Developing Your English through Poetry (guest post by Allan Kennedy)

Here are two poems I wrote. The first poem is called 'My Love for Dreams' and the second poem is called 'Breathless'.

My Love for Dreams

My love for dreams is so great,

my heart melts for them 'til the dusk of day.

The night runs when they're away,

helps, loses 'til day's dawn.

Their beauty is so great,

Wondering mind 'til they see,

ending is all I do,

While waiting for the moment, for them to say "I do."

Breathless

Breathless

in the evening

waiting in the rain

Breathless

at the station

running for the train

Breathless

when I see you

Breathless

when you leave

You're all I ever dream of and

you're all I ever need and

You're all I ever think of and

you’re all I ever

Breathe

To tell the truth, I told a 'white' lie (meaning a small lie); really I only wrote one of the poems. For the other poem I simply thought of a few key words and then used a poetry generator. All I did was choose a noun, a pronoun and four verbs (one end 'ing') and the poetry generator wrote 'my' poem.

For example: http://www.poemofquotes.com/tools/poetry-generator.php

Poetry generators are a useful and fun way of introducing English language and literature students to poetry – that is both reading and writing poetry – and for helping English foreign language students improve their English in a number of ways.

Put very simply, poetry helps us to:

a) organise our thinking
b) choose exactly the right word for the right occasion
c) increase our vocabulary
d) to play with metaphors and figurative speech
e) to play with rhyme
f) to think about the sound of a word as much as its meaning or part of speech (verb, noun, adjective and so on)
g) to play with synonyms (words with similar meanings) and antonyms (words with opposite meanings) – and even homonyms (words that sound like each other but are different).
h) to say more with less (being concise)
i) and much more...for example, (The Four Benefits of Poetry, What Use is Poetry?)

So let's write a poem. At the moment in the northern hemisphere it’s winter and in the southern hemisphere it’s summer. Here in the north we're looking forward to the spring. In the south, autumn (or 'fall' in American English) isn't far away. So let's write a poem about the seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter.

Four Seasons by Haluk Ozcan

To get us going here's part of a poem about the seasons by poet Arlene Smith.

Springtime filled with baby's breath,

stretching forth, rising tall.

Unconfined from east to west,

breaking free from every fall.

Summer's heat can't be denied;

playful and unencumbered.

Passion swells as ocean tide;

basking tho days be numbered.

Now let's write (or create) a poem using a poetry generator. For this exercise I'm choosing Spring, so the poem is called 'Here Comes Spring'. I'm using the poetic forms generator found at this site: http://ettcweb.lr.k12.nj.us/forms/seasons.htm (for more opportunities to make poems, take a look at other topics on their list - http://ettcweb.lr.k12.nj.us/forms/newpoem.htm)

There are just three stages:

For the first one, I chose “Budding trees, April showers”
For the second, I chose “New leaves, May flowers”
For the third, I chose “Energised, hopeful”

And here’s the poem:

Here comes spring,

Here comes spring,

Budding trees, April showers

Here comes spring,

Here comes spring,

New leaves, May flowers

Here comes spring,

Here comes spring-

Energised, hopeful there it goes

Okay, it’s not Shakespeare, it looks fairly simple and to a certain extent it is. But even in this very quick example there’s quite a lot going on. Here are a few questions for you to think about.

Question 1: In what season does it seem that this poem has been written?

Question 2: What are the obvious relationships between ‘trees’, ‘leaves’, ‘showers’ and ‘flowers’?

Question 3: Why did the poet chose the words ‘energised’ and hopeful’ to finish the poem?

Question 4: Identify one particular feature of this poem?

Think about these questions and then scroll down to see the answers below...

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Answer 1: Winter – the poem starts “Here comes spring,” which means spring hasn’t arrived yet, but that ‘it’s just around the corner’ (meaning it is coming very soon). However, at the moment it’s winter.

