about aspects of listening that do actually need to be taught rather than simply practiced. The first thing that came to mind was a list of general principles of which learners often seem to be unaware, and I want to write about the first of those today.

The first point is that we listen with our brains, not our ears.

Many learners think that improving their listening skills means developing their ability to recognize audio signals produced by proficient speakers of the language. In fact, the audio signal that most speakers produce does not contain sufficient information for it to be recognized in isolation. To hear an example of this, try saying the following sentence quickly.

“There was a great movie on TV last night.”

Now say it again at the same speed, but stop at “a.” Repeat the first three words, but keep your pronunciation exactly the way it was when you said the full sentence. Now dictate this segment of language to a proficient speaker of English and ask them to write down what you are saying. The chances are that they will be unable to do so. If you then complete the sentence, however, you will find that the listener is suddenly able to understand what just sounded like random noise a few seconds ago. The person will probably even tell you that they can “hear” the words now. Of course, the listener cannot hear “There was a” because you are not really saying it. The reason they think they can hear it is that after the words enter their ears, their brain takes over to decode the signal in the light of what went before, what came after, and what that person knows about the way English works. In other words, it is the brain that is doing the listening, not the ears.

You can see this process in action for yourself by playing around with an iPhone 4S. Even if you do not have one of these yourself, I am sure you have been bored to death by friends who do have one telling you about it and/or demonstrating its features. Anyway, Siri is a “virtual personal assistant” that, so its developers claim, is capable of recognizing natural speech. The interesting thing about Siri is that it only works when you have a good Internet connection. This is because it has to take the audio signal and process it through powerful servers in order to work out what has actually been said. If listening really were a matter of simply recognizing audio signals, this would not be necessary. The fact that it is necessary shows that it is the computers that are doing the listening, not the microphone.

I was quite skeptical of Siri before I tried it, because the voice recognition software I have used in the past has been worse than useless. Siri, however, is remarkably accurate, and it gets things right a lot more often than it gets them wrong. When it does make mistakes, however, it provides interesting insights into the challenges the human brain faces when it attempts to comprehend spoken language. One of the most difficult things about decoding the audio signal produced by spoken language is working out where the word boundaries lie. This is because different sequences of words can produce an identical audio signal. To give you an example of this, here is a true story about a message I tried to send the other day. On that day,  I was feeling particularly pleased with myself because I had managed to get up at 6 a.m., and I decided to send an email to a friend to inform her of this remarkable achievement. Picking up my phone, I dictated to Siri, “I just broke the world record for getting up early.” When it had taken a moment to absorb the sequence of sounds that came from my mouth, Siri displayed the following message on the screen:

I just broke the world record forgetting up early.

If you think about it, the audio signal produced by my original sentence and the one produced by Siri’s transcription of it would be identical, but no speaker of English would interpret those sounds as Siri did because that sentence simply does not make any sense.

Another issue that both humans and computers have to cope with is the problem of homophones (different words that share the same pronunciation). One way software engineers attempt to deal with this is by taking into account the relative frequencies of words. For example, “rain” is more common than “reign,” so when in doubt, the computer will opt for the more common word. This, however, can lead to mistakes. As a follow-up to my first sentence, I continued my message:  “Maybe I should contact the newspapers to tell them about my feat.” Before you read on, can you guess how Siri transcribed this sentence?

Of course, “Maybe I should contact the newspapers to tell them about my feet” is perfectly grammatical, and it would even make sense in some contexts. The problem is that in order to arrive at the correct interpretation, the listener has to hold in his or her mind a continually developing sense of what is being discussed. This sounds simple, and indeed it is—for humans. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!), however, it is still beyond the capabilities of even the most powerful modern computers.

To summarize, it is important for learners to understand that the reason they cannot “hear” clearly what proficient speakers of English are saying is that the speakers are not saying it clearly in the first place, so the sooner they give up on that idea, the easier it will be for them. Other proficient speakers can’t “hear” English in that sense either. What allows us to decode the signal and understand what is being said is our knowledge of English vocabulary and grammar, and our ability to keep track of topics over the course of a conversation. As I said, we listen with our brains, not our ears.

