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.  

"Beat It," "Eat It," and "West Side Story"

To teach students the concept of parody along with count and noncount nouns, students first listened to a young Michael Jackson singing and dancing to "Beat It " (1982) Then they watched Weird Al Yankovic in a video parody called "Eat It" (1984).  Students examined the lyrics (or words) to Weird Al's song, examining nouns for countability. It was difficult at times to understand the food references without knowing brand names such as Captain Crunch, Raisin Bran, and Spam.  Much more could have been done with this song in a literature or reading class, and I hope I'll have a chance to try the materials again with another high intermediate or advanced level group.

***You can also go back in movie history and watch an excerpt from "West Side Story" (1961) which the Michael Jackson dance video seems to parody.  There are other excerpts which seem relevant to "Beat It", such as the scene where Tony tries to break up the fight between two gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. The scene parallels Michael Jackson's role in "Beat It," except Michael, of course, is able to get the two gangs to dance out their hostility.  

Pronunciation of Minimal Pairs /p/ and /b/ (initial and final positions)

When teaching pronunciation to intermediate level students, you have to find some balance between giving them the information they need to produce certain sounds and finding a fun way to practice those sounds a lot in class. Here are some of the resources that I used and created to help my students, primarily Arabic speakers, distinguish between /p/ and /b/ in both initial and final position.

A game that was fun and successful is a variation on Go Fish, where students try to match cards with identical words written on them. That is, instead of asking if someone has any "Queens", the student asks a partner if (s)he has the word "PUB." If the student asked has the card with "PUB" written on it, (s)he gives the card to the student asking questions.  If the student being asked does not have the word, "PUB", the other student must draw a card from stack of cards that were not passed out.  Below is a photo of some of the cards I made up. I printed the words on an Avery label sheets. I stuck the words on old playing cards. You can often get these as give-aways from local casinos. Students liked playing with cards that looked like actual playing cards.

I used words from this minimal pair list. Students had a chance to practice the words on the list two days earlier. As with all card games, there is some time investment on the part of the teacher making them, but once she has the game(s), she can use it (them) repeatedly.  I also made another set of Go Fish cards using the images and words from this site (= a very useful site with lots of written and visual materials put together by a speech pathologist). Finally, you can have students practice pronouncing the sounds outside of class with YouTube video links, such as this one.  More advanced level students can also practice learning all the sounds of English using the phonemic alphabet.

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It is also possible to use these same cards to do vowel contrasts (e.g., "cap" and "cup").  When students had played a few round of Go Fish, they also could play a game of Concentration or Memory using the same cards or a subset of the cards. I also showed my students a link to an audio version of Concentration for practicing pronunciation.

The Fancier the House, the Fancier the Words to Describe It

One of the areas of greatest interest to me in teaching ESL is vocabulary.  English is an incredibly rich language with the largest lexicon of any language in the world, and everyday people everywhere are affected by words, especially printed words.

Last year Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a brief article about a study on the language used by real estate agents to describe property.  One of the interesting findings was that the more expensive the house, the greater the number of characters were spent on describing the property.  Another way to look at it is that the fancier the house, the longer are the words (or the more words) used to describe it.  Just look at any real estate section of the newspaper!

Read some descriptions of mansions or luxury homes in San Diego and compare a $1,000,000 home with a $400,000 house. You can use the Word Count Tool to see if you can observe the pattern highlighted in WSJ. My observation just now is that I experienced a negative reaction when I compared a million dollar home with one for less than half that price because the description of the two houses, in this case, did not differ at all in number of characters. In fact, I had the feeling described below.

If there isn't a lot written about the million dollar home, a prospective buyer might suspect that it has a major drawback or shortcoming. In fact, Mark Liberman (Linguistics professor at University of Pennsylvania) is quoted in the article saying, "Given that all the descriptions of better properties are full of these empty-enthusiasm words, it might be interpreted by readers as an indication of problems if they're absent."  

