5 minute read
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.
Language 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.
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:
1Students 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: Task: Learning New Language (and where to use it!)
Word: non-real ‘literally’ No. of uses: 36 Who said it: friends, family To whom was it said (e.g. friend, teacher): friends, family, YouTuber Where did you hear it: at home, at school, online funny video
Word: No. of uses: Who said it: To whom was it said (e.g friend, teacher, YouTuber): Where was it said:
Word: No. of uses: Who said it: To whom was it said (e.g. friend, teacher, YouTuber): Where was it said:
TASK 2: SPEAKING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY For the second task, the goal is to support the development of spoken language as well as the acquisition of new language. First, students should be pre-taught a number of changes in language use. This pre-teaching should highlight both the new uses and what it was like before. This could refer to changes of word-class like ‘message’ which, 20 years ago, was usually a noun, whereas today, it most often is a verb. Other examples are words like ‘google’ becoming a verb, where initially we would have ‘searched for something on Google’. Once you decide which language to teach, this task has three steps: rephrasing, group conversations, and rotation.
In teams, students take turns rephrasing old language uses into their more contemporary uses. For example: Team A: Send me a message Team B: Message me
Group Conversations
Once the students are comfortable with the words that have changed over time, they have 2-minute conversations in groups of three. Two of the students have a conversation while the third takes notes.
Rotation
The goal is for students to try to use as many of these new words and new word meanings as possible which the listener captures. Every 2 minutes the groups rotate until everyone has been the listener.
This activity helps develop students’ awareness of language change as well as their language use. Initially, rephrasing develops paraphrasing skills, which are important for university study. The conversations require deep cognitive engagement and language processing, which facilitates language acquisition. While cognitively demanding, this can be supported by choosing conversation topics based on previously studied themes. This is an opportunity to consolidate knowledge and minimise students’ cognitive load. This task also develops fluency, active listening, and note taking skills, which are important for future study and work. To offer a brief conclusion, in order to participate with confidence in the English-speaking world, keeping up to date with language change is key for teenage learners. The tasks here aim to support this by using activities that reflect the ways in which teenagers learn, e.g. through socialisation and learner-centred content. Overall, by incorporating more tasks that address language change in this way, we can prepare our learners for a successful future as English language users.