If we step outside our ESL classrooms for a moment and think about the mode of language that we use most often in “real” life, we might say “speaking” by reflex, or we might pause and name one of the other three modes (listening, reading, and writing) after a second thought.

Research built up since the 1930s or so indicates that listening is actually number one.  Something like 45% of human language use amounts to listening.  Speaking comes in second at about 30% (Feyten 1991).  Keeping our ears pricked up appears to be key to daily human communication.

So how can we respect and use this in the classroom?  One typical classroom task that requires intensive, concentrated listening is dictation.  Here students listen not only for the gist, but rather for the entirety of the message, every word and sound.

True enough.  But wouldn’t some say it’s outdated?  And what about shorthand?  Should we teach that at the same time? Are any of you wincing, cringing (and perhaps even LOL!) at the idea of using traditional dictation methods?

On the other hand, perhaps dictation has a place in testing.  That use has had a measurable, if small, effect in recent decades.  Some would surely argue as much.  Others would eventually mention benefits related to word decoding skills and short-term memory training.

Still, most of us would probably settle on the conclusion that dictation has little to do with real, live verbal communication.

Be that as it would be, I know of a dictation-based activity which involves not only listening skills but speaking, reading, and writing skills as well- and it requires students to engage in realistic, meaningful communication and cooperative learning too.  Maybe you’ve heard of it: it’s called dictogloss!

Dictogloss, an activity introduced by Ruth Wajnryb in 1990, involves students in dictation (the “dicto-“ part) as well as paraphrase or interpretation (the “-gloss” part) of texts.

The activity is composed of four stages:

1. Preparation

The topic of the text and any special or unfamiliar vocabulary items are presented.

2. Dictation

The text is read out at natural speed, twice in a row. Students are not allowed to take notes during the first reading, but they are specifically asked to do so during the second.  It is crucial to inform students that they should, during this second round, jot down key words and phrases- not complete sentences.

3. Reconstruction

Working in small groups, students are asked to share their notes and create their version of the text, a version which does not have to be identical to the original but does have to be grammatically correct and does have to approximate the original text’s organization and meaning.

4. Analysis and Correction

Students are asked to correct any errors that they have introduced into the text. This is ordinarily done at the class-general level, where students of different small groups can speak up and share their results and thoughts.  

Stage 3, the reconstruction stage, is the core of the process. It’s at this phase that students:

• work at achieving a specific goal and engage in meaningful communication;
• cooperate by sharing notes, discussing possible solutions or answers, and discarding problematic ideas;
• pay attention to the forms and meanings of words and phrases, but ultimately work beyond the sentence level to construct a cohesive rendering of the text.

In a 1996 article, Toshiyo Nabei reports the findings of a dictogloss-based study that she conducted.  Her data on occasions of the reconstruction stage reveal that when students were engaged in language-centered discussions, they focused on grammar in almost 50% of cases and on content in some 35% of cases.  It seems that the activity stimulated conversation about both forms and meanings.

My favorite thing about dictogloss is that it draws students into a situation where they are compelled, regardless of the many details of sentence construction, to shape their version of the text into a kind of unique whole.

I may use dictogloss a bit more next semester.  Many of my students are struggling with the uses of the passive voice as well as the uses of several prepositions. I’ll see if dictogloss can help us out there.

Has any of you used dictogloss in teaching grammatical topics?  Any success stories (or disaster stories!) to share?

References

Feyten, C. (1991). The power of listening ability: an overlooked dimension in language acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 75 (2): 173-180.

Nabei, T. (1996). Dictogloss: Is It an Effective Language Learning Task? Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 12 (1): 59-74.

Wajnryb, R. (1990). Grammar Dictation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

In my previous piece for “Teacher Talk,” I focused on English grammar and usage in the spoken language as reflections of cultural shifts.  What I’d like to focus on now has to do with a cultural as well as an educational shift over the past several years. I’m talking about certain aspects of punctuation with people not taking care anymore to punctuate according to tradition. This trend may also be happening because of the sloppy way people write when they send e-mails and text messages. Let’s look at some items that seem to be casualties of the ever-increasing loss or downgrading of language arts programs at least in American schools and the influence of electronic toys used for written communication.

