Gone with a Friend?

In my reading and writing class, we are reading a novel Half-Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls. It's a great story about Jeanette's grandma, Lily Casey, an awesome heroine who lived during the first half of the last century when the novel takes place. She broke horses, survived tornadoes and floods, taught school, ran ranches, sold liquor, flew airplanes and more; a fearless woman. Stories are a good way to cover topics college students need some knowledge of such as the two World Wars, and the Depression, Route 66.

They students have a quiz and this week, they had to remember which movie Lily went to see, the first color movie in American theatres: Gone with the Wind.
The answers I got are:

• Gone with the Wind. A boy falls in love with a girl who has bad character.
• Gone on the Wind. The woman in the movie is a mean woman, not a good woman.
• Gone with Wind.
• Disappear with the Wind.
• Go with Friend. 

I laughed out loud grading these.
another funny: A student from China was giving a presentation on New York City, the Empire State Building. She kept talking about the "alligator" but meant "elevator." Even though I corrected her, she still couldn't get it right. In the next class, some defined the word "swamp". I said, "That is where the alligators are!"

I posted audio files of their presentations on places for them to listen to. They have to write word for word what they said to analyze their use of grammar in speaking.

Tutoring with Interviews

In St. Louis, we have a free monthly magazine called Alive. In the back of every issue is a cool interview with someone in St. Louis WHO IS MAKING A DIFFERENCE! YES! YOU HEARD ME! They aren't beautiful high school dropout celebrities but real people who do amazing things: teach underprivileged kids art, assist the homeless, manage an organization that gives grants to startups, design fashion, and so on. The same questions are asked each time. If you haven't taught indirect speech, it is tricky. "Do you like chocolate?" is "he was asked if he liked chocolate". 

I have my student read the bio and use indirect speech to answer the question, answer it himself, and open it up to me. For example, "She was asked what inspires her and she said her children do. As for me, books about real people inspire me. How about you?"

I had another private lesson and just picked up the Everyday section. It was awesome! We read the comics, Dear Abby, Ask Heloise, and their astrology forecast.

Next time you're tutoring in a café, just pick up material around you.

It's complicated!

Participial adjectives are tricky! Students confuse those -ed and -ing adjectives like "bored" and "boring" all the time. I explain that they are not past and present tenses but adjectives that come from verbs. Often these verbs, like "interest" are rarely used as verbs. Who says "history interests me"? The direct object takes the passive form and the subject uses the active form. I am interested in history because history is interesting to me. What complicates these even further is learning which prepositions to use. My favorite list is from Betty Azar's "Understanding and Using English Grammar", aka "Betty Blue", the Bible of ESL.

I once worked with a great guy named Irwin in Chicago who told me he explained that the "ing" is for the thing. Get it? "Thing" has "ing" , and people, who receive the feelings, use the -ed forms. The movie is exciting and the audience was excited. Of course people can be described with the active form. Sonny Bono once said, "My first wife (Cher) was interesting and my second wife was interested."

I draw a box on the board and say it's a movie. I make arrows go to a stick figure and tell my students that if the movie is the -ing, it makes the person feel the -ed (overwhelming/overwhelmed, boring/bored, etc.) Yesterday, however, I thought about something new. As I was explaining this, I told them that the -ed is typically a person. Then I was corrected. A student asked, "But people say their relationships are complicated." It is a status on Facebook. You're married, single or "it's complicated." And situations are complicated...

Teaching participial adjectives is complicated.

Non-verbal communication

In the Seminar for International Teaching Assistants, we have a great conversation at the beginning of the semester about non-verbal communication. It's related to teaching but we expand to everyday life.

 One topic is moving around, how in Asian cultures teachers stand in one area and don't move around the room. Moving around keeps students focused, though. I remember having a crush on my Economics professor in collage because he'd pace across the stage, moving his arms up and down to emphasize points. He was so passionate about such a boring subject. Once an older student from China came into the room and I was sitting or learning on the desk. I introduced myself by my first name, and he nearly out of his desk.

One thing I've learned lately that I didn't know was that in many Asian countries, crossing your legs is a no-no. But that's so ladylike here! Plus it is much more polite for both genders than leaning back with knees out. Apparently, this is considered arrogant in Japan. It's informal in Korea, so don't do it except with friends there. Be aware if interviewing for a job there!