We are definitely influenced by words, so it's good to be aware of all the power - indeed, 'empty-enthusiasm' words - wielded by marketers in every realm of sales.

Luxury apartments for monkeys at San Diego Zoo

Here are some popular high-end words for million dollar homes or to make a less costly house sound like a wonderful buy: exquisite finishes, luxuries/luxurious, expansive, gleaming hardwood floors, sea-view terraces, remodeled/updated to perfection, stunning.  If you want to grow your vocabulary of rich language, it's all around you. You can even find it by checking out real estate listings!  

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!  

A Bending Motion or a Vending Machine?

I am teaching a low intermediate pronunciation class and trying to impress upon my students the importance of syllable stress in English.  The concept is not obvious for them because if you're a Spanish speaker, the syllable stress is marked with an accent over the vowel. In Japanese, syllables are not stressed.  That is a problem for me when I'm in Japan because I am Japanese by blood, but I am third-generation American Japanese. English is my first tongue, so when I speak Japanese, it is hard for me to eliminate the tendency to stress, for example, the second syllable of America (when I identify myself as amerikajin). Unless students go out into the world and are misunderstood by native speakers, they don't ever quite grasp how syllable stress can lead a native speaker to make a wrong inference. 

Bending MOtion

Recently, a non-English-speaking San Diegan asked for help at the public library. My son was working at the front counter and was stumped by the question. The man asked for a bending motion  /'bɛndiŋ 'moʃən/.  My son and another library patron tried to make sense of the query, but because the man mispronounced the 'b' for a 'v' and put the stress on the first syllable of the second word, the image of someone bending came to mind. It made no sense, so the listeners continued to ask for clarification. At that point, the Korean man's face turned red. Rather than repeat himself a third time, the man was able to explain that he wanted to buy a bottle of water.  

Vending maCHINE

Suddenly, the other patron and my son understood the object of the man's query - a vending machine /'vɛndiŋ mə'ʃin/.  I explained to my class that even with a mispronunciation of the first part of the word ("mo" instead of "ma"), if the man had put the stress on the second syllable of motion and said, "moTION," the native speakers might have understood the target word as "machine."  A little knowledge about the importance of syllable stress can go a long way toward anticipating and resolving problems of miscommunication. When learning a new word or new expressions, always listen to where the stress falls in the word or phrase.

Buzzwords

What are buzzwords?  They are words or phrases that are popular during a certain period of time. Sometimes they're trendy technical terms that are used to make those people who don't keep up with technological or social trends feel out of touch with what "newsmaking" people are talking about or doing.  Should you pay attention to buzzwords?

If you're an ESL instructor, it's probably a good idea to notice buzzwords since your more ambitious students may hear them in the news or on a TV show or in a night club and ask you for a definition. The problem for most teachers is that it's impossible to monitor all media, so the best you can do is to send students to sites that attend to these new (or re-activated) words that regularly pop up. Cambridge Dictionaries Online has a useful blog that focuses on buzzwords. Another well-known publisher Macmillan also has a list by date of trending words.

At the end of the year, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an article about words that "popped" in 2013. I often spend a bit of time going over these annual reflections and ask myself which words I heard or used last year.  They include expressions such as twerk, Obamacare, cronut, drone, selfie, Thanksgivukkah, bitcoin, and lean in.

If you're a real "wordie," you should check out lexicographer Ben Zimmer's blog.  There are numerous links to articles that he's published over the years (including the above Wall Street Journal article), and he often responds to tweet queries about origins of expressions. There is another article on buzzwords from WSJ entitled "Which Buzzwords Would You Ban?" but this is currently accessible only to online subscribers. Words from that list include expressions like push the envelope, out-of-the-box thinking, passionate, and viral.  For a look at another sample of words to banish from business use, you should examine LinkedIn's "Top 10 Overused LinkedIn Profile Buzzwords of 2013." You can also be a part of the next survey of "buzzwords to ban in 2014" by visiting and leaving your input at WSJ's "At Work" column.

