Sweet universal gnawing agent radical.
Superb unit goes against reality.
Swiftly ‘unger grows away right?
Stop using great amounts readily.
Splendid usage goes always running.
Split until garbage alternative route.
Spills up grins and rave.
Stop. Ugh. Grr. Argh. Rah!
S. U. G. A. R.
Penned, April 2014
Funny looking things they are. Five little protruding rounded stumpy endings. Not like leaves on trees. More like branches that broke away and fizzled out their growth. Each one with a kind of cover. Those shiny nails continually grow and need hacking back like a rainforest refusing to bow to the city. Hairs grow from mine, wiry and infinitely unorganised. I look down on them usually, because if I’m looking up, it’s either exercise or gravity winning.
I’ve seen people with more or less of the usual number of five digits. I’ve seen webbing between and I’ve seen tattoos and scars. Mine sometimes resemble a relatives head shape. I won’t tell you which older brother that is, as he’ll probably be upset. I’ve seen fluff under my nails, often blue or black in colour and more than a fair share of mud and dirt. My toes have ached and hurt and witnessed impressions of Lego bricks and even three pin plugs.
I can’t remember my toes being sang about ‘This little piggy’ and so on but I know my Mum played with my toes as a young child and baby. These days my Mum wouldn’t be seen near my toes, and I’m all the better for it. They’re my toes and they’ve walked with me everywhere I’ve been. They’ve swam and danced and kicked and been strong as tiptoes. These toes are my toes and I’m proud to have them here for the journey ahead. Where are we going next?
“Do you play football in the rain?”
“Of course!”
It’s raining.”
“We play on on an all weather pitch.”
“Don’t you get wet?”
“Yes, a little.”
“It must be very cold, right?”
“Not really, because we move and heat our muscles up.”
“What about your skin?”
“Skin is waterproof.”
/////
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, I’m cycling.”
“It’s raining tomorrow. How can you cycle in the rain?”
“Rain jackets and care.”
“Rain is cold and dangerous. Won’t you catch a cold?”
“A cold is a virus. I may be more susceptible but it’s unlikely I’ll catch a cold due to rain.”
“What about your skin?”
“Skin is waterproof.”
////
“We can’t go outside tomorrow. What can?we do?”
“We can go outside.”
“But… but… it’s raining. How can we?”
“Macintosh jackets, umbrellas and Wellington boots are useful.”
“What about my skin?”
“It’s waterproof.”
I was going to write about the artist César Manrique but Wikipedia has it covered.
I was going to pen a few lines about Peter Saville and his artistic influence on Manchester music culture but Wikipedia beat me to it.
I was going to draw up an outline of Manchester’s musical diversity but there’s no need as Wikipedia has shed the light on the matter.
I was going to scribe, jot and share much about Mancunian folklore and key moments but Wikipedia beat me to it.
I was going to foreground and draw a conclusion about life in Manchester but wouldn’t you know, Wikipedia snuck in on that one too.
Wikipedia, what haven’t you covered?
What do you believe in? Is it fairytale endings? Is it a happily ever after story? Maybe it’s pots of gold at the end of colourful striped rainbows? Perhaps there’s a pirate ship sailing through your skies above. Do you believe in love? Is hate something you shove?
Who believes in you? Do they think you’re a prince or princess? Are they your happily ever after? Maybe they’ve seen shining rings of gold? Perhaps they’re buying long dresses and swanky suits for that special day they dream of. Do you believe in yourself? Do you have a heartbeat of wealth?
Why do you believe in you? Do you know your happy ending? Is it flowers and sunshine at the end of your road? Maybe it’s celebrity and fame down your journey of fate? Do you believe in success? Is your life free of duress?
Whatever will be, what ever you wish may follow, but deep down, amongst it all you need to sweat it and bet it. Without a gamble, the adventure can’t be written. Without a step off the beaten track, you’ll never find what you’re looking for. Danger may hurt you but the monotonous life will drain and kill you. They may all sound like cliches, but didn’t they cliche writers have a point?
Your comfort zone: you’ll remain alone or go insane. Your sense of exploration: you’ll adapt or be born again. So, what are you waiting for?
My heartbeat is firing like a machine gun rattling out bullet after bullet, streaming out flashes upon flash of doom and fire-streaming life-ending hot metal. My breath is heavy, laboured and gasping in pockets of air, struggling to deliver the necessary components to my demanding heart rate. I can’t open my mouth fast enough and suck air inwardly. It burns with every gasp. It rasps as I force it down my windpipe deep into the cavity of my lungs. They heave and tussle at their over demanding master’s will. My chest throbs and I swell with redness. My temperature is rising. I shiver with fear and pain. I can’t get air quick enough. I quiver and flutter like a bird stuck in a net. My eyes water and my nose sounds dry and tight. Air filters in and out of it like a vacuum in a hurricane. I grasp my hands tightly onto my sweaty shorts. They’ve crinkled in the heat of my own body but I don’t know it. I can’t see further than my own nose. The vision around it blurs and blends. It’s coming soon. I can feel it. My mind swirls and whirls. It moves around like a dishwasher dancing on a violently shaking washing machine. I taste something metal. Little do I know that the iron taste is my own tongue shredding between my clenched teeth. I smell nothing. I feel less. Suddenly. No warning. Nothing. Light’s out.
Dedicated to Daft Punk. It’s been a ride.
Rabbits and their habits. Mice into vice. Whippets who whip it. Dogs who do doggy dogging. Cats who prowl for pussy. Porcupine porking time. Zebras who do lines. Heroine hyenas. Hung like a horse: a story of execution. Penguins Eat Nice Icy Salads. Cock a doodle do? No, Dr. Seuss, we decline your submissions.
Sat here just thinking. Thoughts rattling through my head. Should I do this? Should I do that? Maybe I can go there? Perhaps a visit to such and such a place is order? How about I do that thing? You know, that thing, the thing I always say that I should do. Or maybe learning an instrument is in order.
