Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Writing HAIKU: Creative Writing



Discover and Reveal your unique perspective of the world


What is Haiku?

It is a short, three-line Japanese poem with a specific number of syllables in each line (pattern of 5-7-5).
The best-known Japanese haiku is Basho’s "Old Pond":
古池や蛙飛び込む水の音
ふるいけやかわずとびこむみずのおと (transliterated into 17 hiragana)
furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto (transliterated into romaji)

This separates into on as:
fu-ru-i-ke ya (5)
ka-wa-zu to-bi-ko-mu (7)
mi-zu-no-o-to (5)
Translated:
Old pond . . .
A frog leaps in
Water's sound

The purpose of composing haiku:

It aims at developing a voice and articulating self on the basis of an individual’s experience of the world.  It is not a simple sketch of observations. It is rather a direct, personal response to nature and events.

Textual Analysis:

  1.         How many syllables are used in each line?
  2.       What is the seasonal reference?
  3.      Where do you see a cutting word in this haiku?


Interpretation:

  1.      What is the theme?
  2.         What is the context?
  3.         What is happening in the poem?
  4.         What does the writer want to tell in the haiku?
  5.         What is your impression from this haiku?


Composing through 5 steps

Step 1: Review the concept of haiku and explain the purpose of the poem as a personal reaction to nature.

Step 2: Collecting material for haiku

Students sit wherever they want later in the day for 10 or even 20 minutes and focus on answering these following questions:
a.       What do you see and hear?
b.      What do you smell and taste?
c.       What do you feel?

Step 3: Composing haiku

Students start composing their poems in haiku style that fit in the 5-7-5 syllable pattern. Although they have plenty of impressions from the previous steps, they need to sift through them and choose and even enhance their choices for a better final poem.

Step 4: Peer reading

Students read each other’s poems and react to the voice and intent contained in them. This step will allow them into the realm of interpreting, comparing and reacting with opinions.

Follow up activity

Teacher asks students to write about some of their indelible memories by answering the following questions:

  •        Where were you?
  •       What did you see and hear?
  •        What did you smell and taste?
  •       What did you feel?


Step 5: Publishing the haiku

Students/ teacher discuss the procedures of publishing. Even assigning a publishing jury to do the job where the teacher plays the role of a guide merely.
Websites that welcome English haiku:
1.      World Haiku Association: www.worldhaiku.net
2.      The Haiku Society of America: www.hsa-haiku.org
3.      Asahi Haikuist Network: www.asahi.com/english/haiku
4.      The Mainichi Daily News-Haiku in English: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/features/haiku

More examples of Haiku: (taken from: http://www.asahi.com/english/haiku )

Closing time
even the bartender
looks handsome
--ai li (London)

In the mirror
not really recognizing myself
another year older
--Angelika Kolompar (Vancouver Island)
Holi Purnima
the moon follows me
at every turn
--Puja Malushte (Mumbai, India)

An IKEA run . . .
there is something familiar
in the Hubble images
--Alexey Golubev (St. Petersburg, Russia)
My bookshelf
a spider in search
of lost time
--Dietmar Tauchner (Puchberg, Austria)

Sound of temple bells
penetrates villagers
end of the year
--Isao Soematsu (Tokyo)
December ends--
the milkman revises rates
for the New Year
--Pravat Kumar Padhy (Odisha, India)

Snow-covered lake
scattered lights glow from
fishermen's tents
--Hidehito Yasui (Osaka)
I shiver
in the glow
of the winter moon
--Nancy Nitrio (Orangevale, California)

Christmas dusk
a glow lingers on the
bedroom wall
--martin gottlieb cohen (Egg Harbor, New Jersey)

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Storytelling and speaking fluency development

The act of conveying events in words, and images, often without prior preparation is by definition an act of storytelling. It is based in everyday life and situations as in a bar chat, coffee with friends, or even family or friends reunions. Quasi-everybody has his own ways of re-telling an event to his immediate audience, be it private or public.
Storytelling, in the classroom context, can play an influential role in enhancing speaking fluency and social skills. It can promote a less-threatening learning environment where learners are willing to communicate and share parts of their lives. Besides, storytellers can be very active participators and can develop a sense of imagination and creativity, let alone the positive effects storytelling can have on verbal proficiency and catering for individual variations. Receptive skills, especially listening, have their own share of the whole package of the advantages. It simply develops a good listener and interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences in learners (MI Theory ²).
Everyone has some story/ anecdote to tell: teacher and learners alike. As teachers should use their own experience as a model, learners can develop their storytelling techniques in the target language too; thus providing further integration (Competency Approach) of what has been learnt about the language. This article looks at how a teacher can develop learners’ skills as conversational storytellers following a three-step approach. It will also consider simple and practical ways on how to make learners active listeners.

