Editorial
This article has been published with the kind permission of Voices (May-June issue, no. 196, pp. 8-9), where it was intitially published.

Sticky Wordplay: Rhymes and Alliterations

Monica Hoogstad, UK

Monica Hoogstad is a freelance Business English and Legal English teacher, with eighteen years experience in ELT. She has taught English in various European countries, like the Netherlands, Sweden and Romania, and is now living in England. She is particularly keen on teaching Advanced Learners. Her current interests are material design, intercultural communication, creative thinking, and teaching while having fun (and the other way around). E-mail: monicahoogstad@yahoo.co.uk

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Introduction
Background
Activities 1-4
Key

Introduction

Despite the 'learn Globish' hype that has enticed some business English students, most of them don't stop at the 1,500-word-vocab hurdle. It is their commitment and dedication that urged me to try to make the teaching/learning process more memorable. "How did you learn your mother tongue? Did your parents put a grammar book and a dictionary in your pram?" This would make my students chuckle in the beginning, but they would soon grow to understand that learning a language needn't be a tedious memory exercise. The alternative is a learn-a-language-naturally approach requiring intensive exposure to genuine English texts, from which they are supposed to elicit and recycle relevant vocab. And - hey, presto! - English is as easy as pie, right? Easier said than done. The 1 million dollar question is how to make language more memorable. How can I help enhance my students' language acquisition and production?

What I had in mind was something that would not only put a smile on their faces and get their creative juices flow, but would also facilitate learning, make their spoken production sound more authentic, and give them a well-deserved confidence boost. This is the idea that triggered the following activities, which can be used with higher levels, i.e., CEF B1high, B2 and C1, provided they are adapted for each level, type of course, learning goal, etc. These activities encourage adult learners of English to play with the language, and to regard the learning process as a celebration of wit and creativity, instead of a laborious, boring task. They also intend to add a touch of fun and performance to the language class.

Background

I've tried to ascertain what appeals to and sticks in memory without too much effort. After a close scrutiny of the language starting with Beowulf, created in the seventh century, and ending with the Telly Tubbies fourteen centuries later, it seems that the English are still reigning international wordplay champions. Undoubtedly, the nation's favourite pastimes are harnessing, taming and exploiting the power of certain sound patterns. If you ask yourself what alliterations and rhymes have ever done for us; well, apart for grabbing our attention, stirring our curiosity, and helping us remember, learn, enjoy and be creative with the language - not much really. Consider the following:

• fairy-tale and cartoon characters: Tom Thumb, Benjamin Bunny, Mickey Mouse;
• children books and films: The Prince and the Pauper, The Wind in the Willows;
• nursery rhymes: Hickory Dickory Dock teaches how to tell the time; Incy Wincy Spider combines the kinaesthetic with the verbal and the musical, in true MI fashion;
• limericks, nonsense poems based on rhyme and rhythm, rather than on content;
• proverbs: Curiosity killed the cat; A friend in need is a friend indeed;
• Cockney rhyming slang, nonsensical yet highly creative: butcher's hook - look, Steffi Graf - laugh.
• literature, films, musicals: Nicholas Nickleby; Pride and Prejudice;
• TV programmes: Continental Cash; Trading Treasures; Real Deal;
• captions and advert jingles: Migration migraine; Beckham's reign in Spain is on the wane; more reasons to buy at Morrison's; Britain's brainiest boffins; unfair fares.

From baby talk (teeny weenie, bye bye, yummy yummy) to regular talk (willy-nilly, walkie-talkie, wheeler-dealer), sound patterns seem to be doing the trick. The lynchpin of this technique used over and over throughout the tumultuous history of the English language lies in the threefold function of onomatopoeia, chants, repetitions, alliterations, assonances and rhymes: attention-grabbers, mnemonics and fun-inducers. The 'stickiness' of these sound patterns hit me a couple of years ago, when one of my students confessed, "The only thing I remember from our last session is chick flick." It was one of those three days a week, six hours a day super-intensive courses, at the end of which if someone asked me what my name was, I'd doubt between phoning a friend, going 50/50 or asking the audience. But still I must admit I was quite miffed when I heard my student's confession. It dawned on me a little while later that eureka!, this was the answer. As an advocate of the lexical approach, I've always encouraged my students to learn chunks rather than single words, and using rhymes, alliterations and assonances as mnemonics appeared to be the solution to remembering newly-encountered lexis.

Juxtaposing some alliterating nonsense is no rocket science (A noisy noise annoys an oyster). The real challenge is making sense out of idioms, collocations, expressions, etc. Take reduplicative phrases, binomials and trinomials, for instance. Native speakers tend to use them massively due to their alliterative and rhyming nature, which certainly adds pizzazz to the language. Learners of English, on the other hand, are rather afraid of them and inadvertently follow Jean-Paul Nerrière's advice on how to speak Globish: use a limited number of basic words, oversimplify spelling, and skip humour and idioms. I do agree with the former IBM executive that pragmatism and functionality are the name of the game we tend to play in today's business-driven world. Time is money, indeed, but what would business be without inventiveness, innovation and brilliance? And what better way to achieve all these than the creative use of language?

