Learning English by Looking at Houses

Now you may be looking at this photo and wondering what kind of real estate this is. Well, it's a hangout for monkeys (this is at the San Diego Zoo in San Diego, CA). Zoo architects put up structures that have the basic elements of a house even though these monkeys have probably never been in a human house. What do you see? A roof, different floors, a wooden frame with no windows, a rope ladder for getting to the second story of the building, and a shady view from the bottom floor of the house. Now you have a little language to start with.

Basic House Vocabulary

Look at the photo above which comes from the Little World website  Little World (Japan) is a special park which displays houses from various parts of the world which were either transported intact from the country of origin or reconstructed using materials from the country of origin. Visitors have the opportunity to go inside the house structures.
  
Do you see any similarities between this house above and the first one for the monkeys? The roof is the top of the house and protects the people (or monkeys) from rain or too much sunshine. The floor is the flat or horizontal structure on which the inhabitants can stand, lie, groom, play, and place furniture. A house can have more than one floor as the monkey house does. If it does have more than one story (= floor of a building), usually, people have a staircase inside or outside their house to get to the upper level. However, if you build a treehouse for your children, you might use a rope ladder like the one you see in the zoo photo.

Every home has certain basic elements - an entryway or door, walls, a roof (something above your head to keep out the rain and/or sun) and windows or openings to look outside and to let fresh air inside. The photo above of a traditional house from rural Japan shows you what we expect most houses to look like. 

A great way to expand your vocabulary in a foreign language - or even in your native language - is to focus on a topic of interest to you. If you're trying to build useful vocabulary about houses or housing, for example, try the real estate section of any newspaper. You can also go online, of course, and do some virtual house-hunting.  

To teach or not to teach ... 'bad' words

Recently, I viewed a very funny video about the many meanings of 'shit.' Although I have taught such common four letter words in the past, I wondered how my colleagues and friends (native English speakers and non-native English speakers) would respond to a query about teaching 'shit' to my intermediate-level adult students at a community college. Out of 10 people who responded via FB or email, not one of them waivered. They all said, "Yes, you should teach bad words." One even said that it is my 'responsibility' to teach them.

Here's the video. The performer is Finnish and definitely has a great sense of American English. I don't know if he was a comedian in his native country, but he definitely tickles my funny bone.

What do you think?  I did show this video to my students, and most of them (a dozen) enjoyed it. However, a few didn't seem to 'get' it. When you explain humor, it somehow kills it, so I had a brief follow-up reaction/reflection talk, advising caution (especially to the young adult males in my class) when attempting to use this kind of language with native speakers.

I agree it IS my responsibility as an instructor of English to non-native speakers to teach them awareness and self-consciousness when using four-letter words that can be seen as obscene or irreverent. I also want them to understand that context is extremely important - how powerful a definite or indefinite article is in changing the meaning of an expression. As a student of many foreign languages (Spanish, French, Quechua, Japanese, Arabic, Lingala), I find it easy to put myself in the position of my students. I would want to know these words in other languages I have studied to greater or smaller degrees, so that I might understand if someone is insulting or complimenting me.  It is up to each student to take what I've chosen to give, store it in memory, or throw it away.  

Teaching and Practicing Growth Mindset and Political Correctness

Since 2015, I've been starting my Advanced ESOL Reading and Writing class with some readings about mindset and a TED video by Carol Dweck.  Why?  I have been frustrated with students who arrive in my class from their previous classes believing that they are "A" students, so everything that they do should have an "A" grade attached to it. First, where does this fixation on grades come from? While adult immigrant students earn credits for their ESOL community college classes, the grades do not impact their college transcripts. In other words, if they do well enough in their ESOL classes to move up to Basic Skills Writing courses, a grade of "C" or better in ESOL will not affect their chances of getting into a four-year degree-granting institution. Second, when there is nothing to lose by earning a passing level grade of "C," why is there still an obsession with grades? Third, if students are supposed to complete certain skills by the time they arrive at the highest level, why are a third of them arriving in the last "advanced" level course without what I expect are the requisite skills? Why do we ESOL professors feel pressured and compelled to move students on to the next level - to pass them because they're immigrants and can't be expected to be as skilled in English as a native speaker? Interestingly, in a class discussion about language and literacy across the world, one of my students said that she thought a big difference between her country (Colombia) and the USA is that in Colombia if a student doesn't reach the required level of skill in Spanish, for example, (s)he will have to repeat the class. No ifs, ands, or buts. They might even have to repeat it twice; it is the same for mathematics and science classes at the middle school level. In that way, it actually means something when students complete middle school. If they don't pass, then they can't go on to high school.

