The lost magic of childhood Christmas

It’s Christmas, and the nostalgia of all years gone and all fulfilled and unfulfilled dreams is overwhelming. Here is a Greek poem of mine about the lost magic of childhood Christmas:

Η χαμένη μαγεία των παιδικών Χριστουγέννων

Ήρθε τότε ένας χειμώνας

Στα ολόλευκα ντυμένος

Θλιβερός και πεινασμένος

Και με ένα φύσημά του

Σάρωσε όλες τις χαλκομανίες

Κι έγινε η φωτιά στο τζάκι στάχτες

Κι ένα αστέρι εκεί πάνω

Στο βουβό τον ουρανό

Που τρεμόσβηνε δειλά

Κάπου πήγε να κρυφτεί

Σ’ ένα σύννεφο μολυβένιο

Και γεμάτο με βροχή

Τα Χριστούγεννα εκείνα

Χάθηκε όλη η μαγεία

Ψάχνω όλα αυτά τα χρόνια

Ίσως κάπου να τη βρω

Μα θα έχει ξεθωριάσει

Και αδύνατο να τη δω

Some of the challenges about teaching adults-beginners

The greatest challenge about teaching adults -- especially beginners --is how to reinforce grammatical structures in a stimulating way. Course books typically provide plenty of practice in more or less repetitive exercises, which are meant to hammer home to the learner the new grammar. Those exercises mostly consist of single sentences with limited vocabulary.

My feeling is that once the grammar and the vocabulary of the unit have been presented and consolidated, the teacher is still left with time on their hands, time which they must fill with meaningful input before moving on to the next unit.

Besides, compared to young learners, adults are far quicker at understanding and applying rules and they also have a head start in terms of experience and factual knowledge and, therefore, a higher boredom threshold in class.

I have been trying various ways of interspersing the wasteland of grammar and repetition with some extracts from poems and songs. My main criteria for the selection of this supplementary material are its potential for reiteration of the structures presented in the course book and the intellectual stimulation it provides for my students.

 I will illustrate my point by providing an example which worked quite well with one of my adult students. The grammar practised in the course book is “there is/are” in all three forms – positive, interrogative and negative. Along with the practice material in the course components, I handed out the following:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZY6m9j97cbcMS4AR77GzyaZcZeUk1I4f

Apart from striking a chord with the student, it is the kind of input that the student will go back to, if not to remind themselves of the grammar, to relish in it.

Before completing the work on this specific unit, I provided the lyrics of the following song, which the student was to listen to in the comfort of their home.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YLlz4XGql55lY2qDl9wZ0bnQKuvi-h0M

While I am aware of the fact that the song as a whole will not make perfect sense to a beginner- or elementary-level student, I have reached the conclusion that nuggets of gold are better than no gold at all. After all, we do not understand everything in its entirety in real life, but we don’t let this deprive us of the joy of discovering things.

Writing a description of an object: a playful challenge

Describing an object is often a topic set at high-level   English language exams. It is normally one part of a composite task.

Descriptions are a real challenge and not only for the student but for the teacher as well. Not everyone has an eye for detail or is gifted enough to bring an object alive through the accurate use of language.

When you describe something, you have to know the appropriate terms and you can’t resort to generalities as they do not contribute to the task by any means.

Besides, you need to “deconstruct” the object described so as to handle its different parts while not losing sight of the whole. Last but not least, you have to prioritise the parts you describe on the basis of an underlying principle: larger parts-smaller parts, interior-exterior, upper-lower, right-left and vice versa. The list is indicative but far from comprehensive.

The ugly question that arises is whether we need to develop the skill at all. I dare say that it is well worth cultivating as the description of anything leads to a better understanding and raises questions which would have not otherwise been posed. It leads to a more profound and thorough knowledge of anything, and it is of utmost importance in science too.

There are some ways of leading up to full-scale descriptions. Perhaps “game” is not the right word; consequently, I will call the activity a “challenge”. 

The teacher or different groups of students think of, research and write a description of an object without naming it. The other groups have to guess the actual object. The description should be structured as a series of “detachable” or “interchangeable” chunks of meaning so that the information can be revealed step by step – or should I say chunk by chunk – and not necessarily in a linear way but selectively depending on how difficult or easy the group may wish to make the task for the others.

The activity is appropriate for any level of English.

Here are some examples at different levels:

TOOTHBRUSH: a stick of hard plastic with a head of bristle at its end used as a tool of oral hygiene – teeth and tongue

RING: band of a precious metal often set with gemstones (diamond, ruby, emerald etc) worn round a finger offered as a vow of love or worn as a pledge of allegiance

CONCH SHELL: It is an elongated spiral with two ends: one pointed and another tubular. Close to the tubular end is a small cavity. There are five whorls on its surface of an off-white and vanilla colour.