First off, there’s the hyphen. Punctuation marks were created to aid readers, to make phrasing clearer and more easily recognizable for readers. Here’s a case in point. If I write here Man Eating Crocodile, which picture below reflects what I’ve written?

In actuality, it’s the picture on the left that depicts what I’ve written, but a show entitled Dangerous Encounters on the cable television network NatGeoWild (National Geographic Wild) used that title for one of its episodes. Of course they should have written Man-Eating Crocodile. That hyphen shows readers that man and eating are being used together as a single adjective to describe a ferocious crocodile. The hyphen helps readers to understand that and phrase it properly in their minds. In fact, the rules of prosody in English dictate a change in how these words should even be spoken if the hyphen is present or absent. I’m going to use capital letters and bold face to show which words or parts of words receive more or less equal primary stress in the flow of speech. Say both phrases out loud a few times and you’ll see what I mean:

man eating crocodile = MAN EATing CROCodile

man-eating crocodile = MAN eating CROCodile

Another example that I love is the following title of a show which appeared in the TV listings for the Science Channel: China’s Man Made Marvels. Does that refer to a famous Chinese man who made marvels, or does it mean marvels made in China by human beings rather than by nature? Going strictly by what you see here in print rather than what your logic tells you, you figure it out! By the way, did it come to mind that if we insert a hyphen in the correct place, we’ve got another one of those phrases that aren’t considered “politically correct” anymore? Yep! China’s Man-Made Marvels! Should it be China’s Human-Made Marvels or perhaps China’s People-Made Marvels? Food for thought.

Not that I want to belabor the issue, but a brand-new series just started on yet another cable television network that I couldn’t pass up mentioning here. This one has a bit of a different twist. The punctuation used in the title is correct, but the voiceover announcer who’s talking about the new series in the network’s promotional spots totally disregards the punctuation and screws up the prosody! The series is called Monster In-Laws. He should say MON-ster IN-laws, but instead he says MONtser in laws. Tsk. Tsk.

And here are yet two more examples I’d like to offer to make my point. One was actually written in a newsletter on archaeology by a person with a master’s degree: “There was no don’t ask don’t tell policy to be repealed for the body of potential Roman soldiers, but …” This one’s got problems on many levels, including capitalization as well as missing hyphens and quotation marks! In my style of writing it would be There was no “Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell” policy …, although I imagine there may be other ways to help readers clearly discern the content. The other was written by a medical doctor in a letter to his patients, telling them he was planning to close his practice temporarily: “Because of a once in a lifetime opportunity, I …” Since the phrase in question is so well known, readers will more than likely not have a problem discerning that those four words (once in a lifetime) actually form one adjective describing the opportunity, but traditionally this would be written Because of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I …

Another casualty of the lack of care in teaching punctuation in our schools or in using punctuation in electronic communications is the apostrophe. First let’s discuss how it’s not being used traditionally to add the –s genitive to a noun. Here are some recent examples I’ve seen: in our minds eye; Brides Maids (the title of a movie); Kids Room, (a Website on AOL Games), and the title of another movie, Two Weeks Notice. Traditionally, these would be punctuated in our mind’s eye; Brides’ Maids; Kids’ Room; Two Weeks’ Notice. And last but not least, in an article on contagious diseases that I was reading, I found “Tufts University is now offering a masters program …” Of course it should be master’s.

Another situation in which the apostrophe is being dropped is when writing decades or numbers. It used to be that when something that normally doesn’t have a plural form is pluralized, ’s would be tagged onto it, so we’d write 1,000’s of people or the 1960’s. Nowadays you’ll see these written as 1,000s and the 1960s. This has become so commonplace that now both ways of writing such plural forms are acceptable.

But let’s not forget the comma. Here’s why the comma can be so important. A picture on a Website showed this:

And this was in the banner on that Website:

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’RE OUR 200000th ONLINE CUSTOMER!

YOU’VE WON THE GRAND PRIZE!

Wow! You can get cockeyed before you figure out what the number is. Had they just inserted that little comma, 200,000, it would have been much easier to decipher that cipher!