Stage ONE: Raising awareness and implementation

At this stage, a model lesson is suggested to raise learners’ awareness of the benefits and importance of storytelling as an in-class activity. It focuses also on the story’s generic structure as suggested by Eggins and Slade (1997). Learners will integrate learnt knowledge through a follow-up application lesson where they make use of the generic structure aforementioned and the fluency technique known as 4-3-2 (Maurice 1983; Nation 1989; Nation and Newton 2009).

Stage TWO: Developing active conversational listeners

In which I will look into ways, like back-channelling and other linguistic devices, that listeners can use to show interest and empathise with the storyteller.

Stage THREE: Ways of making storytelling an integral part of lessons

Mini-talks or stories, not exceeding 5 minutes, are a technique that could be used in daily lesson plans.
The technique subject of this article is better suited for pre-intermediate or lower intermediate. Learners at this level are well equipped with enough linguistic background that can help them become good storytellers. The introductory lesson preferably begins with a story drawn from the teacher’s own experience/ repertoire or any story they judge fit for the purpose. E.g.
‘’I’ll tell you something funny that happened to me once. It was a few years ago when I was working a junior high school teacher. It was about the middle of April and I was hiking in the countryside with some third-year students and a couple of teachers. Anyway, we were walking past a rice field and suddenly I saw a snake lying at the side of the path. So I asked some of the students, ‘’is it dead?’’ and then one boy walked over to the snake and he kicked it. Yeah, that’s right! He kicked it just like this (mimicking the boy’s movement) and the snake moved its head. And then the boy turned to me &and said, ‘No, it’s not dead’ and I … I just looked at him and said, ‘What are you doing? You just kicked a snake. Are you crazy?’ And he just laughed. ‘Hah! Hah! Hah!’ Oh there are some crazy people in this world, aren’t there?’’
Robert E. Jones. (2012). Creating a storytelling classroom for a storytelling world. English Teaching Forum, V 50, N 30, P: 3.
For practicality, teachers should try to use up a simple story containing one event leading to some emotional reaction such as: pleasure, frustration, satisfaction, astonishment, anger, etc. The story should contain the five generic components of conversational stories identified by Eggins and Slade (1997): Abstract, Orientation, Remarkable event, Reaction, Coda/Closing. Three of these latter are a must in every story.
1.      Abstract: an introductory sentence or phrase that signals the start of a story, and sometimes its type.

‘’I’ll tell you something funny that happened to me.’’

2.      Orientation: It gives necessary background information to get hold of the story and in order to be clear and comprehensible for the listener. It usually contains answers to concept questions like: Who was in the event? Where? And under what circumstances?

‘’It was a few years ago when I was working as a junior high school teacher. It was about the middle of April and I was hiking in the countryside with some third-year students and a couple of other teachers.’’

§  Lead questions: Who? Where? And When?

3.      Remarkable Event: What has actually happened in the story and it includes the section extending from ‘’Anyway, we were …’’ to ‘’No, it’s not dead.’’

§  Lead question: What happened?

4.      Reaction: It is the overall reaction to the event: feeling, or action or even verbal reaction.

‘And he just laughed – ‘’Hah! Hah! Hah!’’

§  Lead question: What did you do? How did you feel? Has the story changed in any way?

5.      Coda/ closing: This ends the story by relating it to another event or time or place. It could state long term effects or repercussions.
‘There are some crazy people in this world, aren’t there?’
Although these components constitute a perfect framework to every story building, only three of them (Orientation, remarkable event and reaction) are central and thus a focus should be placed on them at the presentation and implementation stages. And such a scaffold of three components with lead questions could be used in the implementation stage as an outline to ease the task of telling the anecdote.
Another aspect that teachers should take care of before all is the linguistic knowledge learners must be have, or else appropriate through practice; namely the use of appropriate grammar and diction. One grammatical notion which is particularly crucial here, besides the past tense, is the past continuous tense in its function of describing the atmosphere/ background information (the where part of the story). That is relevant to the orientation part where listeners require information to help them have a clear picture of the story and self-guide through it. In this respect, any activity or formal teaching of the past continuous is mostly conducing to better building of the story as a whole; be it in the form of restricted use practice activities, focus and clarification or even authentic use of it. It all depends on how well students are ready.

