Conversation Topic: Art

1.      What is art? Do you know any definitions of art?

 Comment on the two quotes from Brâncuși, the Romanian sculptor called the patriarch of Modern Sculpture, below.

'Sleeping Muse', bronze sculpture by Constantin Brancusi

“Art is the creation of what you don’t know.” 

“There are no foreigners in art.”

                                              (Constantin Brâncuși)

2.      Is it easy to recognize art? 

Read this fragment from the article Pearls before Breakfast by Gene Weingarten, then answer and discuss the questions posed in the second and third paragraph.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, 2007, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as a violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L’Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you?

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the violin player standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

Here are more questions for discussion.  

• Who was the musician? 
• How much money did he make after playing for 43 minutes?

After an initial discussion, find the answers in the next fragments.

In April 2007 he accepted the Avery Fisher prize, recognizing him as the best classical musician in America. 

In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run — for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

• How special is Joshua Bell’s violin?

Bell always performs on the same instrument, and he ruled out using another for this gig. Called the Gibson ex Huberman, it was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari during the Italian master’s “golden period,” toward the end of his career, when he had access to the finest spruce, maple and willow, and when his technique had been refined to perfection.

“Our knowledge of acoustics is still incomplete,” Bell said, “but he, he just . . . knew.”

Bell doesn’t mention Stradivari by name. Just “he.” When the violinist shows his Strad to people, he holds the instrument gingerly by its neck, resting it on a knee. “He made this to perfect thickness at all parts,” Bell says, pivoting it. “If you shaved off a millimeter of wood at any point, it would totally imbalance the sound.” No violins sound as wonderful as Strads from the 1710s, still.

The front of Bell’s violin is in nearly perfect condition, with a deep, rich grain and luster. The back is a mess, its dark reddish finish bleeding away into a flatter, lighter shade and finally, in one section, to bare wood.

“This has never been refinished,” Bell said. “That’s his original varnish. People attribute aspects of the sound to the varnish. Each maker had his own secret formula.” Stradivari is thought to have made his from an ingeniously balanced cocktail of honey, egg whites and gum arabic from sub-Saharan trees.

Like the instrument in “The Red Violin,” this one has a past filled with mystery and malice. Twice, it was stolen from its illustrious prior owner, the Polish virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman. The first time, in 1919, it disappeared from Huberman’s hotel room in Vienna but was quickly returned. The second time, nearly 20 years later, it was pinched from his dressing room in Carnegie Hall. He never got it back. It was not until 1985 that the thief — a minor New York violinist — made a deathbed confession to his wife, and produced the instrument.

Bell bought it a few years ago. He had to sell his own Strad and borrow much of the rest. The price tag was reported to be about $3.5 million.

3. How affordable is art?

 4. What art objects or art works do you like to have around you?

5. What art are you a master in?

Here’s a selection from my students’ answers:

• I am a master in the art of making tea.
• I am a master in the art of making salads.
• I am a master in the art of playing football.
• I am a master in the art of taking photos.
• I am a master in the art of spending time.

How many masters in the art of making people smile are there among you, I wonder… Drop a smile here, if you please!

Filed under: 2. Art, 3. SPEAKing, ACTIVITIES & ELT RESOURCES, Conversation Topics

How to evaluate your students’ speaking and listening skills

At an ELT seminar organised by the British Council in Krakow on January 21st, I had the pleasure of attending a very interesting training on the topic of  ”jazzing up” the students’ listening skills, delivered by Barbara Szybowska, which included a variety of graded listening activities based on 6 different songs. My favourite activity was a multiple choice exercise based on Sting’s song,  Englishman in New York. This also led me to contemplate some interesting cultural parallels I have been exploring on another blog of mine. 

During one of the many audience interaction moments in the seminar, I mentioned a listening activity that I was planning to do with one of my student groups the following week. This post includes a description of this listening activity that may be used with groups of any level. It was a real success with my group, so I warmly recommend it to any teacher interested. 

Here is how it works. Ask each student in your group to choose a favourite  song, look for the lyrics to it, and be prepared to read them fluently at the next class. It is best to have some extra lyrics at hand for the students who may have been absent.

Each student will read his or her chosen lyrics in front of their colleagues, who would assess the reading at the end, using the 5 criteria in the activity sheet below and a scale from 1 (for a very poor reading) to 5 (for an excellent reading). The teacher and the students’ peers are able to award marks to assess the reading, which allows for both the students’ speaking and listening skills to be put to the test.  