This is a point I need to explore further. There are 'triage' or two-tier apprenticeship vs. academic-track systems in Europe where students who don't have high enough scores on level tests get filtered out as pre-teens or teenagers into so-called apprentice programs (where the focus is on learning blue-collar skills and office/clerical skills for service-oriented professions) rather than academic or science-oriented careers.

When I got exposed to Brainology and the work of Carol Dweck in 2015, I had little idea how well it would work to help my students focus on learning and growing their minds. The concept of the fixed and growth mindsets was revolutionary to me and to my non-native Englsh-speaking adult population. In addition, it was empowering for me and for some of my students.  Since January 2015, I've had a handful of ESOL students who knew they were not going to pass my class who stayed in my course beyond the withdraw deadline (10 weeks of 16 week semester) because they decided that they could improve their essay writing, do advanced-level readings, participate in reading circle discussions or debates, build their knowledge of more advanced grammar structures, and be better prepared to repeat the class the next semester. One student who did this wrote in her portfolio reflection that it was one of the best experiences she had had in ESOL because she wasn't worried about her grade. Instead, she was focused on learning. Wow!

I have continued to use the growth mindset and find that it has worked for me and transformed my way of communicating to my students. This approach to teaching doesn't protect students from getting "D's" in my classes; it means, in my view, that they're not yet ready for the next level. (See Dweck above). I also share my own educational flops in my long journey through a four-year degree at UCLA and two master's degree programs (anthropology and TESOL). I let them know that I don't equate grades with intelligence because when I suffered from "D" grades, I know that I didn't suddenly get dumber. I was over-extended (working, commuting by bus over two hours per day, and emotionally stressed and depressed over a broken relationship). These were not excuses; other factors overpowered my ability to focus on classwork.

Praising effort over grades does not mean that a student should pass a class because they worked hard. Many of my students were hard workers, but they knew that they had not achieved the learning outcomes. Their English "muscles" were not strong enough to perform at the level of a college freshman.

Is it easy not to pass a hard-working ESOL student? No, of course not. However, I wish the previous professor had conveyed the same message to his/her students so that I wouldn't have had to deflate egos and overcome the bad attitudes of students who came with fixed mindsets - and saw anything as difficult as an attempt on the instructor's part to show/prove that they were not very smart. Some students told me that they "knew" all the grammar and passed at an "A" level in the previous course, yet they didn't know basic irregular verb forms (e.g., teach -> "teached") or how to use present perfect or simple past nor did they know that modal verbs are not followed by past tense verb forms (e.g., should "went"). On top of that, several of these same students complained that I should spend more time on basic grammar even though "grammar" was supposedly what "they already knew."

This is not a rant, but a suggestion that adult-level ESOL instructors use concepts from elementary school curricula to enhance their approach to teaching, in general. The Brainology reading for 5th graders in the public school was not too simple for advanced-level ESOL students.  A side benefit one semester was the revelation that one of my students connected to her son because he had studied the same reading. My adult ESOL student was fearful of going back to school, but as her children were out of kindergarten, her husband encouraged her to go to college and to seek a career outside the home. Learning to write in academic English was her first big step.

