The Other Things Matter: grammar

Showing posts with label grammar. Show all posts

Thursday, August 15, 2013

The world's greatest [a) job vocabulary b) modal verbs c) plural 's' d) spelling] lesson ever

Hi all,

A big thank you to everyone for your support over the past two years. Realizing that this blog keeps growing and that the options for making it navigable with blogger are diminishing week by week, I've moved over to WordPress. I hope this doesn't cause any unnecessary inconvenience.

The original article you are looking for is below this short message. After reading, if you have a moment to check out the new (and hardly changed) "The Other Things Matter", please drop in. Would love to hear from you.

CC: Roland Zh, Occupy movement,
22 October 2011

I am mad about post-it notes. I first got obsessed with these 3M designed (thank you Dr. Spencer Silver) squares of joy when I read a blog post by Carol Goodey a little over a year ago. And recently over on the Teaching English Face Book page, they highlighted a post-it note lesson plan from Larissa's Languages. So I thought I would share a lesson I ran last week which makes extensive use of word cards and post-it notes. And as ~~an annoying ranty type thing~~ special awareness raising activity, I purposefully left out one piece of jargon that otherwise would be littering this post. You get 25,000 bonus points if you can guess what it is?

Classroom time: anywhere from 50 minutes to 2 hours depending on how much fun your students are having

Level: mixed ability anywhere from upper-beginners to lower-advanced level.

Target language: modals including must/should/may, plural 's', gerund usage, and so much more

Materials:

A nice big thick block of post-it notes.
A set of job vocabulary cards (which you can grab right here)

Prep: open up your fresh pack of Post-In notes. Print out one set of job vocabulary cards for each group and cut them up so that the words and the image/definitions are separate cards.

Process:

Break the students into groups of 3 to 4. Or even better, leave it up to the students to break themselves into groups. If you have mixed levels in your class, don't sweat it, this activity is built to accommodate various levels. Trust me.
Give each group one set of vocabulary cards, well shuffled.
Sit back and watch as the students start to try and match the vocabulary words to the pictures and the definitions. If they do not start to do this on their own, put together one set for each group to show them how it's done. If you want, give a set amount of time to complete this task as students don't actually have to match up every single job and definition to move on to the next step of the lesson.
Once the students have finished, ask them to pick, as a group, the 5 jobs they are most interested in and the 3 jobs they are the least interested in.
Have the students line up the vocabulary cards for the 5 best and 3 worst jobs slightly to the right of the the left side of the desk like this:

Take a post it note and write, "Should be good at..." on it and slap it down at the top and just to the right of the 5 job cards. Put one more post it note next to each job card. It should look like this:

In my class, students didn't need any explanation of what they were supposed to do. They simply started to complete the sentences for each of the jobs.
Once a group has completed most of the sentences, make any necessary error corrections in whatever way you like (I used a red pen, and felt oddly guilty about it). Then take another post-it, write, "Must like to... or Must like..." and place it above the job cards just to the right of the previous post-it note (the one with "Should be good at..."). It will look like this:

If a group has almost finished up two rows, you can do some error correction and then slap down the next post-it note up at the top. My third post-it note had, "may work in/on/at/Ø ....," written on it

Once again, when a group has almost finished completing the row, do some error correction and then place another post-it at the the top, this time with the phrase, "Should be a ... person." At this point, things will probably look something like this:

Finally, in the space at the top and to the left of the job cards, you can now put the final post it note down. On this post it note, write, "We recommend..." If students need a bit of direction, you can ask them to think about one person in the class who they think would be good at this job. They should write that person's name on the post-it on the left side of the job card.

