On masses of ice

From The Adventures of Captain Hatteras by Jules Verne:

'They scarcely leave a passage for the [brig] Forward. Just examine that immense plain over there.'

'The whalers call that in our language an icefield, that is to say a continued surface of ice the limits of which cannot be perceived.'

'And on that side, that broken field, those long pieces of ice more or less joined at their edges?'

'That is a pack; if it was of a circular form we should call it a patch; and, if the form was longer, a stream.'

'And there, those floating icebergs?'

'Those are drift ice; if they were a little higher they would be icebergs or hills; their contact with vessels is dangerous, and must be carefully avoided. Here look over there: on that iceberg there is a protuberance produced by the pressure of the icebergs; we call that hummock; if that protuberance was submerged to its base we should call it a calf. It was very necessary to give names to all those forms in order to recognise them.'

'It is truly a marvellous spectacle!' exclaimed the doctor, contemplating the wonders of the Boreal Seas; 'There is a field for the imagination in such pictures!'

‛iceblink' definition

► noun

a bright appearance of the sky caused by reflection from a distant ice sheet.

From The Adventures of Captain Hatteras by Jules Verne:

'The master signalled the first sight of the iceblink; it was about 20 miles to the N.N.W. This glaring white strip was brilliantly lighted up, in spite of the presence of the thick clouds in the neighbouring parts of the sky. Experienced people on board could make no mistake about this phenomenon, and declared, from its whiteness, that the blink was owing to a large ice-field, situated at about 30 miles out of sight, and that it proceeded from the reflection of luminous rays.'

'The weather cleared up, and the eye could sweep over the white plains in the distance, which the reflection of the sun's rays rendered dazzling.'

Animal vocabulary time with beginners! – WSI

Learner feedback unimportant?

commentary

from Jim Scrivener's 'Learning Teaching' about teachers' initial worries in class:

• I hope I don't say anything silly.
• What on Earth can I do next?
• Do they like me?
• That activity only lasted three minutes, and I thought it'd last 45.
• This is lasting forever, and I thought it would take three minutes.
• I feel so confused.
• I don't really understand this thing I'm teaching.
• Is the observer going to catch me out? What's she writing?
• This is so boring.

a solution for which, Jim suggests, lies in continually gaining feedback from the learners in order to fine-tune our intuitive responses.

aught

'before aught else, we must be free'
— Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Silvia's English Corner

Private tuition – general oral fluency only: Silvia Mucci (Minister for the Environment, Buenos Aires Province)

Social Outings – WSI

A day out in the Japanese Gardens

An evening at the Irish pub

Shakespeare's Influence on the English Language

commentary

'Friend' in its verb form – 'befriend' having a slightly different meaning – was coined by Shakespeare 400 years ago. Only today it has made it into mainstream use (FB).

Shakespeare's neologisms amount to as many as 33,300, in fact. A neologism is a newly coined word or expression. That's more than twice the quotations than the next sighted author Walter Scott, and much more than Chaucer, the Bible, Milton, and so on.

Much of the evidence for this can be derived from the Oxford English Dictionary. 

The Oxford English Dictionary: A short historical sketch.

One of the great endeavours of Victorian and Edwardian scholarship, the dictionary was conceived in the late 1850s (outside Oxford) by a body called the London Philological Society. It was then established in Oxford in 1878 and brought to fruition only in 1928 after a long and bumpy ride. Editors of the Oxford English Dictionary set out to read through as many printed works as possible from all periods of the English language. They would then extract quotations from these works, showing how words had been used from their earliest occurrence to their latest, then deduce from these the senses of the words as manifested through their history.


The OED is unique; this aspect sets it apart from the many other dictionaries before and since. 

An extensive amount of etymological information can be found within each entry in the dictionary. See an example here.


Lexicographers, volunteers, and editors analysed not only letters, diaries, histories and newspapers, but also works relating to arts, sciences, commerce and crafts, as well as literary texts: poems, novels, plays, and so on. 

There did exist, however, a literary bias, partly owing to the predominate view that literature had an especially formative role in creating and preserving language (which prevails today to some extent), and, also, partly to a superior availability of literary texts. Other bias included race, class, and gender – there are lots of cultural assumptions enshrined in the OED, which is natural for the Edwardian and Victoria periods in which it was created, and which we would now think of as distinct cultural prejudices.