If you hold it to your ear, you are supposed to hear the sound of the ocean.

Here is a graphic way of what I mean by detachable chunks of meaning:

Small things and lesson plans: “spin” is the word

Small things and lesson plans: “spin” is the word

I am a great believer in small things. Small things possess a lot of potential, and this is magic. A small thing can be a single concept examined in as many ways as one can imagine in one’s mind’s eye.

Let us, for the sake of illustration, take the concept of “spin”. I had never bargained for this

Spinning by firelight The boyhood of George Washington Gray, 1894  Henry Ossawa Tanner

while trying to prepare a first-time lesson plan for an online student.  For me “spin” evoked spinning car wheels, spinning tops, spinning dancers but not spinning wheels for spinning yarn!

So here are some suggestions about a lesson plan though of course examples and language production expectations will vary depending on the students’ level. One more word of warning: I always overshoot the time limit of a teaching session. (It’s a leftover fear of my early days of teaching: what if I run out of ideas before the lesson is over?)

To begin with, show the painting and try to elicit as much as you can about the setting, the era, the thoughts of the people portrayed in it. I suppose it is rather unlikely that the students will know the word “spinning wheel” or its use for that matter, so you can explain all about it. You could use the familiar image from Sleeping Beauty, which most students will have seen before.

Next provide some examples of the different nuances of meaning as well as some idiomatic expressions with the word:

·       The woman quickly spun around and pulled out a short sword.

·       Her head was spinning and it wasn't from any of the alcohol she had consumed earlier.

·       I must say my head is spinning as I contemplate these troublesome questions.

·       Aunt Betty often offered to spin neighbours' wool for them as a source of extra income.

·       Unlike insects, spiders spin silks throughout their lives.

give sth a particular emphasis or bias

·       They spin the story from an African American perspective, making us the centre, not the periphery of the story.

·       This time, they try to spin the story as a ‘legal way to download music.

IDIOMS

·       spin a yard=tell a long far-fetched story

The Oscar-nominated Perlman, who's worked extensively in children's TV, manages to spin a yarn about bullying that's both entertaining and thoughtful.

·       spin one’s wheels=waste one’s time or effort

So for at least five of the last eight years, I was just spinning my wheels.

And since everyone is entitled to a bit of fun, you can play the following song:

You Spin Me Round

Dead or Alive

If I, I get to know your name

Well if I, could trace your private number, baby

All I know is that to me

You look like you're lots of fun

Open up your lovin' arms

I want some, want some

I set my sights on you (and no one else will do)

And I, I've got to have my way now, baby

All I know is that to me

You look like you're having fun

Open up your lovin' arms

Watch out here I come

You spin me right round, baby

Right round like a record, baby

Right round round round

You spin me right round, baby

Right round like a record, baby

Right round round round

I got to be your friend now, baby

And I would like to move in just a little bit closer

All I know is that to me

You look like you're lots of fun

Open up your lovin' arms

Watch out, here I come

You spin…

Finally, ask the students to write a short story about spinning in whatever sense of the word they choose – ideally including as many different shades of its meaning as possible.

Also while you are at it, better not miss the opportunity to assign some dictionary work on the difference between set eyes on and set one’s sights on (the latter is in the song). 

Hope you have fun and perhaps you can add a new spin on this lesson plan!

Humble concoctions: In my Mind's Eye

Sometimes I gather stray thoughts together and I come up with humble things like this:

In my Mind’s Eye

My old mother used to say

If you can’t see the ocean

Behind those pale blue eyes

You are likely blind

And if you can’t feel the heat

In those dying embers

You’ve never been touched

By the divine

Your world is there

And you are forever

Reshaping it only

 In your mind’s eye

Writing as a process: let's get extreme!

Writing at any level in our days has become a burden rather than a time of reflection and quiet introspection.

Technology and its concomitant distractions prevent young -- and more mature -- learners from  concentrating  on the task at hand. I dare say the social media, with their semblance of sociability, cultivate the attitude that being left on our own and to our own devices points to inflicted isolation, which is to be avoided by all means.

Motivating learners to write somehow involves persuading them to rethink the value of spending time alone with their thoughts, and this is not an easy thing to do but definitely worth trying.

A word of warning: I am not advocating a school environment free from technological equipment nor am I in favour of leaving students to deal with a writing task without support from the teacher. What I am saying is that independent thinking also occurs when the students are given time and opportunity to examine a question with the freshness of their own mind.

