Year 3 Number 71 June 21st 2002
______________________________________________________________
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being SHARED
_______________________________________________________________
Dear SHARERS,
The first day of winter and God is
it cold!
Omar spent most of the week in bed
with the most awful lumbago in his “young years”. A most upsetting ailment,
especially because, as all men, he requires (demands ?) very special care in the
face of the slightest indisposition (and all because he knows that from time to
time we love to spoil him).
Shall we start this issue with a
poem? We chose one that our dear SHARER
Elisabet Sandra Guber sent us. It´s very simple. Perhaps too naive but
very true. And most befitting the weather, the lumbago and in a most serious
tone the present situation of our country:
Healing Rain
When I go walking in the
rain
it always seems to heal my
pain.
The raindrops little pitter
patter
say to me "it doesn't
matter.
Let go of hurt that's in the
past
the pain will then no longer
last".
Just as the sun comes after
rain
so will joy come after
pain.
We pray we soon see the rainbow of
hope in the skies of our country.
Love
Omar and Marina
In SHARE 71
1.- Teaching
and Learning Vocabulary: A Self Test.
2.- Bedroom?
Shakespeare invented it!
3.- Murphy´s
Laws for Teachers.
4.- Macmillan
Heinemann Back on the Road again.
5.- Metodología
de la Investigación Lingüística.
6.- Using
Newspapers in the Classroom.
7.- Español
como Lengua Extranjera : Curso para Profesores.
8.- Collective Nouns (Second Round).
9.- Jornadas
Nacionales para Traductores.
10- The Group : Blowing their first ten
candles.
11- Laurels Conference: Special
Offer.
12- Stop Press: The Bs As Players in
Lomas.
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1.-
TEACHING AND LEARNING VOCABULARY : A SELF- TEST
Our dear friend and SHARER Marisa
Lopez sends us this challenging self test to assess how we know about the way we
learn and teach vocabulary. Let´s have a go!
Learning Vocabulary in Another
Language:
A Test of Teachers'
Knowledge
1 How
many word families does an average adult native speaker of English
know?
A 150,000
B
100,000
C
50,000
D 20,000
E don't
know
2 If learners
know the most frequent 2000 words of English, what percentage of
running words in an academic text will be known to
them?
A 60%
B
80%
C
90%
D 98%
E don't
know
3 What is the
most important factor in formal measures of readability?
A
background knowledge
B
vocabulary knowledge
C
reading skill in L1
D
grammatical knowledge
E
don't know
4 The most
effective way of beginning to learn the meaning of a word is
by
A the use of
a picture
B translation
into the first language
C a
dictionary definition
D seeing a
word in context
E don't
know
5 How many
words does an average learner of English as a foreign language know
after five or six years of four 50 minute English classes per
week?
A
1,000
B
3,000
C
5,000
D 10,000
E don't
know
6
Initially opposites like hot and cold should be
learned
A at the same
time
B in quick
succession
C as part of
a bigger lexical set
D at widely
separated times
E don't
know
7
Complex words like inventiveness and uncontrollably are usually stored in
the
brain
as
A stems and
affixes that are combined when needed
B both as
whole units and word parts
C
complete analyzed words
D
complete unanalyzed words
E don't
know
8
Learners most often have problems in guessing the meaning of a word in
helpful contexts because they
A give too
much attention to the form of the word
B do not use
their background knowledge of the topic
C do not draw
on clues from neighbouring sentences or paragraphs
D do not give
attention to the immediate context of the word
E don't
know
9 In order to
have a good chance of guessing the meaning of an unknown word from context
clues, what percentage of the running words in the text does the learner need to
know?
A
78%
B
80%
C
90%
D
98%
E don't
know
10 When learners
know the most common 2000 words of English, the words that they have most
difficulty with in academic texts in their specialist area
are
A
general purpose academic words like assume, concept,
diverse
B
function words like because, although, hence
C
proper nouns like Darwin, Menlo Park, Edgebaston
D
technical words like anode, impedance, galvanometer
E don't
know
11 The
'lexical bar' is
A the
Graeco-Latin words of English
B the high
frequency words of English
C the
function words of English
D the
discourse markers of English
E don't
know
12
Teachers should deal with low frequency words by
A
breaking them into prefixes, stems and
suffixes
B
letting learners guess them from
context
C teaching
the learners strategies to deal with them
D providing
varied and repeated opportunities to give attention to those
words
E don't
know
13 Which of these
most helps vocabulary learning?