Maybe, I said maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me. No, not my words. Sorry Liam and Noel. I could listen to music or write a song, or see a band or play an old vinly record. Is it just the ideal time to dance? Alone or with a stranger? Someone familiar or someone I want? I’ll decide one day.
What if…? Oh, so many what if questions. What if I add another question? What if questions mount up? What if they become a mountain? What if I can’t climb that mountain? What if the mountain has a landslide? What if the landslide swallows me up? What if I’m buried alive? What if the burial is long and starves me of oxygen? Oh. What if?
By the time I’ve thought all of this, time has slipped away. Was it relaxing? Was it a waste? Was it time lost to history? Was it a moment of reflection or a moment of? planning? Was it worth it? Procrastination, what’s that all about? I’ll tell you later…
Wasted energy just fizzled away. Wasted thoughts upped, up and away. Gone. Entropy, all said and done? Faded light in the thick darkness, a laser pen without power. No battery cell to zap outwards. Protons and neutrons inactive.
Plastic shreds, humanity on meds, ducks strangled by packaging. Gone. Waste management, and no fun? Carrier bags drifting in murky waters, a container without a rubbish bin. No recycling scheme to expand areas. Wrappers and sheaths defective.
Rubber tyres, telephone wires, headaches caused by noise. Gone. Bikes of thunder, and not one gun? Airplanes thunder overhead in shrouded skies, a siren without an emergency call. No laws to control the sounds. Banging fireworks completely reactive.
Grimy air, murky vision, stuffy noses full of dust. Gone. Smells of flowers, not by the sun? Machines clatter earth on stripped land, skies fill with ashes. No rule visited this land. This is all productive.
Do you remember trees?
What happened to the bees?
Rainbows and clouds vanished. Elephants and rhinos banished. Trees and grass diminished. Lakes and rivers finished.
Do you recall the smells of spring?
When did the birds last sing?
Dust filled the sky with pain. To see the horizon is a strain. No animals left with a mane. People struggling to stay sane.
How often did it snow back then?
Seasons. When?
The Human race. Who’ll be the winner?
I’m too tired to write this. I started writing an hour ago. I can’t think how to continue the words. Did I forget something then or am I forgetting something now? I can’t shake my mind into gear. The ideas are there. I can feel them. I keep getting bits of this and that, or something and another. Nope. Gone again.
I’ll try memory techniques. I can’t remember how to do them. I’ll walk around in circles. Why am I doing this? What is it that I set out for? Left, right, left right? Look up here. No not there. Oh, there’s something I was looking for. When was that? What was I looking for it for?
I am shattered. My shoulders dropped down a life time ago. What did it to me? Why this week? Now and again it all seems to build up. Then the glass overflows. I need a rest. I need naps. I need to lay in bed. My muscles don’t just ache, they throb and they pulse. They burn. I eat right, I think but something is lacking. I rest well, usually, but what is it that I miss? I relax with books and movies and television shows and music and love and peace and quiet. I lack something.
I overslept. I barely moved today. My step count was liked by friends and colleagues but on those days I’d barely moved an inch. Are they mocking me? Even so, I don’t have the energy to ask them. I’m drained, pooped and my battery is empty. Duracell bunny? Not a chance. Time to close my eyes. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be full of energy. Here’s to hope. I’ve been too tired for optimism. Pessimistic thoughts didn’t join me either. The number you have dialled has not been recognised, please hang up and try again…
My eyes sag heavily. Dry lips. My mouth tastes like yesterday. There’s a smell I recognise as the fumes of frustration. I’ve blinked and the fidgeting of my hand is twitching away. I’m stammering words and mumbling hopes. Dreams pass by. I’m fighting a battle. Just can’t sleep or stay awake. Time to rest. Rest in peace. Not that way. Just quiet. Me, my mind and no movement. Rejuvenating restful rest. I close my eyes, without concern of waking. No plans tomorrow. Just rest. Only rest.
*…Walsh, Gündoğan, Sheron, Creaney, Wright-Phillips, Benarbia, Fowler, Barton, Geovanni, Pizarro, Nasri… and all those other wonderful Manchester City numbers 8s.
These are the voyages of the starship TESMC. Its nine-module mission: to explore strange new words. To seek out almost new teaching methods and relatively new vocabulary. The bold crew of the giant starship explores the excitement of strange uncharted dictogloss things, and exotic uninhabited refined writing. Imagine it – thousands of noun groups at our fingertips… To boldly go where few teachers have gone before!
“Navigation was always a difficult art,
Though with only one ship and one bell:
And he feared he must really decline, for his part,
Undertaking another as well.” – The Hunting Of The Snark, a poem by Lewis Carroll
During TESMC classes we have focused on language in learning across the curriculum. Here’s a recap (to build on the 7th instalment), at the Using English for Academic Purposes website, of nominal groups, structures and examples with exercises. There’s two links here and there for dictogloss activities. Look at this website called The Up-Goer Five Text Editor. It expects you to type a complex idea only using words from a list of 1000 common use words. That’s that, done!
[Now, an important announcement] Lemma: a word family, e.g. running, run, ran; blue, bluer, bluest, blueish, blues, etc. [Announcement ends]
Another vocabulary test website was pointed my way. Cheers ears! You know who you are. VocabularySize.com is a tool to create customized and test vocabulary tests for students. It was created by the University of Wellington, in New Zealand. Their School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies worked with School of Engineering and Computer Science. Language acquisition takes time, patience and exposure. Those students in an international school such as Tungwah Wenzel International School, surrounded by numerous international teachers, are most likely to increase their vocabulary than students in Inner Mongolia without a foreign teacher or access to YouTube. To them English will be as Scottish as a suntan.
