ENGLISH IS FUN TO LEARN
Learning English should be fun. Rigorous learning of English can sometimes cause distaste to it and if it is mixed with some spice, it can rekindle and maintain the students’ appetite for it. So, a teacher should have several interesting things up his or her sleeve to bring interest, life and laughter in the language class. Here are some interesting things you will greatly enjoy learning or even teaching when your students feel tedious. These can be used as warm up activities in the English training as well.
REDUPLICATED WORDS
Reduplication is the process of forming new words by doubling a morpheme with a change of a vowel or the initial consonant. Forming words in this way gives them a musical touch. Make the following reduplicated words your assets and use them as soon as situations call for with the learners of English.
1. hoity-toity (adj): behaving in a way that indicates someone is more important than others.
Jim would have been more popular among his friends had he given up his hoity-toity manner.
2. dilly-dally (v): take too long to do something, procrastinate.
Hurry up! It’s time to get on with our work without dilly-dallying.
3. helter-skelter (adv): hurriedly and in a disorderly manner
Many women and children were trampled to death when the demonstrators ran helter-skelter to avoid the tear gas and baton charge by the police.
4. higgledy-piggledy(adv): in an untidily disordered manner
A great number of books and articles were scattered higgledy-piggledy in the tiny library.
5. topsy-turvy (adj): in a state of great confusion
Jill: Hi, how’s life going?
Jack: Oh, don’t ask me. No job, no apartment and nothing to do. It’s going on topsy-turvy.
6. hotch-potch (n): a number of things mixed together
His essay is but a hotch-potch of bombastic words and does not carry a definite meaning.
7. tell-tale ( adj): indicating that something exists or has happened
The convict denied his involvement in the theft but the police could read his tell-tale face and elicited the truth from him.
8. tittle-tattle(n): unimportant and untrue talk, gossip
Jenny, you’d better stop that tittle-tattle and do something important.
9. willy-nilly(adv): whether one wants or not
Many Nepali girls are still forced willy-nilly to marry the boy their parents choose for them.
10. the nitty-gritty(n): the basic and most important details of an issue or a situation
Time ran out before we could get down to the real nitty-gritty of the incident.
Here are some additional reduplicates you would like to present in the classroom.
11. Walkie-talkie 12. Shilly-shally 13. Tick-tock 14. Teeny-weeny 15. Ping-pong 16. Fuddy-duddy 17. Chit-chat 18. Criss-cross 19. Ziz-zag 20. Boogie-woogie 21. Flip-flop 22. Hocus-pocus
TONGUE TWISTERS
Tongue twisters are the phrases or sentences designed to be difficult to articulate properly because the same vowel or consonant sound repeats several times. The aim of tongue twisters is to repeat a phrase or a sentence as rapidly as possible without making any mistakes. They are often used by language teachers and speech therapists to improve the pronunciation of the language. You will enjoy teaching or practising the following tongue twisters.
1. My mommy makes me muffins on Monday.
2. I wish you were a fresh fish in my dish.
3. Four furious friends were fighting for the phone in their filthy flat.
4. I scream, you scream and we all scream for the same ice-cream.
5. Thirty-three thousand people think that Thursday is their thirtieth birthday.
6. What noise annoys a noisy oyster? A noisy noise annoys a noisy oyster.
7. When two witches would watch two watches, which witch would watch which watch?
8. Rory, the warrior and Roger, the warrior were reared wrongly in a rural brewery.
9. Mr. Tongue Twister tried to train his tongue to twist and turn and twist and turn to teach himself to learn the letter ’T’.
10. She sells seashells on the seashore. The shells that she sells are seashells, I’m sure. So, if she sells seashells on the seashore, I’m sure that the shells she sells are seashore shells. ( Please note that shore and sure are pronounced alike.)
11. Betty Botter bought a bit of butter but the butter Betty Botter bought was a bit bitter. So, Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter to make the bitter butter better.
12. As I was in Arkansas, I saw a saw that could outsaw any saw that I ever saw a saw. If you happen to be in Arkansas and see a saw that can outsaw the saw I saw, I’d like to see the saw you saw. (Note that Arkansas is one of the states of the USA and the final 3 letters of ArkanSAS are pronounced as SAW.)
PALINDROMES
Palindromes are the words, phrases or sentences that read the same backwards or forwards. Here are a few of them for your students’ enjoyment.
1. Refer 2. Madam 3. level 4. Racecar 5. Kayak 6. Never odd or even. 7. Nurses run 8. Live not on evil. 9. Was it a car or a cat I saw? 10. Pull up if I pull up.
11. A man, a plan, a canal-Panama. 12. Rats live on no evil stars. 13. Step on no pets. 14. Ma is as selfless as I am. 15. Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.
LONG WORDS
What is the longest word you know? Here are a few long words that exist in English. The words have been broken up for your convenience.
1. De-institution-alization (22 letters): an act of deinstitutionalizing.
2. Counter-revolution-aries (22 letters): persons who oppose or try to overthrow a revolution.
3. Anti-dis-establish-mentarian-ism (28 letters): the movement or ideology that opposes the disestablishment of churches in England.
4. Flocci-nauc-inihilipil-ifica-tion (29 letters) ( Latin coinage): estimating or cat- egorizing something as worthless.
5. Super-cali-fragil-isticex-pialido-cious (34 letters):This word means describing any quality that is so indescribable that you have no real word to say it. It is a nonsense word uttered in Mary Poppin’s lyrics written by Robert and Richard Sherman.
6. Dichloro-diphenyl-tri-chloro-ethane (31 letters): one of the most well-known synthetic pesticides
7. Pneumono-ultra-microscopic-silico-volcano-coniosis (45 letters): a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles.
PRONUNCIATION WORK
The English words do not tell us how they are pronounced. Nuances in pronunciation, eventhough they may be spelled alike, can convey a different meaning to the listener. Having our students pronounce the following words correctly, we can sensitize them to the importance of English pronunciation. Presenting the following can whet up their appetite for pronunciation.
1. Just compare heart, beard and heard
Dies, and diet, lord and word
Sword and sward, retain and Britain
Mind the latter how it’s written.
2. Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague
But be careful how you speak
Say break and steak but bleak and streak.
3. Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve
Friend and fiend, alive and live
Ivy, privy, famous and clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
4. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean
Doctrine, turpentine and marine
Compare alien with Italian
Dandelion and battalion.
5. We must polish the Polish shoes.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. ( Note the stress on proper syllable and pronunciation.)
7. When the shot came nearer, the dove dove into the bushes.
8. The buck does funny things when the does are near.
• The only country whose name has all the 5 vowels of the English alphabet is Mozambique.
• The word that has all the 5 vowels of the alphabet is education.
• The two words that have the 5 vowels in the alphabetical order are abstemious and facecious.
• No word in the English language rhymes with ‘month’, ‘orange’, ‘silver’ and ‘purple’.
SMS LANGUAGE
We read a detailed article about how the mobile phones can best be utilized in the learning process in theChaitra 2067 issue of Shikshak Monthly. People look for the shortest way of sending an SMS to their friends or relatives to save time, space labour and money. You will enjoy sending an SMS like the following.
