Is "just" a female word?

It has been many months since I took the time to write a think-piece here. One of my 2015 New Year's resolutions was to save my blog. However, instead, I worked on activating my Picturing English and my Mbote from San Diego (travel and wildlife observations) blogs. I also began a new career path, working in a community college.

A while ago, I ran across this article about Words to Eliminate from your Vocabulary but I never took the time to fully reflect on it here. "Just" and "that" were on the elimination list. Subsequently, I noticed another article re-posted on LinkedIn about the use of "just" in speaking - about how women tend to use it more and how it weakens whatever we express. After Ellen Leanse published results of her informal survey comparing the usage of "just" by men and women in a business context, the idea that women mark themselves as weaker or more tentative when speakking has gone viral.  More significantly to me, I realize that I am one of those women who regularly uses "just." Consequently, now every time I write or hear myself say "just," I remove the word or remind myself to avoid it in the future.

Of course, there has been a backlash to this view. After doing a little "googling" around, I have decided not to throw out all my justs.  Last month an alternative view was published. The article is long because the writer substantiates claims with citations and the research of academics. Krissy Eliot has published another fascinating examination of how women's speech is scrutinized and depicted in American culture. (Watch the video, at least.)

Men's speech is the standard to which my speech is compared. That is definitely something I need to think about before I automatically remove all justs - and you know which "just" I'm talking about, right? (There are many meanings of just, but the one I'm writing about isn't well defined at Merriam-Webster.) 

NB:  As always, I welcome my readers thoughts on any post. I also express my apologies to anyone who has been a follower and stopped visiting me regularly. This year I have only added about four new posts here, most of which have been directed toward ESOL teaching with lesson materials and thoughts about how to be more effective in the classroom. I feel liberated writing again about our many Englishes!

Adorkable and Hangry?

As an English teacher - and one who teaches to non-native speakers of English, I am often struck by words that are seemingly "invented" by speakers every year.  I often wonder whether these words sometimes crop up as slips of the tongue. For example, years ago, I remember meeting and talking with a very distinguished French professor in social science (Professor Bruno Latour) while he was at UCSD.  I was very nervous and excited to meet him, so as I was describing my observations at a symposium on chimpanzees, instead of saying "chimpanzee symposium," I said "chimposium." As soon as I said the word, he laughed and thought it was quite clever. In fact, the new word was what came out of my mouth as a result of being nervous and speaking quickly. I've used the word subsequently, of course, and it's possible that the term might have spread in our community of anthropologists, primatologists, and sociologists of science to refer to subsequent gatherings of chimpanzee experts. In fact, I found the word was invented and used more recently here with a slightly different meaning..

There is a TED talk that discusses neologisms such as adorkable and hangry (the title of this article) and how they become "real" words. The topic was especially intriguing to me because of my own memorable innovation (it's possible that many others have made that same slip of the tongue, however).  Because of that phenomenon, I can easily imagine words like "adorkable" (an adorable dork?) and "hangry" (simultaneous feeling of being hungry and angry) slipping out of someone's mouth while trying to describe their feelings of being both hungry and angry. I can also imagine listeners' approval and recognition of an imaginative new word and of it spreading from that one listener and speaker to his or her community and beyond. Ann Curzan doesn't address the "invention" of words such as "adorkable" and "hangry," but because of my own experience, I believe that sometimes new words or usages of words come into being as productions of some natural wiring in the brain that produces these combination words. In fact, an article about slips of the tongue and Freudian slips delves into this phenomenon and how these expressions can easily get picked up by an internet-wired community of speakers. I never tire of learning about language.

Language and Thought ("Futured" and "Futureless" Languages)

Back in the 20th century before laptops, smart phones, and the Internet dominated student lives, I took my first course in anthropology. Since that time, I have been fascinated by the concept of cultural relativism and Benjamin Lee Whorf's linguistic relativism (or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), which views language as a cultural construct that shapes our thoughts and the way in which we view the world.

The academic debate about the influence of language on thought goes back at least a few centuries, and the discussion continues to pop up and to cause me to reflect on my English teaching practices.Students are often confused when they try to translate English into their own language or when they seek a word in English from their native tongue. Sometimes there isn't an equivalent concept, term, or item that exists in both languages. Most translating dictionaries do not show the range of usages of a single word in another language, so how far should I go in explaining to students that when they enter another language, their thinking and behavior might change?

Last year, I ran across this TED blog post and talk which made me pause to think more globally about human language, the English I teach, the vocabulary that enters American English from other languages, and the grammatical rules that continue to be broken and change as my American English becomes a species of English.

