A story of two worms

I was discussing the homeless problem with a friend and whether people became homeless as a result of bad luck or bad choices and my friend told me a story. I just wanted to share the story with you, since it struck me that it would be an excellent short reading passage for ESL teachers to use:

The Story of Two Worms


Two worms were together on a leaf. A gust of wind blew them both off. One landed in a muddy puddle and the other on a dry sidewalk. The one in the muddy puddle had plenty to drink and all the nutrients it needed to grow strong. The other nearly shrivelled to death. Again the wind blew and the two worms ended up together again. The worm that came from the puddle said to the other, "I owe my success to intelligence, hard work and charm." 

Two Methods of Learning English

Looking through my students' writing in detail, I noticed that they seemed to be employing two different methods for learning English:


Method 1: Direct translation


Students using this method would first think of how they would say the sentence in their own language, and then they would do their best to translate this into English. The problem is that no two languages are the same. If you use this technique, your sentences may turn out to be totally incomprehensible! Over time, you will learn via the corrections to your mistakes, but you will definitely need to change your learning style at around intermediate level.






Method 2: "Copy and Paste"


As teachers, we often tell our students: "Don't copy and paste!" However, if you think about it, this is the basis of how we learn language as infants. We listen as adults say something, then we repeat it. Slowly, we are able to be more flexible, and adapt phrases and then sentences to mean what we want them to. Even as adults, we hear a funny turn of phrase, like it, and use it ourselves.


So this is certainly a more natural way to learn English. It's not without it's pitfalls, though. Learners hear something and fail to repeat it correctly, so "Give me a hand" becomes "Give me the hands" and so on. As teachers, we need to be patient with these kind of mistakes.




Clearly, to my mind, the second method is better. How can we encourage our students to "copy and paste"? Lots of reading and lots of listening. And always pick out phrases (not only words) from the listening and reading for the students to use. And praise them when you hear them use a phrase that they've picked up. Help them to be flexible with new phrases and adapt them, just like we did when we learned English as infants!

An educational technology blog

I've been going through this blog for the past hour or so:

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/

I would highly recommend it for anyone casually interested in Educational Technology. The author places a strong emphasis on Google products and the Android platform, which I agree are two great areas for educators to explore.

Who invented English grammar rules?

If you've ever wondered why English has such odd grammar rules, here's an excerpt from the book 'English Grammar for Dummies':

The next time you try to decide whether you had run or had ran home, thank the Angles and the Saxons. Those old guys were members of Germanic tribes who invaded England about 1500 years ago. Their languages blended into Anglo-Saxon, which came to be called Englisc. Nowadays it's called "Old English."

Old English lasted about 400 years; this English would look and sound like a foreign language to English-speakers today. Although it's gone, Old English isn't forgotten. Remnants remain in modern speech. You can thank (or blame) the Anglo-Saxons for most of the irregular verbs, including the fact that you say ran instead of runned.

In the Middle English period (1100 to about 1450) England was speckled with local dialects, each with its own vocabulary and sentence structure. Nobody studied grammar in school, and nobody worried about what was correct or incorrect. (There were a few more important items on the agenda, including starvation and the bubonic plague.)

In the fifteenth century the printing press was invented and the era of Modern English began. At this time, folks were more interested in learning to read and also more interested in writing for publication. But writers faced a new problem. Sending one's words to a different part of the country might mean sending them off to someone whose vocabulary or sentence structure was different. Not to mention the fact that spelling was all over the place! 

Suddenly, rules seemed like a good idea. London was the center of government and economic life — and also the center of printing. So what the London printers decided was right soon became right. However, not until the eighteenth century did the rules realty become set Printers, in charge of turning handwriting into type, were guided by "printers' bibles," also known as the rules. 

Schoolmasters tried to whip the English language into shape by writing the rules down. But they grafted Latin concepts onto English, and it wasn't always a good fit. In fact, some of the loonier rules of English grammar come from this mismatch. In Latin, for example, you can't split an infinitive because an infinitive is a single word. In English, infinitives are formed with two words (to plus a verb, as in to dance, to dream). Nevertheless, the rule was handed down: no split infinitives.

Learn the types of fruit

Here is an activity to learn different types of fruit.

I've tried to put it together so it would appeal to both young learners and adult beginners.

Try it here:   www.roadtogrammar.com/fruit

Create your own quiz and host it on RoadToGrammar

I've just added a new tool to Road To Grammar. Now you can create a multiple choice quiz, like the ones on Road To Grammar, and save it on Road To Grammar for your students (or whoever) to use.

The best thing is that there is no log-in necessary! But you can add a password if you like. When you finish creating and uploading the quiz, you will get a unique URL where the quiz will be located. Here is an example: http://www.roadtogrammar.com/myquizzes?11qh

Try it out, create your own quiz right here: http://www.roadtogrammar.com/myquizzes/qm.htm

Quiz on Embedded Questions

I've just added a new quiz to RoadToGrammar.com, on embedded questions.