Putting all in action
After raising learners’ consciousness, and preparing them through language focus activities, the teacher can start up by brainstorming and sifting topics for learners’ consideration akin to: Trips’ memories, happy childhood memories, small accidents and misfortunes, friends’ adventures, etc. Once a topic is selected through majority agreement, learners can use the three essential elements outline and lead questions to plan their story.
Learners should be invited to keep their outlines short in the form of bullet ideas rather than full fleshed texts. The aim after all is developing their speaking fluency and not writing skills. Upon finishing the notes making, learners can be invited to review their notes taking into consideration the generic framework. They can use the 4-3-2 fluency technique with three partners. In that, learners take turns to tell their stories to three different partners at three different time frames: 4’, 3’ and 2’. Although this latter could be demanding on the part of foreign language learners, it considerably enhances speaking fluency through its time intervals and changing tempos engendered. Likewise creativity is triggered through the stages when learners try to reflect and reformulate their stories while the teachers can respond to their consequent and spontaneous linguistic needs.
The 4-3-2 technique can be used in its purest form or be modified by allowing more time in each frame without announcing it openly for practicality and time.
Groups, of six, in a pattern of three facing three are to be chosen by the teacher and students’ strengths are to be considered in the election process. Upon finishing the first time frame, students can then rotate anti-clockwise for their next practice opportunity.
Teenagers tend to be less self-confident in telling their personal stories and to remedy that teachers are invited to choose carefully the themes that students can choose from and feel confident to talk about. Gender should be taken into consideration in that girls shy away from talking about their awkward experiences with males. Adventures, first time at school, a friend’s anecdote where they were present, or any topic they can tell about in an impersonal way. The teacher can even opt for picture prompts wherefrom students can draw topics to which they feel connected, yet they stick the topic selection to the pictures and not to their own experience. Thus it provides them with an emotional shield that will not raise their affective filter to the task of storytelling.

Language Focus
After the first output students produce using the 4 minutes time-frame, they could be introduced to a couple of elements to enhance the quality of their stories such as: Extreme adjectives, exclamatory sentences and direct speech. It might be vital to revise some tenses especially the present continuous for setting the scene and the past simple for retelling past events. A simple matching activity of a set of adjectives and their extreme equivalents might do the job.

Extreme adjectives activity
Task 1: Match the normal adjective with the extreme adjective.
1.      Angry
2.      Tired
3.      Funny
4.      Small
5.      Ugly
6.      Interesting
7.      Dirty
8.      Beautiful
9.      Hungry
10.  Surprising

a.       Furious
b.      Gorgeous
c.       Exhausted
d.      Starving
e.       Hideous
f.       Hilarious
g.       Fascinating
h.      Astonishing
i.        Filthy
j.        Tiny

Task 2: Complete the extreme adjectives that mean:

1.      Very big: e………………, h……………….
2.      Very good: f………………, w………………
3.      Very bad: t…………………, a………………..
Exclamatory sentences activity

Task 1: choose the correct words.

1.      Someone stole my wallet yesterday
What/ how a nightmare!
2.      My aunt was rushed to hospital last night
What/ how terrible!
3.      Why don’t we organise an end of term party?
What/ how a great idea!
4.      My mobile keeps ringing every time I start my work.
What/ how strange.
5.      My parents are going to pay for my holiday.
What/ how wonderful.

Conclusion
Turning storytelling from a fugazi to a concrete experience is no hard of a task. It might confuse students to deal with the structure and how to integrate it in a story; yet the 2-3-4 technique is meant to make their tries more precise every time. It all comes down to how a teacher engages his students and motivates them through the framework suggested.

References

Robert E. Jones. (2012). Creating a storytelling classroom for a storytelling world. English Teaching Forum, V 50, N 30, P: 3.

Eggins, S. and D. Slade. 1997. Analysing casual conversation. London: Cassell.

Maurice, K. 1983. The fluency workshop. TESOL Newsletter 17 (4): 29.

McCarthy, M. 1991. Discourse analysis for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nation, I. S. P. 1989. Improving speaking fluency. System 17 (3): 377-84.

Slade, D. 1986. Teaching casual conversations to adult ESL learners. Prospect 2 (1): 68-87.