Judgement value calls shouldn’t be drawn from memory. Responsive attitudes towards data collection over time carries more merit and significance. By showing a daily goal, we set a part of a bigger picture. The bigger picture should come from steps and aims. Those goals need organising. Rubrics are familiar territory that often get overlooked. I know, from my experience, that I have often favoured an in-head calculation over pencil, pen or paper. That’s not fair. Formative and summative assessments need clarity, not just for the teacher or the parent. The student should have the goalposts set early on. They must know what the task entails and how to achieve maximum marks.
“When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative; when the guests taste the soup, that’s summative.” – Robert E. Stake, Professor Emeritus of Education, University of Illinois
Having a summative assessment that resembles activities earlier on is key too. If you use formative pieces that have multiple choice questions and then for the finale you switch to an all-singing, all-dancing 2000-word essay, then that’s totally not playing cricket with your students. English as a Second Language (ESL) students need modelled methods that allow them to switch between multiple forms. To do it without preparation is unfair. Failure or success depends on students and their experience. To think outside of the box without the necessary scaffolding is not easy. One activity that I found useful was to assign half the class the activity of being the teacher. The other half had to follow the instructions given by the teacher. Afterwards peer review of the followers revealed that some students gave clear instructions. Others did not. Some students improvised where instruction was lacking. Many students competed to give the better and clearer instructions. Positive peer pressure gives chance for evaluation and reflection. Using a checklist or rubric over the top of that student’s activity gives a more meaningful insight to the activity and assessment. The teacher can play the role of referee or judge. The peers become the jury. Hopefully no executioner needs assigning. That being said we’ve all had that one student who never does homework… [It’s gallows humour, relax]
“What we learn with pleasure we never forget.” – Alfred Mercier
Student age gives us an idea of where to set our expectations. Within an age group, each student’s experience and exposure to English needs to be factored in. Then there’s nationality, multilingualism, academic performance in their native language(s), and so on… or what they ate for breakfast. Classrooms are living breathing jelly-like places that seldom remain constant. One gargantuan factor to take into consideration is that of student behaviour. Special needs and cares need to be taken into account. Not every student has the level of focus that we desire. To give confidence, informal formative assessments and their analysis will benefit the teacher and student. In the long run, reforming practices to unlock their true productive potential using a variety of interactive assessments will become a most valuable teaching tool.
“I never teach my pupils. I can only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” – Albert Einstein
Formative assessments can guide a teacher to how a student is or is not progressing. It can allow the teacher to amend their methods or tailor an individual student’s needs much more fluidly. John Polias, of Lexis Education, describes it as:
I read that in the style of Pep Guardiola as an intense football manager. He, like many great football managers, uses coaching of football in the game, after game analysis and during the game. The game is the test. The game is also a time to test new formations and tactics. The game is something to reflect on and to understand new learnings. This can also be said within our classroom. This should also be applied to our students. Assessment as learning is a real chance give appropriate and frequent feedback – in order to modify learning activities. It’s proactive and not reactive. Assessment of learning, the summative part, is reactive. It’s done, it’s dusted. Game over, almost. Assessment for learning also allows us scope to work away from the traditional unit test and external testing of old. Here in assessment for learning and assessment as learning we allow magic to happen. Students can express themselves. There’s self-assessment, self-monitoring and peer-assessment time. Students can create or make their own checklists or rubrics. With that, they can be employed for the purpose of learning. They allow students incentive, a drive, a spur on to get to a much more useful end. Therefore, Making Assessment Supportive focuses on how we can devote adequate time to making a type of assessment that makes sense for our students – and being able to use it at varied points of instruction. At points along the teaching cycle allows us to make assessment more fruitful. Lorna Earl’s Assessment as Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximise Student Learning further strengthens this material showing a host of judgements about placement, promotion, credentials, etc to fit with other students. It shows information for teacher instructional decisions to meet external standards and expectations. It shows self-monitoring, self-correction and adjustment to reach personal and external goals.
“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” – Kahlil Gibran
So, with all that, I ask you, teacher or not, what does the assessment pyramid look like? Identify how your school, current or old, had their pyramid. Where would you place the below? Top, middle or bottom?
Let’s each analyse samples of assessment tasks being used in our schools. Are they devised to be assessment of, for, or as learning? How can we incorporate a more overlapped approaches to assessments within teaching? What’s the understanding from students within our classes about the kinds of assessments that we do?
“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.” – B.B. King, musician
Until next time… goodbye for now.
Good (insert time here) / Hello / How do,
“Ben told the class that nouns are sexy. I couldn’t agree more.” – Mr Lee, 2020/21 cohort, TESMC, TWIS
Noun groups are everywhere. ESL (English as a Second Language) learners may find ordering tough, whereas a professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, may find that their description of the fictional Scottish public and private boarding school of magic for students aged eleven to eighteen child’s play. The British magical community’s Ministry of Magic may not be an ideal place to start an exploration of noun groups, that most specific to English topic, but we can begin here with a dabble into the magical realm of TESMC class with Mr Ben. It’s our seventh class, hence the title.
“Many a man has a treasure in his hoard that he knows not the worth of. (Sellic Spell)” – Beowulf, J.R.R. Tolkien
Perspectives on Vocabulary by John Polias, Nominalisation, meaning making in the written realm by Brian Dare, and How accessible are the texts we use by John Polias made for riveting reading. They kept me up into the wee hours and on my toes. Why? They made me question my teaching and my selection of textbooks. Hugely. I’ve always been a fan of a DK Board game called Very Silly Sentences. This game helps to expand the vocabulary and manipulates verbs, adjectives and nouns. The idea of manipulating the nominal group needs base knowledge. That is to know the density of meaning slapped together inside a written text by giving numbers to nominalization per clause. Heavy stuff. Really heavy packed stuff. As a teacher we want to see the evolution of a student’s writing. It must go from: ‘It is a cat.’ We’re aiming to add weight to the sentence. Students, like adults, should be spouting Shakespearian cat descriptive pieces.