This feature was also true of the second edition, published in 1989, whose pre-1800s work was not updated. The second edition did, however, mark the digitalisation of OED and the publication of it on-line. The dictionary now for the first time could be reliably quantified, with greater search capabilities and efficiency, and one could see much more clearly the extent of Shakespeare's dominance throughout it.

The third edition is currently being worked on. Since the year 2000 it has covered about a third of the alphabet. The draft version is available on-line. There are lots of differences being introduced into the 3rd edition because of the new textual evidence the lexicographers have access to via electronic databases of all available historical texts: works published in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and more contemporary works. Mentioned databases of now all periods of the history of the language, alongside such electronic search capabilities, are enabling a complete reanalysis of the OED.

––––∞––––

'All the great English writers of all ages'

were named by the OED's then chief editor, James Murray (d.1915) as his principal quotation sources. An additional bias, then, within the literary texts chosen to formulate the OED was given to those of Shakespeare, a virtually comprehensive treatment that was not meted out to any other writer, or text, of any period. 

OED's treatment of Shakespeare inescapably has been extraordinarily influential on histories of the language and on studies and editions of Shakespeare's work. Note the asterisks and other notations below used by editors to point out words and their senses in editions of his plays. Altogether, 2,000 lexemes (lexeme: a basic unit of language; the item recorded in the headword of the dictionary) made it into the OED of a recorded 20,000. That's one-tenth of his stock that were in new usage, a proportion matched by no other post-mediæval writer whose usages are recorded in the OED.

So the question is are these numbers and figures a just reflection of Shakespeare's contribution to the language, or do they rather reflect the cultural values of the lexicographers. Well, it must be the latter. But if so, to what extent? Now that OED is undergoing revision it is possible to begin to clarify the answer to this question. 

The sixty-four thousand dollar question is: is Shakespeare's reputation as linguistic innovator par excellence in the English language going to be sustained, increased, or undermined? Working this out is difficult, apparently, because of the two available editions, 2nd and 3rd, and their being merged together on-line – there are differing conventions between the two on dating, on selections of headwords, and more: in other words the difficulty lies in how each are presented, and in separating like from like.  

OED is now antedating about a third of the words attributed to Shakespeare. Some words can now be traced back as far as Old English, and before his time.

On the other hand, there are new neologisms, i.e. ones they hadn't recorded before, because they are reanalysing his life and finding more compounds than before. Take, for example, the line 'life in death' in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis: Adonis describes love as 'a life in death', which was construed later by another author to be a single compound, 'the nightmare life-in-death was she'. This word, 'life-in-death', as a compound, now merits its own entry, with Shakespeare as the creator. Others include compounds with 'never': never-erring, never-withering, never-surfeited. Also, 'Old-lad', 'old-son', are now first his. Moreover, in the neologism-full Love's Labour's Lost, quite a lot of its words turn out, in fact, to have been already used previously. Whereas, in contrast, Hamlet has lost quite a lot less neologisms attributed to Shakespeare, after the revision, as it proceeds.

We see that from Hamlet, the verb 'pander' (newspapers are pandering to people's baser instincts: to gratify or indulge an immoral or distasteful desire or taste or a person with such a desire or taste) was first used in Chaucer's Troilis and Crisyde as the main character (as a noun), Pandare.


More questions arise yet. Have some words remained and been more readily accepted into the language because of the value of neologisms? Are some neologisms more interesting than others? 

It is easy to see this new revision of the OED is changing the lexical landscape as far as Shakespeare is concerned. 

The phrases below are quite common in modern English; have you heard of any? Ask any native speaker of English what they mean, and whether they knew Shakespeare coined them!

Break the ice.

Come what may.

Good riddance!

As luck would have it.

The be-all and end-all.

The world's my oyster.

A wild-goose chase.

The long and the short of it.

A sorry sight.

Play fast and loose.

In one fell swoop.

Not slept one wink.

Neither rhyme nor reason.

Love is blind.

Laughing stock.

Laugh (oneself) into stitches.