Writing at an advanced level is an extremely demanding activity as it requires performing many different subtasks. I therefore suggest that the teacher develops a method of guiding the students through the different stages of drafting and editing a piece of writing -- perhaps a different one depending on the nature of the task.

I will now focus on a specific form of writing and suggest an approach which could not only enable the learners to complete the task but would also teach them skills and ways of addressing similar writing tasks while at the same time it will activate their minds.

This is the topic

A sports magazine has invited its readers to write letters on the topic of dangerous sports. You have decided to write a letter (280-320 words) expressing your views about dangerous sports and what you think the responsibilities of the people who do these sports are.

It is a task set in the coursebook Masterclass for the Cambridge Proficiency published by Oxford University.

The first step was to ask the students for a definition of extreme sports to which the answer is typically an activity which carries a high risk possibly incongruous with the pleasure derived from practising it – though the last point is highly questionable.

Although the task seemed and indeed was quite straightforward, the students did not have enough ideas to develop into a 300-word letter, which brings me to the next step.

By focusing on structure and format, coursebooks tend to overlook the dearth of ideas and arguments, which is really the raw material for structuring anything at all. Rather than providing the students with a ready-made model, which is often well beyond their scope and abilities, I consider it a priority to train them to look for information on the Internet. It takes some time to learn the ropes since searching should yield the most relevant results, which requires thinking carefully of the key words of the search.

On this particular occasion I did the search for the students and gave them the links so they could read up. The first text was a New York Times article:

Taking sports to the extreme

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/taking-sports-to-the-extreme/

The second one was a post from a blog:

Should extreme sports be banned as they put people’s lives at risk

https://sciaga.pl/tekst/60776-61-should_extreme_sports_be_banned_as_they_put_people_s_lives_at_risk

The third one was an article again from The Conversation:

Adrenaline zen: what “normal people” can learn from extreme sports

https://theconversation.com/adrenaline-zen-what-normal-people-can-learn-from-extreme-sports-72944

The most important thing to warn the students about is that the texts they will read are in different formats and styles from what they have been asked to produce, which means that they will have to select the points that they will include in their own writing. They can copy-paste the relevant extracts onto a sheet of paper but the teacher must point out that they have to read the whole texts and then select relevant bits.

When the students had garnered all the relevant information, I gave them my notes, which evidently lay no claim to stylistic uniformity or structural integrity. The important thing is to make it clear to the students that their notes are a bank from which they can draw but not necessarily exhaust. The notes may contain ideas about linking devices which will come in useful later.

Here are the notes I made and passed on to my students as an example of what I was asking of them:

 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MvUtGyVNGHT5pjIT82sLp7xxOn57oQId

Once they have done the above, they are ready to start the laborious task of organising the ideas in the format required (a letter in this case) and adapting the material collected to their own personal style if their writing is not going to read like a mosaic of different styles and loosely connected ideas.

The final stage is the actual writing. When this is done in class, which it normally is, I make sure that I keep an eye on what each student writes in order to help with phrasing and stop them from wandering off. It is a painstaking process for the students and teacher alike but one that pays off in the long run.

Once they have finished their writing, I usually give the students the end result of my writing. Here is the letter about extreme sports:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18Tnd3owBAFc1XmnvZyubtyKGEuiR_6dc

A poem to relate to: First Day at School

One of my favourite poems is First Day at School mainly because it encapsulates the whole range of emotions children experience on their very first day at school, strangers in an unfamiliar environment, where they will -- willy-nilly-- spend half -- if no more-- of their day.

If your students are mostly children and teenagers, you could ask them to sketch something, no matter how rough it may be, to illustrate their own first day at school. Explain it doesn’t have to be a realistic image – simply a representation of first impressions and gut reactions.

It is not so important for them to verbalise their experience as to convey a feel of the situation for the time being. It could be something like this 

 or something like that!

Following this introductory activity you could draw up a list of questions to ask, which will elicit some of the poem content though possibly in a different light.

§  What was the first sound that you registered?

§  Did you mix with other children before going into class?

§  How did you feel when you realised you couldn’t leave school?

§  Did the railings look scary? How?

§  What was your understanding of the word “lesson” before you started school?

§  What did your classroom look like? Did you find any aspect(s) of the classroom odd/disturbing?

§  What did your first teacher look like? Was s/he intimidating in any sense? Explain.

The students could write down their answers and compare notes to see how similar or divergent their experiences were.

Following that, you can show them the slide show without the lines the first time and ask them to tell the story of this First Day at School based on the sequence of images in the slide show. It would make the task easier for the students if you provided some key words or if you brainstormed the key words. They should be free to interpret the images and their relevance themselves; you might find the result mind-boggling!