“foul night-waking cat” – The Rape of Lucrece, Sir William Shakespeare
If we sit our student’s first grade work alongside the same student’s work as they enter their early teenage years, you will see progress. The same can be done if we take week two work, week ten and week 17 work. Analysis is easy because it is reactive. Our job is much more proactive though. We’re targeting an end product. The factory assembly line of our classes must be targeted to show our desired outcomes of language learning. The crux of the matter is vocabulary extension: It’s a pretty cat. John Polias makes some strong cases for playing detective and taking visuals aside for as good old interrogation.
Fellow hair-challenged Brian Dare points out the pros and cons of refined writing. The high end of the mode continuum gets a fair treatment. He points out that suddenly students are less likely to be thinking on their toes. Students should be encouraged to both rewrite spoken text and speak in different ways about written text. It has to be bidirectional and the transpositions should become the tools of meaning-making in language. Going back and forwards, inverting, flipping it a bit, and relocating words here and there will provide the necessitous scaffolding. Do you remember the joys of messing with words and creating something clean and trim? The mode continuum gives our students something to blend and bend as a way to develop knowledge about language.
Explain these terms to a student without using the terms: common noun, proper noun, abstract noun, concrete noun, countable noun, uncountable noun, compound noun, collective noun, singular noun and plural noun. Respective examples could include window, Manchester, love, house, bike and bikes, rice, textbook, crowd, monkey, and babies. Easy enough, right? Now explain the function and use of a noun group. A noun group is a group of words relating to, or building on, a noun. There may be a pointer (a, an, this, that, these, those, my, your, his, her, its, our, dad’s, Mr Ben’s), one or more adverbs and adjectives. Before and after the main noun. The pre-modifier and the post-modifier offer ample opportunity for exploration. Referring back and forwards, within a sentence is a highly useful skill and tool for an up-and-coming writer. Adding weight and detail to the noun expands the information about the noun itself. It offers a clearer mental image. With these skills, our students can tell us much more about a cat. It’s a pretty fluffy cat with a wonderful temperament. The students are now armed with magic wands to cast spells on their noun structures. Effective writers need detail. Expanding the nominal group should be a weapon of choice.
Note: Nominal means as planned, or as named, or as written (in the mission plan). It does not mean normal.
Synonyms and antonyms are keys and tools to create colourful and abstract language. They’re also ideal for adding dimension to concrete dialogue and reports. One of my earliest English class memories was at Clayton Brook Primary School in Manchester. I, under ten years of age, and my peers were tasked with finding as many synonym words for the words good and bad. Many students talked about it. Some sought books. The tall loner in the corner dived like goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel and grabbed something useful. The dictionary fell into my lap. I was hooked. My personal vocabulary grew from word hunts, games, and reading. Mr Jones, class 5AJ, at Chapel Street Primary School, where I later attended, had me constantly finding words, or even searching for made up words, which made me look up similar words. These strange games certainly gave me reasons to live amongst the pages of discovery.
Here on vocabulary played a part. Even to this day, I enjoy expressions, terminologies, and styles of writing because the words within are shouting at me like conversations and whisperings that I must hear. According to TestYourVocab.com, most adult native test-takers range from 20,000-35,000. The average 8-year-old native speaker already knows about 10,000 words. Foreign test-takers tend to hit 2,500-9,000 words – and even by living overseas that only tends to hit 10,000 words. As I slotted my answers into tick-boxes and scored an estimated 32,700 words for my vocabulary size, I realized how few of the 300,000 entries into the Oxford English Dictionary that I probably know. In reality knowing one word from the 20,000 printed pages of the Oxford English Dictionary isn’t all that bad (and in truth, just 35,000 are useful). Are the website’s findings accurate? Well, entering your data is based on honesty and over two million surveys doesn’t accurately reflect a global population of umpteen billion people. Also, who uses the internet?! Their website’s methodology, the nitty-gritty argues that their accuracy is around ±10%, so in my instance, I could be closer to 35,970 or 29,430 words. Either way, it’s a curious little tool of play. I’m not showing off. Not at all. It gives me a good reflection on how many words I have yet to experience or learn. The bad news, however, is that their findings say middle age is where vocabulary retention tends to end. The best reading I found on their website related to reading habits. They found that reading habits directly increases vocabulary growth. It may sound like, as my Dad would put it, “stating the bleeding obvious” but it goes a long way to reinforcing the habit of reading at an early age. This website is part of an independent American-Brazilian research project. The decade-old findings of China show that the average vocabulary size here for English as a Second Language users was 6,636 words. Now, considering the education boom in China, that could be higher now. The website is an indication but not a science. It made me think about how many base words we need to learn a language. But, then how often do we use the words and do we lose the words? Who do we talk with that make us use new words? Are some words specific to some scenarios? Oh, the endless questions! Where on Earth is Anglesey?
“One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilising or it will die.”- Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh, writer (28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966)
Textbooks need selection. Most of us read reviews and even more of us get handed a reading list and stack of books tall enough to paralyse a student’s passion for reading. Trying not to overwhelm a young kids with a stack of books is a good start. As John Polias points out we need to support the students. If I throw the Welsh town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch at you and say read it. With that name of the Welsh village just over the Menai Bridge, you can unlock the language of Welsh, possibly. Possibly not. That’s where teachers must support every textbook handed to a student. A book without support may scare away passion for reading.
“Our song escapes, on little silver discs; Our love is plastic, we’ll break it to bits” – Reflektor – Arcade Fire
Too long, didn’t read? Well, that’s half the problem. If reading isn’t for you, how can reading be for someone else? And if reading isn’t a habit, how can writing be a skill? I haven’t read any of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Am I a sinner? Maybe. It just never grasped my attention. So, now, I believe that I must read it. I won’t read it alone though. I’ll make it my personal mission to read it with each and every student of my grade four class. Maybe they have read it in Chinese. Maybe in English. But, how did they enjoy it? I’m sure we can enjoy the magical journey as one. If you don’t have one of the Harry Potter books to hand and you want to dig on into the wider world of English, check out the below sites:
The Economist (Johnson blog: named after Samuel Johnson, who made dictionaries. This blog is all about the use and misuse of language, with its ripple effects)
FreeRice.com teaches and tests vocabulary whilst donating 5 grains of rice to the U.N. World Food Programme.