Thornbury, S., and D. Slade. 2006. Conversation: from description to pedagogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tim Falla and Paul A Davies. 2008. Solutions: Intermediate Level. Oxford: Oxford University Press.






Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Saying you don't know - USEFUL EXPRESSIONS

Saying you don't know:
* I don't know. I think it's...
* I'm not sure. I think it's...
* Sorry. I don't' know.
* I'm afraid. I'v no idea.
* I can't help you there.
* I don't know anything about ...
* I haven't got a clue.
* Search me.
* Don't ask me.
* What are you asking me for.
* How the hell should I know.
*

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

21st Century Pedagogy

"How we teach must reflect how our students learn, it must also reflect the world they will emerge into", Educational Origami, ICT and Education.

Known to all, even to laymen, is that teaching should be reflective to how learning is happening. Active learning requires active teaching, and thus goes and knowledge taught should be reflective, drawn from the world being taught to. In a changing context, as ours, knowledge should be changing and coping with that change, in itself and in the way (s) it's being handed down or scaffolded.
Being a teacher of the 21st century, teaching 21st century students is not an easy task. It requires a pedagogy that could be else qualified but as a 21st century teaching pedagogy. A pedagogy that would fit students world's and qualify them through a better preparation before the biggest jump.
............................ to be continued

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Drama In The Classroom


Drama In The Classroom

An Afterthought

By: Nouamane ERRIFKI


A: Well?
B: Well what?
A: where is it?
B: where’s what?
A: You know.
B: I know?
A: Yes, you do.
B: No, I don’t.
A: You do!
B: I don’t!
A: Do!
B: Don’t!
A: Just tell me.
B: Tell you what?
A: WHERE IT IS?
B: I can’t.
A: You can’t?
B: No.
A: Well, why not?
B: Because I don’t know!


Well, if anyone of you were asked what is that text that has been written just above probably your first answer would have been: “It’s a dialog” And if you were a teacher and asked the most famous question that all teachers are obsessed with which is how to teach it your first and impromptu answer would have been something like, if I’m not mistaken, “I’ll use that dialog to introduce or teach WH-questions, short answers with ‘Do’, and the use of the modal ‘Can’ for inability. Or I’ll use it, thrice, to introduce one of the elements mentioned before at a time. Then, after introducing those language points, I would assign the dialog for rehearsal in the following way: students in twos try to perform the given dialog before their classmates.”


For sure the one who would have answered in this way or any other similar ways has got no idea of Drama use in-class and Dramatization at all.


“Drama in the Classroom” is how Caroline Nugent, a teacher at the British Council, choose to entitle her one-workshop at MATE’s Middle School Seminar that took place in Ben Slimane. It was a workshop that raised all participants’ awareness over the importance of Drama use in our classrooms.


Drama is that elusive, missing link in our teens’ classes. If we just think for a moment about its benefits one would come to the inextricable conclusion that it should be designated the most important slot in our teaching sessions. Drama’s most immediate benefit is that it could teach and provide practice for new vocabulary and grammatical structures. The manner in which it serves to provide practice for newly taught language points is more important a feature than that of introducing or presenting. (This will of course be discovered later in this article.) Of equal importance is that trough Drama activities students get more and more self-confident as their pronunciation (especially, Intonation and stress) and fluency develops. Drama boosts self-esteem and that’s what is needed to develop students’ communicative competency. Another benefit is that it yields risk takers and a sense of group belonging that generates good language learners. And to top all of those benefits, Drama is a lot of fun and quite enjoyable for parties, teacher and students.


Drama makes use of the mind, voice and body. And, thus, fits in the “Active Learning” frame that was Joan Kang Shin’ subject of her Keynote speech. Active, both physically and cognitively, is how a student becomes through Drama.

Free your students minds, voices and bodies. let them speak out!

Nugent’s workshop focused our attention on the way drama can be used to practice pronunciation and grammatical structures. Her focus was much more on performance. I mean the ways dialogs, otherwise drama pieces, can be performed. She suggested different scenarios or ways of performance of which I cite here a few if not all.

The first dialog that has been named as an “Energizer” (see above) was performed in twos with the words in bold stressed. The performance was on stage and supplemented with a variation in which the participants (A and B) made it funnier by performing it in a western’s style or wearing different faces/ moods (sad/ happy/ sleepy/ angry).


