'As pure as the driven snow'

Students often produce funny (sometimes 'haha' funny and sometimes 'strange' funny) English in my classes, but I always appreciate their efforts to use new expressions in their speaking or writing. However, teaching students how to use idioms or expressions in appropriate contexts is quite challenging. It's often not possible to supply simple synonymous phrases, and many ambitious students want to try out their new expressions immediately without attending to the contexts I (or a book) provide for an expression's usage.

For example, recently, a student wrote in his journal that what he liked best about San Diego was "the ocean, as pure as the driven snow.' It struck me as quite funny at the time I read it (I laughed), but explaining how to use this expression was not that easy.

A student has to understand that this 'pure' evokes an image of newly fallen white snow, which hasn't had time to get dirty from particles in the air falling on it or from vehicles driving over it. In addition, we usually use that expression to describe the nature of a person who is innocent, virtuous, or unspoiled. Thus, 'the ocean, as pure as the driven snow' doesn't work on two counts. First, the ocean is usually thought of as a colored, fluid entity, unlike newly driven snow which generally piles up into a powdery white mass. Second, the student's metaphor refers to some thing's appearance rather than to someone's basic character.

What is difficult to decide as a teacher is whether to encourage the misuse of an expression (i.e., complimenting the student for using 'as pure as the driven snow') in order to avoid discouraging the student from experimenting with idioms or phrases that (s)he doesn't yet completely control, or to discourage misuse by immediately correcting the student and re-emphasizing correct usages. I know it's not quite so black and white, but finding the right touch or balance between encouraging use of new vocabulary and correcting misuse is a daily dilemma.

Another ESL Game Board: Verbs with Gerunds/Infinitives

Below is another favorite game board that I created a few years ago. My fellow instructors have used it successfully as a simple way to get students speaking to each other using these structures.

The verbs included on the board come from lists in Betty Azar's classic Blue grammar book (click on 'Contents' of Third Edition of Blue Azar book). I usually photocopy the reference lists (14-9 and 14-10) and hand them out to students to use as they practice creating their own sentences orally, rolling dice and moving around the board.

The tenses or structures that you ask your students to use with the board can be adapted to several levels from intermediate to advanced in any course where the object is to get students to produce and control these forms in speaking or writing. Try it out, and let me know if it works for you.

CAE - Fall 2008

From pain to gain!

Mixing Up English

What's the problem? The words 'to marry', 'married,' and 'marriage' are perhaps poorly chosen words for what are legal designations as well as rituals or actions often performed in churches in our society. You wouldn't think a simple eight-letter English word could cause so much trouble, would you?

The mixing of two definitions of 'marriage' - one legal and one religious - has resulted in Californians passing Proposition 8, a law which prevents gay people from enjoying the right to equal treatment under the law, including the right to be legally married.

James Madison, often thought of as the Father of the United States Constitution, once said “...I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

In this case, the mixing of meanings of 'marriage' in our language has led to a decision that seems based on religious interpretations rather than consideration of the U.S. Constitution.