The findings of Keith Chen presented in this TED talk are provocative. (The published paper related to the talk is accessible here for free.) Chen's long-term research and surveys provide some compelling evidence to support the view that something basic like the existence of a future tense or lack of one can result in noticeable and measurable differences in behavior. Patterns of saving, for example, are correlated with the existence of a future tense. Wow!

Build Vocabulary with Signs

Here's a link to Picturing English for a look at a way to raise your vocabulary to an advanced level, even if you're a native speaker! Wherever you stop along the road or highway, keep your eyes open for signs full of new words. If you find a cool sign, please send it on to me here at Many Englishes or Picturing English.  I'll post it for all.  Enjoy the rest stop!  

Reviving "Picturing English"

My sister blog "Picturing English" is being updated to another format, using photographs instead of original cartoons. The concept of the blog is the same as before. That is, for me, "a picture (any kind of picture) is (still) worth a thousand words." However, there is a twist on this notion as my photographs will very often be of signs or written objects.

This past year, I've taken a renewed interest in signs, advertisements, and headlines as a way to learn vocabulary. I love picture dictionaries, but not all vocabulary can be illustrated in such texts. Not all vocabulary can be mimed or acted out or easily drawn. Signs can be photographed, and in that way, they can be viewed as illustrations. The color, shape, font, background scenery or backdrop, and any accompanying drawings or designs provide context. All of those go to illustrate important meanings. I hope the readers of Many Englishes will find Picturing English to be a useful supplement to learning and mastering English.

Some Tips on Writing (Blogging) Well

I haven't written about blogging for a while, but my daughter has sent me a link to a great site for copywriters.  I am passing along this link about several common writing mistakes because I am sure that you want to avoid these errors.  They are errors that ESL and English instructors everywhere try to avoid making themselves and try to get their students to avoid making.  Sometimes my ESL students seem unconvinced that the rules I teach are ones that native speakers need to follow, too.  Maybe these tips and this site will reinforce my lessons or yours.

Song Playlist Gadget for Blogs

I'm a big fan of using songs in the classroom to teach pronunciation, rhythm, and vocabulary, so I was very excited to discover this gadget to attach to my blog. It comes from Playlist.com and allows the user to put a music player into his/her blog, website, facebook, or just about anywhere else on the internet - and it's free!

I put one of my favorites on the list, Kenny Rogers' 'The Gambler', which I've actually got a lesson plan for on this site. Unfortunately, I couldn't find another popular one for lower level students, called 'Sing' by Karen Carpenter. Nevertheless, check out all the songs and this gadget/widget. You may find that you like it well enough to put it on your own blog.

Putting More Color in 'Many Englishes'

For two years, I've been blogging away here at 'Many Englishes' and apparently never noticed that I could write using a rainbow of colors. Hmmm.... This is an exciting discovery! In addition, I see that I can justify or align my writing to the right or left, center it, or have bulletpoints automatically generated. How did I not notice these features earlier? I will definitely exploit them in the future. Oh boy!

'You're 20 minutes early for the iBT, so you're too late!'

I thought we had everything worked out for the internet-based TOEFL. I checked my students online profile, and the name matched his passport perfectly. Nevertheless, on Monday following the scheduled Saturday test, I queried Patrick about his exam. Well, actually, he wasn't able to take the test in the end.

"Whaaat!! Whyyyy?," I asked, gasping. He was 20 minutes EARLY; therefore, he was too LATE to take the exam. According to ETS rules, you should arrive 30 minutes before the iBT to ensure that there is enough time to check you in before the exam. However, depending on which test center you choose, this arrival time is flexible. After all, if there is no line of students waiting to be processed for the exam, it does not take a half-hour to check in. Unfortunately, in the case of my student, although his test center was not crowded, the person at the front desk was poorly trained. Despite there being no line of waiting students, Patrick was prevented from taking the test as planned, and , of course, lost his registration fee too.

If this is standard policy across all ETS centers, why were some of my students downtown being admitted five minutes before the exam and others being told they were too late when they were 20 minutes early? Obviously, one ETS center manager was trained to provide good service whereas the other manager was trained to follow directions to the point where she behaved like a mindless, thoughtless robot. In the process, a young, non-native English speaker was turned away from the TOEFL test center feeling crushed, angry, sad, defeated, robbed.

As a TOEFL instructor at a relatively small school, I can only imagine that this maltreatment of students is going on all the time across the USA. All I can do now is to get the word out to other teachers and TOEFL students. READ and PAY ATTENTION TO EVERY PRINTED WORD on your registration form and profile for the internet-based TOEFL.

1. Make sure that your profile name matches your passport name EXACTLY (i.e., if you have five names, put them all there. There is no space for middle-name, so put the middle names in the last name box. Better yet, go to the test center and register face-to-face and get a written note from the person who registered you stating the date, time, and place that you got registered.)