Give groups time to discuss their recommendations with each other. This can be a bit tricky as a sentence like "A nurse may work in a hospital," will have to be converted into something more along the lines of, "Kenta likes hospitals," or "Kenta doesn't mind being in hospitals." This part of the activity could also be organised as a task in which, after a group explains their reasoning for having recommended a person for a certain job, the other groups are encouraged to change the recommend names and give the reasons for their changes. The discussion continues until the two groups come to agreement on which students in the class best fit the jobs laid out on the table.
Pass out one more post-it note to each student. Have the students write down on the post-it note what they thought was being taught in the lesson. In my experience, students write down all kinds of things at this point. In my last class, one student wrote "plural 's' with like" while another wrote "using '-ing' with the phrase good at." Not one student wrote "practice with 'should', 'must', 'may'" which was actually my intent with the lesson.
Tell the students to now pick up all of the cards and post-it notes that they will need to study what they believed to be the main point of the lesson. But they can't just pick up the cards/post-its, they also need to explain to the other students in their group why they want to take those cards. If more than one student wants a particular card/post-it, they have to negotiate with each other (and probably one student will be forced to make a new post-it or take some notes in the their notebook).

Optional extension activity:

Pass out a sample interview script using the language from the above activity. Have students who have been recommended for a particular job role-play an interview for that job.
Have students write a cover letter as if applying for a job which they have been recommend for by other students.
Role-play an interaction between an employment councillor and a person looking for work which uses the language from the above activity.

Last week I ran this lesson with a class of 12 mixed level students. The amount of interaction and the depth of language being used varied wildly from group to group. So did the pace at which each group progressed through the lesson. I think it's one of the strengths of the lesson that there is enough flexibility that higher level students never have to wait for students of lower ability to get through a particular part of an activity. It's also an interesting lesson to explore how different what we think we are teaching, and what our students are choosing to learn can be. But I especially enjoyed listening to the students discussion at the very end of the lesson as they tried to collect the post-its/cards they wanted to take home. As teachers, we know that students all have their own unique way to learn a language. But it's not something that our students probably spend much time dwelling on. The final negotiation activity helped make that fact salient for the students in my class. I hope that piece of awareness can help them see that by checking-in and depending on each other, they can use each others strengths and interests to not only learn a discreet piece of language, but to learn about learning itself.

Bonus awareness raising activity: the piece of jargon was 'scaffolding.' It's a term I think only has meaning when you explain exactly what aspects of an activity lead to scaffolding and give examples of how it plays out in a real class. And when you do give concrete examples such as, "Lower-level students can rely on the pictures of the jobs to help them understand the written definitions. Higher level students will often reference the pictures as they explain the meaning of words within the definition to the lower level students," there is really no need to even use the word 'scaffolding' anyway. But that's just my pet-peeve of the month and I hope it will in no way detract from the usefulness and enjoyment of the post in general.

Special bonus update: Just wanted to say how pleased I was when Matthew Walker (twitter handle: @esltasks) over at ESLTasks posted a link to a blog post describing how he used this lesson in a teacher training program in Korea. If you're interested in teacher training, want to see how adults would handle a lesson like this, or just want to check out a great blog, I highly recommend Matthew's blog:

ESLTASKS

Thursday, July 26, 2012

The Closing of the Ocean (a short story for ELLs)

The following is a short story for ELLs. Usually, I write these stories so that they are as easy to understand as possible. I try and keep as much of the vocabulary as possible within the first 2000 most frequently used words in English as identified by the General Service List. Often times I will also write with a certain grammar point in mind. This time, I decided to focus on ellipses. There are two main types of ellipses. Textual ellipses are when a word or phrase is omitted because it can be inferred from the clause or sentence either proceeding or following it. There are also situational a ellipsis. In that case, general knowledge of the situation allows us to imply something without clearly stating it. For example, if someone is about to stick there hand into a running laundry machine, we might say, “I wouldn’t!” leaving out the, “stick your hand in a running laundry machine,” as the situation itself provides the information included in the second part of the sentence. This story has a fair number of textual ellipses and, as far as I can tell, ~~not even~~ just one situational ellipsis (see comments).