With more advanced groups, students should be able to explain the various marks they award to each other.

With lower-level groups students may be given a second shot at reading and being assessed. In the case of my group, the second reading, after a detailed discussion and assessment of the first, increased their score by a significant 10 to 30 %. 

Judges► Questions▼	Student 1	Student 2	Student 3	Teacher
1. General impression: How well did you understand the text presented to you?
2. How clearly were the sounds articulated? (Think about pauses, the speed of the speech, word stress and rhythm.)
3. How was the speaker’s intonation?
4. Attitude
5. Posture
Score out of 5:                                                      1                   2                  3                     4                  5

Filed under: 1. LISTENing, 3. SPEAKing, ACTIVITIES & ELT RESOURCES

Brain Rules for Meetings

You can find out how you can apply the 12 principles in John Medina’s book, Brain Rules, in the context of a meeting by reading his answers to the questions below, first published in an interview for the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) magazine Convene, and later re-posted on his blog, on January 30th.

Which of the 12 Brain Rules has the most impact on meetings? 
Well, probably, the biggest one would have to be about attentional states. This rule is very simple: People don’t pay attention to boring things. So if you really want to have a lousy meeting, make sure it’s boring. If you want to have a lousy classroom, make sure it’s boring. And if you want to vaccinate against the types of things that really do bore the mind, we have some understanding of that.

So how do you design a good meeting?
Here are the top three “brain gadgets” that probably have a bearing on the question. First, the human brain processes meaning before it processes detail. Many people, when they put meetings together, actually don’t even think about the meaning of what it is they’re saying. They just go right to the detail. If you go to the detail, you’ve got yourself a bored audience. Congratulations.
Second, in terms of attentional states, we’re not sure if this is brain science or not, but certainly in the behavioral literature, you’ve got 10 minutes with an audience before you will absolutely bore them. And you’ve got 30 seconds before they start asking the question, “Am I going to pay attention to you or not?” The instant you open your mouth, you are on the verge of having your audience check out. And since most people have been in meetings – 90 percent of which have bored them silly – they already have an immune response against you, particularly if you’ve got a PowerPoint slide up there.

How do you then hold attention?
This is what you have to do in 10 minutes. You have to pulse what I just said – the meaning before detail – into it. I call it a hook. At nine minutes and 59 seconds, you’ve got to give your audience a break from what it is that you’ve been saying and pulse to them once again the meaning of what you’re saying.

What is the third “brain gadget”?
The brain cycles through six questions very, very quickly. Question No. 1 is “Will it eat me?” We pay tons of attention to threat. The second question is “Can I eat it?” I don’t know if you have ever watched a cooking show and have loved what they are cooking, but you pay tons of attention if you think there’s going to be an energy resource. Question No. 3 is highly Darwinian. The whole reason why you want to live in the first place is to project your genes to the next generation – that means sex. So Question No. 3 is “Can I mate with it?” And Question No. 4 is “Will it mate with me?”

It turns out we pay tons of attention to – it actually isn’t sex per se, it’s reproductive opportunity. [It is also] hooked up to the pleasure centers of your brain – the exact same centers you use when you laugh at something. Oddly enough, I think that’s one of the reasons why humor can work. If you can pop a joke or at least tell an interesting story, it’s actually inciting those areas of the brain that are otherwise devoted to sex. You don’t become aroused by listening to a joke. I’m saying those areas of the brain can be co-opted. You can utilize them, and a good speaker knows how to do that.

What are Questions 5 and 6?
“Have I seen it before?” and “Have I never seen it before?” We are terrific pattern matchers. There is an element of surprise that comes when patterns don’t match, but the reason why that happens is because we are trying to match patterns all the time.

Is there a Brain Rule that addresses whether you should try to control the use of laptops and phones during a meeting session?
I have this rule response, based on data, and then I have a visceral response, also based on data. In other words, I’m about ready to tell you a contradiction. Are you ready?

Yes, I am.    

Alrighty. I do believe what you can show is that there are attentional blinks. The brain actually is a beautiful multitasker, but the attentional spotlight, which you use to pay attention to things, [is not]. You can’t listen to a speaker and type what they are saying at the same time.

