Informal and formal language

This is how 92-year-old Lizzie Bloggs reacted to the sudden death of a beloved pet in a phone call to a friend.

“My little cat Sophie popped her clogs last week. I'll tell you, I were totally gobsmacked. Died in her sleep. Talk about a bolt from the blue! She were only five years old, poor little bugger. It broke my heart, it really did, she were like family to me. Funny how you can care about a moggie what dumps dead birds and mice in the bleedin' kitchen, right? Didn't think she'd be pushing up daisies this soon though. Don't really fancy getting a new one either. Not at my time of life. Not a kitten anyway.”   

 1) Point out some of the aspects of this text that make it very informal. Think about: grammar, slang, incomplete sentences, idiomatic expressions, swearwords, clichés.   

2) Queen Elizabeth's last corgi died recently. How would she tell a friend in a personal letter? Write the letter.


Five-letter Words

I am fortunate enough to teach kfk-courses, and a few weeks ago, as a warm-up activity,  I asked my students how many five-letter words they could make by adding THREE letter to TH____

This is what they came up with: three, think, those these, their,  there, thing, throw, thigh, threw, theme, third, theft, thumb, thank, thorn, thyme, thick,  thuds, Thais, thugs, thong, thief, thrice.

There may be even more :)

A couple of the kfk students told me later that they had used this activity in their primary school class, and the pupils thought it was great fun. This can be a way of reviewing spelling and learning some new words.

There is also an opportunity to practise the “th-sound”, for example contrasting pairs of words such as: theme/team, thorn/torn, thigh/tie, threw/true, there/dare, those/doze

From eight to one:

“Starting” has eight letters. Can you make seven English words by removing one letter at a time, without re-arranging the remaining letters?

Scroll down for a solution:

7 letters: staring

6 letters: string

5 letters: sting

4 letters: sing

3 letters: sin

2 letters: in

1 letter: I

Working with dictionaries

  • I am a great believer in encouraging pupils and students to use proper dictionaries, not just Google Translate.

Here is a type of activity I used in lower secondary school, back in the days when we had paper dictionaries.

“How many English words can you make by adding THREE letters to wh___”

Here is a list, which may or may not be complete:

where, white, which, whine, whack, whoop, wheat, whelk, whelp, whose, while, wheel, whore

Several of these words will be new for the pupils, depending on their age and skill.

You can also ask older pupils if they know any homophones, eg:

where/wear, whine/wine, whose/who’s, which/witch

Here is an alternative, where I gave them three letters and invited them to add TWO.

sto__

stone, stony, store, storm, stole, stomp, stood, stoic, stoat, stool, stout

Rhyming Animals

There is a great picture book called Oi Frog! with lots of funny rhymes and amusing pictures. It is beautifully read by Liz Carr, here

A helping hand

Or should that be “a helping beak”?

You have probably seen this lovely video already, but perhaps your pupils might like to write a short text or two about it, or even perform a short conversation?

  • Tell the story to someone who hasn’t seen the video

  • Imagine that the crow and the hedgehog tell their friends about the episode. What do they say?

Palindromes

Palindromes are words or even strings of words that read the same backwards and forwards. A famous example is: “Madam, I’m Adam.” Presumably Adam introducing himself to Eve.

The other day our eleven-year-old granddaughter was visiting us (she is a Norwegian native speaker), and we started thinking of words of three or four letters that are palindromes. This is what we came up with:

eve, bob, bib, ada, nan, nun, mam, mum, dad, did, dud, gig, gag, pip, pup, tit, wow

sees, peep, poop, deed, toot, boob, noon