It’s my hope that by keeping the story and the vocabulary simple, students will be able to recognize points in the story where things have been left out and perhaps even why. Usually I just put the stories up as is, but in this case I am including a second version of the story with “[]” markings to signify an ellipsis. The second version can be found at the end of this post.

Suggested activities:

- Students could be asked to fill in the ellipses after reading the story.

- Students could be given a list of clauses or phrases and asked to match them to the ellipses in the story

- Students could be asked to circle the word, phrase or clause which makes the ellipsis possible.

- Students could read the ellipsis-filled version of the story, then be given a version in which all of the implied phrases or clauses are included. Finally students could be asked to read the ellipsis-filled version again, filling in the implied phrases or clauses.

I am sure there are lots of other, probably more interesting, activities that could be done to help students recognize and use ellipses, and hope you might let me know your ideas in the comments.

Text Information:

First 1000 most frequently used words (GSW): 89.61%

Second 1000 most frequently used words (GSW): 8.23%

Academic Word List: 0%

Outside lists: 2.16%

Total Word Count: 457

Flesch Reading Ease score: 88.7

Flesch-Kinkaid Grade Leve: 3.6 (~9 years old)

The Closing of the Ocean

During the first week of November, all the police officers leave their clean pressed uniforms on the front steps of their houses. Anyone in town is free to pick them up, put them on, and see what it is like, this work of being an officer of the law. But this year the uniforms were left untouched. It was the first time.

My brother and I are sitting in the coffee shop on Heart Street. I pour some milk in my coffee. My brother drinks his black. My brother is a police officer. Lately his eyes get kind of empty when he talks about work, which isn’t often. He’s in charge of keeping people off the beach at night. Too many accidents of late, so they decided to close down the ocean until summer. Even put up a white sign with big red letters. The sign reads, “Ocean Closed Until Further Notice.” And my brother is the one who makes sure it stays shut down nice and tight. I imagine him, walking on the sand, spending his nights making sure that no one is breathing in the salty air. No one is looking and looking at the dark water as the lights of fishing boats flash on and off. No one is counting the rocks shining like bones in the moonlight.

My brother takes the last sip of his coffee. “A few weeks ago, we had a big problem,” he says and shakes his head. “A bunch of old men, big Russians with big chests, decided to take a quick swim. I had to pull them out of the water one by one. Big steaming men acting like children.” My brother looks in his cup like there might be an answer at the bottom. “And then they just walked away. They didn’t say anything. Just walked away like it was all my fault.”

Now it is February. Soon enough winter will end. Soon enough the ocean will be open again. My brother looks at the clock. It’s almost seven. “I’ve got to go close down the ocean,” my brother says and stands up. As if it actually means something, this idea of closing the ocean. But maybe it does. Maybe it means something important. And not only to my brother.

In November this year, the police officers’ uniforms remained where they had been placed, untouched. They just sat there, waiting. It was the first time. But every night the beach was filled. Filled with footprints. Filled with the whispers of lovers trying to hold on to a few more moments. Filled with kids laughing like they already had a hundred tomorrows rolled up tight and put away safely in their pockets, saved up for the coming of spring.

Ellipsis Marked Version:

The Closing of the Ocean

My brother and I are sitting in the coffee shop on Heart Street. I pour some milk in my coffee. My brother drinks his [] black. My brother is a police officer. Lately his eyes get kind of empty when he talks about work, which isn’t often. He’s in charge of keeping people off the beach at night. [] Too many accidents of late, so they decided to close down the ocean until summer. [] Even put up a white sign with big red letters. The sign reads, “Ocean Closed Until Further Notice.” And my brother is the one who makes sure it stays shut down nice and tight. I imagine him, walking on the sand, spending his nights making sure that no one is breathing in the salty air. [] No one is looking and looking at the dark water as the lights of fishing boats flash on and off. [] No one is counting the rocks shining like bones in the moonlight.