Language Log. Simply put, Mark Liberman, at the University of Pennsylvania, is a linguist with love of words. His Language Log website is a ticker-tape of blogs, posts and news all relating to language. Expect popular culture, controversy and history.
Dictogloss: a language learning technique. Used to teach grammatical structures. The teacher prepares text examples that need to be studied. The teacher reads it. The students just listen. No pens allowed. Next the students lift up their pens. Notes must be taken. By forming small groups, students can work together to reconstruct the text example using their knowledge, notes and teamwork. Afterwards reflection comes as students compare their various versions. With respect to my Grade 4 class, they tried this task twice and each time, they sailed the rough seas. Grade 4 are very capable sailors when the going gets tough. For extra experience, add a Powerpoint presentation whereby the words (and phrases) that you feel need noting pop up as you read it. It can reinforce student ability. After students become familiar with the dictogloss methods, take away the option of teamwork. First try paired working and then ask the students to work solo. This can also promote confidence.
“Fate goes ever as fate must.” – Beowulf, Seamus Heaney
As students move through schooling they will encounter different registers with full expectation to engage them accordingly. The use of nominal groups to enhance and even make complex text can be explained and shown to be more than useful. The dictogloss is there to be used as a tool, but not for exactitude. How many things change through new interpretation and retelling? Language and writing, like speaking can all be about exploration. As teachers we are captains of ships and we must wake our hypnopompic students with a sparge of word play. Our fuliginous fluffy funambulist of a feline with a wonderful temperament must exercise its vibrissae to avoid any pother as it balances on the tenebrous tightrope of life. With that, I end my braggadocio writing.
“Fate will unwind as it must!” – Beowulf, Burton Raffel
Goodbye, for now.
Are they immortal? Do they feel their movements? Shaped in time, carved by ice, snow and rain, to name but a few of nature’s shaping tools. Winds blow over them, sometimes finding ways deep into the soul of the mass, but often unmoving little more than loose ground.
Rains, earthquakes, feet passing over, whether herd or bird, a plethora of life creeping and digging into it. What does a mountain sense? Does it see the land and valleys below? Can it feel the altitude changes of plants like we feel the differences between socks, shorts and a woolen jumper?
From the lowlands to the tips, diversity grows and taints every inch with colour and variety. Crags, crevices, crests, cracks, boulders, rocks, ledges and all spectacle of materials decorate the mountain. Waterfalls and streams bathe the light that shines brightly down between the gaps in the clouds.
Flowers give the wings of bees and butterflies places to compete for beauty. The banks of trees stretch from thicket to wood to forest. Some ancient. Some not. Insects occupy every level and avoid the preying spiders that jump, spin webs and roan the floor. Chasms of rock beneath overhanging shelves house fluttering sounds within. The darkness of the mountain’s belly home to frightful delightful shapes and shadows. Oh, majestic mountain, what is it that you know?
Penned, when trekking, during a break at Muse village, Nepal, 11th January, 2017.
Hello.
Instant goodbye.
(applicable to Douyin and Twitter users, but not Donald Trump as it contains too much information)
Cutting into me, it twists like a knife. Confidence hasn’t been in my hand for too long. This companionship I hold drains me. An awful lonely feeling of dread and dreams that have disappeared.
Will I be disappointed? Will it all go wrong? What should I do now? WHAT SHOULD I DO? My soul screams at me. Echoes ping around my head like a thousand pinballs on a pinball board. Each ball finds a hole but no points join the scoreboard.
Silence hasn’t visited me in weeks. I’m trying. Oh, how I’m trying! Trying and crying. Solace? Where are you? I’m sensitive to you but you haven’t called for me in so long. Remember peace? I don’t recall it’s calm. My millpond is full of rippling waves. A cask of broken rocks plummets here and there. A plethora of circles expand ever outwards. This is my universe’s big bang.
A street that has no name is where my feet fall. I’m lost. I’m a shadow without a being. Am I a ghost without life? I want you to understand that I’m not looking for sympathy. You’ll forget me, as soon as you look at me. My skin is supposed to be thicker but every whisperer who whispers makes me want to shrivel away into nothingness. I’m not really here.
Religion and words won’t relate to me. Poems and stories won’t leap from the page. Songs won’t pull me together. I’m sure that I’ll see you again. Whatever you are. Whoever you were. We’re far apart. We’re not really here. Like the face of an invisible man. We’re not really here. We’re not. We are not. We’re not really here.
Oh doubt, you cut through me like fear. You tear me apart. You give me indecision. I’m in Dante’s inferno dancing without feet. My eyes are red-raw bleeding tears of sorrow and my lips are dry. Where did it all go wrong? Sometimes, no, all the time, I wonder why. Why does my soul wander? Why does it choose to wander hand-in-hand, side-by-side with you, doubt?
THUD! THUD! THUD! Clattering tapping, scraping, raking of metal on concrete, tapping to no discernible rhythm, whooshing of liquids of pressure too high to be useful (surely) and horns of an arriving concrete mixer. Jangling metal lifted by crane slams to the floor of an unfinished level. Thank you my neighbouring alarm clock that forever remains unwanted.
A yapping dog, barking, growling and filling the air with its territorial call of power. I imagine it’s been disturbed by the building site. The dull humming of pumped up storey after storey probably haunts the ears of that canine. Either that or the dog is angry that it is confined to an exposed balcony. Howling away without shame. Poor thing. Wouldn’t you be? Balconies should be silent, not living, breathing, wolf like alarm clocks.
The pressure is too much. It hurts. I’m going to burst. Can I sleep through this? No. Just no. I must get up. The call of my bladder has rang. Get up! Get up! Get on up! I stretch on wearying legs, reach up, straighten and with legs like Bambi, I strut awkward motion toward the bathroom. Here I greet the porcelain telephone and deliver my undesirable alarm clock’s stream away.
I settle back into bed. The din of the building site. The dog yapping. Wet hands from washing them after my body refused me a minute more of closed eyes. Vrrrrrrrrrr. The whirring of a power drill in the apartment overhead. It wakes a baby. Screams echo around the walls in a room somewhere adjacent to the drill hall above. Twinkle twinkle… What’s that? A piano thunders into life. Repeated notes, some off, some tuneless ditty from the apartment below. The nonessential alarm clock is an orchestra today.
A scream for good measure echoes down the corridor by my apartment. The immediate neighbour’s daughter is in a singing mood. Their cockerel on the balcony let’s out a few sounds. Little does it know that it’s on the menu tonight. Their washing machine had finished. I can hear it beeping. The treble electronic bleeps come every minute, and have been doing so for at least this last hour. I hear as the grandparents of the family rip up large packaging boxes and slam plastic bottles together before compression by foot and body. They sing a song, gently, no doubt, but to my alert morning ears, it is at karaoke level. My neighbours are a reliable alarm clock. But please… not today.
De trop. Redundant. Rejected. Unsought. Unwelcome. Unsolicited. These alarm clocks aren’t of my choosing. I close my eyes. Trucks and cars honk on a nearby road. An ambulance siren is piercing the air, screaming at traffic to move aside. Judging by the duration, the selfish traffic is refusing to assist. Blackballed the ambulance shrieks a lonely sound of hope to narrow-minded folk going about their day, unaware of an emergency vehicle probably on the way to something more important than my desire to snooze a little more. These alarms are not in the picture of my plan to doze.
The body clock, programmed by weeks of morning necessity has won. The Monday to Friday alarm clock of my mind has triggered. Saturday is now a school day too. I wonder if Sunday will be any different.
Swirling swirls swirl around, swirly and softly to the ground. Drops drip and drop beyond. Down, falling high and low without sound. A roar of wind breezes through, pushing all air aside, drawing every room’s breath outwards. A vacuum for a split second, all life freezes. The rip of heat singes and severs flesh from bone. Dust from stone fragments, as waves upon wave of pressure jump and ripple in circles ever outwards. Heat rises. Metal buckles. Fragrance ceases to exist. The particles refuse to cooperate. Iron tastes flutter but refuse to reach the tongue. Rainbows of orange, red, gold and yellows in every known shade flicker, flash and flurry. A crack of sound, as if the sky itself had collapsed. And. In one brilliant flash. It was all over. Gone. Blank and no longer.
Help I’m alive. It’s the end of the world as we know it. Comfortably numb. Fall. Still feeling blue. Boulevard of broken dreams. Everybody hurts. I’m so lonesome I could cry. If you’re reading this. More than a feeling. I’m so lonely I could cry. Nothing compares 2 U. While my guitar gently weeps. Apologize. Mad world. Is there life out there? I just wanna dance with somebody (who loves me). You don’t even know who I am. Creep. All by myself. Hurt. Life is a lemon and I want my money back. O my heart. Left outside alone. Act naturally. Only the lonely. No hard feelings. Don’t let me be lonely tonight. Here comes that rainy day feeling. If you’re happy and you know it (clap your hands). Smile to keep from crying. Say something. Peaceful easy feeling. Into you. I feel the earth move. Dancing with myself. Hooked on a feeling. I feel fine. I can feel a hot one. Electric feel. I got the sweetest feeling. I got you. The way you make me feel. I will rise. Cum on feel the noize. Make you feel my love. I feel free. Feels like the first time.
Feel Good Inc.
Twisting and turning, weaving and looping, over and over again, the thread winds and binds itself together, securing passage, places to capture and sending signals far beyond the centre. Each radiating line sends ripples outwards and inwards. A prang here. A twang there. Waves of delight or despair depending on your view. As wings flutter, powerless to escape, out I step, ready to drink the juices of life. The sun beats above, or it doesn’t, I’m ever present. Ever ready. Ready to feast. All on the web of life, that I spun.
What are tears? Are they escaping emotions from deep inside us? Is it fear, worry and strife jumping overboard? Does each tear represent the birth of hope? Each emerging drop must mean something. What do my tears mean?
I’m homesick. I’m alone. I’m lost. I’m without you. Terrifying panic as you’re lost in an Altrincham shopping mall? The day after a school day full of bullies pushing you around with hateful words. Thoughts of a day hidden under a bridge, unable to attend a funeral of a grandparent. Pup. The wonder dog. No longer by your side. No longer. It all means something, surely?
As momentum builds with each rolling droplet, your cheeks redden. Lips dry. Inside your mouth a new taste emerges. Raw. The taste of your own cheeks. Holding your hands to your face. Imagination flashes back to memories and forwards to dreams, good and bad. Sniffles break out. A stuffy nose hides all smells. You try to gain composure. Did it work? No. A tidal wave of locked away emotions surge out like a river bursting its banks. What does it all mean?
Friends fall. Time ages you. They remain unaged. Gone. Not forgotten. Far from home? Where is home? Why am I here? Why am I not there? Working hard. Working. Work keeps many busy. The lucky busy ones. Others don’t work. They can’t. They don’t. There is no work. We lucky busy workers. Some sleep early. Some late. Some nap. Snooze. Wake up. Lucky. Busy. Workers. Lucky. Where is this meaning that we all work for?
Interpretation. Judgement. Don’t judge a book by its cover. If you see my eyes red and tearful, judge me kindly. It doesn’t have to be this way. Or does it? The tears recede. Breathing slows down. The calm after the storm. Feelings. Feel. You feel. We feel. I feel. I felt something more. I felt again. I felt it rush back. Tears mean something more. Has hope been born again?
The air conditioner light is on. It’s seventeen above zero and the power still feeds it. I should stand up and disconnect it. I should. But I don’t. I’m worried if I stand up that the machine will win. Tomorrow it could be warmer. Then I plug it back in like a faithful servant. It shouldn’t be warmer tomorrow. The machine knows better.