Answer 2:

1. There’s a physical relationship (trees have leaves and showers are rain and flowers and trees/leaves need rain)
2. There’s also a rhyming relationship in that the words sound similar: trees/leaves, showers/flowers

Answer 3: These words identify some of the poet’s feelings at the time of writing, about how spring with the ideas of new birth and creation can fill people with both energy and hope for the rest of the year and beyond.

Answer: Repetition. The phrase ‘Here comes spring’ is repeated six times. This is a very familiar poetic device which in this case gives the poem the feel of a song, straight away I'm reminded of George Harrison’s ‘Here come the sun...here comes the sun... an’ it’s all right...'

Repetition is only one of many, many poetic devices. A few other examples could be:

a) alliteration – where the same sound is repeated at the beginning of words,

e.g. she sells sea shells on the seashore

b) hyperbole - extreme exaggeration,

e.g. a thousand wild horses could not move me...so hungry I could eat a horse...

c) personification – human/personal characteristics to animals or objects,

e.g. The sea had climbed the mountain peaks, and shouted to the stars o come to play: and down they came splashing in happy waves

For those of you who want to find out more about poetic devices here’s a useful pdf list: http://www.chaparralpoets.org/devices.pdf

So if you’re an EFL student or a teacher and you are interested in poetry, ‘give it a go’ (meaning ‘try it’); you won’t be disappointed. All aspects of your language learning/teaching will be better for the experience – listening, speaking, reading and writing, improving grammar, extending vocabulary and, importantly, thinking and expressing yourself clearly.

Here’s a little poem to finish. Oh, and if you’re wondering which of the two poems at the start of this article was actually mine, well, take a guess.

Friendship

You are friendly, kind and caring

Sensitive, loyal and understanding

Humorous, fun, secure and true

Always there... yes that's you.

Special, accepting, exciting and wise

Truthful and helpful, with honest blue eyes

Confiding, forgiving, cheerful and bright

Yes that's you... not one bit of spite.

You're one of a kind, different from others

Generous, charming, but not one that smothers

Optimistic, thoughtful, happy and game

But not just another... in the long chain.

Appreciative, warm and precious like gold

Our friendship won't tarnish or ever grow old

You'll always be there, I know that is true

I'll always be here... always for you.

Untranslatable Words

Maptia.com

I found this on Facebook a while ago (thanks to the Memrise page).  It sent me to a really interesting website called Maptia, which is full of true stories from around the world.  They are not very long stories and many of them are very ‘uplifting’ (meaning they make you feel good).

Words like these are why English has so many words.  When we find a new word that we can’t translate, we often just steal the word!  These words aren't used in English... yet - but I might start using them in my conversations. ;-)

Maptia.com

If you are interested in the origin of words in English, then you might enjoy this little video.  It might be a little difficult to understand all the words that are said, but you will get a good idea of the story from the visual information.

Are there any other words you know in your language that don’t translate into English?  If so, please leave a comment below giving the word and some description of what it means - go on, it will be good practice for your English! :-)

To see the rest of the untranslatable words, click here.

Learning and Forgetting Vocabulary

Do you see the link on the top bar?  The one that says 1000 Challenge.  It goes to a page that talks about a language learning challenge I did earlier this year.  Learning 1000 new words in a foreign language.  I was quite successful – in one month I memorized 869 new words and phrases.  However, that was in July and now it is October.  After the challenge finished, I had a holiday, I was busy with other projects and I was lazy – I didn’t continue studying and now I probably remember about 200/300 words. :-(

This is not surprising and it is explained very well in this article, 'Do not forget The Forgetting Curve'.  I highly recommend reading the article.  It talks about spaced repetition.  This means, learning something and then going back (meaning ‘returning’) to it a day later, a week later, a month later.  I did not review the words I learned after July 1^st and that is why I do not remember all 869 of my words.  However, I still remember 200/300 new words and phrases - and that is not bad!

How I originally learned all those words and phrases in one month was with note cards.  Aaron Myers wrote a short blog post, 'The Stack', about using note cards to help you put language learning in more parts of your life; on the bus, waiting in a line.  These are perfect moments to continue your language learning.

