Fortunate Contest

Learning a language is a complex and long process as anyone
who has tried will agree. One of the most difficult and
frustrating things is making the transition from the
classroom to the ‘real’ world. In the classroom, everyone
knows you are a student and mistakes are allowed, and the
environment is contained and safe. Speaking another language
outside the classroom is completely different and often
students are lost at sea as soon as they step outside the
door. Lists of memorized vocabulary are suddenly useless
when ordering in a restaurant.

Role-plays, or simulations are one of the ways ESL
instructors can ease students’ transition into using
English in real world situations. A simulation is where
students act out a real-life situation, for example
checking into at a hotel, but do not act out a different
personality. Role-plays are where students take on
different personalities. In a role-play, for example, one
student may be asked to take on the role of “an angry
neighbor” which is out of character for the student.

Role-plays require more imagination by students and teacher
and can be difficult to manage because they are
unpredictable. The initial scenario develops from the
students interacting with each other and can literally go
in any direction. This gives students practice in a
non-threatening environment, and gives the motivation and
involvement where they have to think in English. Role-plays
are interesting, memorable and engaging, and students
retain the material they have learned. In their assumed
role, students drop their shyness and other personality and
cultural inhibitions, making them one of the best tools
available for teaching a second language.

Here are a few pointers and suggestions to assist ESL
teachers using and managing role-plays:

-The more engaging the better. The value of role-plays
come from students immersing themselves in the material. -
Choose a ‘hot’ topic and stage a debate. Assign students
positions on the topic (for/against). This will get students

out of their personality and into the role where they do
not have the same inhibitions. - Preparation is very
important to success. Give students ‘personality cards’
which sketch out their personal characteristics or scenario.
Divide students into groups and give them time to sketch
out various scenarios, and go over extra or special
vocabulary ask them to discuss how they will act, think
about the character and plan what they will say. For
example, what are possible responses/replies for the angry
neighbor? - The teacher, as facilitator of the role-play
must support students in their role, i.e. they ‘are’ in the
backyard arguing over the fence. Don’t do anything to
interrupt the pretend environment. Leave grammar correction
to the end. Correcting students in the middle of an argument
interrupts the pretend environment. Make notes and do a
debriefing after. - Exaggeration is good! Encourage
students to exaggerate their actions, opinions and
movements. Exaggeration helps students immerse themselves in

the role. - Stage a rehearsal first. Have students
practice their role in small groups with coaching from the
other students. - While the role-play or debate is in
progress, have other students suggest vocabulary first, and
act as backup if they do not know.

Role-plays are unpredictable which makes them both a
valuable learning tool and at the same time difficult to
manage. Sketch out the various routes the role-play can
take from the initial scenario. This will give you some
idea what to expect and avoid any surprises.

Suggested topics for role-plays:

- Lovers problems (He has to move away to get a new and
better job) Spending money (Government, United Nations
etc. spending money, who gets what)

- Traveling (where would you go? what would you do?)

- Debates on current affairs/politics. Extreme opinions or
opinions at the opposite ends of the spectrum work well (i.e. left
wing/right wing etc.)

Role-plays can range from 30 minutes or one hour to a year-long
corporate simulation for business English. Staging role-plays can
be challenging for an instructor, but is also great fun. After you
have done a few, you will know what to expect and feel more
confident.

My experience is students love them retain what they learn, and
often leave the classroom laughing and still arguing all the way
out of the building!

George and Daisy Stocker have traveled the world teaching
ESL to children and adults. Their website, http://www.efl-esl.com
offers ESL curriculum, activities, an online forum for ESL teachers and students, plus a free newsletter for ESL teachers. Their second site, http://www.esl-storybooks.com offers storybooks and ESL curriculum for children.