In a pickle.

Tis high time.

For goodness' sake.

Forever and a day.

Eaten me out of house and home.

Dog will have his day.

Dead as a doornail.

Refuse to budge an inch.

Bated breath.

All that glitters is not gold.

Glimpse inside the Globe Theatre here in this truly great television documentary on English.

sources: prefaces of the first and second editions of the Oxford English Dictionary; podcast Shakespeare and the Oxford English Dictionary spoken by Charlotte Brewer (involved in language research projects at Oxford University and in their new MST in the English language); http://www.pathguy.com/shakeswo.htm .

Professional development | Book Club Class 4.0 – WSI

Last night's Book Club class went really well despite its low turn out of just three learners. Using a trusty teacher's aid of mine 'Literature by Alan Duff & Alan Maley' I had earlier in the day sketched out a comic strip depicting a short scene from Jules Verne's Around The World In Eighty Days.

A scene in which Phileas Fogg, servant, and Parsee girl are accosted at just the moment they are to quit  India, and many a misadventure there, to start for Asia, by a police officer. Swiftly, they are taken by horse and carriage and locked up without much more than that 'at half-past eight you will appear before a judge'… I had skimmed through it on the bus, between private lessons, before going to work at the language institute in the hope of finding something entertaining for the evening's class. 

I was looking for a scene I would not have to grade too heavily for my elementary learners. Now I know having finished the book that this scene is, actually, plot-critical, and it worked well to gather suspense in the class.

At the institute (now finished with my private lessons) I sat down to grade the page I had selected and to decide what I should sketch. Thirteen pictures completed the scene.

 

                                               

Firstly, the learners were given a variety of clippings of texts from a variety of sources and asked to decide which two of them where  taken from literary sources, such as a play, novel, or short story, and which weren't. After five minutes learners had worked together to underline textual evidence in order to prove their findings. Five more minutes and learners were matching authors with titles (I put these up on the whiteboard), and then those to the sample texts they had at their tables.

From Literature by Alan Duff & Alan Maley: 

'This activity encourages close attention to what is actually said in the text. In looking for clues, and in marking features of the language, the students are learning how to use the text itself in discussion. Focusing on the particular helps to discourage vague theorising.'   

From this point, as I thought learners were ready and engaged enough to invent their non-vague stories, I handed out completely arbitrary pictures of people, places, and objects. Ten minutes passed as they thought of stories and made notes, individually. I asked of them to guess each other's stories only by looking at the pictures, and asked that the learner who had thought it up reply only 'yes' or 'no' to the other's questions in order to encourage practice making questions; not only that but also enough speculative thinking to tie in with the activity that followed this. Finally, learners revealed their stories.

'A story can be sparked off by very small details – a smell, a gesture, a sudden sound, or a chance remark [...] The purpose of the introductory activity (Stage one) is to put the students in the right frame of mind for speculation, by inviting them to devise their own stories from a few visual pointers. The pictures suggest a framework which they can fill in as they like.' 

I elicited anything the learners might know about Jules Verne's Around The World In Eighty Days. I introduced the scene before giving them the comic strip. I handed out photocopies of the sketches I had done out-of-sequence, and asked them to suggest what might happen in the story, and to put them in their correct order. A few minutes passed and I read a few lines of the text to help them along and then they spent a few minutes revised their suggestions.

'In Stage two, the activity becomes more controlled. The students are not inventing, but recreating a story from pictures. But they do not have the text. The challenge, then, is to build up a plausible story in their own words. 

For a final listening stage and to confirm predictions I read to them the page I had chosen on the bus in the morning. I walked over and picked it out in full view from our new library of 20 or so books which I've contributed to the institute, hoping to gain some interest in it.

Here, we were supposed to talk about the 'what', 'how', and 'why' regarding the next events of the story, but time was not permitting, and anyway the most developmental - and most important - stages of the lesson had already passed. I did, however, take the opportunity to let them know they could at any time borrow from the library.

sources: p.19, 89 of 'Literature by Alan Duff & Alan Maley'. 

Poster: Olympic & Paralympic Events – WSI

Professional development | In Treatment night three at WSI

Role-playing therapist and patient (with attitude of their choosing)

Think about your lesson and answer the question.