That air conditioning unit of mine has seen much. It’s wise. It’s witnessed heat and coped with far worse than I can handle. Storms. Lashing winds. Torrential rainfall. Zipping daggers of lightning. Hailstones as big as marbles. It’s felt me hitting it as I pursue a bloodsucker of a mosquito. It’s been deadened by lightning and my operatic singing. It still clings the wall resolutely.
I say clings. It perches. No. It hugs. Hugs tightly like a giant curved fat bat with huge jaws. It just watches and waits, lifeless and cold. It’s heat setting is hidden away, unneeded. It knows that I don’t like warmth and I like the air to move. It waits for my moment of weakness. Patience is key. It’ll get me. It senses my needs.
But, after all that thought, I change my mind. Out pops the plug. Socket empty. It’ll be hot tomorrow. Just you see. It knows. Oh, how it knows. See you tomorrow.
It has started. We are too close to the door to close it now. The wind is too strong now to wind the sail. Anthony Horowitz gave empowerment to five. Enid Blyton made the number famous. Swordsman Miyamoto Musashi wrote a book about five rings. The Olympic games use five rings representing inhabited continents. Five-a-side football isn’t a bad game. In rugby a try gets you five points. “Give me five”, praises someone as you high five. Quintessence is essential to water, earth, fire and air. The five-second rule used to be applicable but then COVID-19 came along. UK pop band 5ive are best forgotten, just like the notes taken from the fifth TESMC module.
Words like dynamic and dynasty be so mellifluous. Pleasing to the ears. They make me all aquiver when tied to descriptive texts, like the bombinating of a bumblebee briskly buzzing by. Sometimes the words themselves are so ineffable that no words do them justice. These moments can appear ethereal like the petrichor (the sometimes pleasant fragrance of earth that follows rain). Try laying supine, facing the sky, closing your eyes and listening to the things around you. What sounds pleased? Which make a horrendous hum? Yesterday was the memorial day of the Nanjing massacre in China and at some stage a sonorous sound shrieked out from a siren. On the quieter side, there has been bird song and on opening my eyes, spheres danced in my vision, the phosphenes from the rubbing of my eyes.
Hiraeth [hiːrai̯θ] is here. A longing for home. The home of yesterday has changed. The world has changed. I cannot go back as easily as before. It’s a Welsh word. Pure beauty in meaning, a pining for nostalgia. A desire for home and an epoch gone by. I find myself as a somnambulist. I miss second-hand bookshops too. The kind of bookshop which is so full that it had to refuse more refuse. That vellichor. The fragrance and strangeness of so many gathered histories. The insurance has long been invalid for the invalid books.
A teacher must know words. Words are friends. Words need sharing. Words need to be entrusted and explained. How can we intimate this to our most intimate student friends? Students from ESL (English as a Second Language) backgrounds need new words. New words can help develop a love for language. Without these tiptoe steps into a world thesaurus and dictionary, what will a student learn? Are we sometimes guilty of assuming students can’t pick up new words? What are the ramifications of low expectations? Surely, if a student has been set low standards or an activity without a challenge then they will wither and fade like an autumn flower as winter arrives. Speaking of word play, congratulations to my mate Gerry on his third marathon finish. If he was a drummer, he could paint a bass fish on the head of the bass drum. Wordplay.
Ongoing and meaningful preparations are a must. You can’t make Christmas cards easily without card, colouring pencils or pens, and materials to stick onto the card. You may have the words to write ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’ but they’re null and void without a place to affix them. Now, you have prepared well, and now it is time for explicit and timely support – by teachers and their assistants. These key tools of learning are essential to educating ESL students. Think omnipresence. Even at a later stage a teacher should be guiding through support and reassurance, or corrective guidance, when and where appropriate. Give an ESL student supportive confidence and they’ll fly. No more wilting flowers.
Practice alone won’t hone writing as a skill. It needs companionship. Reading, a variety of examples, experimentation and bravery aren’t bad starting points. Encouragement and explicit guidance by all teachers will go far. Repetition may help an ESL student with handwriting or to spell a few words but it won’t do much more without a careful eye and a hand on the shoulder. Teachers are the Jedi masters of the classroom. They must be open-minded, flexible and experimental in teaching strategies to encourage students to adopt the same mindset. Practice is important, however, to get better a structured and reflective approach, of a clear nature is of greater benefit. What a teacher wants from a class should be discussed and explained clearly. The teacher has the task of progressively conveying their expectations in ways that don’t confuse or blur the outcome. Every opportunity for a student to write should be a chance to seek clarification and guidance. Perhaps like now, it is Christmas and the task is to write Christmas cards. Careful wording helps build a basic familiarity. If not worded correctly your Christmas card workshop class could easily become a paper aeroplane and origami showroom. In my classroom, anything is possible. Perhaps, they’d create a Picasso-style masterpiece then rip it up. Upon seeing the tears in their painting I would shed a tear or two.
Writing processes must be clear, with the genre of the task apparent from the off. The specificities of the genre will make the register of the writing task transparent and relevant. Joint construction, modelling, then independent construction each have different demands on both the student and the teacher. Here the right language choices can be made. They offer the chance to have a running dialogue between the teacher and the student. The activity of writing is integral to learning in many educational contexts. It is not simply to show what has been learned. Far from it! One piece of text could be construed by one reader as a different thing to another reader. The writer interacts with their audience via the text. Various semiotic systems make this possible. They could be multimodal, interactive and often they have meanings or interpretations that change over time or from culture to culture or from prior knowledge or even contextual factors. Society and culture changes. Technology changes. Word meanings evolve or fade away. Who knows what literacy skills we’ll need for the next century?!