One last casualty I’ll mention is the lack of quotation marks in some newspaper and magazine headlines. If readers aren’t familiar with what’s being referred to in the following example, they’ll probably be at a loss to interpret what this says:

14-YEAR-OLD IT GETS BETTER FILMMAKER COMMITS SUICIDE AFTER ENDLESS BULLYING

Even though I was familiar with the reference here, I still had trouble figuring it out for a couple of moments. “It Gets Better” is the name of a Website. Had the writer simply used quotation marks or even italics in this headline, everything would have been much clearer. Even if I weren’t familiar with that Website, I would at least know it’s the title of something:

14-YEAR-OLD “IT GETS BETTER” FILMMAKER COMMITS SUICIDE AFTER ENDLESS BULLYING

OR

14-YEAR-OLD IT GETS BETTER FILMMAKER COMMITS SUICIDE AFTER ENDLESS BULLYING

The point is, the reader shouldn’t have to stop reading to figure this out. And isn’t it interesting that the person who wrote this headline at least had the presence of mind to hyphenate the head noun properly (14-year-old), but failed to use quotation marks or italics for the title of that Website?

With the ever-increasing use of text messaging and the ongoing use of e-mail, I think the future doesn’t look too bright for the continued traditional use of punctuation. That may just be a losing battle for traditionalists like me. I wonder if your outlook is a gloomy as mine. What do you say?

After many years of teaching without access to the internet, I am overjoyed to finally be able to take advantage of some of the great teaching resources on the great ole World Wide Web, particularly those on YouTube. Because of my late start with this resource, I understand that I am behind the curve, so forgive me if some of my enthusiasm seems a bit out of date. There is just so much great stuff out there, if you look hard enough! In addition, the clips are generally bite-sized, so they are perfect for a bit of English practice.

I teach young learners, and I can personally vouch for the sedative quality that video clips seem to have. Nothing quiets my students down faster than the promise of a video activity. The key is to make the video more than just the video. There always has to be a purpose, even if the kids are too busy watching the clip to notice.

Kramer and the Past Tense
I was having a hard time coming up with fun activities for my students to practice the simple past tense. They need so much review to help them remember the irregular forms, but that repetition can get boring fast. So, I showed them a clip from Seinfeld available on YouTube. In it, Jerry is going out for the day and Kramer is in his apartment. The next 1 ½ minutes shows Kramer doing crazy things like riding a bike, putting out a fire, starting a fight, and hosting a party. You get the idea. At the end of the day, Kramer is asleep on the sofa when Jerry comes home and gets irritated because Kramer had not used a coaster.

This clip works particularly well because there is no dialogue, so students can focus on the action. The video is also a great match for simple past practice because, as I show the video, I ask the students to list all the things they can remember in answer to the question, “What did Kramer do?” I show the video several times, often pausing to give students time to write. Then, they share their lists with the class at the end and I correct any mistakes they may have made with the simple past. It’s a lot of fun.

Niles and the Third Conditional
One of my all-time favorite TV moments involves Niles Crane from the comedy Frasier. In this clip, Niles is waiting for a date and he notices that the crease in his pants isn’t as sharp as he’s like. He tries to iron them and in a hilarious chain of events causes a fire in Frasier’s apartment. Again, this clip has no dialogue, so students can concentrate on the action. I show them the video a couple of times and them have them work in pairs to write sentences using the third conditional, such as “If Niles hadn’t cut his finger, he wouldn’t have fainted.” I don’t pre-teach any vocabulary; I just circulate and supply words as necessary. But, you might want to consider it because certain vocabulary items (fire extinguisher, for instance) might be too frustrating for some students.

I Love Lucy and Speaking
In 2005, I attended a session at TESOL called “Practicing Structured Long Turns Using DVD Clips.” In this presentation, Ron Belisle and Anita Aden demonstrated how to use video clips to prompt students to speak quickly and descriptively. In our classes, we focus so much on accuracy, I was intrigued to learn about an activity that promoted fluency. To begin, divide your students into partners and assign each partner a role, either listener or speaker. The listeners should sit so they can’t see the video and the speakers should sit so they can. Then, play the video clip and have the speakers describe the action to the listeners in real time. After, the listeners re-tell the story to me based on what their partners told them. Then we all watch the video together. Finally, have the partners switch roles, so the speaker becomes the listener and vice versa and play another video clip. I like using 2 clips from a famous episode of I Love Lucy in which the ladies and men switch (1950s) roles and the men stay at home while the women go out to work. In the first clip, Ricky and Fred are trying to cook rice and chicken to hilarious results.  In the second clip, Lucy and Ethel struggle to work in a chocolate factory.

