Sunday, March 31, 2024



 

Book Haul: The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon, Starlight Enclave by R.A. Salvatore,
Books (135 pages this week--the goal is 200 pages)
The Epic of Gilgamesh Introduction p.i-lv main text p.1-34 (89 pages)
1st Samuel p.306-322 (1st Samuel 12-24) (From The Bible) (16 pages)
Comic Books (Comic Books don't count towards weekly page counts)
Revolutions Season 9: The Mexican Revolution 3rd Listening From: 9.03- Mexico To: 9.18- The Fall of Huerta (from Revolutions Podcast)
From: Section 2, Unit 10, Level 1, Lesson 4 To: Section 2, Unit 10, Level 3, Lesson Legendary (My Duolingo profile is hereHere is the quizlet I use to practice all of the vocabulary I've learned in Duolingo, and here is a smaller quizlet I use to consolidate the new or difficult vocabulary.)


Videos from this week:

For more information about what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE.

Saturday, March 30, 2024

The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood: ESL Listening Story Time



[Notes: This is a story I wrote in 6th grade.  I had originally posted it on my other blog, Literary Endeavors, over here.  I am now repurposing it for my Story Time: ESL Listening Project.
I had previously flirted with the idea of posting my turning my old childhood stories into Youtube videos a couple years ago, and ended up deciding against the project.
But, I'm making an exception in this particular case, because this particular story lines up so well with one of my Interesting Input plus Production Prompts ideas, specifically the idea for students to write a subversion of a well-known fairy tale.  (I'll post about this soon.)  So in the process of thinking about subversion of fairy tales, I naturally thought of my own contribution.]

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/e8e7WgW6wQk

The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood


I am the "so-called" big bad wolf in the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Let me tell you the real story.

One day when I was feeling bored, a chubby little girl was skipping through the woods, eating as she went. "Where are you going little girl?" I asked.

"I'm just going on a picnic," she said as she flung her red cape around her shoulders.

At this point I was so bored I was willing to do anything. "Can I go on the picnic?" I asked.

"Sure, the more the merrier," chimed the little girl. We went to a nice quiet river and began to chow down. The little girl must have had eyes bigger than her mouth because she had packed enough food for days.  There were lots of fruits and vegetables and healthy food, but the little girl just ate all the candy and nothing else. I ate nothing because it was all people food, and I just waited patiently for the picnic games to begin.

After the girl had polished off the last piece of candy, she shook my paw, thanked me for coming, and started back to her house.

"Isn't your mother going to be mad when she sees that all you ate was candy?" I called out.

She froze. "You're right," she said. "As long as I'm in the area, I'll drop the rest off at Grandmother's house."

"One more thing," I added. "Aren't we supposed to play games? I didn't come to the picnic just to watch you eat."

"If you're so big about games," she said, "then we'll play 'Who can get to Granny's house first'. I'll go this way, and you go that way, and the first one who gets to Granny's house wins."

It was a dumb game, but I was so bored I was willing to do anything. I ran like the wind, and would have won except that on the way I saw three houses, a straw house, a stick house, and a brick house. I went to the straw house and…

...Well, that's another story altogether. Anyway, to sum it up, I ate two pigs, and almost got cooked myself after a narrow escape. The point is, because of this little detour I came to the house last.

Meanwhile Little Red Riding Hood had gotten to the house first and went inside. Her Grandmother had recently had plastic surgery done. But the surgeon was an amateur, and he had had equipment problems, and the results were that poor grandmother had ended up looking very weird. Because of this she was not feeling well and was lying in bed, trying to recover.

Little Red Riding Hood went into her grandmother's hut. "Oh, Grandmother, what big hands you have," said Little Red Riding Hood.

"The better to hug you, my dear," answered the grandmother.

"Oh, Grandmother, what big eyes you have."

"The better to see you, my dear."

"Oh, Grandmother, what big ears you have."

"The better to hear you, my dear."

"Oh Grandmother, what a big mouth you have."

"The better to eat you, my dear." Then they both laughed, because Grandmother had been joking.