So I did my challenge to inspire people and to raise money for charity.  Giving my money and time to charity is one of the most enjoyable things I do.  It makes me feel really good about myself and it motivates me to do more things because I am doing those things to help other people, not just me.

So have I convinced any of you to do something similar?  I know that I have one friend who is going to do a similar challenge to improve his Japanese.  However, if you are a learner of English and you are reading this, can I convince you to do your own 1000 Challenge?

Please say yes.  Choose a learning goal, choose a month, choose a charity and then get started.  If you are on Twitter then tell people about your challenge using the hashtags: #educharity and #ellchar.  Have I inspired you to push yourself, to challenge yourself, to do something that will help you and an organization that needs support?

Please say yes.  If you like the idea then suggest it to a friend or suggest it to a family member and give them help.  Suggest it to your teacher, suggest it to your students, suggest it to your boss or whoever.  The idea is do language learning and to help charity.

Please say yes. :-)

People you should be following, pt 3 (YouTube)

I don’t have lots of knowledge ‘when it comes to’ YouTube. When it comes to Twitter or blogs I feel much more confident but when it comes to YouTube, I still feel that I’m not really using that resource as much as I could be. By the way, the previous sentence is not very good because it has too much repetition of the phrase ‘when it comes to...’ but hopefully my repetition (see my earlier blogpost) will help you remember this phrase for you to use in the future! ;-)

A big, big thank you to Marcelo Mendes for recommending most of these channels! I highly recommend you explore his website. He is very generous with his time and obviously enjoys learning and helping other people to learn as well.

Two Great YouTube Channels

The Daily English Show amazes me – there is obviously a lot of work that makes this channel! On their blog, they say they are the world’s first daily online English language show. These videos come from New Zealand, which is great because it is very important to get used to listening to lots of different accents in English. This channel has been producing videos for over 5 years! What I really love about this channel is that the videos are about interesting things – I’m watching and learning from their New Zealand Summer Tour. Also, the English is clear and you can read the transcript of every video on the blog.

Try this video, and see the transcript here.

Next, EnglishClub.com is a huge resource for English learners and teachers but EnglishClub is also on YouTube and there is one specific series that I find very interesting – The Learning English Video Project. This project visits school and language institutes to ask learners and teachers about their experiences, goals, problems, solutions and achievements as well as getting tips and advice from them.

Like the Daily English Show, I love these videos because they are really interesting. Again, visit the website for the transcripts and lots of other things to help you when you are listening to the videos.  The project covers the UK, Brazil, China, Spain, America, Romania and Morocco.

Try this first video from Granada, Spain.

A Couple of Other Useful Channels

Daily Dose of English is a channel that provides short videos describing a few English phrases (usually with a common word or topic). There are now enough ‘doses’ (or videos) for one every day for 5 months. However, it is a good idea to watch one or two, take notes, write some example sentences to help you remember and then watch the same video again a week later. How much do you remember?

You can go to the website for transcripts and to download the mp3s. Unfortunately there are advertisements on the website but this is still a good resource.

By the way, a “dose” of something, refers to ‘a small amount of something that you take regularly’. This word is usually used to talk about medicine but we use it for metaphors and other phrases sometimes as well.

Use Phrasal Verbs is another channel of short videos by Linguaspectrum (who makes the Daily Dose of English videos as well). Each video talks about one specific phrasal verb. There is a website as well but I think it is quite confusing to navigate (meaning that it is not easy to understand where to find the information you want).

I like these two channels, Daily Dose of English and Use Phrasal Verbs, because you learn useful vocabulary and phrases but more important than that, you will get at least 5 or 10 minutes of listening practice (actually more than 10 minutes if you watch the videos more than once, which you should do if you really want to remember anything),

Next time I will look at websites you should be following with RSS – and if you don’t know what RSS is, I’ll explain it!

RSS - We see this sign on many websites, but
what does it mean and how can we use it?