What you can show in the laboratory is that you get staccato-like attentional blinks. Just like you come up for air: You look at the speaker, then when you’re writing, you cannot hear what the speaker is saying. Then you come up for air and hear the speaker again. So you’re flipping back and forth between those two, and your ability to be engaged to hear what a speaker is saying is necessarily fragmented.
At the same time, if your speaker is boring, you could have checked out anyway. So you see, in many ways it depends upon the speaker.

How so?
If the speaker is really compelling and is clear and is emotion- ally competent, and has gone through those six questions, letting you come up for air every 10 minutes, I’ve actually watched audiences put their laptops away just to pay attention.

I have a style that is purposely a little speedier. And the rea- son why is that it produces a tension that says, “I need to pay attention closely to him or I’m going to lose what he’s saying.” I don’t make it so fast that it’s unintelligible – at least I hope I don’t. But I do make it fast, and occasionally I see comments that say, “Great speaker, but you know, you were too freaking fast.”

Filed under: 1. Brain Matters, 3. SPEAKing, Brain Matters, Brain Rules, Conversation Topics, IN PRINT

How your brain learns English (and how it doesn’t)

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Hello, there, English learning enthusiasts wherever you are!

It is my pleasure to introduce a new post by ELB guest blogger, Aaron Knight from New York. His post is an excellent resource that complements the previous article on brain matters I recently published on the ELB.  You are invited to explore more great posts by Aaron at this link. Enjoy! 

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I sometimes worry that the lessons I write contain too much information.

“Information” includes anything that can be written as a “rule”: grammar rules, explanations of the difference between two words, etc.

It’s OK to learn information about English. But it’s much, much more effective to become used to English through repeated speaking and listening. Here’s why:

Your brain doesn’t work like this

Your brain isn’t one big container that can be improved just by dumping more information into it.

It works like this

Instead, imagine that your mind has two separate “buckets”. 

One part of your mind (the Knowledge section) stores information.

Another separate part of your mind (the Performance section) controls things that you’re able to do, like draw a picture, drive a car, or speak a language.

When you learn information about English, it goes into the Knowledge section of your brain. But the parts of your brain are separate. Your knowledge might grow, but that doesn’t necessarily improve your ability to use English.

Experience improves performance

You know how to gain Knowledge about English: by reading textbooks and listening to teachers. But how do you improve your Performance?

By listening, speaking, reading, and writing. You improve by doing.

As you listen to natural English, you will naturally start to copy the patterns that you hear, even if you can’t quite explain what they mean.

As you speak English, you’ll get used to speaking in a certain way. The words will come out more automatically.

Why knowledge still helps

I still write explanations for all of my lessons. Why? Because a little bit of knowledge can be helpful.

When you concentrate hard on something that you’ve learned, you cantemporarily improve your speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

The improvement is only temporary. When you stop concentrating, you’ll go back to your old habits. But by hearing and speaking correctly, you can slowly train your Performance brain to continue the new habits.

The important point is to treat information as a tool. Learn some rules, but just a few at a time. Then be sure to practice them until they’ve become natural to you.

What do you think? Do you agree with my little theory? Are you guilty of paying too much attention to rules and information? Answer in the comments!

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Filed under: 1. Brain Matters, 3. SPEAKing, Brain Matters, Conversation Topics

Conversation Topic: Brain Matters

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1. Think about your answers to the questions below and discuss them with your colleagues:

• How do you relax? How do you relax while studying?
• What makes you study faster?
• What helps you become and stay focused?

SPEAKING PRACTICE PROMPTS

•   I feel relaxed when …
• If I want to feel relaxed, I …
• I study faster if/ when …
• I discovered that I can stay focused if/ when …

Read more about the 12 brain rules at the links below:

1.  EXERCISE | Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.
2.  SURVIVAL | Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too.
3.  WIRING | Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.
4.  ATTENTION | Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things.
5.  SHORT-TERM MEMORY | Rule #5: Repeat to remember.
6.  LONG-TERM MEMORY | Rule #6: Remember to repeat.
7.  SLEEP | Rule #7: Sleep well, think well.
8.  STRESS | Rule #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.
9.  SENSORY INTEGRATION | Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses.
10.  VISION | Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.
11.  GENDER | Rule #11: Male and female brains are different.
12.  EXPLORATION | Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers.

2. Answer your teacher’s questions (aimed at the underlined fragments) and make comments on the rules for improving brain power from John Medina’s book, Brain Rules.

