WANISAN

I have long been on the ‘we need more doing and less studying’ bandwagon. I get that some people don’t see things that way, even ones I’m very close to.

However, playing is the best way to learn, actually learn, many things and that includes language.

Playing music also helps you to grow, improve your brain and brain activity.

Very interesting, right?

I just saw this, and wanted to share it here. It has everything I like: play, music, video, brain stuff, and TEDTalks.

Now when your parents give you a hard time about playing your guitar, flute, piano, or whatever instrument you choose, you can say that you are actually actively building your brain 😉

One of the toughest things about having discussion class is choosing topics appropriate for both level of language ability and level of interest or knowledge.

It is pretty difficult to discuss topics students have no ideas about or no vocabulary to use to discuss.

So in my search for new topics for a class I have been teaching now for several years, I came upon made up words.

I found this to be a pretty interesting activity, and I hope that others might as well.

I created lists of made up words using an online generator. Then, as usual for this class, I divided them into groups of 3 or 4 students.

I gave each group the same list of 5 of the made up words. For example list one consisted of:

Chershoee

Hoppler

SWerradith

Novaly

Wetwest

I then asked the groups to decide what the meaning of each of the words might be and to explain why they thought their meaning was appropriate. I told them there was actually no wrong answer though there would be answers that were better than others and they would have to share their answers with the class. This often is important to keep them focused and working since they know they will be expected to talk to the group and listen and respond to the other groups.

I think that it is key to have a reason for their meanings to avoid arbitrary assignment of meaning (yes, this could easily happen and has happened to me on occassion!)

Then I gave them a few minutes to discuss their words, their meanings. They were allowed to use their dictionaries to find the meanings of words that had similar sounds to pieces of the words or to help with their explanations.

I had each group share their word, its pronunciation, and the reason for their meaning. We did this one word at a time rather than going down the entire list.

Overall, I thought the exercise went fairly well. The students seemed to enjoy it as well.

Here are a couple of their definitions:

Chershoee

– a kind of cheese shaped like a shoe

– a kind of meat dish (it sounds a little like the name of a pork dish in Japanese)

– doing “cheers!” with shoes

Hoppler

– a person who makes apples hot

– the children of hopping people

– a hopping helicopter

Werradith

– a small dinosaur

– a contraction for “we are radish”

Novaly

– a brand name of a sister company to Burberry

– a valuable star

– only one

One of the words from another list was “glaretram” which resulted in one group deciding it meant “glamorous ram”. They even provided a sketch:

“glaretram- glamorous ram”

I will surely try this again, but I also would like to have them invent some words of their own and create the meanings for them. That might be fun, too.

That seems simple enough, “home”, but there are some very interesting things about home.

We talked about the many meanings of the phrase “Home is where the heart is”.

We brainstormed for some ideas that come to mind when you think of “home”. A few examples that were given:

1. warm
2.  safety
3. relaxing
4. comfortable
5. freedom
6. protection from the elements
7. a place to keep your stuff
8. where the family can be together
9. sleeping
10. a place to store food (one of my favorite answers ;-))

We also discussed some things about what home means to each of us. Why do we need a home, really?

What kinds of things should you probably only do at your own home?

There were a number of really interesting responses and the discussion, as usual, lasted the full hour and we had to rush off.

These are my favorite classes, the ones where it’s not just me getting lost in the talk and activity but also the students.

I’m looking forward to next class!

This week in class we’re going to talk about movies and use one of my absolute favorite websites. It is actually something I really enjoy.

Movies are not just for fun, though they certainly are. Movies are a great way to practice and improve your language skills.

If you like movies, then you can use movies in many ways for your language study. You can watch movies of course, but you can also read about movies, the story, statistics, and all kinds of fun facts. This is a great way to use English doing something you like and to even increase your appreciation of movies.

One of my favorite places to do that is at IMDB.com

One movie I’m looking forward to watching is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I have a couple of turtles but they’re not ninjas.

Here’s one of them. I think he is smiling…

I hope you guys all had a great summer. I know I did. I had a little quieter time than usual for my summer, but it was still good.

I really wanted to travel a little this summer, but I didn’t get to. I did get to go and play golf a bit and enjoyed more time than usual with my oldest son since my younger son went to America for a month during vacation.

We did get to go to the river, all of us together. It was starting to get a bit cooler, but the weather that day was great. The sun was shining, and the water was cold but not too cold.

We did manage to swim a bit and climb the cliffs and  jump off a few times. That was a lot of fun and made me remember the times when I was a boy and did this kind of thing with my brothers.

I hope you guys all enjoyed your summer and are ready to have another great semester.

I know I’m looking forward to it!!

Here’s a picture I took of my oldest son from our trip to the river.