A
meeting or using the word in a new way
B
having its meaning explained
C
meeting the word in context
D
searching for the word in a dictionary
E
don't know
14
Definitions of unknown words are most effective if
A they are
short
B they
contain plenty of useful detail
C they are
written as complete sentences
D they are
accompanied by grammatical information
E don't
know
15 Most learning of
vocabulary used in oral communication tasks involves words
A whose
meanings are negotiated in the task
B whose
meanings are not negotiated in the task
C which are
in the written input to the task
D which are
not in the written input to the task
E don't
know
16 A 'book flood'
involves
A doing a lot
of intensive reading in class
B setting
a lot of intensive reading outside class
C replacing a
large part of the class work with extensive reading
D encouraging
extensive reading outside class time
E don't
know
17 The Lexical
Frequency Profile' is a way of
A
measuring productive vocabulary use
B
deciding what will be classified as high frequency
words
C
comparing the frequency of
selected words
D
diagrammatically representing vocabulary growth
E
don't know
18
Quickly providing meanings for unknown words while listening or
reading
A has little
effect on comprehension of the text
B upsets
comprehension of the text
C greatly
increases the amount of vocabulary learned
D results
in little vocabulary learning
E don't
know
19 About what
percentage of the low frequency words of English comes from French, Latin or
Greek?
A
20%
B
40%
C
60%
D
80%
E don't
know
20 How many closely
related members does a typical English word family have?
A
3
B
5
C
7
D
9
E don't
know
21 During writing
activities, learners use dictionaries most often to
A check
spelling
B look up the
meaning of a word
C see if a
word exists
D find out
about the grammar of the word
E don't
know
22
'Retrieval' involves
A
receptive learning
B
productive learning
C
recalling an item
D
recognizing that two given items go together
E
don't know
23 The sentence 'To be or
not to be, that is the question' consists of ten
A
tokens
B
types
C lemmas
D word
families
E don't
know
24 A 'lemma' is a base
word and
A all its
derived forms
B all its
inflected forms
C all its
related forms
D all its
inflected forms which are the same part of speech
E don't
know
25 An 'Academic
vocabulary' is made up of words that
A are only
used in academic texts
B are only
used in a specialised field
C are found
in a wide range of academic texts
D are found
in a wide range of academic and non-academic texts
E don't
know
26 How many chunks of
information can be held in short-term memory at any one
time?
A
one
B about
three
C about
seven
D about
ten
E don't
know
27 The General Service
List of English Words is a list of
A 30,000
words and their frequencies
B the
commonest collocations
C 2,000 high
frequency words
D words that
can be used to define other words
E don't
know
28 To test learners'
productive knowledge of vocabulary we must get learners to
A
produce words in spoken or written sentences
B
produce spoken or written forms from a meaning cue
C
produce or recognize spoken or written word forms from a meaning
cue
D
produce a first language translation of words
E
don't know
Answers
1D, 2B, 3B, 4B, 5B, 6D, 7A, 8A, 9D,
10A, 11A, 12C, 13D, 14A, 15B, 16C, 17A, 18C, 19C, 20C, 21B, 22C, 23A, 24D, 25C,
26C, 27C. 28 C.
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2.-
BEDROOM? SHAKESPEARE INVENTED IT!
Did you know that the Bard invented
the word “ Bedroom” along with 1700 words we use everyday? Read this revealing article that our
dear SHARER, Emilce Vila from San Luis sent us. If you want to find more
information about the words on the list below ( e.g. links to the plays in
which they first appeared) consult:
http://shakespeare.about.com/library/weekly/aa042400a.htm
The English language owes a great
debt to Shakespeare. He invented over 1700 of our common words by changing nouns
into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used
together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original.
