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Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 5; September 02
Making up New Words
Time: 20-30 minutes
Purpose: to invite students to enjoy making up new words, as natives sometimes do, and so to experience their dominance over the language, though within its silken, steel-strong rules. This activity requires a "linguistically warmed up group who have, for example, already enjoyed the ambiguity exercises on Page 00.
Preparation: make a copy of the NEW Words worksheet for each person, and a separate copy of the key.
Lesson outline:
- Give out the work sheet and ask people to work on it in pairs.
- Get pairs to shout out some of their solutions and then give out the key.
- Get the pairs into fours and ask each foursome to come up with half a dozen new words of the sort given in the worksheet.
- The new words go up on the board and each four explains their meaning.
NEW WORDS Worksheet
To bagonise : to anxiously wait for your suitcase to appear on the baggage reclaim carousel in the airport.
Elaversion: In an elevator, avoiding eye contact with other people round you.
Toiliterature reading matter people keep in their toilets
Affpuddle a puddle hidden under a paving stone that shoots up your leg unexpectedly.
Please supply definitions for these words:
1..Lexikinesis
2 kellogulation
3. illuminoyance
Please supply words for these definitions
4. The practice of waiters refilling your coffee cup in restaurants
5. The position you have to get into in order to cut your toenails
6 The fact that, in any group photo, there will always be one person with their eyes closed.
7 The time that elapses between when hiccups go away and when you suddenly realise it's happened
1 The ability to open the dictionary at the exact page you want.
2. The soggy mess breakfast cereal turns into if you pour milk onto it and leave it for
half an hour.
3 You turn on the light and the bulb goes "pop".
4 Reincaffeination
5 Pedicurious
6 Blindsync
7 hicgap
Acknowledgement
The words and definitions used in this exercise were sent in by various listeners to David Crystal following a 1988 Radio 4 programme on humorous nonce-words. They come on Page 34 of his book Language Play, Penguin 1998.
