Humanising Language Teaching
Year 2; Issue 1; January 2000

* Lesson 1 * Lesson 2 * Lesson 3 *
* Lesson 4 * Lesson 5 *

by Simon Marshall, Solihull

Lesson outline:

1. Dictate the following list:

an overcoat ago
a couple of boy friends girl friends ago
two or three classes ago
a flat or house ago
a lifetime ago
a personality ago
a couple of books ago
a letter ago

2. Ask students, working on their own, to rank these phrases in order of nearness or farness in terms of time.

3. Get the students to compare their lists and to discuss the reasons for their ranking.

4. Either in class or at home get them to expand the list with their own "agos" that should go beyond obvious uses like " 5 minutes ago".

5. The students compare their "agos".

Variation:

Dictate this list of phrases:

the room beyond
in a farm beyond Canterbury
beyond pleasure
beyond caring
the idea's beyond me
beyond brassica
beyond God
beyond one's wildest dream
beyond good and evil
beyond my patience
beyond a joke.

Ask the students to subjectively rank these phrases in order of collocational frequency.

Acknowledgement Dylan Thomas first made us realise the power in such simplicity in his phrase " a grief ago".

by Simon Marshall, Solihull

Lesson outline:

1. Write some abstract nouns on the board such as balance, chaos, friendship, loneliness, equality, respect, oppression, perfection, gravity, variation, availability, opportunity, rhythm etc.

2. Take some rods and build your own model of one of the words above without saying which one.

3. Ask the students which word is represented by the "rods model" and why. Finish by giving more details about your model.

4. Divide the students into groups of three and four. Give them a box of rods and ask them to take turns in building models of an abstract noun. Again, other members of the group should interpret the model before the builder tells them which noun is represented. Other members may well have different ways of modelling the same noun. Invite them to do so.

5. It is important that each model should be valued as it stands. Different models of the same noun should be presented as simply the way that person sees it. Each representation has equal value.

Acknowledgement: From Caleb Gattegno, founder of The Silent Way, we learnt the thrill of standing back and watching students make their own discoveries about phonology and grammar. This exercise carries Gattegno's thought into the area of meaning.

by Simon Marshall, Solihull

Lesson outline 1:

1. Dictate the first sentence from the set below. Be careful not to disambiguate the sentence with your way of reading. Ask the students to then include the given sentence in a three sentence paragraph. Their two new sentences can come either side of the given sentence, both before it or both after it. Do NOT mention that the sentence you gave them is ambiguous.

2. Dictate the rest of the sentences using the same procedure as in step 1.

3. Group the students in fours and ask them to read their paragraphs to each other.

4. Ask them to come to the next class with three ambiguous sentences each from their own mother tongues.

Sentences to dictate:

1. The prince decided he was only happy with six subjects

2. The poor woman was stoned

3. The panda bear lives in South China and eats shoots and leaves

4. He had a complex about the size of his stomach

5. No, I'm sorry, I have a wee cough/ week off ( identical pronunciation)

6. Quite a lot of people don't want to watch the game until the end.

7. We could offer you a bit of a Microsoft person.

8. Join the Navy and feel like a new man each day.

9. He appeared before the Rabbi.

10. They had no protection from the trade union.

11. Do I understand you right/write?

In lesson 2:

1. Ask the students to write all their ambiguous mother tongue sentences on the board and explain them . ( If the class is international there will be a lot of explaining to do and if everybody shares the same mother tongue most of the ambiguities will be clear )

Variation

Dictate the ambiguous sentences above and ask them to write them down in their mother tongue/s. Get them together in small groups to compare their translations. In an international class you will have mother tongue pairs and clusters and an international group made of the mother tongue isolates. These people will compare their readings of the English.

More Material

Here is further set of ambiguous HEADLINES

1. Hospital sued by seven foot doctors

2. New vaccine may contain Rabies.

3. Kids make nutritious snacks

4. Red tape holds up new bridges.

5. Two sisters reunited after 18 years in checkout counter.

6. Juvenile court to try shooting defendant.

7. Miners refuse to work after death.

8. Enraged cow injures farmer with axe.

9. President wins on budget- more lies ahead.

11. Survivor of Siamese twins joins parents.

12. Diet of premature babies affects IQ.

Here are some further ambiguous sentences:

1. How many countries have you got to visit?

2. I haven't heard Tony speak Spanish for a long time.

3. How are you going to work?

4. You just go right over the bridge.

5. What makes you right/ write?

6. Did you get your bed made?

7. One's already visited Paris.

8. It's not fun going to a shrink with a headache.

9. We weren't paid for three months.

10. I want to read you something on the phone I've got upstairs

11. Look, is that the loan/lone shark you told me about?

12. They took me in when I needed them.

13. Please transfer your ticks to the boxes.

14 I'm not going for two weeks.

15 The Internet is influencing how many TV networks operate.

16. I read something Jane wrote last week.

17. He rode/rowed all the way to Liverpool.

18. You can look through these, maybe?

19. I am positively dumbfounded by what you have told me.

20. John asked Darren to visit his mother yesterday. ( 4 meanings )

21. I took my sister to work at the BBC.

22. Russia realises it cannot carry out a reconstruction plan for the Kurile Islands alone.

23. We could do with a n odd man.

24. He might have told me.

25. She has left tennis so much the richer.

26. Yes, we do cover up more nowadays.

27. What have you got to lose? ( triple meaning).

28.The Great Dane was worrying his owner.

29. She created 28 best sellers.

by Simon Marshall, Solihull

Lesson outline:

1. Explain to the students that they are going to do a dictation and translation exercise. Dictate the first phrase:

knot the tie

2. Ask them to translate the phrase into their own mother tongue. In the case of this phrase they may equally well translate " not the Thai" or "knot the tie" " not the tie" and " tie could be sartorial, relational, architectural, to do with supermarket bags or railtracks.

3. Ask them to reverse the two main items and write down

tie the knot

4. Finally they translate the reversed phrase into their own mother tongue. Some may translate the physical meaning some people may understand the figurative meaning of " to get married".

Ask the students to do the above 4 steps with the following phrases:

to eye the dot
to order a ball
to favour a do
to eye somebody's catch
to promise a break
affairs of state
the land of the lie
a piece of pipe
boathouse
to overturn
to fire back
one family parent
release of feeling
mark punctuation
the house white

5. Group the students in threes to compare their translations of the phrases and the reserved phrases. If yours is a multi-mother tongued class let them form same mother tongue groups + a mixed group.

Variation

After the students have done the exercise above, ask them, for homework, to find a dozen reversible phrases each and to come to class ready to explain both meanings.

by Ana Robles, HLT's Secondary Consultant

Procedure: tell the students they have 20 minutes to fill in the grammar card with rules and examples. Tell them they can talk to each other, move around the classroom looking for help and use any reference material they have access to (most textbooks have grammar summaries at the end). However, they cannot ask the teacher any questions. The outcome is not to fill the whole grammar card, but for them to check what they can answer in their own and where they need help.

When the time is over, whether they have finished or not, eliciting information from the whole group fill a model grammar card on the blackboard. Provide any information they cannot put together as a group.

GRAMMAR CARD – SIMPLE PAST