Video: 1000 New Words & Phrases (Learning Language for Charity)

On July 1st 2011 my students tested me in a fun event to improve vocabulary and raise money for charity. This is how and why we did it!

During June this year, I spent at least half an hour every day trying to memorize 1000 new Spanish words and phrases. This was for an event to raise money for a local charity, Asociación Promover, in Argentina, where I am teaching at the moment.

The idea was simple: I had 1 month to learn the words and on July 1st my students tested me to see how many I could remember. Sometimes they gave me the English and I needed to give them the Spanish translation, and sometimes they gave me the Spanish and I gave them the English translation.

It was a fun event and I think everybody who helped improved their vocabulary!

We raised money by asking each person to donate for every word I remembered correctly: $0.02 for 1 word, $0.04 for 2 words, etc. A lot of the students helped by donating as well as helping me to find 1000 Spanish words and phrases to learn. Thank you very much to them!

To know about how I learned and memorized the vocabulary, take a look at my post, No Magic Please (Learning Vocabulary). In future posts this week, I will give some more information about the challenge, the motivation and how much I remember now, 2 months later.

Thanks for everybody’s messages of support. They were very much appreciated. :-)

If you are still a bit confused, here is my video explaining the challenge.

SMART Goals for my 1000 Challenge

This is a short video explaining my S.M.A.R.T. goal of learning 1000 new Spanish words and phrases in one month for charity.

Inspired by Arina Nikitina's article.

Have a good weekend!

1000 Challenge Update

Here is a journal of my progress since the beginning of the month.

Day 2

Spent 1 hour finding and putting down my first 60 words (Day 1 was a non-starter).  Hopefully I’ll get faster at this.  I’ve also found a few websites with common verbs, words and Argentinian phrases.  Added to this, my Facebook is now in Spanish.  Let the learning commence!

Day 4

I have to go to Uruguay today.  Yesterday I added a total of 2 words only.  I was very tired.  Not good enough!

Day 5

I'm going to try learning from Spanish to English instead of English to Spanish.  I’m hoping that after acquiring the Spanish to English, I’ll have quicker success with the English to Spanish.

For this challenge it is important not to get overwhelmed* by the task… I am only at Day 5 so I should not be trying to do too much too quickly.  Every word learned is a success!

* overwhelmed = to feel too much pressure or stress

Day 6

I quickly moved back to English to Spanish - starting from L1 to L2 works much better.

Day 7

Unfortunately I’m not following some of my own rules here.  I have to learn a lot of words quickly so I am looking at word lists and finding any words I don’t know.  This means that I have a lot of unrelated words written together and not in groups, like I recommended.

Words that I’m having problems with at the end of the first week:

To shake or jerk – SACUDIR

To help or assist – SOCORRER

To find out or investigate – AVERIGUAR (I remember this one but not the spelling so I can’t pronounce it.)

Posh/snobby – CHETO

To happen – SUCEDER

To scold or quarrel – RENIR

To distribute – REPARTIR

To put out or extinguish – APAGAR

To heave or pick up – ALZAR

To exhaust or use up – AGOTAR

T-Shirt - REMERA

Day 11

Okay, I have recorded (written down) more than half the words/phrases I need for 1^st July.  See links below for websites I have been using.  I want to give a big thank you to Silvia Bernaudo for some of these links – they have been really useful!

I have probably learned about 100-150 words from English to Spanish.  I haven’t learned any words Spanish to English yet.

How am I finding my 1000 words?

http://quizlet.com/117515/501-spanish-verbs-flash-cards/
http://wordsgalore.com/wordsgalore/languages/spanish/spanish1000.html
http://exposebuenosaires.com/argentine-spanish-the-most-common-words-and-phrases/
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Travel-g294266-s604/Argentina:Important.Phrases.html
http://exposebuenosaires.com/argentine-slang/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo
http://www.freerice.com
http://spanish.about.com
http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/rgshiwyc/school/curric/Spanish/Caminos2/Cam2New/Cam2New1/index.htm
http://www.leoloqueveo.org
http://www.ver-taal.com

http://www.mansioningles.com/Vocabulario.htm

1000 Words & Phrases for Charity in Argentina (#ELLchar)

No Magic Please, part 1 (Learning Vocabulary)

There is no magic trick to learning vocabulary.  I’m sorry.  Maybe you want to stop reading now. :-)

Like all language learning, you have to do some work but there is certainly efficient work and work which is mostly a waste of time.