Using video clips in the class is a fun way to facilitate learning. I have suggested 3 of my favorites, but I am sure you have some of your own great ideas. Care to share?

A culture doesn’t remain stagnant. No matter how much a people may try to keep it from changing, their culture will inevitably change as time goes by. Even the ancient Egyptians, who passionately believed in the concept of ma’at, that the universe should remain stagnant and that their ways of doing things should never change, couldn’t stop that natural evolution from happening. Witness changes in their architecture, in their religion, and yes, in their language over the three millennia that their civilization lasted.

Being that cultural shifts are inevitable, we can see how English is reflecting some of these shifts. We don’t even need to be objective witnesses at a distance to recognize when these cultural shifts affect the language; we can be right in the midst of all the action. In fact, in just my lifetime I’ve noticed some rather interesting changes which seem to have become acceptable now, even though some of them weren’t acceptable when I was much younger. I’m not here to judge what’s going on, just to report on it, but this is the kind of thing that you as ELT professionals may choose to mention in order to teach language in the most accurate way possible.

The first thing that comes to mind is, of course, the deliberate effort since the start of women’s liberation in the 1960s to substitute nouns that clearly identify men or women with genderless nouns. We already had some like that, e.g., teacher and doctor, but the culture began to change lots of other nouns, especially for jobs that would now be done by women as well as men: fireman to firefighter; stewardess to flight attendant; mailman to mail or letter carrier, and cameraman to camera operator to name just four. There were other changes as well, such as mankind to humankind. And then there’s been the ongoing practice of dropping the female form of certain nouns and just using the male form for both genders: murderer and no more murderess; heir and no more heiress; actor and no more actress. Then there’s that really sexist term, an old wives’ tale. I think that’s been turned into an urban legend. But what do we do with noun phrases like manhole, man hours, and manpower? Hmm … Well, as I said, this is still an ongoing process.

Next, I’ve noticed a change in matters of linguistic “politeness.” I clearly remember my parents and teachers correcting me when I was a kid if I said something like Me and my brother as the compound subject of a sentence (Me and my brother shot some hoops Saturday afternoon.) I would immediately be told to say My brother and I … I was taught that it was polite to show deference to the other person, and that by mentioning that other person first, I would be speaking politely. Yet I hear more and more people say things such as Me and my brother as the compound subject of the sentence, and very few people seem to wince.

Similarly, just the other day I heard a lawyer interviewed on TV who said, “So her and I went over to the appellate court and …” Wow! He botched one personal pronoun, but at least he did show deference to her instead of to himself! More and more people seem to be mixing up the declensions of personal pronouns, using the object form in lieu of the subject form, and then, in the very next sentence, getting the forms right. Amazing! “So her and I went over to the appellate court and she told a clerk that …” There you go! And it’s fascinating that people who tend to speak like this will say things like Me and him were just hanging out, but will never say Me was just hanging out. It obviously has something to do with that construction of compound subject X and Y + verb phrase, but never just subject X + verb phrase. Who knows . . . This may become a new rule of grammar at some point in the future.

Getting back to politeness, there’s also a shift with formality in language. I’ve noticed something going on over the past few years concerning how people making business phone calls address the customers they’re talking to: The phone will ring, I’ll answer it, and the voice on the other end will say something like, “Hello. This is Acme Pest Control calling. Is this Richard?” Or sometimes I’ll get, “Is this Mr. Richard?” “No,” I’ll say, “this is Mr. Firsten.” I know what this stems from. There’s a cultural shift going on to do away with formality and go more with a friendly, chummy approach when dealing with people, even in some business situations. It’s supposed to make customers feel more at ease, more like they’re talking to a buddy. This is actually mentioned in many training sessions for employees who deal with customer service! Back when I was young, nobody from a company would have dared address my parents by their first names during a business phone call, yet that seems to be more the norm these days.