Eye contact is a biggie. BIGGIE, as my mom would say. Asians hold it a shorter time and don't make it with strangers. Children in Asia, the Middle East and Africa can not look their parents in the eye when being scolded, the opposite of the U.S. Men sometimes defer eye contact out of respect. Europeans and North Americans would think they are hiding something. In France, people on the subway would just stare at me, and stare, and it was so unsettling. I think in a dangerous situation, it's good to make short eye contact to show you aren't afraid or weak. My international students from Asian avoid it on campus and thus don't often fit in.

What I didn't know, was that women in business often use social eye contact, looking around the nose area, and are considered flirty. They are taken more seriously if they look people around the forehead area.

So much misunderstanding occurs due to non-verbal behavior, which varies among genders and cultures.

Arise and Rise: What's the difference?

Today I taught irregular verbs to group of intermediate grammar students, mostly from China. They have all been here a while but still have such trouble with grammar. The first chapter of the level 3 book skims over simple present and present progressive, like it's an easy review. Well, sure, it's an easy review, but understanding and using are quite different. The verb forms are so messy with "I going" and "I am goes" and sadly some are fossilized. One student went to middle and high school here and said no one ever taught her grammar! In my experience, the longer a student has been in the U.S., the more problems he or she has with grammar.

A student asked me the difference between "arise" and "rise". I looked it up - isn't Google search just wonderful in the classroom? "Rise" is to ascend but it's physical, literal. We had just gone over literal and figurative meanings, since they recognized "hang" in "hang out" and "hangover" more than they did the original meaning. "Arise" means the same thing but in non-tangible situations such as problems, situations, coups d'état, and so on. Who da thunk? I suppose I should warn them that Americans confuse past and past participles. I seen it. I should of did it. I'll let them figure that out later on.

Come up with something!

An American student asked a group of Japanese business students, "You need to come up with an idea. Did you come up with one?" We use so many phrasal verbs in English, those verb and preposition combinations with linking and stress on the prepositions. The next day, I showed them a site I'd copied onto Blackboard of the 25 most common phrasal verbs in English. Their writing teaching had them write (or come up with) dialogues, which they performed. After I taught "come up with", they all started using it. I also noticed that other native speakers used it with them all the time. Let me know if you can come up with other ways to teach phrasal verbs.

Teaching vocabulary strategies

The absolute best strategy you can teach your students is to recognize vocabulary from context. English speakers are so wordy, so redundant, and constantly adding paraphrases and examples that students can easily understand a speaker without understanding all the words.

A group of Japanese I am teaching went on a field trip to learn about business. This one was amazing. It's a business incubator in downtown St. Louis, called T-Rex. It rents space to start up businesses. Anyway, I took notes on the lectures and typed them up for students to analyze and guess the meanings of words in bold type. Here are three of them.
1. They need revenue, or money. 2. You have to farm out what you don't want to do, hire others to do this work. 3. It's important for your business to stand out, look different from your competitors. You'd think it would be easy for my students to figure out the meanings with such blatant paraphrases. Not necessarily. I had them do the exercises for homework and go over the answers in groups. Then, I called on them for answers. I find it very difficult to get Japanese students to speak aloud in class. Sometimes I offer mini candy bars to those who dare to ask questions and most won't. Anyway, if they recognize the explicitness in our language, this will help build their vocabulary and listening comprehension. There simply isn't time to rush to a dictionary. Also, next week, this group will be presenting ideas and paraphrasing will make their ideas clear to the audience. Any non-native who presents in the fashion that native speakers do, with topic sentences, transitions, and redundancy, will have little trouble communicating despite difficulties with pronunciation.

taste test

I've always loved the word "taste test". Yes, I love food and tasting it for a living would be a dream job. I had a student from India whose job it was to fly all over India - which has the best food in the world - and write about the food. AND SHE LEFT IT FOR A GUY! AND although she was this awesome journalist and of a higher caste, his mother didn't approve because - I'm not kidding here - she wasn't a doctor. There is an Indian improv player in Chicago at IO who has a routine because his family wanted him to be a doctor and he chose comedy. Well, probably any parent would disapprove of his career choice, but he sings this great song about how everyone in his family is a doctor even his cat! I love that. Where was I? I hope my dear readers don't mind my digressions...TASTE TEST! The reason I love this word is that it is a great minimal pair for my students, all of whom confuse /E/ and /ae/. Men/man, bed/bath, pen/pan. And the my student taught me something new, of course, because I learn something new every day teaching ESL. She talked about that food shows and asked whether they say "to the taste". No. They say "to taste" like adding salt and pepper to taste. She countered that they sometimes say "let's put it to the taste". AHA! They say" to the test". I explained the difference, how to put something to the test results in a win or lose.

