Job Discussion Forums

[teacheratlarge]

Another interesting article from Harvard Business School


http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6630.html

[Jbhughes]

I'm not sure if I overthink or underthink as a rule, but I think I could find examples of when I've been guilty of one of the other. At least, I'd like to serve them up and see whether Dave's wants to give them a try or not.

Overthinking

1. A student paraphrases a word, wanting teacher to provide an English equivalent. A word comes to mind, but in fear of it not being exactly what the student needs and not being natural enough usage for their context, I refrain from giving it. A barrel load of questions (me confirming from the student the context and requirements of the word) and a 'I'll think about it and tell you next lesson/week' and the intervening time between lessons later......... I end up giving them the same word that came to mind originally with some caveat about American English or register. At which point the student probably doesn't even remember asking about the word and has no longer has need for it.

2. Only have vs have only

'Teacher, only have or have only?'

Thought in head: 'It doesn't matter as long as it's clear what you mean.'
Response to student: you guessed it, 'I'll check'

So, I spent a good amount of time researching these stats from BNC and CCAE (the number is the number of occurrences in the respective corpus and % the respective ratio compared to other results - I realise that the ratios with 'have' are probably skewed by perfect tenses)

British English:

only has � 320 24%
has only � 995 76%

only have � 1143 53%
have only � 1015 47%

only had � 785 32%
had only � 1671 68%

has � 256598 23%
have � 460850 41%
had � 420317 37%

American English:

only + verb � 53386 32%
verb + only � 115452 68%

spoken
only + verb � 12949 41%
verb + only � 18806 59%

written
only + verb � 30398 29%
verb + only � 72866 71%

only have � 3375 49%
have only � 3541 51%

spoken
only have � 1311 70%
have only � 567 30%

written
only have � 1529 44%
have only � 2061 56%

Final response to student - (Pedants be damned) 'Both are ok, but make sure people understand clearly what you want to say' followed by a couple of examples on the board about potential confusion - 'I only kissed my girlfriend last night' and 'I kissed only my girlfriend last night.'

3. Racking my brains, searching the internet and school resources for some kind of clever activity where beginner students will naturally and communicatively use solely the affirmative Past Simple of 'be' (not negative nor questions). IF anyone does have some kind of activity which I can adapt such that it doesn't require pre-teaching 20 or so items of lexis that they will struggle pronouncing alongside the already difficult weak form or 'was' - do pm me!

Underthinking

1. Using the same lesson plan for the same pages in the book for different classes.

2. Using the same method of explaining/eliciting vocabulary throughout a lesson. I always end-up doing this with kids - TPR for vocab twice in a lesson always seems to bore them.

3. Accepting common errors without attempting to find different methods with dealing with them (something I've improved on).

[LongShiKong]