The second type of dialogs, the grammar-loaded dialogs, was performed in groups. Example: the first group (A) performing the dialog in a whispering tone and the second (B) in a normal tone. Other variations were explored and others suggested like:

A: Confident.
B: Afraid or crying.

A: In an old’s tone/ voice.
B: In a baby’s tone/ voice.

A: In a western’s style.
B: In a western’s style.

And the examples went on and on.


There was another type of dialogs that has been discovered and which was named, the Missing Lines Dialogs, where the (A) part of the dialog was provided and the (B) part was missing.


On the whole, the workshop was quite practical and delightful, enjoyable and inspiring to the extent that I decided to explore it in my next class, right after the holidays finishes. It was not enough, but it was at least awareness raising and a lot of fun.

That’s all folks for the time being. Expect more in no time!

Reference: Drama In The Classroom. a workshop by: Caroline Nugent. MATE's Middle School Seminar. 2008


Nouamane ERRIFKI

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

A Whole Listening Activity Worksheet

A
Whole
Listening
Worksheet

SILENT WATCH/BEFORE LISTENING

1- Who is singing? Can you guess?
2- Where and when is she singing?
3- What do you think the subject of the song is?
Here is the URL link for the Video clip:
http://rapidshare.com/files/41591471/alcomplicated.rar
Or
http://rs98.rapidshare.com/files/41591471/alcomplicated.rar

WHILE LISTENING
1- Listen to the song. What is the song’s subject? Check the right answer and justify it.
a- LIFE
b- LOVE
c- DEATH
d- FUN/ ENTERTAINMENT

2- Listen to the opening of the clip and write what they say?
3- What do we mean by these words? Translate if necessary!

Life
………………………………………………………
Cause
………………………………………………………
Chill out
………………………………………………………
Frustrated
………………………………………………………
Preppy
………………………………………………………
Crawl
………………………………………………………
Break
………………………………………………………
Faked
………………………………………………………
Act
………………………………………………………

4- Read the lyrics silently. Then, click on play and write the missing words or sentences.

Uh huh, life's like this
Uh huh, uh huh, that's the way it is
Cause life's like this
Uh huh, uh huh that's the way it is

Chill out whatcha 1-................... for?
2-................it's all been done before
And if you could only let it be
You will see

I like you the way you are
When we're drivin' in your car
And you're talking to me one on one but you've become
Somebody else like everyone else
You're watching your back like you can't relax
You're tryin' to be cool you look like a fool to me

Tell me
Why do you have to go and make things so 3-.................?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else gets me
4-..................
Life's like this you
And you fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into honestly
And promise me I'm never gonna find you fake it
no no no

You come over unannounced
Dressed up like you're somethin' else
Where you are and where it's at you see
You're making me
Laugh out when you strike your pose
5-.................all your preppy[NE1] clothes
You know you're not fooling anyone
When you've become
Somebody else like everyone else
Watching your back, like you can't relax
Trying to be cool you look like a fool to me

Tell me
Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else gets me
Frustrated
Life's like this you
And you fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into
Honestly
You promise me I'm never gonna find you faked
No no no

Chill out [NE2] whatcha 6-.................. for?
Lay back, it's all been done before
And if you could only let it be
You will see
Somebody else like everyone else
You're watching your back, like you can't relax
You're trying to be cool; you look like a fool to me
Tell me
Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else gets me
7-...................
Life's like this you
And you fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into
Honestly
You promise me I'm never gonna find you faked
No no

Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you’re somebody else gets me frustrated
Life's like this you
You fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into honestly
8-.................................................................................
no no no
AVRIL AVIGNE


POST-LISTENING
1- What do you think of the whole clip?
2- Write a ten lines paragraph describing what you think of your friends?

Here is the URL link to the Video Clip:
http://rapidshare.com/files/41591471/alcomplicated.rar
Or
http://rs98.rapidshare.com/files/41591471/alcomplicated.rar




Footnotes:
[NE1]A YOUNG PERSON WHO GOES OR WENT TO AN EXPENSIVE PRIVATE SCHOOL AND WHO DRESSES AND ACTS INA WAY THAT IS THOUGHT TO BE TYPICAL OF SUCH A SCHOOL (AMER ENG , INFORMAL)

[NE2]TO RELAX AND STOP FEELING ANGRY OR NERUS ABOUT SOMETHING

Writing HAIKU: Creative Writing

Discover and Reveal your unique perspective of the world What is Haiku? It is a short, three-line Japanese poem with a spec...