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.  

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!

"G" and "H"

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

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.

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.  

Word Forms Matter

Last year, UCSD psychology professor Christopher Bryan reported a fascinating finding about word forms and behavior. In an experiment exploring adults' responses to the verb use of "cheat" and the noun form of cheat referring to the person who cheats or "cheater," Dr. Bryan found that when people were directed "not to cheat" or advised "please don't cheat," they were more likely to cheat than if they were advised "not to be a cheater." Here is a link to the abstract of the research report. 

More recently, in a collaborative study, Professor Bryan worked with a team focusing on word choice and effects on behavior in young children. Similarly, experimenters were able to get child subjects to help more often by asking them to be "helpers" rather than to "help." Findings such as this lead me to believe that we need to be more attentive than before to the word choices and more specifically, word forms, that we use to promote ethical behavior in our students. It would be interesting to know if the same effects apply to non-native speakers of a language as to native speakers. 

The meanings of "date"

As part of my series of posts about WMMs (words with multiple meanings), I am now adding to my sister blog, Picturing English. There, whenever possible, I will provide photos, drawings, or clipart to illustrate the multiple meanings of a word. This provides a language learner with another way to acquire vocabulary so that it sticks to her/his long-term memory.

In the classroom, I often act out words. Former students have told me that a word "stuck" because of my "act" or visual illustration of it. Ultimately, that's the goal of language teachers - getting the language to stick!

Most of the words or expressions that I remember from Spanish, French, Japanese, and Quechua classes taken decades ago are those that are associated in my mind with events or images of people or a context in which I used or understood the language. I have no memories of words that I wrote on a page or a flashcard - even though I did use those tools for studying and improving my foreign language skills. Maybe those methods work best for short-term memory building.

"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.  

Funny Translations from Chinese to English

The hardest thing to convey to students, especially lower level ESL students, is not to use a translating dictionary to write in English. Here are some very funny examples of signs (you may need to click on the replay button for Gallery after you get to the first photo) that obviously don't say what was meant. Most (all?) of them are apparently mistranslations or literal translations from Chinese to English. We hope that no one was injured by following some of the directions.

Even though there may be some pretty good translating programs online, creating signs are a challenge even to native speakers. To avoid this kind of comedic representation of English, it is essential to have a native speaker of English or a bilingual bi-cultural speaker of Chinese and English verify the spelling and meanings of signs before they go up in public. I have no doubt that Americans translate to other languages in the same fashion as the Chinese. As I pointed out here, we don't even make signs very comprehensible to our own people.

I hope that we can, however, all enjoy the many colorful Englishes used around the world and appreciate the effort that non-native speakers of English (who far outnumber us native speakers of English!) make to apply or master our tongue.

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!  

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.

Do you have time? Or, do you have the time?

What is the difference between the two expressions in the title above?  For an example of what can happen when you confuse these two expressions, please read this post at my sister blog.  I have used the example in listening and vocabulary classes in addition to dedicated grammar classes. When students think that articles are not significant, it might help them to pay more attention if they have a clear image of how one little word like "the" created an embarrassing misunderstanding.

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.

Can You Teach English without Teaching Culture?

Most people would probably answer the above question with an unequivocal "No!"  On top of that, why would you want to teach a language outside the context of the culture that uses the language?  I guess I'm not like most, however, because I can see the point of teaching English in Switzerland, for example, using books that were created with Swiss people in mind - not for immigrants living in the USA and trying to learn American English.

The question of whether you can teach English without teaching culture is worth discussing. Maybe what we need to think about is whose culture we should embed the English in, ours or the culture where English as a foreign language is being taught.

At the beginning of this year in the Saudi Gazette, there was an article about how some Saudi families complained to a Saudi university about teaching English that had "inappropriate pictures and components of Western culture." Will learning English embedded in American culture change the value system and unique cultural views of an Arab student?  Does globalization via language lead to loss of unique cultural identities?

The fear that someone else's different and often attractive new language and culture will displace or "infect" one's own language and culture seems to be built into our human DNA.  This fear has probably existed since the first bands of human beings encountered people from another region, with another language and different customs and dress.  Throughout our history, languages have disappeared along with the indigenous people who spoke these rare tongues and who lived in non-industrialized small-scale societies.  Isn't it a legitimate concern that - with the spread of English and the cultures that embrace it - we will lose linguistic and cultural diversity? Do speakers of major languages such as French, German, Arabic, or Spanish, spoken by millions, have to fear that their cultural values will be destroyed or mutated by English?  Which English is the most dangerous?  After all, English is a national language of England, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Singapore as well as several African countries.

I've gathered some links together on the title topic and offer them to my readers for commentary and for cogitation.  For example, here is a discussion started by a well-regarded online ESL instructor. Another teacher argues in an advertisement and blog for its tutoring services that English is not enough. Finally, this one opens up a discussion of how to actually create a class to teach English as a foreign language and be sensitive to the "culture" issue.

As always in teaching a foreign language, the difficulty lies in implementing the principles and theories of cultural relativism in "real" classrooms. Often the books or materials teachers have to work with (if any at all, in some places) have been created for ESL students studying in England, Australia, the USA, or Canada. The vocabulary and topics concern life in those countries where English is the native language but may be inappropriate in Russia or Vietnam.

Going back to the original question at the beginning of this post, can we teach English without teaching culture?  I doubt it.  However, I do think we can incorporate more of the language (vocabulary) and context of the local environment when dealing with students learning English as a foreign language.  What I mean is that if you are teaching American English in Switzerland, for instance, it probably doesn't make sense to use a text that talks about baseball or American football heroes. It makes more sense to give Swiss students language and vocabulary for talking about relevant topics such as Alpine sports, famous Swiss mountaineers, or the cultural norms and customs of Switzerland. Indeed, there are many Englishes, and maybe our texts and other materials should reflect that reality.     

More Signs for Building Vocabulary

As you know from previous posts, I enjoy signs in English.  Not only can they be funny, but they contain a lot of useful vocabulary for non-native English speakers.  Recently, while surfing the web, I found this great link at ManyThings.  It has an extensive set of photos of signs in English. Please do have a look.

I've also included a list of some of my previous posts about signs (1, 2, 3, 4).  Enjoy!

P.S.  This is an amusing one which works best if you know who Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, and Steve Jobs were, and who Kevin Bacon is.

Another Funny English Headline

Today my husband set aside a page from our local newspaper because of a very funny headline. This one got by the editor(s), but there must have been numerous readers who called in about the error in word choice/word form.  The headline in the paper edition was

"Day Two of Furious Turkey Demonstrations" 

I looked for the link online before photographing the newspaper.  The online edition had been correct(ed) as you can see here.  

Do non-native speakers understand why the original headline is so hilarious or strange?  Do you know the bird "turkey," which Americans eat at Thanksgiving?  This headline seems to be announcing that turkeys are furious and demonstrating for the second day.  I wonder if UT San Diego will make a formal apology since the above use of English error makes the reader start off laughing about something serious.  

"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!