My brother takes the last sip of his coffee. “A few weeks ago, we had a big problem,” he says and shakes his head. “A bunch of old men, big Russians with big chests, decided to take a quick swim. I had to pull them out of the water one by one. [] Big steaming men acting like children.” My brother looks in his cup like there might be an answer at the bottom. “And then they just walked away. They didn’t say anything. [] Just walked away like it was all my fault.”

Now it is February. Soon enough winter will end. Soon enough the ocean will be open again. My brother looks at the clock. It’s almost seven. “I’ve got to go close down the ocean,” my brother says and stands up. As if it actually means something, this idea of closing the ocean. But maybe it does []. Maybe it means something important. And [] not only to my brother.

In November this year, the police officers’ uniforms remained where they had been placed, untouched. They just sat there, waiting. It was the first time []. But every night the beach was filled. [] Filled with footprints. [] Filled with the whispers of lovers trying to hold on to a few more moments. [] Filled with kids laughing like they already had a hundred tomorrows rolled up tight and put away safely in their pockets, saved up for the coming spring.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Multi-word, phrasal, and prepositional verbs. Do you know the difference? Do your students? Does it matter?

I've been doing a lot of reading about phrasal verbs lately (or multi-word verbs if you wish). And regardless of who is writing, things invariably seem to get into a muddle. As I read my way through Parrot, Aitken, Murphey and Swan, it seemed to me that the rules everyone wanted to hold onto, kept slipping away on closer inspection. Perhaps the best thing I've read on the difficult nature of phrasal verbs is Scott Thornbury's P is for Phrasal Verb. Luckily, I didn't decide to write a paper on the nature of phrasal verbs. Instead, I've been thinking about ways I can help my students simply identify phrasal verbs when they run into them during our English classes. So with that goal in mind I starting writing what I hoped would be a short paper on how to identify hard to recognize multi-word verbs. Unfortunately, my desire to keep the paper short had very little to do with the inherently large and messy nature of phrasal verbs. So the first draft of the paper is now complete. But, messy. Still, if you have students with serious issues when it comes to identifying multi-word verbs, you might want to give the paper a read. It's a little too long for a blog post, so I have posted it to my Scribd account:

Multi-word verbs: how to recognize the recognizable parts that make up an unrecognizable whole

Thursday, April 12, 2012

The curriculum planners at my school need some grammaring

The school year has started and that means, at least at my school, 'All Check.' 'All Check.' Oh how I hate the sound of you. It's a series of review classes and short tests which cover everything the students were supposed to have been taught last year. Usually the foreign teachers don't have anything to do with All Check. But I guess, seeing as how I've been at the school for four years now and most of the teachers have been fooled into thinking I speak a passable Japanese, they slotted me in to teach a few "All Check" classes. I got a nice fat envelope filled with tests and a one page explanation of the grammar point--or points--I needed to cover in my fifty minute lesson. Now I was lucky. The teacher who sits next to me seemed pretty upset about her teaching content. I peeked at her sheet and here's what I saw:

What a beautiful flower. à How beautiful this flower is!
What a kind boy he is. à How kind that boy is!
What a fine singer she is. à How fine that singer is!

I have to admit my ignorance. Looking at those sentences, I am slightly perplexed about what is supposed to be taught. And completely befuddled as to why the period morphs into an exclamation mark.

Anyway, I didn't get anything that bad. I was supposed to teach:

- must have + past participle

example: He must have missed the bus.

- may have + past participle

example: She may have seen that movie already.

- cannot have + past participle

example: My teacher cannot have made that mistake

- should have + past participle

example: You shouldn't have forgotten your crayons.

(author's note: why crayons?)

These are the actual grammar points and example sentences I was given. The first thing that struck me was the fact that 'must', 'may' 'cannot' 'should(n't)' can pretty much be moved around freely between the sample sentences without causing any kind of structural problems or meaning difficulties. Depending on the type of teacher, he very well 'may have made that mistake,' or in a worse case scenario 'must have made that mistake' which might/may/should lead you to scold him with a tart 'you shouldn't have made that mistake.' I put the my 'All Check' envelope to the side of my desk and decided to think about it. I'm good at putting things on the side of my desk. And the higher that pile gets, the harder it is to see me. Which is also nice.