So there you have it. Some cultural shifts reflected in English grammar and usage. For the most part, I’ve tried my best not to judge. As far as teaching English goes, I think we need to keep our ears and eyes open to take note of any changes in how the majority of English speakers say or write things, and to decide whether or not these changes should be incorporated in our lessons or at least mentioned. You’ll have to be the judge of that.

By David Barker

When I worked in Singapore, I lived in an apartment block where most of the other inhabitants were Chinese Singaporeans. I regularly met other people from the block in the elevators and in the food courts, and they were always very friendly and chatty. Unsurprisingly, the first question people normally asked me was, “Where are you from?” I found this quite normal and inoffensive, but I have to admit that I was more than a bit thrown by the inevitable second question the first few times I was asked: “How much rent do you pay?” Just to be clear, I am not saying that one or two people asked me this—almost everyone did! The reason that people asked this was apparently that most ex-pats lived in much more expensive places, and the Singaporeans were fascinated to know whether we were paying the same rent as them or whether we were paying more. Unfortunately, of course, “How much rent do you pay?” is not a question that people would normally ask someone they had just met in my country, so being asked it made me reluctant to develop the conversation with that person any further.

Of course, this was Singapore, so the problem was not one of language; it was more a question of cultural differences. When a language barrier is added, the problem becomes even more acute, and learners of English can often unwittingly create a bad first impression by asking or saying something inappropriate, or something that causes them to be perceived as being dull. In other words, the problem for a language learner might not how they are saying something, but rather the fact that they are saying it at all.

I have been living in Japan for a total of 15 years now, and I often find myself not wanting to talk to a Japanese person because of something they have asked me or a comment they have made. I should point out, of course, that this is not something that is unique to Japan. I have been embarrassed many times while walking in Britain with Japanese people to hear my countrymen screaming “Ni hao!” at them from across the street. In most cases, I think these people are trying to be friendly, but that does not make it any less inappropriate.

Broadly speaking, there are two categories of “things that you should not say to people from other countries.” These are:

1) Questions or comments that may be inappropriate, rude, or even offensive.
2) Questions or comments that are not rude, but that will annoy the other person because they have heard them so often.

An example of the first category would be a question like “How old are you?” or a comment like “Wow, you have such a big nose!” The interesting thing about this category is that many of the questions are ones that no Japanese person would ever dream of asking another Japanese person that they had just met. “How old are you?” is a prime example of this. For some reason, people of all nationalities have a tendency to forget social norms when they speak to someone from another country. It is as if they think that because the person does not share their cultural background, all bets are off and anything goes.

A more problematic type of question from the first category is one that would be appropriate to ask someone from your own country, but that might seem very strange to other people. For example, British people are known all over the world for our penchant for endless (and largely pointless) discussions about the weather. When we learn another language, therefore, we need to learn whether that topic is an appropriate one for people of the other culture.

In Japan, the default topic for general conversation with people you do not know very well is not the weather, but food. It is almost impossible for a foreigner to have even a short conversation with a Japanese person without being asked about their culinary preferences. When I first came to Japan, I assumed that I was being asked about this because of my “foreigness,” and I found it more than a bit annoying. One day, however, I was in a car driving to a ski resort with two Japanese people who talked for—and I am not exaggerating here—more than an hour about the different types of breakfast eaten by people from Osaka and people from Tokyo. Apparently, food was something of a hot topic for the Japanese!

This discovery led me to realize that if I wanted to talk to Japanese people in Japanese, I would need to understand and accept that it is part of their culture to discuss food with people they have just met, no matter how strange that topic might be for me. I dare say a Japanese person I did not know would be a bit surprised if I tried to strike up a conversation about the weather! Equally, however, if I am teaching a Japanese person how to communicate in English, then it is an important part of my job to teach them what is and what is not an appropriate subject to talk about with someone that you do not know very well.