Just about this time I arrived. When I walked through the door, Grandmother saw me and jumped out of bed in a fright and ran around the room screaming. Little Red Riding Hood, upon seeing this, thought that maybe Granny had really lost it after all, and hadn't been joking about eating her.

A Woodsman heard the commotion, and ran into the house. Seeing everyone running around, he naturally assumed the wolf was to blame, and cut my stomach open. Two little pigs came running out of my stomach, and I blacked out.

Little Red Riding Hood thought I would be hungry now that my lunch had run out of my stomach, so she filled up my stomach with rocks so I wouldn't be hungry.

I awakened to see the woodsman with his axe standing over me, so I decided to play dead. Fortunately, everyone bought it.

When Little Red Riding Hood got home, she ran to her mother and said, "You'll never guess what happened. I was bringing food to Granny's and--."

"I thought you were going on a picnic. You were bringing food to Grandmother's house? Why how sweet," her mother interrupted.

"And I met this wolf after we went on a picnic--"

"Picnic?" Her mother asked.

"I mean after I met him, he wanted to play a game, so he went one way and I went the other and I got there first, but Granny had turned into a wolf and I said, 'Grandmother, what a big mouth you have," and she said, 'The better to eat you my dear.' I thought she was kidding at first but then..."

And she told the rest of the story.

Well, you know how mothers are. The mother drew her own conclusion from the story, and told all the rest of the mothers. And that's how the story that you know came to be.


A People's History of the World by Chris Harman: Book Review (Complete)


This video was originally published in two parts: 
I had previously posted these videos on this blog here.
At the time, I didn't have access to editing equipment, so I just uploaded the videos separately.  But now I've combined them into one video.

Friday, March 29, 2024



This video was originally published in two parts: 
I had previously posted these videos on this blog here.
At the time, I didn't have access to editing equipment, so I just uploaded the videos separately.  But now I've combined them into one video.

Finn: Origins by Pat Mills and Tony Skinner: Book Review

(Book Review--Comic Books)
 
On My Shelves: March 10, 2024
Started: March 11, 2024
Finished: March 28, 2024



March 17, 2024--no page numbers on this book, but I'm about a quarter of the way through
March 24, 2024 --no page numbers on this book, but I'm about halfway through

Playlist HERE

Thursday, March 28, 2024

The Monkey's Paw: Reading and Writing Prompt

(TESOL Materials--Time FillersWritingInteresting Input plus Production Prompts)

I'm continuing to look for new materials to add to my "Interesting Input plus Production Prompts" project.  I was searching around on esl-bits and found the original version of The Monkey's Paw.  
It seemed like a good story to use: nice and short, and also suitably creepy.  (As I've mentioned before, my teenage students love horror stories.)

The original ungraded version could almost be used in the ESL classroom (with a high level class, of course.)  The sentences are pretty short and simple and easy to understand.  An advanced level class could almost understand it without help.
There's just some vocabulary that would need to be adjusted to make it more comprehensible for an ESL class.
I was in the process of trying to re-write the story myself, when I thought to myself, "You know what?  I bet somebody's done this already."
So, I searched for "The Monkey's Paw ESL" and sure enough, found a pretty good version here.  For the most part, it manages to preserve the vibrancy of the original text, while also simplifying the vocabulary where necessary.
For the purposes of sharing this version with my students, I took the liberty of copying and pasting it over to Google docs, so I could print it out and distribute in in my classroom (docs, pub).  While I was at it, I also edited it slightly--e.g. cleaned up a few typos and grammar mistakes that had been in the original.
I distributed the google document to my students, and we read it together in class.
The production prompt, then, is to write about what happens to the Monkey's Paw next.  The Monkey's Paw finds a new owner, who will make new wishes.  How will these new wishes go wrong?
For the purposes of giving my students maximum freedom, I left the prompt as wide open as possible--i.e. I didn't specify who the new owner would be.  But for students who were having trouble getting started, I gave them some helpful ideas.
"Imagine there's a Vietnamese boy who wishes to be a gamer.  But then" (spooky voice) "the wish goes horribly wrong."
or "Imagine there's a Vietnamese boy who wants to be a famous tiktoker.  So he makes the wish but then" (spooky voice) "the wish goes horribly wrong."
Etc.  Other ideas I gave were students who wished to get a band 9 on the IELTS, or become a successful businessman, or get into a top university, etc.
[Sidenote: The original story of The Monkey's Paw states that the paw was only cursed for 3 owners, and that this old couple is now the 3rd owner, so presumably in the original story the curse of the Monkey's Paw is now finished.  But I just ignored this little detail when designing the production prompt, and so far my students haven't noticed the contradiction.]
Production worksheet is here: docs, pub