The other day I signed up for a TESOL IA virtual seminar on Grammaring with Elka Todeva from SIT. I didn't have any real deep interest in grammaring. Mostly I wanted to know more about the people who have helped support and served as mentors to my PLN. Turned out that Grammaring was something I really needed to know about. From the very start, when Elka flashed a slide and said that Grammaring was "a set of options," and "a liberating force," I was hooked. She said a lot more, but you know what? You can access a recording of the whole seminar, right here. And you absolutely should. First off, you will learn to teach the hell out of indirect and direct articles, which alone is worth it. But if you don't know all about grammaring already, it will also introduce you to input flooding. That's what I am talking about baby, input flooding. Instead of introducing a discreet grammar point, or giving a nice series of disconnected examples, flood the students with the grammar in use. Let them not only see how it works, but experience it and learn it in and through use.

So that's what I decided to do today. I picked up that fat envelope of tests and my grammar points and headed off to class before the bell rang. On the board, I drew a picture of two stick figures sipping steaming cups of coffee in a café. I'm no good at drawing bodies, but very good at steaming cups of coffee. I labeled the stick figures Tom and Mari and drew and extra chair with a big question mark above it. Then I wrote the following conversation on the board:

Tom: Where is Kathy? She should have been here by now.

Mari: She lives so far away from the station.

She must have missed her train!

Tom: You know, she left her day-planner at my house.

She may have forgotten that we were meeting here.

Mari: No way! I talked to her last night.

She can't have forgotten!

(author's note: watch out for exclamantion mark overuse syndrome)

I had the students practice this dialogue in pairs in a 4/3/2 activity. As they practiced, I erased words here an there from the board until they were saying it from memory. But one dialogue does not a flood make, or at least it seemed the waters of understanding had risen to pond level at most, so I drew a stick figure of what I thought looked like an angry teacher and a defiant student on the board. Then I jotted up the following dialogue:

Teacher: Tom, where is your homework?

You ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿　done it last night.

Tom: But I did do my homework! I put it in my bag.

Someone ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿ stolen it!

Teacher: Who do you think stole your homework?

Tom: It ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿ been Mari.

She was standing near my bag.

Teacher: No! It ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿ been Mari.

Tom: How do you know?

Teaching: She didn't turn in her homework either!

As you probably guessed, this time around, aside from 'cannot' students were free to slot in the phrases wherever they liked. I grabbed my eraser and we practiced until the board was blank.

And then I gave out the tests. I am happy to say that the average grade was 90%. Which was much higher than the previous tests. That might be do to the power of grammaring. It also could be do to the fact that in the other classes they were learning insane things like, "What a beautiful flower. à How beautiful this flower is!"

So I'm down with this whole grammaring thing. Tomorrow's grammar points are "must/have to/should/can" in the simple present tense (not sure of the logic of putting the past-tense before the present tense, but maybe my school is just working on a deeper, cosmic wavelength). I'm gonna grammar flood them again. But this time, I want to move a bit faster so we can finish up with a minimum-prompt dialogue. If I had had enough time today, I was hoping to have the students complete the following:

Mary: You ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿ homework!

Tom: 　No! You ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿　yesterday!

Mary: What? You ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿　last month!

Tom: No way. You ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿　from the minute I met you!

But perhaps fortunately for the students, we ran out of time. Which was a very good thing, because they might have developed dangerously high levels of toxicity from exclamation point over-exposure.

(Final author's note: this blog post really doesn't do justice to the depth of thinking behind grammaring. I feel pretty guilty about that. So please, please, take a listen to Elka's seminar, or maybe even buy Diane Larsen-Freeman's Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring. I just did.)

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