The second category I mentioned above is a bit more complicated. It basically consists of things that would not bother a short-term visitor to Japan, but that get extremely annoying for people who have lived here for a long time. As I mentioned above, Japanese people like to ask each other about what foods they like and dislike. In the case of foreigners, however, the discussion generally defaults to one question: “Do you like natto?” For those who do not know, natto is a kind of fermented bean that has a very strong taste. Many Japanese people do not like it, and it is almost impossible for a foreigner to meet a Japanese person and not be asked, “Do you like natto?” within the first minute or so. I sometimes wonder what happens in meetings between senior diplomats from Japan and those from the West: “So, Mrs. Clinton, putting aside these pesky North Koreans for a minute, can I ask you something that I’ve been wondering about for quite some time now…?”

Apart from the fact that anyone who has been in Japan for any length of time becomes utterly sick of being asked this question, there is also the problem of appearing to be looking for differences between you and the person you are talking to. One explanation I have heard for why Japanese people do this suggests that it reaffirms their sense of Japanese “uniqueness” to establish clear differences between themselves and people from other countries. Whether that is true or not, English teachers need to explain to our Japanese students that it is more productive when speaking in English to try to find things you have in common with the person you are talking to rather than things that accentuate the differences between you.

Anyway, the reason I wanted to write about this topic was that I would love to hear about the experiences of teachers in other countries. Do particular nationalities have a tendency to ask a particular type of question? Are your students ever offended by things that would be quite acceptable in English-speaking countries? How do you address this topic with your students, and what is their reaction?

Look forward to hearing your stories.

After about a million years teaching adults, I have gone over to the dark side. In September, I started a new job as the English as an Additional Language Immersion instructor at a private British school in Belgium. This means that now I spend my days with students who are 11 to 16 years old. What’s the big deal? Teaching English is teaching English is teaching English, right? At least I had thought so, since so many of the evening adjunct instructors in my college in the USA had been public school teachers by day. I was about to find out how wrong I had been.

Thirteen is not the New Thirty!

Teaching children is not the same as teaching adults. For starters, kids cry all the time. Just last week, a boy cried because I gave him a (much deserved) 20 minute detention. Another boy cried because I took away his cell phone in the class. And another boy cried because he got in a dispute with another student and he felt I wasn’t listening to his side of the story.

At first, I took each incident of bawling seriously. After all, if an adult cried in my class (on the rare time it happened in my 16 years of teaching) it was a big deal. But, kids, especially pre-teens (are they called “tweens” now?) and teenagers are hormone-filled, emotional messes much of the time, and after a bit of sobbing, everything returns to normal remarkably quickly.

Pick up your Pen. Open your Books.

Another big difference I have noticed is that children need to be told to do everything. Nothing is common sense to them. For instance, I read announcements to my class every morning. I have to stop after each announcement and remind them that if they want to join the world drumming group, they should make a note in their planner so that they remember when and where to go. Adults, for the most part, already know this. I never had to configure a rewards system to get my adult students to remember to bring their dictionaries to class every day. In fact, when I taught adults, I just assumed that if they didn’t, for instance, bring a pencil, they would figure something out. They usually knew how to organize their papers (perhaps by tossing them in the trash) without me sitting them down with a hole-punch. Well, surprise, surprise, this kind of knowledge isn’t innate.

Could I do it?

However, I think the biggest difference I have seen between young learners and older learners is the resilience my students display on a daily basis. I am not suggesting that adults don’t have the ability to deal with a demanding linguistic situation, but I am constantly amazed by these kids in a way I have never been by my adults. Can you imagine being moved from your home without any control over where you are going or why? Can you imagine, then, being plopped down in a job in your new country not speaking a word of the language and being expected not only to function, but to succeed at your work? Remember, you don’t know anyone else and no one speaks your native language. Good luck! One of my most delightful students, a boy from Indonesia, is in this very situation, except instead of work, he is expected to thrive in a competitive academic setting. And, in spite of the tremendous pressure of this situation, he manages to smile and laugh and make friends. His mainstream teachers seem to love him and he is doing well in the classes he is taking.

Often, because it is “just school” we may underestimate the stresses faced by these students; however, in spite of a little crying from time to time, they handle pressure with grace and good humor that would send many adults spiraling toward therapy. I am constantly amazed by these kids, especially when they remember to bring their dictionaries!