Eurolink News Archive

Eurolink News Issue No 16 April 09

Linguistically, the word April is derived from the Latin "aperire", to open; hence, we have the word aperture for an opening or a gap, we take an aperitif before a meal to stimulate the appetite — and an aperient as a laxative!

Why Teach?

One of the many reasons, but by far the most significant, for my choice of teaching as a career, was the ability of my German teacher, Bill Gould, to transcend reality and make history come alive.

We were timetabled to study Advanced Level German Literature the last lesson on a Friday afternoon. How clearly, even to this day, do I recall Bill sitting in his brown mac throughout the lesson because he too was anxious to get away as soon as the bell rang.

But these considerations apart, within a few minutes of opening our copies of Schiller’s Maria Stuart at the appropriate page, we were somehow transported on a magic carpet to the English court of Queen Elizabeth 1.

Though we dozen or so sat in a small classroom in the city of Leicester, we were literary witnesses to a human tragedy of sombre and mournful feelings.

Still inspired to this day, I try to make each and every lesson a memorable learning experience for my students; much learning takes place by association with a visual or auditory or behavioural stimulus; the memory of the lesson will hopefully appeal to as wide a variety of senses as there are learning styles to appease the advocates of differentiated learning.

/s/ or /z/?

Differentiating between the voiceless /s/ and the voiced /z/ is a problem area for some non-native speakers.

Consider the two words gorse and gauze: in orthography there is little in common between the initial and final letters, but in phonetic transcription only the final letter in each instance is different.

Prize and prise are homographs and so share the same phonetic transcription.

Can you correctly identify the /s/ or /z/ in these words? Remember not to be influenced by spelling.

• companies
• sky
• ads
• writers
• purse
• purrs
• salmon
• visa
• life’s
• live’s
• rose
• Ross

Ex cathedra

Those of you currently writing modules for the Lesson Preparation Unit will know only too well the need to differentiate between a general and a specific objective: whereas the former identifies the language skill involved in the lesson plan, the latter describes in detail how the appropriate skill will be demonstrated and hence tested as an indication of a successfully achieved objective.

By far the simplest rule of thumb for the wording of a specific objective is an activity learners perform whose successful accomplishment can be measured against given criteria.

In ESOL terms the following would be examples of specific objectives

• to underline in a given passage all the adverbs
• to highlight with a marker pen all the irregular verb forms
• to complete gapped sentences with the correct preposition of time (in, at or on)

The tasks are unambiguous in their wording and can be evaluated reliably.

Ken Milgate
Chief Examiner

Eurolink News Issue No 15 March 09

According to one of my many gardening books "an ounce of March dust is worth a king’s ransom". The gardener in me appreciates the statement, given that March is a sowing time and a dry dusty March makes the ground surface in good condition for seeds; the linguist in me hopes that political correctness does not invade our colourful language and insist we revise the analogy to a "monarch’s ransom".

Will children of the future play a game re-titled "monarch of the castle" and will an Indian restaurant menu need to de-sex its fish option to "monarch prawn bhuna"?

Reading aloud between the lines

English is not a phonetic language as students all over the world know to their frustration if they read the following words aloud without due regard to their contextual meaning. These phonetic faux amis are known as homographs; how would you variously pronounce these words?

 minute, wind, second, desert, lead, perfect, entrance, present, read, row

What’s the Italian for Milan?

The question could equally be "what’s the English for Milano?"

An interesting practice in phonetic transcription is to ask a multi-national class to pronounce their mother tongue version of a number of international cities.

The list is purely arbitrary but I have used the places below to produce a worthwhile session on listening and pronunciation skills;

• London
• Moscow
• Berlin
• Paris
• Mumbai
• Prague
• Washington
• Rome
• Cologne
• Amsterdam

More advanced students could transcribe the versions phonetically to highlight the differences from the English version.

Ex cathedra

Education continues to be plagued by political interference as buzz words and flavours change with climatic frequency as "learning styles" are superseded by "differentiation" and then by "every child matters" as the benchmark for successful teaching.

A constant in such shifting times is the need to encourage students to read on their own: a regular literary diet of models and good practice from a variety of sources will quickly bring about improvement in grammatical accuracy, vocabulary extension and general confidence of expression and comprehension.

There are many excellent abridged works of fiction on offer as well as graded readers specifically written for nominated levels.

Every ESOL department should have a discrete library of such books and actively promote extensive reading.

What are your students reading in English at the moment?

What, for that matter, are you reading in English at the moment? I have just finished reading The Way I Found Her by Rose Tremain and am about to start John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas before re-reading Crime and Punishment.

Happy reading!

Ken Milgate
Chief Examiner

Eurolink News Issue No 14 January 09

A happy 2009 to all Eurolink distance learners throughout the world. Hopefully, you have set yourself a career goal to achieve in the new year or resolved to complete a module by submitting any outstanding worksheets.

Fiction or non-fiction?

If you still have an unredeemed book token, you might consider one of the following forthcoming titles as a suitable purchase to broaden your knowledge and interest. All selections could be on the bookshelves by 01 April.

• Exit Manoeuvres by S. Cape
• An ABC of Haulage Halts by Laurie Parks
• The Cost of Delay in the Retail Trade by M. T. Shelves
• Stolen Kisses by Miss L. Toe
• The World of Palindromes by Liam Mail and Robert Trebor
• The Highway Visionary by I.C. Rhodes
• Vegan Recipes by Naomi E. Torfish
• Doubts and Uncertainties by R. U. Shaw

Can you recommend any literature in the same vein?

Silent letters

When transcribing phonetically, students should bear in mind that the purpose of IPA is to produce the sound of a word irrespective of its written form. Not being a phonetic language, English consequently requires extra vigilance in transcription.

A feature of phonetic English is the silent letter, that is, a letter that appears in orthography but is not pronounced and hence as it were disappears in the transcribed version.

Such words might include whether in which the second and final letters are silent, handsome in which the d and e are not pronounced and Wednesday in which the d and second e are not pronounced.

Try transcribing these words into IPA and note those letters which are silent and not symbolized

• pneumatic
• wholesome
• ghost
• answer
• handbag
• knight

Ex cathedra

The start of a new year is a good time to think of the future. In terms of English grammar we have many ways of expressing time to come, the correct choice of expression depending on its intention and relative stage of fulfilment.

As a TESOL practitioner you will be expected to field with confidence any questions about the future. Before you check in the grammar book how would you express the following future expressions

• a prediction
• an instant decision
• an offer
• an intention
• a timetable statement
• a personal arrangement
• an action over a future period
• the result of a routine or arrangement
• an official arrangement
• the near future
• something that will be over in the future
• looking forward from the past

Tenses are one of the most problematic of grammatical topics for ESOL students – make a resolve to revise your own knowledge and not be put on the spot.

Ken Milgate
Chief Examiner