Now, imagine that someone else finds the Monkey’s paw, and tries to make three wishes.  Write about what will happen next.


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Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Phone Addiction Self Study Worksheet

(TESOL Materials--Classroom Management, Learner Autonomy)

Google: docs, pub

[Notes: Phone use in the classroom continues to be a problem, but I'm still trying to figure out the best way to deal with it.  
As I posted on this blog last year, for a while I tried to pre-empt the problem by doing a lesson on cell-phone addiction at the beginning of the term (Worksheet on Cell Phone Addiction and What Happens To Your Brain When You Mindlessly Scroll?: Listening Worksheet for Youtube Video).  However, I've stopped doing this for several reasons:
1) It ate up too much class time, and put me behind in terms of the curriculum I had to cover.
2) Because I did it right at the beginning of the term, it was still unclear at that point how severe the problems with phone addiction would be with the particular class, and thus unclear how much intervention they would need.  Some classes actually managed themselves fairly well, in which case the intervention at the beginning of class was unnecessary
3) On the other hand, students who actually needed the intervention were often resistant to it.  And in many cases, it was unclear how much the phone addiction was controlling them, and how much they were just consciously choosing not to participate in the class.
So, I've now opted for a new strategy.  I've taken all the resources that I have on Cell-phone addiction (taken from these previous blog posts: here, here, here and here) and put all the links onto one Google Document.  I then share this Google Document only with students who are using their phones a lot in class and have also failed the mid-course test.  (Under my new system, students who pass all their assessments receive no intervention.)
Addendum: I have some mixed feelings about this document, as it contains many different videos.  As a co-worker of mine once said, "If you give them 5 videos to watch, they won't watch any of them. If you give them one video to watch, they might do it."  So it may be better to just share these videos one at a time.  Despite this hesitation, for the moment I'm sharing them all at once because I believe they are all useful videos.  But I may be making a mistake.  I don't know.]

Phone Addiction Self Study

You are receiving this worksheet because your phone addiction is making it difficult to succeed in your English class.  Here are some resources that you can use to help you become more aware of your addiction


Watch these videos for more information on your problem:


Complete these worksheets on phone addiction, and then check your answers:


Watch these videos for ideas about what actions you can take:

Social Media

We suggest logging out of social media applications during class.  Here is a video with more information: https://youtu.be/j3Thqrcw_Ag?si=uvcEccjWQFj2jMSP


Watching Videos:

Avoid watching videos in class.  Here is a video on Tiktok addiction that will give you more information on why this behavior is not good: https://youtu.be/JcB2RsHJZhw?si=jY49BHm7gqoh-5Nd


Playing Video Games:
Playing video games in class is not beneficial.  Here is a good video to watch on how to deal with video game addiction: https://youtu.be/8PYhEWK2wVA?si=9Itu8yf9h9N2m6H5


General:

It’s important to pay attention in class.  Here is a video that explains why paying attention in class is so important: https://youtu.be/6vTsyJZbkug?si=SYbPEvikPwLHTqFT


I buy clothes whenever my clothing gets old. (What is a noun clause?)

(Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer)

The question of noun clauses came up again in a recent staffroom discussion.
A co-worker asked me for my opinion on something he had noticed from the textbook (Reflect Listening & Speaking 5, Unit 2, Grammar: Noun Clauses p.34-35).
"I think I get noun clauses," he explained to me.  "It's a clause that acts as the subject or the object of a sentence.  I get that part.  But how do you explain this?"
He then directed my attention to the grammar explanation box on page 34, which read:
whoever, whenever, whatever
When the noun clause begins with whoever, whenever, or whatever, the meaning is "anyone, any time or anything."
We aim to give our customers whatever they want.
Okay, so far so good.  In the example sentence above "whatever they want" is obviously a clause, and it's obviously standing in the place of a noun.  (You can test this out by substituting a noun into the same slot--e.g. "We aim to give our customers a hat."  The sentence is still grammatical either way.)
But then, my co-worker directed by attention to Exercise J on page 35, in which the students were given sentence heads that they had to complete.
Number 2 of exercise J reads: "I buy new clothes whenever_______________"

My co-worker explained to me, "I tried to complete the sentence myself, like 'I buy new clothes whenever I feel sad', but then it's not functioning as a noun, right?"
I agreed.  "Yeah, that seems like a time adverbial to me.  So I would call that an adverbial clause, not a noun clause."
We checked the teacher's book to see what the suggested answer for this exercise was.
Now of course, because of the open-endedness of the prompt, the answer key said "answers may vary, but here are some possible answers."  Then, the possible answer for number 2 was: "I buy new clothes whenever my clothing gets old."
Both my co-worker and I were of the opinion that this was an adverbial clause, not a noun clause.  (Its not functioning as a noun in this sentence?  I mean, it's not a subject, it's not an object, it's not an indirect object, it's not a predicate nominative, etc.)
So, what was going on here?
The easiest option is that the textbook was just wrong.  
In my experience, in my many years in TESOL, it's not uncommon for mistakes to get printed in textbooks.  In fact, it happens quite often.  This could just be a mistake.
Right?  Or have we analyzed this sentence wrong?  Let me know in the comments if you disagree.

"So," asked my co-worker, "What about the word 'whenever' then?  Can it ever be used with a noun clause? (as the textbook claimed on page 34)  Or is it only used as for adverbial clauses?"
We tested out some examples.  My co-worker thought of, "I hate whenever you look at me", and he argued that this could possibly be a noun clause starting with "whenever".
But I argued that his sentence was ungrammatical.  It should be "I hate it whenever you look at me."  We debated for a while whether or not the "it" was necessary.

In the end, we never did come to a conclusion about whether or not "whenever" could be used with noun clauses.

Tides of War by Steven Pressfield: Book Review


On My Shelves: September 17, 2023
Finished: March 26, 2024

This is my first time reading this book, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.



Links to Videos mentioned: 
* The Alcibiades video by Overly Sarcastic Productions: https://youtu.be/kRLkjBUgB2o?si=Ab_yimF58KHrNZHu

March 03, 2024 Tides of War p.1-142
March 10, 2024 Tides of War p.142-244
March 17, 2024 Tides of War p.244-270
March 24, 2024 Tides of War p.270-386

Playlist HERE:

If I remembered one day, I would choose to remember my wedding day.

(Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer)

A co-worker of mine was preparing a lesson on unreal conditionals (i.e. 2nd conditionals).  
For the presentation stage of the lesson, he wanted to build a context around the sentence "If I could remember one day, I would choose to remember my wedding day."  (I believe the intended context was that if he could choose to preserve one day of his life perfectly in his memory, it would be his wedding.)
However, in the course of preparing the lesson, he realized that the textbook (Reflect 4 Listening and Speaking, Unit 4, Grammar p.62: Unreal Conditionals) defined the unreal conditional as:
If + past simple, would + bare infinitive.
He was worried that his example sentence didn't fit the pattern because he was using "If I could remember"--i.e. If + could + bare infinitive."
This sparked a debate among the staffroom as to whether "could+bare infinitive" was the same as the past simple in this context.  I took the position that it was.  (Certainly that's the way I've been teaching the 2nd conditional for years.  And I showed my co-worker worksheets that I had in my archive like this one in which I had used "could fly" as equivalent to the past simple).
But there was also a secondary question: why do we even need "could" in this sentence?  Why can't we just say: "If I remembered one day, I would choose to remember my wedding day" ?
And what was the difference between "If I remembered..." and "If I could remember..."

