Promising Practices This is an ongoing column, featuring advice for effective teaching. Please send article submissions to the column editor, Ann C. Wintergerst (contact information on page 22 of this
Piece of cake! Idiom activities and the importance of proper intonation
by Andrew Edison Schneider Idioms pop up everywhere in English media, often met with confused looks by our students. Even more advanced students have diffi culty using them with any degree of competence, especially if the idioms are culturally different from their own (Irujo, 1986). Given their importance, more attention should be paid to teaching idioms in ESL settings (Cooper, 1998). It is up to teachers to help students not only learn idioms, but also to encourage their usage in an intelligible manner. How can we incorporate idioms into classroom settings in a relaxed, communicative, and student-centered way? More important, how can we teach the intonation of idioms to achieve students’ maximum intelligibility? I have found the following three activities to be helpful for my students.
BYOI—Bring Your Own Idiom
are totally you). During the students’ explanations, I stay off to the side and will assist only if the situation calls for it; I have even done this activity remotely via Skype when I was home sick in bed. Having the students in charge of this activity made it quite manageable. It can also act as a springboard for all kinds of culturerelated discussions.
Where Is the Change?
A major obstacle facing our students is intelligibility, especially when using idioms. While pronunciation may be a factor, an equally important factor is proper intonation. As the pitch in our voices rises and falls, these changes in intonation are processed by the listener (Cruttenden, 1986). If you have ever studied Chinese, Thai, or Vietnamese, you may be familiar with the inextricable link between the proper tone and communication. In English as well, when language is given the correct intonation, communication can be greatly enhanced. To emphasize this point with my students, I imitate the “wa wa” teacher from Charlie Brown. I walk around the class, lock eyes with a student, raise my hand, and slowly say “Wa, wa wa Wa?” What I am actually saying is “Hi, how are You?” Students inevitably guess correctly and are quite surprised that they can understand what I am saying. Once they have caught on, we can then create contextual situations and apply the proper intonation. A mini-dialogue I might have with a student in front of the class, in which my role would be B, is as follows:
A: What are you doing this weekend? B: This weekend? Nothing special. Each student chooses one idiom to “teach” the class. They may choose from any I’ll probably just hang OUt. source, and learn it well enough to be able to A: OK. Give me a call. explain it in front of their classmates. This B: Alright. is a great warm-up; it’s student-centered and exciting, since they have chosen these idioms themselves based on their own interests. Don’t be surprised if a number of idioms come from Gossip Girl or Glee, American television programs centering around highschool students, so idioms relating to dating and shopping tend to surface quite often (i.e., It’s on me; She’s into him; Those shoes
NYS TESOL Idiom Bastien_NYSTESOL_newsletter.indt 8
After the classmates have heard the dialogue, I will ask them, “Where is the change?” Hopefully, they will hear “OUt” on the fi rst try. I will then mark it on the board. The rise in pitch at the beginning of “OUt” rather than on the word “hang” is essential to the
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intelligibility of the idiom as well as to the rest of the dialogue. Teachers play a vital role here. Once an idiom is presented, either the students or the teacher should provide/ elicit the proper intonation and then mark it. This marking system is especially important for non-native-English-speaking teachers who may be unfamiliar with the proper intonation of idioms. The good news regarding idiomatic phrases is that there are general intonation patterns. In an emphasized two-syllable word, such as “brainer” in the expression “no-brainer,” the word tends to receive a higher tone or pitch on the fi rst syllable. It’s a no- BRAIner. In the case of a one-syllable word, such as “cake” in the expression “piece of cake,” there is a higher tone on the fi rst half of the word: It’s a piece of CAke. In either case, the rising intonation at the beginning is then followed by a falling intonation. Saying the idiom in front of your students in slow motion can really help to clarify this, and it is also good for a laugh. When students know the proper intonation, communication can be achieved even with less-than-perfect pronunciation. This is good news for our students, as it is generally much easier to change the pitch of a word than to pronounce the word properly.
Mini Dialogues
The mini dialogues written by the students, followed by an in-class role play, are not only a lot of fun but practical and effective exercises for ESL students (Nunan, 2003; Scott & Ytreberg, 2000). They could be done as homework or in class individually, in pairs, or in groups. These dialogues supply the context necessary to achieve natural usage and effective communication (Nippold & Martin, 1989). The task is to write mini dialogues, where each dialogue contains at least one idiom from class, either from our text or from one of the students’ BYOI. There should be just enough context (4-6 lines) for the exchange to be meaningful (Nippold & Martin, 1989). Make sure the students understand that even though these dialogues are being written down, they should be striving for spoken and not written English. I also ask them to
Vol. 41, No. 3 (Fall 2011) 6/26/12 9:59 AM