• What happened according to plan? we discussed the series and what happened in the previous episode. Learners made predictions based on an introductory scene of the current episode. We created a mind-map of vocabulary related to attitudes, I gave examples, clarified meaning, and drilled pronunciation. We listened to a scene, completed a gap-fill and improved listening for specific information. We listened again and answered some gist questions. Learners took a few moments to decide upon three words to describe the character's attitude. I further clarified some of the vocabulary from the board. We role-played a patient-therapist situation like the one in the episode, and therapists tried to guess the chosen attitudes of their patients. We finished more or less on time.
• What didn’t happen according to plan? 1) I hadn't checked the video was ready and as a result when I went to look for it discovered the computer, where I had copied it, is set to do an automatic clean-up upon reboot, and I found myself having to search for it on YouTube, and alas, being copyrighted, I could only find a shorter documentary version of it, which sufficed to provide listening for about three-quarters of the text. 2) Because of a 'difficult' encounter (level checking class) before this lesson, I used my set time for it and not to prepared photocopies, this delayed things – the photocopier became jammed midway through printing the last page of the worksheet and as a result learners had to share before the last listening task. 3) Owing to these delays, the post-listening task that I'd planned to run 17 minutes lasted more like 7 minutes. 
• What happened that I didn’t expect? The photocopier jammed. Twice as many learners than I expected showed up. I apologised for the lack of worksheet copies. I had to leave the room once or twice to arrange more copies.
• What would I do differently next time, and why? I'd be a little less relaxed about preparation. The problems with the video and worksheets completely changed the pace of the lesson so that in between stages learners, I think, might have switched off somewhat, and we didn't make it to the post-listening stage with enough time, at least to mix pairs / roles. I'd like to keep up a good rapport with the class for the rest of these series of lessons.

Statement	Evaluation
1 I achieved what I was aiming to do.	0  1  2  3  4  5
2 I managed the class effectively.	0  1  2  3  4  5
3 I Involved the learners.	0  1  2  3  4  5
4 I used the time effectively.	0  1  2  3  4  5
5 I used the materials / aids effectively.	0  1  2  3  4  5

Cooking class posters – WSI

'In treatment' lesson poster – WSI

In this series of classes Ss watch a 25 minute episode of HBO series In Treatment, which portrays the troubled lives and psychotherapy sessions of a varied set of interesting characters. Ss answer questions to develop listening skills, while also increasing Ss' awareness of vocabulary related to human emotions and attitudes. More significantly, by using video Ss will see the language in use, match intonation to facial expressions etc., and also be shown via demonstration what may be needed in a role-play activity.

this poster was displayed at the institute and on the institute's blog and Facebook page

Raining On The Rock – WSI

Though a lesson from a long time ago, I wanted to upload some students' writings I found today going through my papers, to keep record of.


This was the exercise

the writings

Professional development | Aviators Castaways Jigsaws & Pyramids – WSI

The survivors of Castaway reality TV show & one intensive
task-based lesson for a Friday evening.

A communicative focus. Aim: learners developed oral fluency and confidence through solving tasks or problems; subsidiary aim to develop listening sub-skills.

A 'pyramid' discussion in which students decide on items they believe would be necessary for survival on a desert island (the theme of the lesson). They must agree first in pairs, then threes, in groups, and finally as a whole class, in the hope of stimulating debate, negotiation, teamwork and problem-solving.

I showed a short video of my own voyage to a small island in the South Pacific, The Cook Islands, and animated map, to engage the class and personalise the topic. 

In building a discussion of the topic and in encouraging early communication I played a short listening text. North American record-breaker & aviator Amelia Earhart was a castaway with co-pilot on the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro. The listening text was used with a simple jigsaw task. Jigsaw task: learners  listen repeatedly to the report, gap-filling, piecing together a short transcription of it in separate groups, then put findings together as a class to understand the whole 'picture' of Amelia's story.

Useful language during the lesson was

I handed this out during the pyramid discussion.

The lesson, task-based, follows a fluency first approach: a communication -> language focus -> practice -> communication.

narrative

I created A and B worksheets which contained different parts of the report (pictured below; the 'jigsaw'). There were two recordings of the news report, I cued those at different points.