Below is a list of a few of the words Shakespeare coined :
academe, accused, addiction,
advertising, amazement, arouse,assassination,
backing, bandit, bedroom, beached,
besmirch, birthplace, blanket, bloodstained
barefaced, blushing, bet, bump,
buzzer,
caked, cater, champion,
circumstantial, cold-blooded, compromise, courtship
countless, critic,
dauntless, dawn, deafening,
discontent, dishearten, drugged, dwindle
epileptic, equivocal, elbow,
excitement, exposure, eyeball,
fashionable, fixture, flawed,
frugal,
generous, gloomy, gossip,
green-eyed, gust
hint, hobnob, hurried,
impede, impartial, invulnerable,
jaded
label, lackluster, laughable,
lonely, lower, luggage, lustrous
madcap, majestic, marketable,
metamorphize, mimic, monumental, moonbeam, mountaineer
negotiate,
noiseless
obscene, obsequiously, ode,
olympian, outbreak
panders, pedant, premeditated,
puking
radiance, rant,
remorseless
savagery, scuffle, secure, skim
milk, submerge, summit, swagger
torture, tranquil,
undress, unreal,
varied, vaulting,
worthless
zany
If you are looking for more words
invented by Shakespeare be sure to read the wonderful book Coined By
Shakespeare by Jeffrey McQuain and Stanley Mallessone. Each entry in the
book comes with a history of the word.
Shakespeare also invented many of
the most-used expressions in our language. Bernard Levin skillfully summarizes
Shakespeare's impact in the following passage from The Story of English:
“ If you cannot understand my
argument, and declare "It's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare; if you
claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if
you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in
sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if your lost
property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have
ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have
played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength,
hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of
necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced
attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short
shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days
or lived in a fool's paradise - why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for
it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting
Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you
think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe
that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh
and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play,
if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason,
then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have
a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good
riddance and send me packing, if you wish I were dead as a door-nail, if you
think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted
villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut, tut!
for goodness' sake! what the dickens! but me no buts - it is all one to me, for
you are quoting Shakespeare” . (Bernard Levin. From The Story of
English. Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil. Viking: 1986).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.-
MURPHY´S LAWS FOR TEACHERS.
Our very dear friend and Webmaster Bernieh
Banega sends us this list of Murphy´s laws for teachers. A very abridged list,
indeed! I guess you can think of many more to add to it. How about sharing them
with all of us?
1. Good
students move away.
2. New students come
from schools that don't teach.
3. The most dingy
room in school is the faculty lounge.
4. The less time you
have to make copies, the more the machine will
malfunction.
5. Disaster
will occur when you have visitors to your classroom or
when
you're being observed.
6. The time you take
to explain something is inversely proportional to the
information students retain.
7.
Open school
night will fall on the night when the best shows are on
television.
8. The problem
student will be a school board member's son or daughter.
9. Students who
are doing better are credited with working harder. If
children start to do poorly, the
teacher will be blamed.
10.
The length of the faculty meeting will be directly proportional to
how
boring the subject
is.
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4.-
MACMILLAN HEINEMANN BACK ON THE ROAD AGAIN..
Our dear friend and SHARER José
Luís Morales, Academic Manager for Macmillan Heinemann ELT Argentina sends us this invitation:
Macmillan Heinemann ELT in close
collaboration with Asociación Cultural Argentino - Británica de Salta, Asociación Rosarina de Cultura Inglesa,
Colegio Nacional de Monserrat, I. E. S. "Lola Mora" and Universidad Nacional de
Cuyo, invite you to shake off the cold, attend two presentations by Gabriel Mohr
and meet your colleagues over a warm cup of coffee.
CÓRDOBA
Monday 24th June 2002 – 18.30 to
20.30
Colegio
Nacional de Monserrat, Obispo Trejo y Duarte Quirós
Registration:
Librería
Blackpool
Dean
Funes 395 - Tel. (0351) 4237172 /4246959
Academic Workshop/Presentation:
Teaching Young Adults: A Full Sweep
Of the Language Learning
Skyline
New Publications : Presenting the
Macmillan English Dictionary
MENDOZA
Tuesday 25th June 2002 - 18.30 to
20.30
Sala de
Actos, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras - Universidad Nacional de
Cuyo
Registration: Centro Internacional del
Libro
Lavalle
14 - Tel. (0261) 4205049/4201266 - E:mail.
cilventas@ciudad.com.ar
Academic Workshop/Presentation:
Making Vocabulary Memorable: Tasks
and Techniques that Can Make a Difference.