There are nearly 7 billion people in this world which probably means there are nearly 7 billion different ways to learn vocabulary!  Everybody is different, everybody remembers different things and everybody has different priorities about what words are useful to know.  BUT, there are some methods which are good ideas for everyone. 

L1 to L2 and L2 to L1

(L1 = Your native language, L2 =Your foreign language, English, for example)

When we studied Beginners Spanish at St Andrews we were given a goal by the professor.

“You must learn 30 new words a day.”

You have to learn twice.

Now you might think that is a lot, but actually, it wasn’t that bad and all I needed was 5-10 minutes maybe three or four times a day.  But that wasn’t the only thing we had to do because he also said,

“You will have to learn it twice.”

What he meant was that anyway we learned our words, they would need to be learnt English to Spanish and Spanish to English.  Understand?  I'll explain.

You can’t just learn in one direction because if you just learn L1 to L2 then only your Speaking and Writing will really benefit.  If you only learn vocabulary L2 to L1 then you will improve your Reading and Listening skills but your Speaking and Writing will not improve very quickly.

You need to do both.

Index Cards (I used them and I think they are great!)

I wrote 5 or 6 words on each card, one side in English, the other side in Spanish.  Then I would look at the English and try to remember the Spanish.  If I got it right, good, if I didn’t remember correctly, I put a tally mark next to the English word.  I then when to the next word and did the same thing.

With 6 cards I had my 30 words for that day.  I looked through them four times a day and quickly I knew which words I needed to focus on.  For every time I remembered the word, I could rub out (erase) one of my marks.  Once the word had no more pencil marks, I would highlight it.  Once the car was clear of pencil marks I would turn the card over and do the whole thing again, this time looking at the Spanish and remembering the English.

It worked very well.  Remember you’ll need to recycle these cards over a few weeks before you have completely memorized these words – remember the 75 times! ;-)

English side (the marks show how many times I forgot the Spanish)

Spanish side (these marks show how many times I forgot the English)

This method can work with phrases as well as individual words.

Learning in Categories

Another important thing… try to keep your vocabulary together in categories.  You see all the words on my cards are computer-related.  These things are already connected in your brain.  It helps to learn things in groups – it is how our brain works.

Last week I recommended blog article by Berni Wall, 10 ways to increase your vocabulary.  This is from the article,

“…for example animals, can you, hand on heart, say that you know the English word for all the animals? Think of all those you don’t know and look them up in your own language. Do the same for other [groups of things].”

To help you get started look at this website, Language Guide, and select one of the groups.  Try to record the words you don’t know on some index cards and see how quickly you can learn these words.

Vocabulary Circles

If you are studying on a language course right now, you could try Vocabulary Circles.  I must credit this idea to Caroline Gwatkin and I think it is a great way to learn groups of words from groups of people!  The benefit of this way of recording vocabulary is you immediate see what you already know (good for confidence) and see what you can learn from the other students in your class - you don't always need to learn your English from the teacher.

That’s all for now.  There is plenty more think about when we learn vocabulary and I’ll talk about that more in part 2.  I look forward to your comments and opinions.

Gordon

Help for Exam & General English Practice (Blog Recommendation #2)

If you are preparing for the IELTS exam then you will be interested in these links.  If you are not doing exam preparation but want to improve you general English abilities, then I have other links you will be interested in.

But these all come from one source... so this is my

BLOG RECOMMENDATION - Rliberni's Blog


IELTS Help

So, if you are preparing for IELTS, I think you should look at Rliberni's Top 10 Tips for Improving IELTS Scores.  This blogger has been involved with IELTS since the mid-1990s (when it started!) so she has lots of experience and certainly understands what you need for the exam.