We began on time – with only two late arrivals – and I showed the class the video of the Cook Islands. I told them by the end of the lesson they would get to travel to an island. I chested the worksheets and checked understanding.

I assigned groups, handed them the worksheets, and we moved into separate rooms. I staggered instructions asking them to sit on their hands during the listening and only complete the gap-fill after listening to it. I started the two-minute listening. Each group listened three or four times before their once skeletal report and gap-fill was now fleshed out.

This was only preparatory to the communicative focus of the lesson shape and designed to stimulate early communication. I took some work to get everyone back together and to segue from this into the language-focused stage.

The whole class seemed to be engaged and close to the materials. They successfully de-fragmented the report and gained a full understanding of it. It was good to feel redundant (!) at this point as they discussed the text without my help using the language. 

Jigsaw tasks are great for comprehension, sharing information in order to close a gap.

I only monitored to correct slips, to concept check and get feedback ready. Minimal teacher talk (TTT) is good in language lessons, especially communicative-focussed.
    
We broke up again into original groups, filling the 3 tables in the classroom. The class seemed highly engaged.

I congratulated the class for being successfully selected for a reality show 'Castaways' and welcomed them to the 'TV studio'. 

The new audience gave a round of applause!
    
They chose only eight items to take with them to a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean from a handout. The prize was one million dollars. I gave three minutes for the task to work individually. They began deciding together. I announced a change of plan and that they would live in pairs on the island, and must now decide on eight items to share between them. I handed out useful language (above) for justifying their selected items during this stage. I elicited examples with the language before moving to another table.

I interrupted to say they would live in groups on the island. In groups they debated quiet a lot over the items they would take. Meanwhile I drew a box on the board labelled 1 though 8 on the outside (pictured below). I fetched some leis I had stored away.

I put the leis around the neck of one candidate nominating her as co-ordinator of the final 'event'. I asked everyone to stand around the board to decide as a class unanimously on eight items: the whole class would win the prize money if they could live on the island as one happy community, content with the eight items they should choose..

Some short plenary feedback and the lesson ended.

• I was happy with the way the jigsaw activity (the transcription of the radio news piece) worked really well; the way students worked in groups to piece together the almost 'skeleton' text I gave them.
• I wasn’t so happy with the way gaining attention was hard, to signal instructions between stages.
• Next time, I’d either take away the worksheets or notify pair at a time we were about to form a whole class again
• I learned that jigsaw tasks are quite effective to stimulate discussion.
• I learned that Friday night lessons, after long weeks at work, don't have to be cumbersome. 

1= because it was difficult to regroup between tasks

from Oliver Twist by Dickens

This bitter disappointment caused Oliver much sorrow 

and grief, even in the midst of his happiness; for he

had comforted himself many times during his illness, with

thinking of all that Mr. Brownlow and Mrs. Bedwin 

would say to him: and what delight it would be to tell

them how many long days and nights he had passed in 

reflecting on what they had done for him, and in 

wailing his cruel separation from them. The hope 

of eventually clearing himself with them, too, and ex-

plaining how he had been forced away, had buoyed him

up, and sustained him, under many of his recent trials; 

and now, the idea that they should have gone so far,

and carried with them the belief that he was an impostor

and a robber – a belief which might remain uncontra-

dicted to his dying day – was almost more than he 

could bear.

The circumstance occasioned no alteration, however,

in the behaviour of his benefactors. After another fort-

night, when the fine warm weather had fairly begun, and

every tree and flower was putting forth its young leaves

and rich blossoms, they made preparations for quitting

the house at Chertsey, for some months. Sending the 

plate, which had so excited the Jew's cupidity, to the 

banker's; and leaving Giles and another servant in care

of the house, they departed to a cottage at some distance

in the country, and took Oliver with them.