An active life can make it tricky to read every book you would like to. Often we don’t see how long journeys and various other chores take up large chunks of our time. A demanding job, taking care of kids or looking after your house all cut down the free time available for your hobbies. If you really love learning and are finding it difficult to fit it in, time in the car might provide a chance to enjoy an audio-book. With user friendly download technology, you can relish Brimstone by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child available from Download Audio Book Online, or audiobooks brought to life by Alan Colmes without ever turning a page. In today’s busy environmant multi-tasking has become the norm. Audio books like Innovate Like Edison by Michael J. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott by Download Audio Book Online fill the squandered moments in life, whether it is minutes spent waiting at the physician’s surgery or perhaps buying groceries. A tremendous variety of audio books are now available to download in mp3 format these include Without Fail by Lee Child, so make use of your mp3 player and use the opportunity to check out the current biography, for example audiobooks written by Jimmy Buffet without carrying cumbersome books with you. Audiobooks extend a multitude of benefits like the ability to rent or buy many titles and peruse them at your own pace. Do you wish to learn Spanish? Try audio books! Maybe innovative sales techniques are your thing, you may even explore religious or spiritual trends.

A tremendous selection of literary genres and titles exist. It really doesn’t matter if you like natural history, or if you are nuts over horror even interested in health and fitness, you can access many titles at once. Options are wide open; it’s easy to take a subscription to a rental service or make a purchase.

Reading will invariably have its place, even so the thousands of audio titles available are so handy. A author or actor can enhance the experience of numerous books. Simply reading a book is not quite the same as listening to an audio title performed by Francesca Simon, with the all the refinements of an actual rendition. Listening to audio titles recounted by Fern Michaels will bring more depth to your reading experience and often mean more than words on a page.

So next time whenever you think about buying a volume you might never find time to read, do not forget about audio-books as a different option.

Imagine the following scenario: You wake up one morning and instead of speaking English, everyone around you–including your family and friends–is speaking Hungarian. This is a problem because you don’t speak Hungarian and you don’t have a clue what they’re saying. You become frustrated. The people around you become frustrated, too, but instead of switching back to English, they speak Hungarian more loudly.

Somebody gets the bright idea of writing you a note. You take the note in your hands and study it. Unfortunately, it’s in Hungarian, too, and you can’t read it. So they write you another note, still in Hungarian, but this time with large, block letters. You can’t read the second note, either.

This strange scenario is almost exactly what happens to people who have a stroke (circulation impairment) to the left side of the brain, except that the family and friends aren’t really communicating in Hungarian. They’re speaking and writing English–same as ever–but to the stroke victim their words are suddenly incomprehensible. This sudden disruption in language-processing is called aphasia.

Different patterns of aphasia occur with damage to different parts of the left side of the brain. The preceding scenario, in which comprehension of language is impaired, is called a receptive aphasia and is associated with injury to the upper portion of the brain’s left temporal lobe, roughly adjacent to the temple and top of the ear. In receptive aphasia the affected individuals can still produce sentences, but, in an odd twist of fate, they can’t make sense of or properly monitor their own words, so their output is riddled with errors.

A pattern of language impairment opposite of receptive aphasia is called expressive aphasia, in which individuals can understand what others say or write, but cannot produce much, if any, speech or writing of their own. In 1861 Pierre Paul Broca, a French surgeon, recognized a case of expressive aphasia and followed through with an autopsy of the patient’s brain.

For much of the nineteenth century most scientists and physicians believed that the brain was homogenous, and that its different actions were spread diffusely throughout the entire brain. They did not believe that functions were localized to specific regions of the brain. (The phrenologists believed otherwise, but that is a story of its own.)

However, when Broca treated a patient who lost his power of speech (the only word he could still say was “tan”) he was able to correlate this language impairment with damage to the left side of the man’s brain. Instead of being in the temporal lobe, the destroyed brain-tissue was in the frontal lobe in an area now referred to as Broca’s area. In fact, expressive aphasia is also known as Broca’s aphasia. Dr. Broca’s case was the principal salvo in a reversal of understanding about how the cerebral cortex (the brain’s wrinkled gray surface) operates. Now we realize that many functions–not just language–are localized to specific regions of the cortex.

Receptive and expressive aphasias are not the only patterns of language impairment, but nicely convey the basic idea of a sudden disconnect in language processing. What becomes of these cases? As is seen with strokes affecting other parts of the brain–for example, those causing weakness or paralysis of muscles on the opposite side of the body–recovery varies widely among patients. Some patients become normal again and others don’t improve at all, but the usual outcome is somewhere in between.

Improvement in language function that occurs within the first week or two following a stroke is due to brain cells that were sick from the stroke–but not quite dead–becoming healthy and operational again. By contrast, improvement in language function occurring over ensuing weeks, months and even years is due to the retraining of surviving brain cells that take over for their fallen comrades. A younger stroke patient with more brain cells in reserve has a better chance for recovery than an older patient with fewer reserves.

Is there anything that can be done to improve outcome? First of all, there is the management of the stroke itself which generally takes place in a hospital. One important point to emphasize is that a stroke causing aphasia is no less a stroke than one causing paralysis of muscles. Sometimes it seems that the latter receives more serious attention than the former. Management of fundamental issues–like blood pressure, body temperature and blood sugar–can set the stage for the best possible outcome.

Following a first stroke, physicians also implement “secondary stroke prevention” to decrease the odds of a second stroke. In cases of stroke due to hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis) this often takes the form of ratcheting down blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol, along with elimination of smoking and other unhealthy behaviors. Also, the doctor usually prescribes a medicine to reduce blood-clotting. Other causes of stroke might call for other measures.

Does speech therapy help stroke-patients with aphasia? So far, this form of treatment has not been proved beneficial. Randomized, controlled trials (the standard of proof in clinical medicine in which patients receiving the treatment are compared to similar patients receiving either a dummy-treatment or no treatment) have not clearly demonstrated that speech therapy is better than either no treatment or treatment provided by family or friends.

Sometimes patients with aphasia are perceived as “confused” in the sense of having a delirium or dementia. But this is not the case. Acutely aphasic patients need to be recognized as having suffered a stroke to a specific part of the brain so they can be triaged for appropriate medical care. Over the longer term, family and friends need to remember that the stroke victim is still a perceiving, self-aware human being who happens to have a communication problem. He or she should be loved, appreciated and otherwise included in activities just as before.

(C) 2005 by Gary Cordingley

Gary Cordingley, MD, PhD, is a clinical neurologist, teacher and researcher who works in Athens, Ohio. For more health-related articles see his website at: http://www.cordingleyneurology.com

Like just about anything these days learning Spanish is a service that can be found on the internet. Nowadays it is possible to order just about anything you want on the internet, so much so that you could probably live a very long time without ever having to leave your house or interact with another human being. How you can learn a language this way though is lost on me.

I guess it is possible to memorize words and grammar rules. You can gain an understating of the structure of the language and learn how to write and read; however speaking is a different matter. Personally I think if you learn Spanish only on the internet you are missing some of the important nuances that exist in the language. Your pronunciation will probably be horrible as you will have no one to correct you. Your conversational skills will definitely be lacking as you will have no basic knowledge of how to hold a conversation in Spanish.

In theory I assume it is possible to “learn” the words and form of the language on the internet but you will have no grasp of intonation or the many colloquial phrases used in everyday conversation; these of course being mostly specific to the country in which you are speaking.

There are many sites to learn Spanish on the internet, offering varying levels of assistance. Most require the purchase of software for true help as one would expect. They are worth it if you have no other way, but will probably leave you at a severe deficit when it comes to actually speaking.

I think the language is valuable, and I recommend to all that are able, to relocate to a Spanish speaking country where you can learn not only the language but also about the culture from which it stems.

Gregory Newell is a web author who’s written about hot to learn to speak Spanish. If you want to learn Spanish on the internet then you might be interested in reading more.