2. Arrive early - at least 45 minutes, but maybe one hour! early and check in at the front desk. If you arrive 29 minutes early, be prepared to argue for your right to sit and take the test, since you're supposed to arrive 30 minutes EARLY.

3. If you encounter any problems at the test center, do not leave without getting a piece of paper with signatures of the test center manager, clerks, and so on. Document what happened and why you were denied admittance to the exam. Make ETS personnel accountable by getting their names and contact numbers.

Good luck!

Word Clouds

You can create colorful and thought-provoking images of words using this wonderful tool called Wordle. This is one of my creations with a bunch of random antonyms. Can you match these opposites? Teachers and students can both have fun with this. Choose your own color combinations and the font you like. You can also print out your creations or save them to a permanent gallery.

Random thoughts on iBT, CAE, and blogging

I'm switching hats again, this time back to CAE after a break in order to teach a four-week TOEFL crash course. So far, despite having had only five students for the iBT class, there have been good results. A Swiss student reached his goal of 100 (out of 120), so he will be able to come back to the US and get into a choice college or university (assuming his undergraduate grades are also at a high level). There was another strong TOEFL candidate from Austria who passed the CAE in December. He also has a good chance of breaking 100.

Now I'm getting back into gear to teach our new CAE Preparatory Course, using the Oxford Series called 'CAE Result.' I used the book last year in the fall, on a 15-hour/week schedule. This time I will be following our school's 2009 curriculum of 22.5 hours/week dedicated to Cambridge prep. Most instructors and students seemed pleased with the extended hours in the winter session, so we'll continue.

Each time I teach a closed class, I try to think of ways to use this blog. Last night I put up another calendar from Calendars Net (my last one from widgetbox disappeared after a year, and I never bothered to replace it). In the past, students liked having an internet calendar where they could see reminders of homework assignments and upcoming tests or activities. I'll see if I can get that going again.

My plan this year to do more blogging has been a positive experience. Though I hadn't planned on teaching a blogging class, that recent experience forced me to become familiar with wordpress.com, which has proven to be quite user-friendly, friendlier than it was a few years ago. If you haven't visited Our Hi Five yet, please drop by and leave a comment on one of the student's posts. I will try to keep that blog alive after school with any interested students.

ESL Students in San Diego Start a Blog

We finally published several posts on a blog created by and for students studying ESL here in San Diego. It's called 'Our Hi Five'. I hope that readers of 'Many Englishes' will check it out from time to time. Bloggers at 'Our Hi Five' are intermediate level, and we have an ambitious goal of producing one new post per student per week. So far, we have some recommendations for local restaurants, a description of Lichtenstein, and an introduction to the La Jolla seals and the Children's Pool controversy. Enjoy!

Working with Widgets

You may recall that in an earlier post last year, I happily announced that I had discovered 'widgets' and had placed a clock on my blog. Now I'm unhappy to report that my clock has disappeared. I'm not sure what happened to it. My unverified explanation is that the site that allowed me to download the clock for free no longer supports that particular widget clock. (It also disappeared from my wiki.) I have, therefore, removed my timepiece and will be searching for a new gadget to replace it.

Picturing English

If you haven't yet noticed, I have a sister blog called 'Picturing English,' which I just started last month with the help of some relatives who are skilled artists. I give them the story concept, and they create my pictures. All of the cartoons are based on true stories from students and from my own experiences teaching English. I hope 'Picturing English' stimulates your English cells. Enjoy the cartoons! Maybe you'll see yourself in one of them.

Free 'Fun with Grammar' @ Azargrammar.com

For those of you who have read my previous posting about Betty Azar and Michael Swan, there is some exciting news for friends and users of Azar's grammar book series. Betty Azar has recently put up a new website. I've checked it out, and you should, too. Because it's brand new, we need to spread the word so that folks are aware of this resource.

One of the exciting attractions is that Suzanne Woodward's 'Fun with Grammar' book is available there for free downloading. 'Fun with Grammar' is filled with interesting ideas and game materials to get students to use their grammar communicatively. It's great to have this book available for teachers who have internet access. You can print out pages from the book as you need them.

Check out the many features of the Azar Grammar website, including a blog and a moderated forum for discussion among ESL/EFL instructors. Currently, Betty Azar is requesting feedback from instructors about correcting errors in writing. If you're interested, please join the discussion there.

Cleaning up my blog and adding a clock

There is always a choice when it comes to working on my blog. Being a neophyte at this (thus everything takes me ten times longer than a savvier blogger would), I'm in a constant battle with myself. Should I just focus on content, or should I invest more time now trying to organize what I've already written and make my growing number of entries easier to find and access?