New Publications : Presenting the
Macmillan English Dictionary
ROSARIO
Wednesday 26th June 2002 – 18.30 to
20.30
Asociación
Rosarina de Cultura Inglesa, Buenos Aires 1174
Registration:
Librería Ameghino
Corrientes
868 - Tel. (0341) 4495637/4498906 -
E:mail empresas@ameghino.com.ar
Academic Workshop/Presentation:
Making Vocabulary Memorable: Tasks
and Techniques that Can Make a Difference.
New Publications : Presenting the
Macmillan English Dictionary
SALTA
Friday 28th June 2002 – 18.30 to
20.30
Asociación
Argentino - Británica de Cultura, Caseros 131
Registration:
Librería San Francisco
Caseros
350- Tel. (0387) 431 8456/ 4310892 - E:mail
sanfrancisco@arnet.com.ar
SBS -
Lerma 45 - Tel. (0387) 4318868 - E:mail
salta@sbs.com.ar
Academic Workshop/Presentation:
Making Vocabulary Memorable: Tasks
and Techniques that Can Make a Difference.
New Publications : Presenting the
Macmillan English Dictionary
TUCUMÁN
Saturday 29th 2002 – 10.00 to
12.00
Hotel
Jardín, Laprida 463
Registration: Librería San
Francisco
Corrientes
256 - Tel (0381) 4228822 - E:mail
sanfrancisco_tuc@arnet.com.ar
Academic Workshop/Presentation:
Making Vocabulary Memorable: Tasks
and Techniques that Can Make a Difference.
New Publications : Presenting the
Macmillan English Dictionary
Teaching a language to young
secondary learners involves giving them opportunities for Accessing, Analyzing
and Activating new language. Why not broaden your horizons with an exciting new
approach? It may prove to be just what you and your students
need!
Making Vocabulary Memorable: Tasks
and Techniques that Can Make a Difference.
More often than not, our students
find it difficult to recognize, use accurately and remember lexis.. This
workshop provides various ways to teach vocabulary with different age groups and
levels. Come and collect a selection of user-friendly techniques to make
vocabulary learning and teaching a memorable experience.
Why not have it all?: Presenting
the Macmillan English Dictionary
A Unique New Dictionary with a
Unique New Concept.
The Macmillan English Dictionary
successfully integrates special focus on the words that students need most,
special help notes and a special language awareness section. This presentation
will reveal how MED provides real help for real needs.
Gabriel Mohr
Gabriel Mohr has over 12 years'
experience teaching EFL. He has taught general English to pre-adolescents and
adults at prestigious language schools and in-company business English courses
in Buenos Aires. Gabriel has also lectured on EFL methodology in various latin
American countries in the past four years and is a Pitman qualifications and
City and Guilds International examiner. He joined Macmillan Heinemann ELT
Argentina as Academic Consultant very recently.
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5.-
METODOLOGÍA DE LA INVESTIGACIÓN LINGÜÍSTICA
Our dear friend from UNNE Magister Marta Susana Lopez sends us this announcement on their
forthcoming postgraduate course on Metodología de la Investigación
Lingüística
Facultad
de Humanidades - UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DEL NORDESTE (UNNE)
Las Heras
727 - Resistencia - Chaco
Profesora
dictante: Dra Maria Laura Pardo
Carga
horaria: 30 horas teóricas presenciales
30 horas
teórico-prácticas presenciales - 90 horas de estudio independiente
Carga
horaria total del curso: 150 horas.
Destinatarios:
graduados universitarios de disciplinas relacionadas con las Ciencias Sociales,
especialmente aquellos que realizan investigaciones que incluyen textos o
discursos como datos.
Coordinación:
Sección Lingüística - Departamento de Letras
Fundamentación
El
propósito del Curso es el estudio teórico y la práctica del análisis lingüístico
de textos (según el estado del área hoy) que constituye un método de
investigación para la Lingüística y otras Ciencias Sociales. En efecto, el
reconocimiento del análisis del discurso como herramienta metodológica al
servicio de las disciplinas sociales se afianza progresivamente. De ahí que su
conocimiento teórico y práctico sea fuertemente demandado por especialistas e
investigadores de diversas disciplinas como la Sociología, la Antropología, la
Psicología, las Ciencias de la Comunicación, las Ciencias Jurídicas, la Historia
y otras, más específicas, como la Teoría Literaria,
la
Lingüística y la Semiótica.
