LEARNING ENGLISH AND FUTURE SELVES By Niall Curry
Niall Curry is a lecturer at Coventry University specialising in applied linguistics, corpus linguistics, and language pedagogy. He lectures in academic language, language analysis, and language pedagogy.
TASK 1: LEARNING NEW LANGUAGE (AND WHERE TO USE IT!) The first task aims to raise learners’ awareness of language and the contexts in which different words are used. Drawing on corpus research at Cambridge University Press, there are a number of changes that could form the basis of this task. For example, adverbs like “well”, “so”, “like”, and “literally” in British English have changed considerably over the last two decades. 20 years ago for example, ‘literally’ was mostly used in a literal sense, but now primarily refers to unreal events with examples like ‘I literally haven’t moved all day’. After teaching these new uses of words, the task is as follows:
L
anguage is alive and changes with the times. As language professionals, we have the difficult task of ensuring that we teach up-todate language to our students. In the context of English language teaching, the difficulty arises from the fact that English language pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, for example, are constantly evolving and changing. Often, such change occurs in order to remove redundant and less useful language, or by borrowing directly from other languages. Other factors like culture, migration, and globalisation can also impact languages and cause them to change and adapt to new contexts and uses. Whatever the reason, keeping up with language change is important for teenage language learners because mastery of English will be integral to their success in future study and work internationally. As educationalists and teachers, it is our responsibility to equip our learners with knowledge of contemporary English. To this end, this article presents two research-informed tasks that can help raise learners’ awareness of language change.
KEEPING UP TO DATE WITH LANGUAGE CHANGE IS KEY FOR TEENAGE LEARNERS
1 Students pay attention to the use of words like ‘literally’ in everyday life, games they play, and media they consume.
2 Students note how often they hear these new words or uses over the course of one week.
3 Using a checklist, like the example
given here, students must capture extra information surrounding the new words and new word uses, e.g. who says them, to whom, and in what contexts?
At this point, it is a good idea to have a classroom follow-up and get students to present their findings to one another. Taking a learner-centred approach, this will be an opportunity to help students unpack their own language and discuss the importance of not only keeping language up to date, but also of thinking about where to use it. It is also worth considering the formality of the language, which may not be clear to your students. Being aware of formality in English is particularly important for teenagers because they will need to know how to speak to employers and university professors in English if they are considering studying and working in English-speaking countries in the future.
:
Student Name Class:
al ‘literally’ Word: non-re 6
No. of uses: 3
ends, family Who sa id it: fri : end, teacher) it sa id (e.g. fri To whom was uber uT Yo ly, mi friends, fa
u hear it: Where did yo e funny video school, onlin at , me ho at Word: No. of uses: Who sa id it: To whom was Where was it
end, teacher, it sa id (e.g fri
YouTuber):
sa id:
Word: No. of uses: Who sa id it: To whom was Where was it
20
) ere to use it!
uage (and wh
g New Lang
Task: Learnin
end, teacher, it sa id (e.g. fri sa id:
YouTuber):