Just as the debate still sizzles in public schools, I have found that some of my colleagues teaching college-level ESOL courses are caught in a battle over what our purpose is. Is it to help students reach a level of English fluency and accuracy that will allow them to communicate well in a work or business context to colleagues and employees, or is it to equip our students with enough language to be functional, comprehensible, and "good enough" - assuming that they will improve over time with exposure to native English-language speakers?

I am torn between treating my students as I would want to be treated in a foreign country, studying in an academic setting, alongside native-born students.  Would I want to be passed along because it was viewed as not PC (politically correct) to fail me and force me to repeat a course until I had reached a more functional level in the target language in which I needed to express myself? If I continued on in a foreign environment and obtained a degree there, would my degree be worth the same as the native-born student's?  Are we cheapening the value of a UCSD degree by taking on so many non-natives who don't command the language into our degree programs?  Was the professor forced to pass me along because I was foreign-born and working hard to acculturate and learn the local language? Does it degrade the value of a degree from UCLA or UCSD if a non-native speaker receives a degree from one of these prestigious universities and is incomprehensible in English outside of a classroom context? When we discovered that President George W. Bush graduated from Yale University, did we not pause to wonder whether the standards of Yale were as high as we once thought them to be?

Now, in February 2018, I am still puzzled and asking many of the same questions.

Reading Circles - Part Deux

Now that I am in the midst of a new semester, I am doing some reflection on how the advanced level reading and writing course went in the spring. In particular, this reflection is tied to the Reading Circle experiment (see earlier posts 1 , 2). I plan to continue using the reading or literature circles based on several positive reflections from student portfolios last semester.

Here are a few examples of some of the comments. Several students did not mention the reading circles specifically, so these comments represent a biased sample where "circles" were specifically mentioned. Those that referred to the reading circles in their reflections said they were "an excellent idea" (MGA, 2015), "the best experience" (NT, 2015), and "a useful method." Some of the reasons they thought the circles were a positive experience is that they had specific roles to play which varied every two or three weeks. They had to learn how to think about the reading and hear alternative views and understandings of the work. According to one student, activities affected other reading experiences: "it helped me a lot in understanding the bottom line of the book that I am reading..." (JQN, 2015).

One huge benefit of the reading circle was that it helped to build a community in the classroom, a sense of responsibility for playing a role in their small groups. What made it work successfully in this classroom was the participation by 99% of the students. Without preparation, when a student was called on to contribute to their circle, they knew that they were failing their classmates - not the instructor. Each role counted since a "circle" was made up of five students, each playing a different role. In addition, a few students commented that they learned about different cultures through these discussions since one of the roles was "Connector." Often, students used this role to comment about how their experience growing up in another culture was very different from what was being described in an American context.

Another theme from the students who liked the reading circles was the feeling of empowerment that they gained from having others listen to their interpretation of a reading as a summarizer, discussion leader, or connector. Students didn't feel overwhelmed by trying to learn every new or unknown word and started learning how to infer meanings from context. They could count on one member of the circle explaining at least five new words from the article, and students could always discuss difficult vocabulary amongst themselves.

A final advantage and positive outcome of using Reading Circles was the opportunity to conduct formative assessments. When the students are involved in student-led discussions on the same readings, they face each other. This leaves the instructor free to move around the room and observe whether students are doing some critical thinking and learning to discuss ideas in English. At the end of the group activity, the instructor can merge vocabulary that came from the reading - put it on the board in its various forms (noun, verb, adverb, adjective). In this way, the whole class developed a common vocabulary list.

"G" and "H"

By the way, don't forget to check out some Picturing English.    "G" is for get, and "H" is for head. 

Organizers for Teaching Connectors

I have been meaning for some time to make these graphic organizers available to all here at Many Englishes. I have several versions of these two on connectors, but these are the most recent ones that I have distributed to my classes. One organizer focuses on coordinating conjunctions and transitions or conjunctive adverbs. I usually teach the usage of the FANBOYS and transition words together.  The other organizer focuses on a small array of subordinating conjunctions (which I encourage students to expand upon as they encounter other subordinators). Subordinating conjunctions which require more explanation of meanings, punctuation, and usage (especially the prepositional forms) are taught separately.