 Alternatively, you could provide the first word of each line and ask the students to continue the line or even supply the last word of the line or both. The possibilities are endless, and you can improvise depending on the level and the aptitude of your students.

https://The poem

The exercise to elicit the poem

Slideshow without words

Slideshow with words and narration

A dog's life on a page: a poor effort to pay my respects to a friend

Dogs are the mirrors of our souls. When I see a dog suffer, I feel the world’s most profound sadness.

A Dog’s Life on a Page

My name was Vromas[1] (it showed how much appreciated I was and how much effort went into my hygiene). I was found by a little girl and imposed on an old lady, who may have well loved me in her own way.

I was cute but never showed because, as I said before,  I never had the luxury of a bath. Nor did I get any vaccines or anti parasite protection. But I was robust and only too happy to serve.

I shared my space with other dogs—in fact I picked a few fights with a male who left us before I did. I gave him a bite or two, but nothing fatal .(Talking of fatal!) For a couple of years I was chained because I lived in the proximity of hens and chickens, and as you know, dogs love chasing them.

I grew old gracefully in an enclosed space and would have probably carried on living happily, but it wasn’t meant to be. A fancy dog was given shelter in my enclosure (dog owners often get tired of their pets but some of them can’t bear the guilt of putting them in the street). So anyway one day the fancy dog turned on me in a really nasty way and mauled me around the neck. Blood everywhere and screaming from my owner, but to no avail.

I was wrapped in a towel and left to my own resources for a few hours until another dog owner (unintentionally responsible for some puppies’ death and burdened with guilt) took the initiative to take me to the vet –together with her husband.

I was laid softly on the back seat of the car and driven to the vet. I was still conscious and when she turned round to look at me, I riveted my eyes on her trying to tell her it was no good. But she refused reality at point blank.

The vet was nice. He cleaned my wounds and put me on a drip. He even gave me a relaxing warm bath (the only one in my life) and removed my ticks. The people who brought me here visited every day but I was long gone – far too advanced in age and weary with life.

My eyes, a thousand words, will haunt one of them maybe for a long time, but memories fade. Humans forget humans – let alone dogs.               

---

[1] The dirty one in Greek

Adding detail to expand sentences in writing

Adding detail to expand sentences in writing

One of the stumbling blocks when it comes to productive skills is, to begin with, coming up with ideas especially for young learners who are required to sit formal language exams. Assuming that the ideas are there or discussed in class, the word limit for the written tasks may constitute another obstacle to a satisfactory performance. Organisation, accuracy and communicative ability are all very well, but one must learn how to add detail, how to expand a sentence without repeating oneself.

There are two ways in which the teacher can help their students. The obvious one is to provide examples of how to add detail when correcting a writing task. The second is to highlight detail in texts presented in class. I am going to illustrate how to do the latter by looking at a text which I used with a group of students preparing for the Cambridge Proficiency exam (Level C2 for those who might be unfamiliar with formal exams).

The text, an article published by BBC on 8 July 2018, focuses on a Spanish woman’s fight to pursue a career as a military psychologist, to the preparation for which she has devoted two years of her life, without having her tattoo removed.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kEda4_72pfImWW1v2hnxAxQWMD7WCCJy/view?usp=sharing

I spotted a few details in the text which could be removed without detracting from the content or grammatical construction and jumbled them asking the students to fill each gap with the right short extract.

I won’t claim that details can be divided into clear-cut categories, but I will use the text in question to provide some guidelines as to how one could go about it.

The first detail explains what the lotus stands for. The reader would have to look it up if it were not for the relative clause which follows. Therefore, providing definitions for concepts mentioned in writing is one type of detail.

The second detail refers to the place where something occurs.

The third detail describes a condition on which something happens.

The fourth illustrates a point with an example.

The fifth one is a second thought for “two years of my life”.

The sixth one adds a reason why something should be so.

The seventh one qualifies the preceding statement.

The teacher could ask the students to bear in mind those examples of detail and try to use as many as would be appropriate in their next writing assignment.

A final suggestion is to get the students to draw up a list of different kinds of details which have been highlighted in other texts or which the teacher has added in their writing.

