Learners always complain that linguistic rules are too complicated and that there are too many exceptions to memorize. They are right. One way to explain why children learn language better is to say that they focus on meaning, not form.
When children learn about the moon, they don't care about the rules that says we need an article when we say the moon. They care about the bright white ball in the night sky.
Imagine that language rules make up a jungle. A child will follow a trail through the jungle and come out of the jungle with good language skills. An adult will stop to examine every single tree, take some notes, describe it fully, try to memorize the description, etc. This will take forever, and the adult will never leave the jungle. In fact, anyone who tries to do this will become hopelessly lost.
Similarly, if an adult stops to memorize every linguistic rule, he or she will die before they finish language learning. To me this tells us that we need to learn more like children. We need to focus on meaning. This is oversimplifying things to be sure, but we don't want to get lost in the jungle of SLA linguistics do we?
Actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays:
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge free ATM.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15 They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
I wish I knew where these came from, but all I know is they were emailed to someone on a football messageboard I frequent...
So on my English Grammar forum, I have native speakers interacting with language learners. Anyway, you're invited to send students from anywhere in the world to register for the forums and begin talking with the native speakers and the other students. Here's a good example of a learner pushing his/her language to the limit while trying to explain Korean age.
The best part is that the grammar forums like the verb tense & voice are there and students sometimes take advantage of these on their own. Give learners a chance to be independent and some will take it...
So a friend of mine who created Vocaboly vocabulary software has a new self help page at his site. In general, I think the most important way to help yourself is to set goals. I've written down short and long-term goals and that makes me committed to them. I think that has helped me get up from in front of the TV (numerous times) and go do some work that would help me achieve the goals I've set for myself.
Next in importance for me comes health and fitness. I just got a little Macmillan book with their words of the year. One of them was healthspan. Think lifespan, but shorter. Your healthspan are the years you're healthy. Have more healthy years.
Of course, English teachers have to consider career and financial success. Ours isn't exactly a get rich profession, so we need to make something happen in that regard by starting businesses, investing, etc.
So at a meeting today, a teacher who was trained at SIT mentioned a very cool way to check comprehension. Have students check comprehension in pairs. This is a great way to make the class less teacher led for a minute and in a teacher training program like SMU-TESOL students get practice asking comprehension check questions which is extra useful for them.
Behavioral practice has fallen out of favor. Drills can sometimes be useful if it is made meaningful. An information gap is one example of a drill with a communicative purpose. Here are some old school Behaviorist drills: chain drills, substitution drills, and transformation drills.
Chain Drill - Model the drill first:
"Are you having a good time?"
"Yes I am having a good time."
Next, the teacher will ask one student the same question. The student will give the same answer. That student turns to another student and asks the same question. Each student will ask the question and answer the question. This forms a chain of questions and answers around the class. Every student asks and answers the question. Each student hears the questions and answers many times.
Substitution Drill - Use the same question as used in the above drill but substitute one word for another word. First, model for the students.
"Are you having a bad time?"
"No I am not having a bad time. I am having a good time."
This drill can then be used as a chain drill.
Transformation Drill (oral) (what, when, how, why, etc.). Change the form of the same question and then give the answer. First, model it for the students.
"What kind of time are you having?"
"I am having a good time."
This drill can also be used as a chain drill.
Personally, I think we should stick with the information gaps and find someone who... activities. They are drill-like (the same form gets repeated numerous times) but not as tedious.
Here's some more information on drills.
It occured to me that the 2006 summer vacation plan travel writing contest is perfect for giving students a writing task with an authentic context.
They have an audience: entries get published on www.travel-plan-idea.com which gets thousands of visitors daily.
They have something to write about: even if they haven't traveled, they can come up with a vacation plan for their own country.
They have a reason to write: 1,000 dollars in prizes from 500.00 for first place, to 250 for second, to 150 for third, to 50.00 each for the two honorable mentions.
They have a meaning focus: The contest entries are evaluated on content, not grammar.
1. The vacation plan includes a daily itinerary: 0-10 points6. They have models: other contest entries can be found on the 2006 Summer vacation plan page.
2. The vacation plan discusses possible accommodations: 0-10 points
3. The vacation itinerary includes detailed information on activities (e.g. the attractions of a museum, the best hiking trail, the best restaurants, must see architecture, etc.): 0-20 points
4. The vacation itinerary estimates the cost of activities (e.g. museum admission price, cost for dinner in a recommended restaurant, etc.): 1-5 points
5. The vacation itinerary generated discussion on www.travel-plan-idea.com (readers left comments regarding the vacation plan): 1-5 points
Now the deadline is May 17, but if you or your students want to submit vacation plans (each person can submit more than one), I'll be looking forward to reading them and sharing them with travelers.