Animalising Language Teaching

Jitka Žváčková, Czech Republic

Jitka Žváčková received her MA in Spanish and Latin American Studies. She currently works for the Masaryk University Language Centre, Brno, Czech Republic, as a teacher of Spanish as a foreign language. She is interested in designing didactic materials, autonomous learning, further professional development for language teachers and language courses quality assurance. E-mail: zvackova@fss.muni.cz

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Introduction
Level
Skills
Lesson topic
Steps
Conclusion
Useful links

Introduction

“When learning a foreign language, you may have a tiger by the tail, but still you can keep grinning like a Cheshire cat. Do you know what we are talking about? If not, this session is the right choice for you. We are going to observe secret lives of animals, pets and beasts living in a magnificent world of words; sometimes between the lines, sometimes ignoring geographical frontiers. You can be as quiet as a mouse, as sly as a fox or as busy as a bee, there is always a place for you in this group.”

This is what students can read on the Masaryk University Language Centre “English Autonomously” website. If they are interested in learning more about idioms related to animals, they attend a 90 minute one-off event called Multilingual animal idioms offered in the framework of an English Autonomously project.

Level

The lesson was prepared for and given to different groups of university students at the B1+/B2 CEFR (intermediate) levels. The type of the idioms selected, however, can be adjusted to the needs of students at lower-levels or in different learning environment.

Skills

Speaking skills, critical thinking, plurilingual skills.

Lesson topic

Multilingual animal idioms.

Steps

1. The teacher introduces the lesson topic Multilingual animal idioms.
2. Students are asked to write down (individually) their expectations of what they are going to learn in the lesson.
3. The teacher presents the main goals of the lesson which is to get to:
   1. know some English idioms related to animals
   2. compare some of them to animal idioms in other languages
   3. see what human characteristics are often attributed to animals.
4. Students are asked to think about and answer two questions:
   1. If you could be an animal, which one would you like to be?
   2. Why?
   The teacher can help by giving an example: If I could be an animal, I would like to be a dolphin, because it lives in the ocean, can swim fast, jumps high and is smart.
   
   Students get stickers and are asked to write the animal they would like to be on a sticker. They should put the sticker on their chests in order to make their choice visible.
5. Students are asked to present themselves to the whole class by answering the two questions from the point 4 (the teacher may repeat the example). Students “animalise” themselves in this way and from now on the teacher calls them by their animal names they have chosen.
6. Students work in pairs. They should see which animal their neighbour is. Then, they should find out what they have in common. The teacher does not specify what to look for (it could be anything from four legs, being mammals, living in the same continent, being unable to fly to having the same number of vowels in the name or starting with the same letter). Finally, students share their ideas with the rest of the class.
7. Students work in groups. They are given a handout with a list of more than 30 English animal idioms in an alphabetical order (it is better for orientation of students), separate paper stripes with explanations of what given idioms mean, and example sentences. Students´ task is to match the idioms with their meanings and the example sentences. Having done that, each student in a group chooses five different idioms they like most. Then, each student checks if the other members of the group remember the meaning of the idioms they have chosen. For example: Do you remember/Do you know/Can you tell me what “ants in one´s pants” means? The teacher monitors the groups.
8. The teacher writes down capital letters that represent first letters of animals that were part of idioms in the previous activity (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, K, L, M, P, R, S, T, U) on the board in order to summarise the idioms students have learnt. Students are asked to give an example of an animal/an idiom related to that animal. The whole class completes this activity together.
9. The teacher asks students if they are familiar with any other language (on any level) to prepare them for the following activity.
10. Students are asked to form different groups. Each group is given paper stripes with seven English animal idioms. Six of those idioms are in five different languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish and German), each idiom on a separate stripe (for example: to have eagle eyes, avoir les yeux de l´aigle, avere l´occhio dell´aquila, tener vista de águila, Adleraugen haben), one idiom only in four non-English versions (être le mouton noir, essere la pecora near, ser la oveja negra, schwarzes Schaf sein) to make it more fun. The teacher gives only a vague instruction: for example, “Here are some stripes with idioms. Discuss what you could do with them and try to do that”. Students need to find out that their task is to match the English idioms with their equivalents in other languages and reveal the English one. The teacher monitors and helps when necessary.
11. Students work in pairs. They are asked to create and write each idiom from the previous activity (in English) in at least one sentence. (The examples from the point 8 cannot be used.) The teacher monitors the pairs and helps if necessary. Then, sentences are shared with the rest of the class.
12. Students work in groups. Their task is to discuss what human characteristics they have been talking about when dealing with animal idioms or which human characteristics are attributed to animals in idioms. Then, they share their ideas with the rest of the class.
13. Students work individually. They are asked to go back to their papers where they wrote their expectations at the beginning of the lesson. They compare their expectations to what really was going on and reflect on their learning.
14. The whole class works together. Students share their reflections. What they have learnt, how much their expectations differed from the real activities in class and from what they have learnt.

Conclusion

This lesson uses the topic of animal idioms in order to practise a variety of language-related skills in the context of a plurilingual environment. The topic of animals is relatively simple from the language point of view, which allows for a wider focus on a variety of skills to be addressed during the lesson.

More concretely, students´ speaking time and practice are maximised by a combination of extensive pair and group work, with only a few individual activities necessary for preparation. The presentation of idioms not only in English but also in other languages enables students to realise how knowledge of one language can help in learning or understanding other languages. The vagueness of some instructions encourages students to work autonomously, to interpret situations and negotiate solutions. Grammatical and lexical issues touched upon in the lesson are second conditionals, comparisons and adjectives especially those describing human character.

To conclude, this lesson, which forms part of the English Autonomously project, activates students´ use of English idioms related to animals, engages them in lively discussions and encourages them to think of inter-language connections.

Useful links

www.idiomconnection.com/animal.html#A
www.learn-english-today.com/idioms/idiom-categories/animals/animals1-ants-bull.html
www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/idioms-animal.htm
www.impariamoitaliano.com/frasi05.htm
www.newsinslowspanish.com/catalog/spanish-expressions-proverbs
http://french.about.com/od/expressions/a/proverbs_3.htm
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/German_proverbs
www.wordreference.com/
www.cjv.muni.cz/en/english-autonomously/what-is-english-autonomously/
[Viewed on January 9th, 2016]

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