Speaking of taste, I made an amazing gooey butter cake, a St. Louis specialty that is divine. She had never heard of it. It's so puzzling and sad how many immigrants don't know much about local culture. She tried it and begged for the recipe. I will be kind and share it with you.
Mix a cake mix- any flavor but yellow is most popular. Red velvet kicks butt too-with a stick of melted butter and two eggs. Spread this pasty gooey stuff in a cake pan. Then mix a package of Philly cream cheese that is softened with three eggs and powdered sugar. I only use a cup. If you like, you can add something you love like vanilla, chocolate chips, cinnamon - almost rhymes with synonym - nuts, or brown sugar. Pour this on top of the cake mixture.
Bake at 350 F for thirty to forty minutes until top browns. You can put a knife in the side to test it. I doubled the recipe yesterday in one pan (my kid didn't read the entire recipe and put all five eggs in the cake mix) and it took like an hour to bake. It may have been underdone and the cheese mixture went to the bottom of the cake. It was sinfully delicious.

looking for Mufasa

A student asked me for a word to describe a man who walks into a room (like he was walking aboard his yacht) and his combination of personality AND looks make you want to follow him. Like Mufasa from Lion King - her words! Words like "distinguished", "attractive", etc. are focused on appearance. "Magnetic", "charismatic", "commanding" are too focused on the personality. I looked up a word on dictionary.com, switched to thesaurus.com, (the best reference to get students to build vocabulary yet most have no idea what a thesaurus is), and found "eminent". Close. OK, my followers, please add your suggestions.

Return, new book, fossilization, denonyms and Vermonters!

First of all, I apologize for neglecting my blog for four years! I think you know that we language teachers are very busy people. Very. During the semester, I feel I'm in a tornado. I get to work, spend a few minutes clearing my desk, and WHAM! 40 new emails, have to finish grading before class starts, have to get all the grades posted in Blackboard, forgot the quizzes, start putting grades in, student pops in with a question, I'm organizing materials, need to print a handout, have all the books, time to go, DIDN'T FINISH PUTTING QUIZ GRADES IN! Show up to class, no questions, begin lesson, student has a question, he pulls out his phone and says "You forgot to put in my 10 points for this homework assignment that I turned in late last month." ARGH!

ALSO, I edited a book of ESL writing activities. It's great so you must check it out. There are lessons for all levels and populations and subjects, from motivation to research, and options using technology. It's called "New Ways in Teaching Writing" by TESOL Publications. That kept me busy as well. Enough excuses...

This summer I have been off and I have missed teaching! Tonight I tutored a woman from Vietnam. She was my student last fall. She was very difficult to understand when I met her because her vowels were nasalized and consonants missing. She has lived here many years, many cases of such result in little effectiveness. This is called "fossilization", when someone's habits are so ingrained that they can't be undone. However, I am an optimist; otherwise, I wouldn't be teaching, would I? She overcame all odds. This requires monitoring and practice. I told her to monitor during small talk. If she can reach a high accuracy when relaxed, some should spill over when she is stressed, like interpreting in the ER. She makes some errors like deletes final "S" half the time but she sounds so good!

I'm getting off track...SO, I enjoyed our lesson and learned many new things! One new word for me was "Denonyms". Can you guess what it means? It's the name of how people are titled according to where they live. My student asked me about the word "Floridian". Do we use it? In a heated debate, she was told we just say "people in Florida." Yes, true, but I have used the word. St. Louis used to have a Floridian restaurant and I call obnoxious colors like sea foam green and the pink on pink flamingoes "Floridian". She then asked why we add "N" to most states (think Texan, St. Louisan, Iowan, Nebraskan...you get the point) but say "New Yorker". I guessed that states ending with vowels, which most do for some reason, add "N". But those like Massachusetts don't add "ER". Then I guessed that stops (p, b, t, d, k, g) add ER.  But then she asked about Vermont. Vermontian? I inquired on Google and sure enough, someone else asked whether they are called Vermontians or Vermonters. The answers were "tree huggers" or "hippies". The consensus on the Internet was Vermontians but this is WRONG! According to the government official denonym on Wikipedia, they are VERMONTERS! I WIN! Ha! My theory was right. Rhode Islanders also end in a stop and thereby are ERS!