Vocabulary Help
The recommendations here are based on using, not losing your bilingual dictionary.  Generally I think it is better for learners to use an English to English dictionary but I think bilingual dictionaries are useful and I think the suggestions here are good ways to use them.  So, take a look at Rliberni's 10 Ways to Increase Your Vocabulary.

Speaking Help
These are some GREAT suggestions and I think I'll start using some of them with my Spanish!  I really like Rliberni's 10 Goofy Ways to Practise Speaking Skills.

Free Rice for Vocabulary

Hello all!

I’m preparing for a seminar this Saturday this will be a short post.

Have you seen the banner/link near the top of the page?  www.freerice.com.  This is a great tool to improve your vocabulary.  It builds from words you already know and asks you to recognize synonyms.  Don’t worry about level – it has 60 levels of difficulty and level 60 is FAR too difficult for me.  It will give you questions for your level based on what you get right and wrong.  It’s quite clever really.  :-)

I promise a bigger post next week.

Gordon

Is English Difficult to Learn?

This post is inspired by a similar post on Warren Ediger’s Successful English blog.

Personally, I always thought English is an easy language for giving information but a difficult language for getting information.  As I continue with my Spanish studies, I think this is probably true of most languages.

For example, a low level learner’s vocabulary in English can be good enough to explain a problem they are having.

“I have very bad stomach-ache.”

But understanding the huge variety of possible replies needs a wider vocabulary (we say “wider” for vocabulary, not “bigger”).

“You should go to the doctor.” 

“You might want to see a doctor then.” 

“You’d best go and see a doctor.” 

“I’d go to the health centre, if I were you.” 

“You’d better make an appointment with the GP then.” 

“Do you reckon you need to see a doctor?” 

“There’s a clinic on the next street if you want to drop in.” 

“It sounds like you could do with an appointment to see the doctor.” 

“It’s probably a good idea to see your GP then.”

Think about all of these different phrases and parts of language you might need to understand the reply. There are modals verbs like ‘should’, ‘would’, ‘could’ and ‘might’.  Phrases like “You had better + verb” or “You had best + verb” which we use for suggestions.  Direct questions using phrases like “Do you reckon…” or indirect questions “…if you want to see him.”   The change in title from ‘doctor’ to ‘GP’ or not talking about the ‘doctor’ but about the ‘clinic’ or the ‘health centre’.  The variety of verbs you could use; ‘see a doctor’, ‘make an appointment’ and ‘drop in at the clinic’.

As you can see, there’s a lot of English that you might get from this one simple sentence, “I have very bad stomach-ache.”  For me, this also shows that vocabulary needs to be learned in phrases around topics instead of learning the grammar first.  What I mean is that there are some complicated conditionals in there "I'd go to the health centre, if I were you."  Do you think you should wait until you are Intermediate/Upper-Intermediate before you can understand that and reply to it?  You need a doctor!

But I don’t think this problem is limited to English because I know I have the same problem not understanding replies to what I say in Spanish.

One of my problems in Spanish is anxiety.   My worst skill is conversational listening.  This is very different from passive listening.  I can sit in a café or pub and listen to a group of people speak in Spanish and I will follow the gist of the conversation (gist = the general idea, the main points).  But listening in a one-to-one conversation is more difficult because you have less time to think about the language you are hearing and you need to think about what you want to say as well.

The problem is that worrying and anxiety do not help learning.  So how do we stay calm?  Well, it is good to work together with other people who also want to learn English or other people who want to help you improve your English.

So, is English a difficult language to learn?  Well yes, and no.

The main points I haven’t mentioned here are motivation and opportunity.  Are you motivated to improve your English?  What is your motivation?  Do you have the opportunity to use your English?  These are also important questions to ask if you want an answer to the question, “Is English hard to learn?”

What do you think?  As always I look forward to your opinions.

Gordon

P.S.  And for a more humorous opinion about why English is so difficult, click here.