Pariseetomol sounds like paracetamol. Whilst one is headache-reducing, the former could be headache inducing. Part of the text is below. Is it a hybrid of Dr Seuss or Roald Dahl, or JRR Tolkien or Lewis Caroll? Perhaps Shakespeare has made a comeback tour like all good big-haired 80s artists do (1580s, obviously). Anyway for more on the below, look at it first and then I’ll share something just after the below text:
“Pariseetomol ossildates the senses, demanding to be looged, hoshed, plessed, misted and spolt. From plooking along the Seine to scarbarsters on merse-sized canvases to the pick-an-ism dupers in cafes parlandering on the mis of garlic or the perster kolecks of Jerry Lewis, Pariseetomol is the embiffers of all things French. Morzel simplurously at its brousal boulevards, pressim monuments, highstopper works of art and larly lippers. Savour its gourmet stoop of premble, jasmerse, dorsims and marebits. Feel the rosset in your doppel as you glerglack through Bastille, or a wergle of frompt and plossule atop the Eiffel Toppletipper.” – Is this gibberish? See below.
Google and other search engines can ruin a mystery, as can Ben Greuter, ace TESMC instructor. Without giving anything away, here’s a link to explain the above Lonely Planet piece. In the classroom we were asked to answer some questions. Again, see below.
1. What does Pariseetomol do to the senses?
2. How is one advised to morzel?
3. When are you likely to feel the rosset in your doppel?
4. Why might you have felt a wergle of frompt and plossule atop the Eiffel Toppletipper?
5. What is the writer’s view of Pariseetomol?
Now, where and how do you begin to answer that. The bandage was wound around the wound. That’s where I’d begin. Much of what we read in English is about context and prior knowledge. Many authors can skip the obvious in a series of novels, but pick up the latest Jack Reacher novel and you may need a few back-publications to fully follow the brutal ex-military officer created by Lee Child. His mind was used to produce produce. He polished his character with the odd Polish trip. I’m sure one novel has the main character deciding to desert his dessert in the desert. And, Jack Reacher definitely took aim at a dove which dove into the bushes, which he could lead others to do if he would get the lead out.
On returning from lunch I see there is no time like the present. Someone thought it was time to present the Christmas present. I do not object to this secret object. Now, who sent it? I shall subject the mysterious subject to a series of tests. I have a package with neat folds, level taping and handwriting that appears feminine. The colour scheme is light and cheery. After, “Hey John” there is “~” which is quite common to signify affection or warmth. The contents will remain secret until Friday when I open it at the staff gathering. I guess from the feel that it is a pin badge, a keyring or earrings. I shall pontificate in my best Sherlock Holmes fashion without sweat. Maybe i could watch a documentary about an Australian marsupial, let’s say the wombat. It eats roots, shoots, and leaves. I’ll get my coat…
Look as he chops a block of wood,
Exact as it needs to be.
Excitement isn’t the word.
Stare in wonder at his guitar skills.
Have a nice day,
As his
Witty kids jump and shout in high
Voices about how
Esteban’s shadow is hard to escape from.
Really hard, but here’s one talent doing his best and a happy birthday to him today.
A familiar smell, tepid and lacking freshness emits outwards. The sound zips by. It’s mouth so small yet so present. This one is a shiny metalic black but they come in other colours.
Fear surrounds them, but somehow, we keep them near and close. Too close. Too close for comfort. They feel and look so cold and lifeless. They press against us from time to time, reminding us that they’re forever hiding in the shadows.
Their sounds are almost undetectable, however, we know when they move. What’s their real motivation for hanging around us so freely? Don’t they have a better place to belong? I’m sure they could be part of a carrier system or help fit a cover somewhere. But, no, they are here and this one in particular is draining the colour from my face.
I heard they’re a major killer around the world, more than wars ever cleansed away life on Earth, or was that something else? I stare down at it. The fly. The dreaded evil fly. It’s red. That’s the last time I catch myself in the fly.
Something is fluttering and refusing to stay still. It grips hold of my attention and drowns out the conversation in the room. My eyes are looking but I’m not seeing. I find my mouth making the sound of agreement but inside I’m dancing, somewhere else. I twitch a little in my eye, but my focus won’t return. In my world, I’ll remain here until the next pat on my shoulder. Don’t disturb these moments. Let me bask in my imagination. Reality doesn’t want me anyway.
I don’t want to write.
I don’t want to.
I don’t want.
I don’t.
I do.
I?
You have no idea what I had to trade with the devil for that. No problem. Not a worry. My pleasure. Don’t mention it. It was nothing. Nothing makes me happier. Happy to help you. You are so welcome. Welcome, anytime. Anytime you need help, ask me. I am glad it helped you. I’ll count on your vote for the next election. I’m sure you’d have done the same for me. You’re welcome. You would have done the same if you were in my shoes. Sure. I’m happy to be of assistance. Happy to be of service. Sure thing. No big deal. The feeling is mutual. That’s why good friends do. I’m glad that you’re satisfied. You’ll get my bill by the morning. Oh, stop it, you! The invoice is on the way. You deserve it. It’s just a token of my appreciation. After all, it was my privilege. It was my honour to have helped. I’m just returning a favour. Let me know if I can help you in the future.
If only you had said thank you.
You have no idea what I had to trade with the devil for that. No problem. Not a worry. My pleasure. Don’t mention it. It was nothing. Nothing makes me happier. Happy to help you. You are so welcome. Welcome, anytime. Anytime you need help, ask me. I am glad it helped you. I’ll count on your vote for the next election. I’m sure you’d have done the same for me. You’re welcome. You would have done the same if you were in my shoes. Sure. I’m happy to be of assistance. Happy to be of service. Sure thing. No big deal. The feeling is mutual. That’s why good friends do. I’m glad that you’re satisfied. You’ll get my bill by the morning. Oh, stop it, you! The invoice is on the way. You deserve it. It’s just a token of my appreciation. After all, it was my privilege. It was my honour to have helped. I’m just returning a favour. Let me know if I can help you in the future.
If only you had said thank you.
AGAINST THE FLOW OF TRAFFIC - ACTON28.BLOG 