[NOTE: All the info presented below can be found at http://brainrules.net.]

Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.

The human brain evolved under conditions of almost constant motion. From this, one might predict that the optimal environment for processing information would include motion. That is exactly what one finds. Indeed, the best business meeting would have everyone walking at about 1.8 miles per hour.

Researchers studied two elderly populations that had led different lifestyles, one sedentary and one active. Cognitive scores were profoundly influenced. Exercise positively affected executive function, spatial tasks, reaction times and quantitative skills.

So researchers asked: If the sedentary populations become active, will their cognitive scores go up? Yes, it turns out, if the exercise is aerobic. In four months, executive functions vastly improve; long and short-term memory scores improve as well.

Exercise improves cognition for two reasons:

• Exercise increases oxygen flow into the brain, which reduces brain-bound free radicals. One of the most interesting findings of the past few decades is that an increase in oxygen is always accompanied by an uptick in mental sharpness.
• Exercise acts directly on the molecular machinery of the brain itself. It increases neurons’ creation, survival, and resistance to damage and stress.

Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too.

• The brain is a survival organ. It is designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment and to do so in nearly constant motion (to keep you alive long enough to pass your genes on). We were not the strongest on the planet but we developed the strongest brains, the key to our survival.
• The strongest brains survive, not the strongest bodies. Our ability to solve problems, learn from mistakes, and create alliances with other people helps us survive. We took over the world by learning to cooperate and forming teams with our neighbors.
• Our ability to understand each other is our chief survival tool. Relationships helped us survive in the jungle and are critical to surviving at work and school today.
• If someone does not feel safe with a teacher or boss, he or she may not perform as well. If a student feels misunderstood because the teacher cannot connect with the way the student learns, the student may become isolated.
• There is no greater anti-brain environment than the classroom and cubicle.

Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things.

• What we pay attention to is profoundly influenced by memory. Our previous experience predicts where we should pay attention. Culture matters too. Whether in school or in business, these differences can greatly affect how an audience perceives a given presentation.
• We pay attention to things like emotions, threats and sex. Regardless of who you are, the brain pays a great deal of attention to these questions: Can I eat it? Will it eat me? Can I mate with it? Will it mate with me? Have I seen it before?
• The brain is not capable of multi-tasking. We can talk and breathe, but when it comes to higher level tasks, we just can’t do it.
• Driving while talking on a cell phone is like driving drunk. The brain is a sequential processor and large fractions of a second are consumed every time the brain switches tasks. This is why cell-phone talkers are a half-second slower to hit the brakes and get in more wrecks.
• Workplaces and schools actually encourage this type of multi-tasking. Walk into any office and you’ll see people sending e-mail, answering their phones, Instant Messaging, and on MySpace—all at the same time. Research shows your error rate goes up 50% and it takes you twice as long to do things.
• When you’re always online you’re always distracted. So the always online organization is the always unproductive organization.

Rule #7: Sleep well, think well.

• When we’re asleep, the brain is not resting at all. It is almost unbelievably active! It’s possible that the reason we need to sleep is so that we can learn.
• Sleep must be important because we spend 1/3 of our lives doing it! Loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.
• We still don’t know how much we need! It changes with age, gender, pregnancy, puberty, and so much more.
• Napping is normal. Ever feel tired in the afternoon? That’s because your brain really wants to take a nap. There’s a battle raging in your head between two armies. Each army is made of legions of brain cells and biochemicals – one desperately trying to keep you awake, the other desperately trying to force you to sleep. Around 3 p.m., 12 hours after the midpoint of your sleep, all your brain wants to do is nap.
• Taking a nap might make you more productive. In one study, a 26-minute nap improved NASA pilots’ performance by 34 percent.
• Don’t schedule important meetings at 3 p.m. It just doesn’t make sense.

Rule #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.

• Your brain is built to deal with stress that lasts about 30 seconds. The brain is not designed for long term stress when you feel like you have no control. The saber-toothed tiger ate you or you ran away but it was all over in less than a minute. If you have a bad boss, the saber-toothed tiger can be at your door for years, and you begin to deregulate. If you are in a bad marriage, the saber-toothed tiger can be in your bed for years, and the same thing occurs. You can actually watch the brain shrink.
• Stress damages virtually every kind of cognition that exists. It damages memory and executive function. It can hurt your motor skills. When you are stressed out over a long period of time it disrupts your immune response. You get sicker more often. It disrupts your ability to sleep. You get depressed.
• The emotional stability of the home is the single greatest predictor of academic success. If you want your kid to get into Harvard, go home and love your spouse.
• You have one brain. The same brain you have at home is the same brain you have at work or school. The stress you are experiencing at home will affect your performance at work, and vice versa.

Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.

• We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.
• Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them. That takes time.
• Why is vision such a big deal to us?Perhaps because it’s how we’ve always apprehended major threats, food supplies and reproductive opportunity.

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Filed under: 1. Brain Matters, 3. SPEAKing, ACTIVITIES & ELT RESOURCES, Brain Matters, Conversation Topics

2011 in review

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,200 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Read and Rate: Role Models

Have you ever felt inspired by someone? Who was it and why?

Read what my young and talented Kliny English Course students wrote about their role models.

Rate the three compositions below and share your own role model with other English learners by leaving a comment with your view on the topic. Have fun!

Ania

 I have decided to write about

my grandfather

who is my role model because of his charismatic personality.

 He is the funniest and the most easy-going person that I know. With his jokes and amazing stories from his life he always makes a nice atmosphere  so that everyone around him feels good. My grandfather is a  painter, so he is really creative and imaginative too. Now a former teacher, he  knows  how to be patient, and when I want to talk with him about my troubles, he  listens to me carefully and always gives me good  advice.

 I think that I am really lucky because I have got the best grandfather in the world!

Michal

My role-model I decided to write here about

my sister.

She has got very long hair which I would like to have as well, because long hair is

funny. She is very obedient, never rude and I want to be like her because parents buy presents to obedient children. She is very moody and I’m going to be just like that, because moody people have lots of friends. She is very ambitious and determined and I hope I will be too one day, because people who are ambitious and determined usually have good grades. She is very social too, and maybe I will be as social as she is, because I will get on well with my friends. However, I don’t like her very much and this makes it all rather difficult.

Iwonka

My role model is

my mom.

She’s really responsible and ambitious because she has own dressmaking company. Of course sometimes she is really as stubborn as I am, and sometimes we argue, but I love her.  And what I like best about her is that I think she’s sensitive. I don’t know why she is the way she is, but I know that I want be like my mom in the future. The End

Filed under: 2. READing, ACTIVITIES & ELT RESOURCES, Questionnaires

Worlds of Sound a Click Away

Here I go again, with a LISTENing update from Soundcloud. These are a number of sites that use Soundcloud to broadcast music, cultural updates, poetry, comedy and various podcasts. Enjoy exploring them!  

 Radiolab - asks the big questions and tells the answers as stories, with great production and sound design.

99% Invisible - a little radio show about design, architecture and the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.
The Economist - “Babbage” is The Economist’s weekly conversation about technology.
Richard Herring - comedian Richard Herring records his hilarious daily blog using his SoundCloud iPhone app.
Dylan Ratigan - analysis show covering the biggest political, economic and financial issues in the US.
The New Yorker - the magazine presents its weekly mix of politics, culture and fiction as an online audio broadcast.
BAFTA - includes a podcast on its new Guru site, which hosts interviews with experts in film, TV and games.

To these you are invited to add the Soundcloud stream managed by yours truly.

A peaceful evening, everyone!

Filed under: 1. LISTENing, ACTIVITIES & ELT RESOURCES

Is it wrong to speak with your mouth full?

I came across this interesting post by David Crystal, who discusses the case of a particular kind of speech: the mouth-filled speech.

You can read this DCblog article in full below.

A correspondent writes with an enquiry that needs to be quoted in full:

‘This morning I tried simultaneously to brush my teeth and talk.  I tried saying, ‘I don’t know,’ and the listener managed to understand my muffled ‘words’.  Actually, they could be thought less of words and more as pulsated approximations of words, three throbs with the first one neutral, the second a bit higher, and the third ending on a lilt.  Since the words ‘I don’t know’ are used so often in English, it wasn’t difficult for my listener to guess what I meant.  And that got me thinking, how much does this sort of ‘speech’—hummed, or pulsated approximations of real words— factor into the English language, as well as others?  I imagine that for any language, the most common words and phrases would, even if intonated in such a ‘muddy’ manner, still be understood because of their familiarity and frequency of use.  Is this sort of speech ever used for histrionic or comic effect?  Or have any authors ever exploited it for inventive literary purposes?’