A few weekends ago, I did reorganize my blog, adding a directory and labels to my posts. Another modification was the addition of Twitter, which simply encourages me to make a habit of pausing and taking stock of what I'm thinking or doing.

Today I hid my archive which may bother people trying to find an August 2007 post, for example, but I'm trying to get a handle on best use of the navigation panel space. Since I show five posts per page now, it's easy to see the most recent additions. I haven't learned yet how to show only part of a post so that a reader can choose to read a long entry or move quickly on to the next one.

This year is the first time I've used the calendar with my Cambridge students, and some of the CAE students say it's really nice to have the homework posted here. They've even asked if I could put up homework assignment reminders for their Tues-Thurs teacher (which I now also do).

Today I added a clock to my blog which I hope readers find useful and even thought-provoking. I tend to lose track of time when I'm visiting a site. Our lives these days are so much governed by the clock that perhaps it will give my readers in other parts of the USA and overseas a sense of what time zone I'm living in. Hope you enjoy the new features. As always, user feedback is welcome.

Getting back to life as an IEP private school ESL instructor

Taking a summer break from year-round teaching was the best thing ever. In addition to having some time to enjoy our new backyard and the wildlife that has come to settle in (having gotten rid of thirsty, weedy grass expanses in the front and back), getting together with some friends and family, and traveling/hiking, I have also been able to start this blog and wiki. I am excited to see if the program works at all with my students. It will be challenging to find a balance between all that goes with teaching, on the one hand, and continuing to develop the blogs and wiki, on the other. Four more days to go. What have I gotten myself into now?! It might have been better to stay a total technophobe.... Counting down....

Just got an e-mail from flo-joe which sent me a link to the new updated Cambridge University test site. Just click here, and you'll go to the home page. From there, you can search for information on ANY of the Cambridge tests.

For those wanting to see a few glimpses of summer activities, I'm eventually going to update my other blog, 'Mbote from San Diego' (see other reflections). It hasn't changed since July and our return from Canada. Time DOES fly! Whoosh.

Getting connected!

Ah hah! What a surprise to find that linking people to my blog got them to come to mine! (I'm curious - did the server tell you that you just got linked up to someone's blog, and then did it give you the place to go?) What a great feeling to know that this 'vacation' time invested on the internet has already paid off. Out of the virtual world that I've inserted myself into came some voices from fellow educators. Thank you very much, Larry and Claudia, for dropping by! And thank you to the several former students who have come by to say 'hello'! I'm encouraged that this can be a great tool for my fall classes.

Adding Links and the Power of Photos

Today I added several links to this blog for teachers and for students (several of these blogs were listed by OTAN, but I checked each one out myself). Of course, you can spend several additional hours following all the links to those links, some of which also looked very informative. I rarely buy an ESL book anymore because there are so many free lesson plans and online materials available. The options are endless.

I've got four weeks to go before I get back to full-time teaching at the International Center for American English in La Jolla, CA. I am so glad that I used some of this summer to learn more about this great technology. My next job is to contact former students (since I don't have classes right now to make assignments to) and see if I can get them to comment about what they're up to and how they're using their English now - if at all!

So far, I've only had a few comments - more like e-mail transactions in a public forum - from a few students who I saw recently. They all posted comments at 'Newspaper class 2007' which is simply a standard class photo with no commentary. Now that I've invested in a digital camera, I can see that a class photograph is also an important tool for opening up online communication with ESL students.

Building up an ESL blog community

To my delight, this month I received a hard copy of the summer edition of the OTAN (Outreach and Technical Assistance Network) Online Connection (www.otan.us), and guess what was inside the issue? A full two pages by Marian Thacher of "Blogging as an Instructional Tool." Because of that, I've spent another 20 hours looking at other people's blogs, accidentally going to Lorelle's blog (see my links for educators and bloggers) and subsequently watching a video of her July presentation in San Francisco which was all about blogging (it is an investment of an hour, but worth it to see this animated speaker in action - lots of ideas about how to keep your class awake after watching her!).

What have I learned about blogging as an educational tool? First, you've got to invest some time to start one and then more time keeping it alive. Second, it's better to write short posts rather than long ones. Get the idea out there. Third, if you want anyone to read your blog, you've got to do your part and visit other people's blogs, leaving your blog as a calling card. Finally, when teaching, give your students the opportunity to be read and heard either by building their own blogs or posting writings on yours. However, the shy Asian ones may not ever do it in English.

P.S. If you go to my other blog (Mbote from San Diego), you'll see that in July after the return from Alberta, I was continuing to work on developing my blogging skills. I've got the 'hammer,' and now I can show you how to overload a blog with photos. Next job, figure out how to link photos to my posts, so you don't have to look at all the pictures if you don't want to!