Activities 1-4

Activities 1, 2 and 3 rely on rhyming patterns in reduplicative phrases and attempt to persuade students that there is more to communication than a few dry, conventional, pragmatic business formulae. Activities 4a and 4b rely on alliterative patterns in binomial and trinomial phrases, and demonstrate that being casual and informal in various business contexts isn't necessarily synonymous with lowering one's standards or adopting an over-familiar attitude.

Activity 1

Complete the following phrases by adding the second part of the double-barrelled rhyming words. Once you've done that, use them in sentences of your own, following the example. Please note that a good monolingual dictionary or a dictionary of idioms might come in handy.

Activity 2

Choose the correct synonyms of the double-barrelled rhyming words below. Once you've taken a decision, use the word in a sentence of your own, following the example.

Activity 3

This is a vocab recycling and review activity, which you can do some time after you've introduced and discussed reduplicative phrases. First select a few phrases from Activity 1 (e.g., razzle-dazzle, chit-chat, shilly-shally, argy-bargy, lovey-dovey, hoity-toity) and a few from Activity 2 (e.g., tittle-tattle, fuddy-duddy, dilly-dally). Then play the following game. Don't forget to have a good monolingual dictionary or an dictionary of idioms at the ready.

• Announce that you're going to play a game involving reading skills.
• Get the students to split into two teams that are going to compete against each other.
• Before the class starts, choose a text - it can be an excerpt from one of the articles you've discussed previously, a famous poem or the lyrics of a well-known song, an essay written by one of the students, a letter one of the students brought in for correction - which you'll have to copy and distribute to each participant.
• Write each selected reduplicative phrase on a sticky label, and put one under each chair occupied by the participants.
• When everyone is seated, ask them to privately read their phrase. The object of the game is that the students take turns to read the text in the manner described by the phrase, while their team mates are supposed to guess it. E.g., if the phrase is argy-bargy, the reader will have to sound cranky and irritated; if the phrase is tittle-tattle, the reader will have to insert some gossip in the text; if the phrase is dilly-dally, the reader will have to keep dawdling; etc.
• Give 10 points for each phrase that is correctly identified and take 10 points for each phrase that the reader's team can't identify.
• The team that work out the highest number of phrases are the winners.

Activity 4a

Binomial and trinomial phrases are sequences of two or three words belonging to the same grammatical category, having some semantic relationship, and being joined by a preposition, e.g., bread and butter; beg, borrow or steal. The most significant characteristics of binomials and trinomials are the irreversible word order and the rhythm.

Match the words in the three boxes below to create binomials and trinomials containing certain sound patterns, like rhymes, assonances and alliterations. Then fill in the blanks with these newly-acquired expressions.

1. Ladies and gentlemen, we're proud to announce that we raised £ 5,000 for charity at the … organised by our company.
2. You wouldn't believe they're sisters: they're like...
3. I'd have never thought she was the vengeful type, but from the look on her face I can only conclude that she went for the good old ... strategy and gave him a taste of his own medicine.
4. On the morning of the new product launch we gathered in the main hall full of expectations, but, ... , the Marketing Manager had called in sick.
5. The decision as to whether bacteria are … becomes more difficult when both the positive and negative aspects of the relationship between humans and bacteria are considered.
6. He has always been here for us when we needed him, that's why I think we ought to assure him we'd stand by him through...
7. I know you regret not having taken any action when your counsellors advised you to do so. Just try not to think about it any more; it's all forgotten now, ...
8. Have you seen our competitor's sales figures? We'll have to do better than that this year by ... by ...
9. In spite of his many shortcomings, what I always admired in the Prime Minister is that he manages to remain ... even under very high pressure.
10. Although many people came to the restaurant by car, after the business dinner they simply left me ... to get to the hotel as best I could. That's what I call hospitality (!)

Activity 4b

Play the following game. Don't forget to have a good monolingual dictionary or a dictionary of idioms at the ready.

• Announce that you're going to play a game involving a group debate.
• Get the students to assign a mediator, to choose a topic (e.g., Mobile phones - a blessing or a curse?, What did the euro do for us?, Smoking should be banned from all public areas), and to split into two teams, according to whether they are in favour or against the statement.
• Write each binomial and/or trinomial phrase from Activity 4a on a sticky label, and put one under each chair occupied by the participants.
• When everyone is seated, ask them to privately read their phrase. The object of the game for the two teams is to discreetly fit their phrases into the discussion.
• Give 10 points for each phrase that remains undetected and take 10 points for each phrase that is spotted by the opposing team.
• The team that work the highest number of phrases into the conversation without anyone noticing are the winners.

Key

Activity 1
1. knick-knacks, 2. topsy-turvy, 3. wish-washy, 4. razzle-dazzle, 5. chit-chat, 6. shilly-shally, 7. mishmash, 8. super-duper, 9. argy-bargy, 10. lovey-dovey, 11. roly poly, 12. hoity-toity

Activity 2
1 c, 2 a, 3 b, 4 a, 5 b

Activity 4a

1. bring and buy
2. chalk and cheese
3. tit for tat
4. low and behold
5. friend or foe
6. thick and thin
7. done and dusted
8. by hook or by crook
9. calm, cool and collected
10. high and dry

Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the English for Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Certificate in Teaching English to Business People course at Pilgrims website.