Contenidos
Módulo 1:
Conceptos Generales
Metodología
cuantitativa. Ciencia. Término. Concepto. Niveles de análisis.
Hipótesis.
Metodología
cualitativa. Categorías
conceptuales. Propiedades. Hipótesis teóricas.
Paradigma
positivista. Paradigma interpretativo. Triangulación de
datos.
Módulo 2:
Análisis del Discurso como teoría y método Metodología de la investigación
lingüística. Análisis del Discurso (AD) como teoría y método. El texto como
herramienta heurística. La doble hermenéutica.
Multidisciplinas.
Distintas aproximaciones cualitativas dentro del Análisis del Discurso. Las
nociones de práctica discursiva, práctica social, texto, para método
y
análisis
de la investigación lingüística (Fairclough)
Módulo 3:
Niveles
El nivel
micro: el programa metodológico y de análisis del Análisis Crítico del Discurso
(Ruth Wodak). Principios, estrategias y recursos. El nivel medio: Teorías de
Medio Rango (Craig). El rol de la etnometodología.
El nivel
macro: Teorías base. Ejemplificación y práctica.
Cronograma:
3 y 4 de julio de 2002. Inicio: 8 hs.
7 y 8 de agosto de 2002. Inicio: 8hs.
Mayor
Información: Secretaría de Decanato - Departamento de Letras: Mgter.Marta S.
López y Prof. Aldo F. Lineras. Av. Las Heras 727 (3500) - Resistencia, Chaco,
Argentina. Telefax: 03722-446958 / 422257 - Int. 300 - 312
Direcciones
electrónicas: martasusanalp@aol.com - alineras@hum.unne.edu.ar
-
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6.-
USING NEWSPAPERS IN THE CLASSROOM
The following is a reproduction of
a posting by Karen Stanley to the ESL List of the
University of New York. In it she addresses the issue of the use of the
newspaper in the ESL /EFL classroom. Here it goes:
I suggest
trying out the New York Times "Learning Network"
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/index.html
It's
a free website for teachers. Although designed for teachers in the
American public school system teaching grades 3-12, many activities are highly adaptable to
ESL/EFL students.
I tend to use the daily lesson plan archives the most. Each
day there is a news article with a wide range of activities planned to accompany
it.
One of my favorites is an article from December, 2000: "Be That As It
Maya"
The article is about new discoveries at a Mayan ruin. There are warm-up
activities and comprehension questions. My favorite part comes next:
Students break into groups and each group is assigned a Mayan city. They
investigate the city via the internet (or other means), then write up a travel
brochure as if the city were a current tourist destination. They also make
postcards with a picture from the internet (I imagine they could draw one if
there's limited internet access) on one
side, and a message on the other
mentioning something they might actually have done or seen.
There are also
discussion questions, and "extension activities."
There are also archived
lessons specifically for working with the newspaper. For example, in one
lesson, "students explore the function of letters to the editor for both a
newspaper and its readers. Each student then selects a current event
about
which he or she feels strongly, reads a related New York Times article
and responds to it in the form of a letter to the editor."
The site also
includes news summaries, a daily news quiz, the word of the day, the test prep
question of the day, and more...
Karen Stanley
Central Piedmont
Community College
Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
<kstanley@charlotte.infi.net>
<karen_stanley@cpcc.edu>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.-
ESPAÑOL COMO LENGUA EXTRANJERA : CURSO PARA
PROFESORES
Our dear SHARER
María José Bravo sends this message:
Estimado
Omar:
En primer
lugar, quiero felicitarlos por la publicación que hacen, que trae muchísima
información para todos los interesados en el mundo de las lenguas.
Les mando
información sobre un curso que puede ser de gran interés para profesores de
inglés.
Desde ya
muchas gracias. Cariños,
María
José Bravo
Alpha
centro de comunicación y cultura
Av.
Córdoba 991, 2º "A" (1054), Buenos Aires, Argentina
E-mail:
informes@centroalpha.com.ar
TE: (54
11) 4322-8932 / 4393-1972
FAX: (54
11) 4322-8932
Curso
Alpha de Iniciación a la Enseñanza de Español como Lengua Extranjera
(ELE)
CAI-ELE
julio/agosto 2002 de un mes de duración