If I ever am mistaken on my linguistic theories, please correct me... as long as you're nice about it. Or I'll call you something that ends in an ER and you won't like it.

Fewer selections to read

I learned something sad. Only about 1% of the books we have in America in our bookstores are translations. Think of all we are missing out on! And most of our works that get translated into other languages are the commercial big sellers, like Grisham-type mysteries. I like a fun read too but I think it's sad how little literature is passing through cultures.

Also, I apologize for skipping this blog for two weeks. I went out of town to a conference in Boston, the big TESOL and it was amazing. I met ESL teachers from all over the country. Jackie, who also teaches ITAs but at Wash. U., had dinner with me at Cheers. The outside is from the beginning of the t.v.show. Teaching and especially coordinating ESL can be rather isolating. Networking teaches a lot and I thought of so many ideas. Then I was on Spring Break.

My goal is post something I learn every day that I teach. I won't post on the days I don't teach. Today I didn't teach. I did fly a kite with my kids, which was a blast. Try it!

Plagiarism and George Washington

I had to cover plagiarism today with little time. I found this quick quiz, which worked well and wasn't too boring. It's tricky at times. Obviously an essay bought on cheathouse.com is plagiarized. But what about sentences that are common knowledge? Just don't copy an exact sentence. Anyway, the quiz tested your knowledge or what was copied and what was legit. One page had a picture of George Washing and it said he is the father of our country. It was plagiarism! Why? Because you have to say where you found the picture!

Can you describe prescriptive and descriptive analyses?

I train graduate students to be teaching assistants. One of my graduate students is studying Public Policy Administration. He lectured on the difference between prescriptive analysis and descriptive analysis. Today he had to review these words from last week by asking questions, eliciting information, thus getting the students to interact. This style of teaching is quite different than in other cultures.
It took like 20 minutes for us to understand the differences again. His English is good, very good, but explaining concepts in simple, every day English, is a challenge. He's from Brazil, so he tends to use formal language.
In case you were dying to know, prescriptive analysis is the plan before you create a policy. Descriptive comes afterwards, the evaluation. However, it's tricky because they constantly overlap. (Kids are dropping out of school. Let's provide milk. This helps but they're still dropping out. Let's provide food.)
I've had this class play Catch Phrase, my daughter's favorite game. You have a word and you have to get your partner to guess the word just by giving hints, synonyms, examples, etc. It's quite fun and challenging. If any ESL teachers out there have other techniques to improve fluency, not just vocabulary but the ability to rephrase ideas in simple language, please share them!

Dream On

I'm teaching rhythm. Rhythm is the most important thing to learn to sound clear. Really! It's the strangest language. All other languages take longer to say the more words you say. Not English. "Students liked my class." "Most of my students should have liked this class." There are lots of reductions: Shoulda, woulda, coulda!

We start with songs. I play them and they mark the stressed words: Every TIME i LOOK in the MIRror....All these LINES on my FACE GETting CLEARer...the PAST is GONE! Steve Tyler sang the original rock ballad in 1972!!!!!!!!! Really! It's still a great song. And imagine how clear those lines are in his face today!

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia

Tuesday
A writer for the Brady Bunch wrote these three words one time and they forever resonate. Jan, the orthodontically-challenged awkward middle child was overshadowed by her pretty and popular older sister. The actress of Marcia, Maureen McCormick, wrote in her biography that to this day, people approach her and say that. All the time. And I hear it all the time!
Today I held a lunch for international faculty. We meet every week. I sent them a list of idioms from movies and television shows. So many come from the Wizard of Oz. "Gee, Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." One woman who's lived here a long time agreed that my list was accurate. She explained when we say "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia". Your friend is so pretty and perfect and you're sick of it. Other idioms included "You had me at hello." "There's no place like home." "Show me the money!" "English is easy, NOT" and references like "Webster is like Mayberry!" and "My in-laws are the Cleavers!" Post more below!

Is English a tonal languae?