Many readers of this blog are familiar with my Intermediate Connectors Game Board which is a fun way (with some dice) for students to practice conjunctions orally. Here is another way using sentence strips that works well for a high intermediate+ level class. You can print the sentence strips on heavy paper or on colored paper. You need to cut between words where there is space (e.g., between conjunction and subject + verb, cut around the commas and periods. Students need to figure out what makes since. The words are all in capital letters so as not to give the students a clue about where to put a connector (at the beginning of a sentence or in the middle).  Please make comments if you have any questions or suggestions about other ways to improve the activity. I usually place a set of the strips inside a large envelope and put students in groups of four or five to sort and work together. You can do the activity more than once and make it a race to see which group remembers the sentences and puts the words together quickly and accurately.

Making Connections in English

In the spring semester, I was pleasantly surprised to find out from my strongest students that what they enjoyed most in the first few weeks of our advanced ESOL reading and writing class was learning how to use connectors or conjunctions.  Even though this grammatical structure came at the end of their textbook, I introduced it at the beginning of our course. Because connectors are the glue with which words, sentences, and paragraphs stick together, it is worthwhile to reinforce conjunctions and transition words often throughout a semester or quarter. Having some variety of games for 10 to 15 minute reviews definitely helps. Most advanced level students believe that they already know how to use conjunctions very well.

It is easy to formatively assess how well students "know" grammatical structures of English, by starting the fall semester with a review session. Divide your class into groups of four or five students and ask them to list and define what parts of speech, functions of parts of speech, phrase, and clause (independent/dependent) mean.  Using SV to indicate to students "subject" and "verb" or a "clause" leads me to ask the class to define and give several examples of simple, compound, and complex sentences. The letters SV are often used in grammar books, so their use as representations for a clause are usually familiar to advanced level students.

By reading and sometimes clapping or walking in front of the class (taking one plodding step, for example, for each simple sentence), an instructor can illustrate why, as writers and speakers, we should use a range of connectors. Sometimes, to be emphatic, we might use a string of the same simple structure as in, "I love your smile. I love your voice. I love your soul." That would definitely have an impact on me!  However, if we don't use any conjunctions to connect sentences in a writing, I show how it starts to be monotonous for a reader by clapping as I read. Da da dadum; da da dadum; da da dadum, and on and on.

Because of my background in anthropology, I always try to give students strategies for learning in general by being aware of their human biological roots. For most of our history, language was spoken. Whatever students learn for written discourse can be used in speech. There is a connection between fluent and accurate speech and fluent and accurate writing. Some students seem to be better at writing because they are familiar with a lot of vocabulary and grammar structures, but they are shy about mispronouncing words. Thus, their speech lags behind. Other students are fluent in speaking because they are focused on communicating and not on the accuracy of their grammar or making pronunciation errors. They often have more difficulty at the advanced level correcting their grammar and vocabulary errors in writing because they already have well-developed habits of expressing themselves and making themselves understood in speech.

Native speakers of any language make allowances for non-native speakers. In addition, since there is so much redundancy in language, even if you only know infinitive forms of a verb, for example, you can get around very well without knowing tenses.  Many non-native speakers of English in this country who learn to communicate through immersion never master the correct academic forms of my language. That is why it is easier for a teacher to train a beginning-level student than an advanced-level student. Beginners see progress every day whereas advanced-level students sometimes feel that they are going backwards or marching in place. In fact, sometimes advanced students DO have to go backwards and relearn what they mislearned earlier.

One way to make students aware of connectors at an advanced level is to have them come up with the various types of types of sentences in a formulaic representation. If they have difficulty, you can guide them to come up with the forms.  Then have the class work in groups and put different types of sentences on the board. Ask them to share a range of connectors, too.

Your whiteboard might look like this:
SV. SV. SV. SV.  I like hamburgers. I don't like hot dogs. I like sweets.

