Orality of the written language

How oral can written language be? This was the question that arose when re-thinking ways of planning my lesson on Words.Moreover, deciding what grammar activities I should involve my students in when dealing with this kind of topic, was indeed a challenge for me. I have just "visited" Scott Thornbury's blog and while reading the post another problem struck me: "How to set creative automaticity on a written language-based lesson?"
So I thought of some simple tricks that we can use in order to have the students speak and write but never lose the "conversational stream" they are meant to follow.
One activity was based on the difference and the usage of OLD/NEW English words.Basically this topic allows us to teach the English chunks, the collocations or idioms that actually represent the basis of easily learning useful expressions. Understanding how collocations function helps the students use them later on in their conversations.I also presented a series of new words that have been introduced in the language in the last decade.Making the presentation "attractive" only requires a funny betting game:
-you need one student to be the auctioneer (he shows the words and asks for the highest bet) and the rest of the students form two groups.They try to guess the meaning and they need to make a logical sentence with that word after they had already won the auction of that word.If the group that offered more money doesn't solve the task, the other group has the chance and, if they know, they become the winners of the auction.
In contrast with the new words, I created a quiz based on the Shakespearean language that entertained them greatly(they had to guess the meaning of the words). As a follow-up,on sheets of paper I wrote samples of dialogues that they had to transform into old English by replacing the underlined words with their old/archaic replicas. It seemed fun and, hearing themselves pronouncing those lines, offered them the pleasure of testing"live" these ancient flavors.
But the greatest challenge of all was to teach the functionality of letter language by "discussing" the letter in stead of writing it. Of course you need to also write a letter but that should be a home-to-do task, so that you can work on their own ideas and written text.
What I did was to cut out extras-es from their letters, fold them and mix them in a bowl.Then I asked the students to pick them one by one and make sure it is not their own letter extras. The 2 requirements were:
- read the extras and decide what type of letter it is (letter of complaint, invitation letter, cover letter,etc)
- and guess the author of the letter.
Using a series of conversational cards (letter composing tasks) the students had to "orally" create the main body of the letters. This was a role-play that had my students actually "speak" the letter instead of writing it.
The success was not only on conversational basis but , by having them "talk the written language", I realized they actually selected from the written letters those expressions that made them sound "writtenish"; they repetitively used "I am looking forward to seeing you", "I am writing you on the behalf of...", "I need to remind you", "I can't find myself in the position of...", "My enclosed resume..." although they had never used them before when leading a complaint/requirement conversational task.
In conclusion, if we want our students to learn the structures mainly found in written language we might sometimes step away from the classical written/reading practice and try a "conversational" approach.It can actually work vice-versa for the oral structures- have them compose their task-based dialogues and then ask them to act out in front of the class.
Moreover, why not trying planning a lesson on "story markers"(starters or linkers) that the students need to act out as a part of their conversational exercises.For example, Ale will like this :), cut out Cinderella's lines from the story and make the students use those lines as logically as possible in a customer-shop clerk discussion (complaining, refusing). Or using "descriptions" from famous novels for a "talk about my family" activity.
Even though it might be viewed as an inappropriate usage of written language, considering the experimental values, this tasks can build the students apprehension of the language, by raising awarenesses; to complete the task, the students need to learn these structures and fully understand their meaning in order to re-formulate and use them into real-time conversations.

Ode to eslprintables...

                            The first sun rays after such a long winter...Today I received a message from a "colleague" of mine; Croatian, a few funny lines and complimenting each other for the printables uploaded on eslprintables and it got me thinking.

 I knew nothing about this person, but I had an awkward feeling of having known her since...forever.And then (maybe because of the upcoming spring ) I felt I belong to a good world, I knew there is hope and creativity around, that in this globalised realm we are somehow connected through our interests. English teachers all over the world share ideas and ask for advice...I often picture myself inhabiting this site as if in old times only the rich could attend fancy balls.Here everyone needs to show his/her best, or at least tries and everyone actually benefits from this continuous struggle/pleasure to come up with great/innovative ideas.
Moreover I meet my own close friends and I find it funny to search for their own works.It has become a habit already.Wake up early in the morning, wish my husband a good day, inhale the steamy flavor of my coffee and there I am in front of the computer, scrolling down the free printables list of the day...checking for my unknown friends as if reading my best friend's journal.
How wonderful it is to be an English teacher! ( I say , pack my materials and run for work).
                         Sometimes I am grateful to know so many enthusiastic and creative teachers, God, I am surrounded by them :), so even though we suffered so many days of terrible cold, even though we might get soaking wet standing and teaching during the hot summer days, we have each other and we do have a lot of fun.
So this is the bright side of being an English teacher, you get to know "beautiful minds" and you learn how to make your student's days brighter...What more could we wish for?
And one of these "beautiful minds" says : "Look there is fog again!" ....
... I guess spring is postponing her visit...

Great expectations...

200 years...so much has changed, so much has stood still and if we look back we realize that we suffer the same; the world's issues are basically the same if we follow an individual approach, but so different from a political point of view. There was no much of technology, no Ipods to wish for, no virtual girls/boys to run after or even fall in love. Misery was at its peak, "hard times" were blackening people's hearts, poverty was the main theme song of that era...isn't it the same now?
Looking back, we realize how "present" Dickens is in our lives, how vivid his topics are.
It's funny that suffering is strongly revealed when suffering out of love, when searching deep inside and realize that the real values of life are Honesty, Love, Respect, Tolerance, the exact values each era should fight for,because no great technological achieves can overpower these four moral pylons.
In 2 hundred years we have tried to evolve, transform into a superior species, but I doubt this is what we are now. Watching a TV series I caught a nice line: " There is no honor among thieves" and I guess that says it all.

We forgot all the principles that had us evolving, we run for THINGS, we no longer run for SOMETHING.We are so afraid of the now-coming Apocalypse exactly because we have no faith, nothing spiritual to hang to, not a solid one at least.We are lost between "ways of finding God" when actually all we need to do is believe He is out there  watching down on us.
We should be more concerned on how to show respect our fellow humans and how to say "sorry" when  stepping on someone's shoe, try not to hit an old lady when jumping off the bus, remember our parents' birthdays, give a nice present just to make someone's day better,and don't be afraid to say "I love you" while looking that person in the eyes...
Pip' story says a lot about friendship and honesty, the inside message should be seen like the power of rewarding a nice word, a helping hand or a good advice, remember the Good and forget the Bad, and isn't this the cornerstone of all religions?
I sincerely believe that we can survive if we learn a bit from our own history, if we revalue the entire corpus of aspirations and plans... everyone agrees there is a lot of violence in our 21th Century, but if we don't change who we are, what sort of example will we be for our own children? And the power of example is the one that can make our young generation fight for something better by respecting the wisdom of the past.
What past? Dickens is part of our world's wisdom, a sort of an ancient Wikipedia for the topic "Life".