Monday
Chinese is a tonal language. That means the slightest inflection changes the meaning of the word. If you pronounce "ma" going down, up, up and down or flat, you have said four different words. English is not considered a tonal language. However......85% of the message is how you say it. Other languages like Russian just change the word order for emphasis. We use focus stress and lots of it. Normally we stress the last important word in a sentence. "I took chemistry in high school." If I say " I TOOK chemistry in high school" and I really apirate that t, that means I don't remember a thing! And I don't!
SO...where am I going with this? I had a job, a paying gig, to teach American people how to speak on the phone. (This really awesome IT firm hires me to help their non-native employees sometimes.) After going over intonation and focus stress, I had them read statements for tone, like sarcasm, enthusiasm, defensiveness, confidence, insecurity, etc.
I asked a young woman to read the sentence "Why didn't you return my phone call?" I assumed since she was a native speaker she would emphasize phone. I asked her to sound concerned. Instead, she said "Why DIDn't you return my phone call?" with did falling down at like a 75 degree angle slam. That sounded angry. She repeated it with the same word stressed, did, but rounded it, like a circle. Then she sounded concerned. The same word was stressed and not even the appropriate word, but that change in inflection completed changed the tone.

Spelling and Vowels

Spelling in English is very irregular, which makes pronunciation very hard to learn. I usually teach pronunciation of vowels by where they are pronounced. Those pronounced with the tongue forward are: /iy/ meet; /I/ mitt; /ey/ mate; /E/ met and /a/ mat. To me, it makes since to teach them this way so they they can differentiate between the confusing sounds, which are close to each other. (beach/bitch is a bitch for them; too/took; cup/cop; and pen/pan).
Today a student asked why the first i in the word "Titanic" sounds like /ay/ and not /I/. It hit me!!! I can now simplify spelling and pronunciation explaining them the way I was taught as a child!
Vowels are usually pronounced either the short or the long sound. We were taught as kids the long and short vowel sounds: A and a, E and e, I and i, O and o, U and u (which can sound like put or putt). The short o, which sounds like AHHH, is confusing for my students because they learned British pronunciation. The letter o is always pronounced long /ow/ as in so or /AH/ as in popular. The only exception I can think of is the word women, in which the vowels both sound like the short i. I once knew a lesbian who spelled women as wymyn, omitting the men, and this is how my students can remember the pronunciation.

I went there for having fun

A student from Brazil taught us definitions from his field, Public Policy Administration. He explained, "A policy needs to change for a new policy." I corrected him that "change to" is what he meant. "TO" is direction towards: "I am married TO John, divorced FROM Vladimir." "For" is a purpose, why we do something. "I wrote a letter TO Jack FOR Jill since her hand was broken."
This lead to another problem Spanish and Portugese speakers have. They often use a gerund after a preposition, which makes sense since prepositions are followed by nouns. However, it is awkward to follow them with gerunds. "I went there for having fun." "I went there for fun OR to have fun" (the infinitive is a reduced form of in order to.) I don't know why gerunds don't work. We use them after prepositions in other constructions. "I am good at swimming." "I look forward to meeting your mom."
After FOR seems okay in this question: "How much money do you get for teaching part-time?" Maybe it doesn't. Maybe I'm losing my ability for judging the English.

Likability

What makes one teacher likeable and another not? I mean, beyond bringing food and not giving homework..haha. Seriously, students are not motivated by a teacher that they can't relate to. It's more than just good teaching, lesson plans, strong activities.... Too much intonation, not enough intonation, (who can take a monotone voice?) approachability, personability but not too much, liking them, encouraging them...My kid says she needs some compliments with all the criticism and for them to smile in a way that is sincere. Another teacher claims it's important to read their body language and gage your lesson accordingly or even surprising them with a 20-second stretch break. Humor helps. Please post any comments!

Two tribes of people

My reading class is reading a juvenile novel, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." It is absolutely hilarious and poignant. My students are mostly from China, Saudia Arabia and Korea in this class, so we write a lot about cultural differences, etc. One thing that came up in the discussion is the relationship between men. In Korea and Saudi, men touch. They can put their arms on each other's shoulders. In Saudi, they even hold hands. (I'm not sure if most of the men I know in the U.S. even have close friends.) My students know that they can't touch a man here or everyone will think they are gay. Isn't it ironic that the country with the most rights for gays in some ways is the most homophobic?

Anyway, the kid in the novel is living between two cultures, native American and white American. There is this great line: I used to think the world was broken down by tribs. By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not."