The whole thing reminded me of a similar grammar question I couldn't answer 4 years ago about the difference between "I wish I played with that dog" and "I wish I could play with that dog".  I wrote about those sentences in this blog post here.  I suspect they are related cases.

Monday, March 25, 2024

There is a crisis for people to monitor the disaster

(Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer)

This one puzzled me for a long time, but I think I've actually worked it out now.  Let me know what you think.
We were playing a Make Sentences game with the new vocabulary from Unit 2, Impact 4, and we were on slide 4 of the game (see here), and one of the students wrote on the board "There is a crisis for people to monitor the disaster."
My native speaker intuition of course immediately told me that the sentence was wrong, and that it should be, "There is a crisis for the people to monitor."  But why?  Monitor is a transitive verb, so it should have an object after it, right?  So why was my native-speaker intuition telling me that "to monitor the disaster" was wrong in this case?

I wrote the sentence down, and have been thinking about it for several days, and I think I've got it now.  It's because "to monitor" is an infinitive of purpose.  So in the same way that we would say, "I have a pizza to eat" without putting on object after "eat", so we wouldn't put an object after "monitor".  
Or perhaps, more specifically, the object of "monitor" is already in the sentence--it's "a crisis", so we don't need to say it again in the infinitive.
How did I do?  Does that sound right?

Sunday, March 24, 2024

1st Samuel 8:10-17: The Arguments against Monarchy

(Commonplace Book)


10 Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 

***************************END QUOTE********

I mentioned this quote in my weekly reading vlog yesterday, but I thought I'd highlight it here as well.  I was pondering whether or not this was worth making a separate blogpost about, but then I remembered that I had made a big deal out of highlighting Herodotus's arguments against monarchy during my readthrough of Herodotus a few years ago, so I might as well do the same thing for the arguments in the Old Testament.  It's always interesting to see these anti-ruling class ideas show up way back in ancient literature.
The above quotation is from the NIV translation.  I'm reading through The Jerusalem Bible at the moment, but the NIV is more widely available on the web, so it's easier to cut and paste.  Plus I grew up on the NIV, so this is the wording I'm more familiar with anyway.  
Christine Hayes, in her lectures on the Old Testament, points out that in the Book of Judges and in 1st Samuel there are echoes of both an anti-monarchist tradition and a pro-monarchist position.
The footnotes of the Jerusalem Bible make the same point.  According to the Jerusalem Bible, 1st Samuel 8, 10:17-24 and 12 are the anti-royalist history, and 1st Samuel 9-10:16 and 11 are the pro-royalist version.  So, for example, in the very next chapter (chapter 9), God suddenly seems to be in favor of the idea of a king:
15 Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed this to Samuel: 16 “About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin. Anoint him ruler over my people Israel; he will deliver them from the hand of the Philistines. I have looked on my people, for their cry has reached me.” (NIV)


 

Books (127 pages this week--the goal is 200 pages)
1st Samuel p.295-306 (1st Samuel 1-12) (From The Bible) (11 pages)
Comic Books (Comic Books don't count towards weekly page counts)
Finn Origins (Rebellion)  --no page numbers on this book, but I'm about halfway through
Revolutions Season 9: The Mexican Revolution  2nd Listening From 9.19- The Conventionists Finished 2nd Listening.  Started 3rd listening To: 9.03- Mexico (from Revolutions Podcast)
From: Section 2, Unit 9, Level 8, Lesson 3 To: Section 2, Unit 10, Level 1, Lesson 4 (My Duolingo profile is hereHere is the quizlet I use to practice all of the vocabulary I've learned in Duolingo, and here is a smaller quizlet I use to consolidate the new or difficult vocabulary.)

Videos from this week:

For more information about what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE.