Are You Stressing? – by Lindell Long

Are you stressing? I am not talking about grading deadlines, or extra forms to fill out on every student you have ever worked with, I am taking about stressing or emphasizing your words.

I teach ESOL students who often put the emphasis on the wrong word in a sentence, changing the meaning totally from what was intended. In order to help them realize how this works, I shared this simple exercise with mainstream teachers to help students during their classes.

Here are the same sentences with the same words in the same order, however, in changing the word that is stressed in the sentence, the meaning will be changed.

The sentence is "This is my black cat."

THIS is my black cat. (This cat right here...not that one over there.) This IS my black cat.(Are you doubting me? It is a certainty.) This is MY black cat. (I own this cat...no one else does) This is my BLACK cat. (Not my red cat or my gray cat.) This is my black CAT. (Not my dog or parakeet.)

Simple sentences can be used to show emphasis and what the meaning the speaker is trying to get across. With all of the debates on television, it would be interesting to have students listen to the speeches and see how well the candidates did in emphasizing the proper words.

Lindell Long teaches ESOL at Clover Middle and High Schools in Clover, South Carolina, a position she’s held for the last 18 years. She’s married with 4 children and so many pets her family fears she’ll bring home a stray yak one day.

Don't Let Tenses Make You Tense - by Lindell Long

Why do we have tenses? A writer is able to pinpoint time with the use of a particular tense but is it really necessary to know if it’s continuous or a perfect tense? In the English language, we have the simple tenses of present, past and future. The more complicated tenses such as continuous and perfect also have a present, past and future form. Then we add them together and have a perfect continuous which also has a present, past and future as well. Whew!

Now imagine you are from another country trying to learn the English language. All of these tenses can be confusing. Couple the number of tenses with all of the irregularities in the English language and it is understandable why an English Language Learner (ELL) can become frustrated.

If the amount of tenses wasn’t confusing enough, tenses also involve changing the verb! Remember

verb conjugation? While native English speakers take verb changing to be commonplace, many other languages do not change the verb. ESOL students from Viet Nam and China (speaking Mandarin) find changing a verb totally unnecessary and exceedingly strange.

How do other languages express time without changing the verb? Many other languages use indicator words without changing the verb. The indicator word determines when the action happened. For example, some words such as now, before, after, yesterday, tomorrow and today indicate when something happened or will happen. Additional words such as just, already, since, right now and later also serve as indicator words. Vietnamese and Mandarin languages use the context of the sentence to establish time or use an indicator word but not change the verb. While English has indicator words, they are used in conjunction with changing the verb as well.

To help an ESOL student, a cheat sheet or flash cards can be created with a formula for creating the

tenses properly.

                                                    Present                            Past                                       Future

  (progressive) continuous:     can+verb                         was+verb                             will be + verb

    

                           Perfect            have+verb                      had+ verb                             will have + verb

Present perfect continuous   have been + verb          had been + verb                  will have been + verb

As far as changing the verb, the present is the only time all of the persons are not the same. The most difficult form of verb change is the third person singular requiring an “s” or “es” ending. This is very difficult for many students to understand and remember and the source of many grammatical errors. Games, puzzles and reviews help students remember the change for the present tense. 

Using an indicator word with the tenses will make learning the English language form of tenses a little more familiar for ELL’s. Learning an ELL’s home language grammatical structure can help an ESOL 

student’s teacher understand some of the more difficult concepts to learn and why the concepts are difficult to comprehend. Don’t be tense teaching tenses, chart it out!

Lindell Long teaches ESOL at Clover Middle and High Schools in Clover, South Carolina, a position she’s held for the last 18 years. She’s married with 4 children and so many pets her family fears she’ll bring home a stray yak one day. 

I've been framed! - By Lindell Long

The criminal declares, "I've been framed."  The word has other uses besides planting evidence to incriminate others. We can frame a picture or frame a house. A frame can give structure to build upon. Have you thought about framing a sentence? 

Many of my ESOL students need a framework to form a proper sentence, especially in the early stages of English acquisition. The order of our words within sentences is often different from the order of words in sentences in a student's home language and a frame is an easy support for helping the student express himself.

Many times a student is required to write about cause and effect. This assignment could be for science, health or a literature assignment.

Giving the student a framework helps flesh out the sentence so the student can concentrate on the words that make a cause and effect sentence.

I was ____(sick)__________so I ____(stayed home)___.

I feel ____(sick)___because____(I ate a lot of candy)____. 

The ___boy_____ did/did not ____pass___ because he did/did not study.

In order to ____(win)_, you might have to ___(train harder)_______.

Because of _( high winds)__,the roof came off during the ________

(hurricane)_.

The words inside the brackets are examples of words students might use to fill in the blanks – the framework. Notice that the sentences are all framed to provide cause and effect examples.

Frames can be used in any subject. Think of social studies and the causes and effects of war. Frames help express the results of science experiments or the motives for the protagonist and antagonist and the results of their actions. Frames are very versatile.  

To aid an ESOL student or any struggling student, a word bank could be added to the sheet with the terms of the lesson.

Lindell Long teaches ESOL at Clover Middle and High Schools in Clover, South Carolina, a position she’s held for the last 18 years. She’s married with 4 children and so many pets her family fears she’ll bring home a stray yak one day.

Should I Use This Frame or That One? - by Lindell Long

How do you decide between two things? Usually you weigh the advantages and disadvantages of one over the other. In other words, you compare and contrast. Is this one better than the other, looks expensive, fits better, I look good in it, I can afford it, while this one looks cheap, makes me look fat, I look awful in it, I can't afford it. 

Students are often asked to compare and contrast findings on research, ideology, characters in a novel or historical incidents the list is extensive. An ESOL student may find this to be a daunting task. Sentence frames to the rescue!

By comparison it is ___(a good choice)__. 

They are similar because ____( both are from  Norway)________________.

Both are the same/different because ___(they are in the tropics).

The differences between ___(the antagonist)____ and the_(protagonist)__ are_(selfishness/ selflessness)_.

A distinction between ____(Kim)__ and __(Dave)___ might be ___(intelligence)___.

It is the __(big)-est of all of them.

They are different because ___(Ellie)__ is __(cautious) and _(Janie)__is _( a daredevil)_____.

Neither __(France_)___ nor__(Spain)___ have/contain/demonstrate/show ___(elephants)__.

Depending upon the subject and level of language acquisition, these frames can be expanded upon to make more complex sentences. Comparative vocabulary such as big, bigger, biggest can be taught prior and then worked into the frame. Once again, word banks may be added to help the student demonstrate understanding of the terms or simply supply the vocabulary necessary to complete the assignment.

Lindell Long teaches ESOL at Clover Middle and High Schools in Clover, South Carolina, a position she’s held for the last 18 years. She’s married with 4 children and so many pets her family fears she’ll bring home a stray yak one day.