SV, and SV.         SV, so SV.          SV, but SV.
I like hamburgers, and I like sweets. I like hamburgers, but I don't like hot dogs.  

SV because SV.   SV although SV.   SV while SV.
I like hamburgers because they are tasty. I like sweets although they are not good for my teeth. 

First, SV.             Second, SV.           Third, SV.
First, I heat the grill.  Second, I make the hamburger patties. Third, I put the patties on the hot grill. 

Along with a review of parts of speech, this is probably enough for a first meeting of class. It serves several purposes: (1) it helps the instructor to know what the students know and don't know; (2) the instructor and students start to get to know each other and to speak with each other in English; (3) the students start to see that they have a foundation to build on.  They build social and cognitive connections in English.

A Low Intermediate Role Playing Activity + Pronunciation Rubric

This activity uses role-playing cards (Big Town English card sets ) to get students to use certain grammatical structures (yes/no and wh- question forms + short answers) and a pronunciation rubric that focuses on clarity, accuracy, intonation, and fluency when speaking during a role play.

The activity worked well for a low-intermediate class, but could also be adapted for higher level English language learners. The rubric is attached as a Word document so that you can alter the descriptors to suit your needs.

Directions:

Instructor needs to create separate role play cards using the card sets linked above, or he/she can have students create their own characters. Students choose a role play card and study their character. They practice playing roles during part of one class session. They ask and answer questions (i.e., the context was that they were at a party and getting to know people; they had to speak with at least six different people in the class and find out about their jobs, hobbies, favorites, and so on). The following week, students were given the attached rubrics and the target features were briefly reviewed. Students were asked to record themselves with one of the instructor's two digital recorders or to use their own iPhone as a recording device during the role playing conversation. If students used their iPhone, they sent the recording to the instructor's e-mail for assessment. Students recorded themselves in casual conversation in English for 2.5 to 3 minutes. Question prompts were written on the whiteboard to ensure that students asked and answered a range of yes/no and information questions. Each student was given his/her score with the rubrics and comments about individual weaknesses and strengths.

Reading or Literature Circles

Because of previous success at Reading Circles, I am going to institute them this semester in my ESOL Reading and Writing class (which also includes a fair amount of grammar instruction). I will report back here in the summer about the experience.

In the past, in a small IEP (Intensive English Language Program), I was very pleased with the results of this activity. It is nothing revolutionary although it does require carefully choosen reading material. Given class time limits. it is important to give a reading to students, with the understanding that they read it in advance. They are also assigned various roles to play in the circle (e.g., discussion leader, summarizer, wordmaster, passage finder, and connector). For the discussions to be productive and enlightening, students need to be prepared to play their roles.

The largest class I've done a literature circle with is one that had 15 high-intermediate students. They were divided into three reading circles of five students, with each student playing a different role. If you have numbers that cannot be divided into groups of five, you can have extra wordmasters, connectors, or passage finders, or you can form a smaller circle with the participants playing two roles each. If you have less than ten students, you can eliminate one or two of the roles (e.g., summarizer). For the first 10 - 15 minutes of a 1.5 hour session, discussion leaders pair up to draft some general questions to put to their respective groups. All the other role players can pair up for the first quarter hour, too.

Afterwards, the pairs or groups split up to play their roles in separate circles. The outcome has been very positive. Students function independently in circles, allowing the teacher to 'observe' and informally assess the students' ability to use the language of meetings (i.e., agree/disagree, clarify, ask for more information, and so on) and 'elevated' vocabulary.

Below are some links to sites I have used for this activity, including role-playing organizers and some language of meetings. I have also attached a few reading recommendations for high-intermediate to advanced-level ESOL students.

This is a new resource for me, but the worksheets are well designed with a self-assessment area at the bottom for students to rate their own participation. Because my class is not a literature class, I use magazine articles, short stories, and excerpts for reading material. There are many short story links that I will encourage my students to explore on their own this semester. This one looked very good. You can find other links at this site. Finally, it is important to know your class if you decide to do a circle activity regularly. See my notes below. You might also like to revisit my post on Reading Circles for Cambridge Advanced English test preparation.