This is an area which, in phonetics, would fall under the heading ofparalinguistics - though I have to say mouth-filled speech isn’t one of the categories recognized when Quirk and I first studied vocal effects back in the 60s. It just didn’t turn up in the corpus – unsurprising, really, as ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full’ is a (?universal) pragmatic prohibition that we learn from our parents at around age 3, and the recordings of relatively formal situations we were using then simply didn’t present the relevant situations. The surreptitious recording of bathroom or dining-room speech wasn’t a top priority at the time. 

It’s more than just politeness that’s at stake. There is a risk of choking. And unintelligibility. But etiquette is a dominant factor. Some people, if asked a question at exactly the point where they have taken a mouthful on board, simply refuse to speak until they have swallowed, which can produce an awkward silence in the conversation (though the mouth-filled one will usually use facial expression or hand gesture to explain what’s happening). Listeners understand the problem if they’ve been brought up in that way. (I muse over my parenthesis above. Is it etiquette in all languages? It is in all the language situations I’ve experienced.) 

Despite the lack of examples in corpora, mouth-filled speech is really rather common. I suspect most people do it, from time to time, in informal eating situations, when they feel the urgent need to make a point. And eating is only one of the relevant situations. Other examples, in addition to speaking while brushing the teeth, are 

- speaking while holding a writing implement in the mouth (while the hands are otherwise engaged), as I’ve often seen in business meetings
– speaking (or trying to) when the dentist, just having filled your mouth with implements, asks you if you had a nice holiday
– and relatedly, speaking after having had your gums filled with anaesthetic
– speaking with pins in the mouth, while sewing
– speaking with a pipe or cigarette in the mouth
– speaking with a hand or finger in the mouth, sucking it better after a hurt
– speaking with ill-fitting false teeth
– little (and sometimes not-so-little) children, sometimes try to speak while keeping a dummy (pacifier) in the mouth
– speaking with a decorative item in the mouth, such as a pierced tongue
– for boxers, speaking with a gum-shield
– in old-style elocution, speaking with a pebble in the mouth to improve one’s pronunciation – a technique supposedly used by Demosthenes to overcome a stammer
– more dramatically, movies regularly show us someone trying to speak with a gag in the mouth
– or talking while someone else is in their mouth, as with a passionate kissing scene. 

These situations are common enough to have made me role-play mouth-filled speech in listening comprehension exercises, when I used to do some EFL teaching in summer schools. Solo, I hasten to add, in view of the last example.

Linguists are well aware of the importance of avoiding situations where something interferes with natural speech production. Field linguists watch out for any physical limitations in their informants – it would be unwise, for example, to rely greatly on the phonology produced by an aged speaker who had lost all his teeth. And some of the semiotic transcriptions of body behaviour from the 1960s include symbols for such effects as ‘speaking through clenched teeth’, ‘speaking while licking one’s lips’, and ‘speaking with mouth pursed’. However, these are just general markers. I don’t know of any phonetic descriptions at the level of the segment.

Do authors do it? I haven’t come across any. They seem to leave the effect to the reader’s imagination. Here’s J. M. Barrie in A Widow in Thrums (Chapter 3): 

‘ “Ye daur to speak aboot openin’ the door, an’ you sic a mess!” cried Jess, with pins in her mouth.’

The character has that accent throughout; no special effort is made to represent the effect of the pin-holding. Here’s George Eliot, in Scenes of Clerical Life (Chapter 1): 

‘ “So,” said Mr. Pilgrim, with his mouth only half empty of muffin, “you had a row in Shepperton Church last Sunday.” ‘

That sentence would certainly have sounded differently. And even Charles Dickens, so good at depicting the idiosyncrasies in an individual’s speech, leaves this effect to the reader, as in Nicholas Nickleby (Chapter 5): 

‘ “This is the way we inculcate strength of mind, Mr Nickleby,” said the schoolmaster, turning to Nicholas, and speaking with his mouth very full of beef and toast.’