Who can describe the pleasure and delight, the peace

of mind and soft tranquility, the sickly boy felt in the 

balmy air, and among the green hills and rich woods

of an island village! Who can tell how scenes of peace

and quietude sink into the minds of pain-worn dwellers

in close and noisy places, and carry their own freshness,

deep into their jaded hearts! Men who have lived in

crowded, pent-up streets, through lives of toil, and who

have never wished for change; men to whom custom 

has indeed been second nature, and who have come

almost to love each brick and stone that formed the

narrow boundaries of their daily walks; even they,

with the hand of death upon them, have been known

to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature's face;

and, carried, far from the scenes of their old pains and

pleasures, have seemed to pass at once into a new state

of being. Crawling forth, from day to day, to some 

green sunny spot, they have had such memories wak-

ened up within them by the sight of sky, and hill, and

plain, and glistening water, that a foretaste of heaven 

itself has soothed their quick decline, and they have 

sunk into their tombs, as peacefully as the sun, whose

setting they watched from their lonely chamber-window

but a few hours before, faded from their dim and feeble

sight! The memories which peaceful country scenes 

call up, are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and 

hopes. Their gentle influence may teach us how to 

weave fresh garlands for the graves of those we loved:

may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old

enmity and hatred; but beneath all this, there lingers,

in the least reflective mind, a vague and half-formed

consciousness of having held such feelings long before,

in some remote and distant time, which calls up solemn

thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride

and worldliness beneath it.

A select home screen of ELT apps . . .

Grammatical Gender Assignment

commentary

In French a noun may either be feminine or masculine, be it inanimate, conceptual, or living. These are either/or semantic opposites: the thing implied must be of one gender or the other, as follows:-

le for masculine nouns, les for plural (le canard, les canards);

la for feminine nouns, les for plural (las vache, les vaches).

(indefinite articles:- un, une, des)

This is not exclusive to French, but a part of all Romance languages. However this apparently arbitrary classification came to be is cause for wonder, even for French speakers.

The subject interested me as, being a speaker of Castellano (Spanish), I sometimes struggle to use the correct grammatical gender: masculine, feminine, or (scantly used) neuter. It spurred me to think a little more on how it is used. 

Unlike French, the conundrum is not quite so great in Castellano since a large many so nouns end in either a or o (feminine; masculine). See 'LESSON II - GENDER' from my first instruction in Castellano via the Teach Yourself series:

LESSON II - GENDER from Spanish by N.Scarlyn Wilson, first printed and published
in 1939  by David McKay Co. Inc. (predecessor to Random House) 

Difficulties aside there are clear advantages. For instance, take an everyday utterance ripe with nouns, pronouns and possessives,

el techo de mi casa y el de la que Ud. compra;

the roof of my house and (that of) the one you are buying.

Immediately you can see the Castellano is shorter; the roof is masculine, the house(s) is(are) feminine, such that when they are referred to again at the end it is clear which stands for what: – el, the roof, and la, the house. 

Incidentally, 'that of' may well be left out entirely in spoken English. In which case doubt is cast over whether it was the house or the roof the two the second speaker was buying. In Castellano we can see 'that of' is masculine and 'the one' is feminine, both are singular, and easy to understand. 

In addition to this, the items to which el or la stand for are not always obliged to reside in the same sentence. They can be repeated in order to summon that previously mentioned thing (masculine, feminine, singular, or plural). 

    

One has to admit the demonstratives shown in the example above are neater and yield greater capabilities than does our poor gender-less English.

ventanas; windows

el techo y las ventanas de mi casa y las de la que Vd. compra.

Now we see by las that it is the windows which the speaker is referring to and NOT the roof. 


A full phrase,

Fué el baño, los techos y las ventanas de mi casa y las de la que Vd. compra también que se dañaron, no la suya ni aquella;

It was the bathroom, the roofs and windows of my house and those of the one you are buying, too, that were damaged, not hers nor that one over there (yonder).

From the English phrase we can't properly determine what 'those', 'the one', 'hers', 'that one', 'yonder' might be, and the bathrooms, houses, roofs, and windows are all ambiguously mixed into one (headache!). Here, new prepositions, repeating the nouns, or an altogether rephrasing of the example would be necessary in order to be clear.  

Well, in making a long story short... wait, that's precisely what we can't do! Okay, maybe it's not all that and your reader will do well to coax it straight out into something more coherent, but it will never be made to reduce to the succinctness of the Castellano.