You can go directly to the quiz by clicking here: http://roadtogrammar.com/?76

Embedded questions was one of the very few topics missing from the list and now there's a 20-question quiz and notes. It's a good topic for learners at level B2 and up.

I combined the the two quizzes on Environmental issues into one quiz, to make space.

Also, I'm always happy to take suggestions for new quizzes or even games. Post them here in the comments if you like.

The Null Comparative

I just learned something new. A comparative that doesn't actually state what it is comparing to is called a 'null comparative'.

They are most often used in advertising:

"XYZ coffee gives you more flavor!"                  (More flavor than what? Toilet water?)

See the wikipedia entry here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative#Null_comparative

Create Backwards Text

Here is a little tool I created just for fun. Enter text and it will reverse it. You can then copy and paste the reversed text:

roadtogrammar.com/backwardstext

Use it for whatever you like

RoadToGrammar now has PDF downloads for each quiz

Each quiz now comes with a PDF version (for teachers to download and distribute to their students). Each PDF includes an answer key.

To see an example: http://roadtogrammar.com/dl/hc/q1.pdf

ESL TED Talks

Have you ever heard of the TED talks?

They are something like an 'Open University' concept of 10 - 20 minute videos for you to learn about something from an expert in the field. They are known for their excellent quality.

Some bright spark has set up a site called ESL TED Talks (http://esltedtalks.blogspot.com/). This site features TED videos and an accompanying ESL worksheet.

The site mentions that the videos are for 'intermediate to advanced' learners. Personally, I would say UPPER-intermediate to advanced. But if you have any students at this level, they could really benefit from this site.

The History of English in 10 Minutes

Here is an interesting link. It's a YouTube video playlist featuring ten one-minute videos by the Open University.

Altogether, they make up the 'ten-minute history or English'.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PLA03075BAD88B909E

Text Analysis Tool for ESL Teachers

I have just completed a nifty little tool for ESL teachers who enjoy using various texts with their students.

Using the he Text Analysis Tool (http://www.roadtogrammar.com/textanalysis), you can copy and paste in a text from a word document or webpage and the tool will analyse it for you. The tool will give the text a rating using both the CEF standards and the IELTS standards. At the same time, it will generate a vocabulary list of suggested words to review before reading. You can even click to get the definitions for words on the list via ninjawords.com, which will generate all the meanings on a single page.


The tool works by comparing each word in the submitted text to a list of the 10,000 most commonly used words in English. Based on each word’s position on the list, an algorithm is used to rate the difficulty of the text. The rating has been calibrated (roughly) against the CEF and IELTS levels.

English Conventional Usage

This is a topic I have been interested in for a while.

I've long understood that English works by 'conventional usage'. That is to say that a word means whatever everybody understands it to mean, as opposed to what some controlling body wants it to mean.

Hence, a word can change meaning. Something which goes 'against' English grammar can become acceptable, such as a split infinitive or using 'and' at the beginning of a sentence.

If everybody started using the word 'dinosaur' for breakfast (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordplay_(The_Twilight_Zone)), then dinosaur would become an acceptable word to use for breakfast.

The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing has this to say (page 243):

Words Are Not Endowed with Fixed and "Proper" Meanings

When people object to how someone else uses a word, they often say, "That isn't its proper meaning." The word disinterested, for example, is frequently employed in the sense of "uninterested," and those who dislike this usage argue that the proper meaning of disinterested is "objective, unbiased. "

In such arguments "proper meaning" generally signifies a meaning sanctioned by past usage or even by the original, etymological sense of the word. But the dogma that words come to us out of the past with proper meanings—fixed and immutable—is a fallacy. The only meanings a word has are those that the speakers of the language choose to give it. If enough speakers of English use disinterested to mean "uninterested," then by definition they have given that meaning to the word.

Those who take a conservative attitude toward language have the right, even the duty, to resist changes which they feel lessen the efficiency of English. They should, however, base their resistance upon demonstrating why the change does make for inefficiency, not upon an authoritarian claim that it violates proper meaning.

As a user of words you should be guided by consensus, that is, the meanings agreed upon by your fellow speakers of English, the meanings recorded in dictionaries. We shall look at what dictionaries do in Chapter 29. For now, simply understand that dictionary definitions are not "proper meanings" but succinct statements of consensual meanings.

In most cases the consensus emerges from an activity in which individual language users participate without knowing that they are, in effect, defining words. The person who says "I was disinterested in the lecture" does not intend to alter the meaning of disinterested. He or she has simply heard the word used this way before.

Uncountable Nouns

I've got a triple release for you today, original RoadToGrammar materials on uncountable nouns: an e-book, an e-learning module and an Android App, all free:


Part 1: Uncountable Nouns, free e-book:http://www.scribd.com/doc/56627819/Uncountable-Nouns 


Part 2: Uncountable Nouns, free e-learning module:http://www.roadtogrammar.com/uncountablenouns/


Part 3: Uncountable Nouns, free Android App:http://bit.ly/jpx3Kj