NB: A literature or reading circle only works well/effectively with a class of motivated students. Students who just want to sit and listen to others speak and do not read in advance will be unable to contribute to the activity. Also, students who have strong aural skills but are weak at reading (but don't like to do homework) may be able to pick up on the general topic of a reading and divert a discussion away from specific analysis of the reading. These students are detractors for the well-prepared students and should be pulled from the table as soon as it becomes apparent to the instructor that they have not prepared. They should lose points for lack of participation in that activity.

Was that a choice or a yes/no question?

Sometimes students have great difficulty understanding the importance of intonation when speaking. When a question has an "or" in the middle of it between two nouns, is the speaker asking you to choose between the two nouns, or is the speaker simply asking a yes/no question?

By changing the intonation of these two questions, a native speaker can differentiate between these two types of question. Can you say the questions below using two different intonations so that the meanings are different? 

Do you want to go to a movie or watch TV? (Choice)

Do you want to go to a movie or watch TV? (Yes/No)

In the choice question, the answer should be either "a movie" or "TV." However, in the Yes/No question above, the response should be "yes" or "no." Listen to the following videos to get an idea of what a choice question sounds like and how it is different from a "yes/no" question in intonation. The most important concept to keep in mind is the rising and falling intonation.

In a choice question, the voice goes up on the first choice and falls on the second choice as illustrated below.
                                 Q:  Do you want to go to a movie ⤴ or watch TV ⤵ ?

                                 A:  I'd like to watch a movie.

However, in a yes/no question, the voice goes up at the end of the question.
                                 Q:  Do you want to go to a movie or watch TV ⤴ ? 
                                  A: Yes. Let's do something relaxing.

If you have problems understanding the difference between the two types of question, listen to the examples and practice. Then practice some more. You should also record yourself using a device like Vocaroo.com. Try to approximate the pronunciation of the people in the videos. Have fun!

Assessing Grammar through Speaking

Recently I taught a course in high intermediate grammar. One of the SLOs (student learning objectives) was "Students will be able to ... produce in writing and speaking... [certain structures, such as present perfect with question formation and basic subject-verb agreement]." It is relatively straightforward to assess for grammatical structures in a writing assignment, but how does one objectively assess the "natural" production of certain structures in a speaking task? You can have students give prepared presentations, but this is somewhat "unnatural" in my view. What I would want to know if I were an English student is whether or not I can control certain structures in a "normal" conversational situation.

To get students to practice target structures in a conversation mode, I gave pairs of students a game board, with die. They also received a speaking rubric for the task so that they could see what they were being evaluated on. The game board has more than 50 squares with the base form of both regular and irregular verbs in each square.

Below you can preview the rubric and directions and decide if you like it before going to the pdf file link above. You can also see the game board which uses a bogglesworld's board template, which I like a lot. I modified slightly with with my own words.

BOARD GAME - SPEAKING ASSESSMENT

Target Features	4	3	2	1
Present perfect (questions, statements, short answer)
Subject-verb agreement (singular/plural)
Simple past (question formation, statements)
Irregular verbs (present perfect and simple past)
Pronunciation of -ed endings (present perfect and simple past)

Name___________________                                                                       Score______/20

Comments:

PRESENT PERFECT (questions, short answer, statements in positive/negative):

4 = Error-free use and production of the structures

3 = Occasional errors in use and production of structures

2 = Frequent errors in use and production of structures    

1 = Lacks control of use and production of structures

SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT:

4 = Always follows rules of subject-verb agreement

3 = Occasional errors in subject-verb agreement

2 = Frequent subject-verb agreement errors

1 = Almost no control of subject-verb agreement

SIMPLE PAST (Wh-Q, statements)

4 = Error-free use of the structures

3 = Occasional errors in use of structures

2 = Frequent errors in use of structures                

1 = Lacks control of structures

IRREGULAR VERBS (present perfect and simple past):