A summer night’s vision

A summer night’s vision

The drifting moon

Was gazing down

A seamless blue

The sleepless sea

A swelling lull

The slightest signs

Of life subdued

In its arms

An eerie stillness

The cosmos ruled

A trail of dreams

Wrestling free

Like sailing boats

Under a breath of wind

Their skyward course

Across the nightly cloth

With eagerness pursued

The restless vision

A flight of fancy

Unchecked

In its inception

A  ruthless rift

Insidiously wrought

In the nocturnal harmony

Maria Danoussi, 2 years ago

Mystery and teaching

Mystery and Melancholy Giorgio de Chirico

Ideally, to stimulate and hold the students’ interest you need a touch of suspense and a balanced mix of science and art. It is not every day that I can strike gold in this endeavour, but from time to time I come across some promising material such as a recent item entitled How we Found Three Poisonous Books in our Library on Conversation.

https://theconversation.com/how-we-discovered-three-poisonous-books-in-our-university-library-98358

You could introduce your topic by writing down

books                                    poison                         colour

and then asking the students to think of any possible ways to link the ideas. The speculation would enhance the mystery around the forthcoming text.

To test some fine points in syntax I turned some extracts from the text into a transformation exercise, which the students had to do before they read the text. They then confirmed their answers while they read the text.

I also gave them a vocabulary exercise to do in order to practise the new words.

However, I often get this niggling feeling that the students are not quite active in learning when they simply perform tasks, but on the other hand I am aware of the fact that because they are young they need some guidance in order to become independent learners.

To this end, I searched on the internet for some related topics and came up with the following:

The mystery of Caravaggio's death solved at last – painting killed him, The Guardian

 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jun/16/caravaggio-italy-remains-ravenna-art

and

Oil paints that could kill: did Albrecht and Margret Durer poison their customers with their paintings? Part I, By Dr. Elizabeth Garner and Joe Kiernan

 http://www.albrechtdurerblog.com/oil-paints-kill-albrecht-margret-durer-poison-customers-paintings-part/

Next, I devised some kind of framework within which the students can prepare an oral presentation of each text and assigned each to pairs of students. They had to meet up outside school and work together on their presentation. I was pleasantly surprised by how well they accomplished the task and how many questions arose out of doing this independently.

I provide the copies of the Student’s handouts here:

(Some Greek equivalents are given by way of explanation for some lexical items. I am all for such shortcuts when it comes to technical terms or words which it would take too long to explain.)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CQq_YmAMkD2uBvYzeAK40MwupHvdNdB0/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WA59oVQdllD9rrgbjIRyIJmAuS3lIMpn/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q2xCQV4edgDUJMTAAqHJHJZPJSlMZQ2A/view?usp=sharing

Lessons from nothing

Lessons from nothing

Texts, whether they are articles or news stories or literary extracts, provide fair amounts of exposure to the language, which is the most obvious way of learning. However, the challenge for me is how to introduce a text so I can stimulate the students’ interest as well as activate their mind.

I often rack my brains as to how to present a new topic before I actually hand out the text. It turns out that the best ideas come to me in the process of teaching as the students are the ones who shape the lesson – with their unpredictable responses -- no matter how well-prepared a teacher might be. I therefore call these “lessons from nothing”.

For instance, recently I had prepared a BBC article about the death of baobab trees for my B2 students. I attempted to introduce the topic by asking my students to write down some words they associate with “forest”. They seemed to be stuck (not least because the school year was drawing to an end). So I supplied some words and asked them to ask questions using them.

The words I gave them were:

plant, acid rain, destruction, reforestation, deforestation, human activity

It was a small contribution for the questions I got back from the students:

·       To what extent does acid rain affect trees?

·       In what ways does human activity affect forests?

·       How can we stop deforestation?

·       What is the significance of reforestation?

·       Which is the most effective method of reforestation?

The questions form the basis of a writing topic on forests, and the students could go on to write the answers to the questions if they could do so off the top of their heads or alternatively they could search for answers on the internet.

Another example of how a key word can trigger a variety of improvised activities follows.

This time it was a news item I was introducing concerning an explosion in an apartment building in Wuppertal, Germany, published in The Guardian.

I simply wrote down “explosion” on the board and invited the students to share what the word brought to mind. Not surprisingly, they came up with the very words that constitute the causes of an explosion:

earthquake, gas, bomb, volcano

I grabbed the opportunity for some collocations:

A volcano erupts

Gas leaks

You plant a bomb

At that stage, it occurred to me that it was high time we revised possibility in the past. I wrote on the board:

may

might

could

and underneath a question: What could have caused the explosion?

I then elicited sentences with the other causes mentioned by the students.

·       Gas could have leaked.

·       A bomb might have been planted.

·       There may have been an earthquake.

·       A volcano might have erupted.

In conclusion, lessons from nothing can be thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding for both students and teachers.

The links for the two articles:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44418849

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/24/dozens-injured-by-explosion-at-apartment-block-in-west-germany