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Attention, teachers!  Here's a link to several lesson plans using Macmillan's dictionary resources on buzzwords.

Teaching Articles

Teaching the use of articles to a low intermediate group of ESL students can be tedious, especially if it's focused on lots of repetitious exercises, choosing between "a" or "an," zero article, or "the." My students in a grammar seminar were fairly competent at understanding when to use "a" or "an" with a countable noun beginning with a vowel sound and understood that "the" has to be used with certain proper nouns, such as rivers, mountain ranges, and islands. The hard part of using articles was deciding when to use them within larger structures than a sentence.

For that, an engaging and challenging activity for lower level English language learners is trying to put missing articles into a short paragraph. For this activity, I used paragraphs from an online site called News In Levels. This great site summarizes random news of the day in one paragraph. It has four levels for ESL students from Level 0 to Level 3. In addition, a few key words from the target paragraph are highlighted and defined, and there is a cloud-based audio recording of the paragraph.

To illustrate one way that you can use these paragraphs for teaching use of articles, you can view and/or download a copy of an exercise I did in class.  Later, I used the same cloze activity to quiz my students.

For some thought-provoking generalizations about grammar instruction, you can also have a look at Diane Larsen-Freeman's digest. 

***I checked the online link to News In Levels which began in 2011. It states that the site was begun as a school project and was meant to last for 1000 days. The producers of the materials are requesting donations to keep it going. It is currently free. If you like the paragraph samples, then I suggest downloading some before they disappear or making a small online donation to see if we can keep it going.

"Spellbound" Revisited

Can't believe it's almost the end of May 2013, and this is my first blogpost of the year!  Better late than never, though....

A popular post at this site is my lesson plan using the movie "Spellbound."  Because the Scripps National Spelling Bee is just around the corner and the star of the movie, Nupur Lala, who won the national bee in 1999 was recently interviewed, it seems appropriate to mark this first post of the year with a reminder of the upcoming Scripps National Spelling Bee.

It begins this week on Wednesday, May 29th, with the Preliminaries.  On May 30th, the semi-finals and finals take place (You can watch these in real-time at ESPN3).  There's a 13-year old girl who is returning to Washington from Granger, Indiana, for the third time.  Good luck, Kate Peterson!  Enjoy the competition all players and aficionados of spelling!  It's always a spellbinding event!

P.S.  Here's another Addendum to "Spellbound by Spellbound" from last year.

** Now that the National Spelling Bee is over, you can view the competition as a replay at ESPN 3.  There is also a link on YouTube to the final round words and the student who won the 2013 bee.  Congratulations, Arvind Mahankali!

Intermediate Level Connectors Chat Board

As with other board games that I have put up on this blog, I hope that this one will be useful to both teachers and students.  I used it recently with an intermediate group of ESL learners in a TOEFL writing preparatory class (they learned how to write independent task essays).  Along with vocabulary building activities, the students had the chance to orally practice using connectors (conjunctions) with the assistance of the attached game board and the comparative word chat board.

You can use a die or not (it will go faster using dice and game pieces).  However, I wanted my students to do a lot of practice, and it was highly successful making the students alternate turns.  They did not finish the whole board, but got a lot of practice after 20-30 minutes.  Happily, they remained engaged until I stopped them because they were challenged creating their own sentences that linked words or ideas from the comparative chat board and used the conjunction that came up next on the board.  The partner could choose any pair of words on the comparative chat board. I was able to monitor students and spot-checked to ensure that they knew how to punctuate coordinating (the FANBOYS) and subordinating conjunctions (e.g., when, because, while, before, after) and conjunctive adverbs (e.g., however, therefore, first, second, finally).

This board is designed for lower intermediate level students.  In the future, I will post my more advanced level game connectors board along with some other ideas for how to use it.  Meanwhile, I hope that you'll find this one useful.