4 = Error-free use of the structures

3 = Occasional errors in use of structures

2 = Frequent errors in use of structures                

1 = Lacks control of structures

PRONUNCIATION OF -ed ENDINGS (present perfect and simple past):

4 = Error-free pronunciation of verb endings

3 = Occasional errors in pronunciation of verb endings

2 = Frequent errors in pronunciation of verb endings       

1 = Lacks control of pronunciation of verb endings

A Verb Game board** was used to elicit questions and responses in present perfect and simple past.  Students practiced for part of one period and "played" again the following meeting. They needed to practice "yes/no" questions in present perfect, short answers, and follow up wh-questions in the simple past. Answers to the wh-questions needed to use the simple past form of the verb in the original question. The paired speaking activity was recorded and rated for accuracy in use and production of target structures (about 2.5 to 3 minutes). 

**A partial view of the game board is attached at the bottom. It is not in landscape format. I printed boards and handed out dice for students to share for this activity.  

Video Illustrating Multiple Meanings

There's a new post at my sister blog Picturing English which has a link to a great video. It has been linked multiple times, but apparently is a creation of RadioLabs. You can also find this same video and a worksheet here at EFL Classroom 2.0 .  In the version at EFL Classroom 2.0, the owner of the site modified the original video slightly to eliminate what he considered images inappropriate for school-age children, such as the raised middle finger drawn on a whiteboard. That image is included in the original form at the Picturing English site, so you have a choice of video versions.

Spanish words that have no English equivalence

As an ESL (English as a second language) instructor, I often tell my students to avoid using translating dictionaries and to try understanding new English words by learning synonyms, paying attention to context, and by listening to or reading lots of examples from native speakers.

The Huffington Post recently came out with a list of Spanish words for which there may be no single comparable English word.  Since I'm not bilingual, I can only trust that the translations to English are as close as possible to the meaning of the words in Spanish. As with English, the main problem of providing a single definition for these Spanish words is that other meanings are possible, e.g., sobremesa (could be a tablecloth or dessert). The most common usage of a word is usually the only one provided in paperback translating dictionaries. Even when searching online for definitions in English, there are many dictionaries and definitions to choose from. Language is very much a reflection of culture (previously touched on here), so it's not surprising that there may be no single word equivalence between languages. Translation always requires interpretation of one culture's vocabulary into the standard of another. If Facebook is any indicator of how far we have to go with translating apps, we still have a looong way to go with non-European languages such as Arabic, Korean, and Japanese.  

Teaching Sarcasm in English

When teaching intermediate-level students how to become better listeners, we often advise them to listen for differences in intonation or word choice that might signal meanings that are different from the dictionary definition of the words themselves. Learning to make inferences or to infer meaning from the way people express themselves in a foreign language can be daunting.

Some of my students who don't recognize the word sarcasm have difficulties understanding it from a written definition, so besides using examples from their textbook, Listening Power 3, I offer them some free online examples linked to my wiki. It is helpful for students to be able to listen to audio tracks or video examples outside of class.

The first one here is from the BBC's Learning English website. It gives a student some insight into English or British culture and a few audio examples of what sarcasm sounds like. The next is a link to a popular American TV series called The Big Bang Theory (TBBT). In this segment of an episode, one of the main characters Sheldon is trying to learn what sarcasm is. This video clip reinforces the explanation given by the BBC.

Personally, I'm not a fan of sarcasm as it was not part of my personal background. I didn't encounter it much until I was in high school. As explained in the BBC Learning English track, not every culture uses sarcasm as a form of humor. When dealing with non-native speakers, especially, but also with native speakers of English who you don't know well, be careful about using sarcasm. If the person you are interacting with doesn't know that you're being ironic or sarcastic, (s)he could misunderstand you and be hurt by your words. Sarcasm when aimed at a person unfamiliar with this form of communication can feel like an insult or a put down.