The road to understanding Japanese in littered with lies. These lies aren’t intended to harm. The fact is, in the beginning the lies seem natural and helpful. They help make the language ‘feel’ closer to our native language (English, most likely). Unfortunately, the more knowledge you try to pile on the top of these lies, the more your house of learning resembles a home built on a foundation of sponges. Instead of helping, these myths only make life harder.

At points, they can make you wonder:

• “Why can’t I understand Japanese?”

• “What’s wrong with me?”
• “I must just be stupid.”

When I started taking a formal Japanese class a few months ago, I realized how harmful those ‘friendly lies’ can be. I noticed that a class full of people who had completed almost three quarters of a textbook still couldn’t conjugate verbs in a negative plain form. I realized that it was difficult for my classmates to naturally conjugate an adjective. It was more than simple memory slips - my classmates genuinely didn’t understand how verbs worked. Though they had the benefit of a native Japanese teacher, and classroom conversation time, still, the basic verb seemed to evade them.

I realised, as the class progressed, that my classmates were victims of a number of myths that I had also faced. These myths seem inherent in most of the learning materials for students. Unless you are the kind of person who looks at an inconstancy, and really searches to find out why that inconsistancy is there, it’s easy to drink in these lies, until they grow so big they claw their way out of your brain, and go skittering into the night. .

So over the course of the next week, I’m going to post up all of the myths I’ve learned about Japanese verbs, and how you can defeat them. Hopefully you’ll find them helpful.

Know Your Verb! (Some myths about Japanese Verbs as seen from a student of Japanese)

If you think ‘desu’ = is, congratulations, you are about to defeat your first big myth about Japanese.

Let me make this clear:
DESU DOES NOT MEAN IS!

Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Desu is a word that has no equivilant in English. In short, it makes what you are saying more polite. This is exactly, word for word, what a Japanese friend told me.

Okay, but what about:

Doesn’t desu mean is in that sentence?

Now we get to the real secret of desu. Desu will sometimes pretend to mean is, if it is the last word in the sentence, and if there isn’t a more active verb at the end of your sentence. It’s exactly the same thing as using the masu form of a verb to make a verb more polite (The Masu Myth we will defeat next).

So why does believing that desu = is give me problems?

Because, a whole bunch of the time, desu doesn’t mean is at all. Further, if you try to think ‘desu’ means ‘is’ it will only confuse you to what’s really going on in a sentance.

EG:

If you believe (as I did) that ja nai means ‘is not’ and desu means ‘is’, the last two sentances are a complete mind-twist.

You may convince yourself: well, something like that is just an exception to the rule, and memorize it. But if you are forced to memorize everything that is an exception to the desu = is myth, eventually, you will quickly experiece desu burnout. You also really run into trouble when you meet the word has a meaning a lot closer to is: (what the Genki textbook calls the ‘plain form’ of desu, though calling it a plain for of desu is more of the ‘desu’ = ‘is’ crap)

I say a lot closer to is, because the word ‘is’ in English is a lot different than ‘is’ in Japanese. Japanese has a bunch of different kinds of words to express existence. The most common ones you will meet are:

Also, because you tend to drop redundant parts of the sentence in Japanese, sometimes the word ‘is’ will be left off entirely. Finally, the word ‘is’ is wrapped up in every other verb, depending on how you conjugate it (which is why you don’t need to use a ‘to be’ verb to say, I am going to the store - Mise ni itte iru) We will get into that more as more myths are busted.

I hope this helps clear up points of confusion with desu/da.

Future myths busted:

• The Masu Form (it’s not the real deal)
  
• Adjectives and Verbs: One and the Same
  
• How to conjugate verbs and adjectives without sweating blood

About The Author
Minna Shiawase is an avid Japanese student and fan of Japanese culture. Read more about Japanese grammer at her blog, AI Love Bunpou.