A rare example of an author trying to represent the segmental phonetics of mouth-filled speech is Anna Pickard in The Guardian(27 April 2006) which begins:

‘ “Fankky, i’s ow-wajus. I fine i’ affo-uuti owajus. Va figiss … hangom, suwee, nee to swa-oh.” Frankly, it’s outrageous…’ 

And she goes on:

‘And what, I ask, is so wrong with talking with your mouth full? In an age where multitasking is a marketable skill, surely the ability to eat and keep up your end of the conversation at the same time should be positively commended. ‘

She specifies three benefits:

‘Time management
There simply isn’t time in the day to set aside a separate amount for eating and for talking. By combining the two activities, an incredible amount of time can be saved. Also, none of your companions will ever need to ask what you had for lunch again. They will know, because they can see.

Portion control 
The process of eating while talking can do wonders for the figure. Anatomically speaking, the act of sucking in air for the talking while holding food in the oratory position should, in theory, bring more air into the food, thus inflating it, and making you feel more full (if slightly gassy). While this hasn’t been scientifically proven as far as I know, speaking as a university graduate, it certainly sounds like a convincing theory. My degree is in dramaturgy.

Characterfulness 
By the simple act of talking while eating, you can easily ensure that you will be memorable to everyone you meet. While what you were saying might have been otherwise forgettable, no one will ever forget you if you gave them a good eyeful of bolognese while you were saying it.’

It’s nice to have the opportunity of resurrecting this piece from the journalistic past.

If readers of this post have come across any other examples of mouth-filled speech, especially in literature and in languages other than English, I’d love to know of them, as I’m sure would my correspondent.

Filed under: 1. LISTENing, 2. READing, 3. SPEAKing, ACTIVITIES & ELT RESOURCES

Why I Love ELT Conferences

At the beginning of this week I had the pleasure of taking part in a very informative series of teacher trainings during the ELT PEARSON Conference “Minds Wide Open”, which made me ponder on some of the points discussed, and re-position them in the context of the way we communicate today, using spoken language and the written word. I would like to share some of these ideas with you here, on the English Learners’ Blog.  My thanks go to Mr JJ Wilson, and Mr Daniel Brayshaw for allowing me to use selected content from their presentations on this blog post.

 The Illusion of 

“What I thought I heard”,

or the Crux of

Understanding Spoken Language

In the beginning of his presentation, “Great Speakers Need Great Listeners”, JJ Wilson made a very valid observation  concerning the difficulty  shared by both people and computers when it comes to recognising speech. As proven by recent speech recognition software research, a sentence like

“It’s hard to recognise speech” was read by a computer as “It’s hard to wreck a nice beach”.

Just the other day, while surfing my TV channels I heard a Polish lector translate the phrase “tuckered out” (exhausted, very tired, in the context “Oh, look at her, poor thing! She’s all tuckered out!”) as “delikatnie” (gently, soft). 

 What separates people into listeners and good, or even great listeners?

We all build temporary hypotheses while listening. JJ Wilson adds that, apart from that, good listeners test these hypothesis and learn not to take all utterances at face value. They know how to persevere in their attempt to understand in spite of the various parts of what they hear while listening that they do not understand. Good listeners are not as easily discouraged by the parts they do not understand, as the “all-or-nothing learners” are who lack nuances like: “I did not understand this part, but I did understand…”.

It is also essential to understand the speaker, not only the words & sentences in use, because, as  real-life contexts often show,  that is not always enough.

In understanding the speaker, the good listener makes use of both his linguistic and his worldly knowledge, such as the conventions of turn-taking, or interpreting speech as relevant to a status or position of power, and so on. A good listener focuses on the important facts and ignores anything else.

Are you a good listener in all the languages you speak? Research shows that good listeners in their first language do not automatically transfer their knowledge and strategies into another language they acquire. Which is why teachers have to teach listening strategies to students, especially to those who recognise the importance of acquiring and applying them when communicating in a foreign language.  :)

Before proceeding to the list of listening strategies proposed by JJ Wilson, let me redirect your attention to a project called “Say Something Nice”, initiated by ImprovEverywhere, as part of the Guggenheim Museum exhibition stillspotting nyc. Speaking for the sake of saying something nice sounds like a pleasant premise for listening, doesn’t it? Watch the video and decide for yourself what you would say if you had to… say something nice.

Have you heard of Blaving? It is the new vocal social network. On the Discover Blaving page of the site you can find out how to record your first blav, how to upload an existing audio file from your computer, how to send invitations to your friends from Facebook, to your twitter followers, or link your account with Facebook or Twitter.

The English coursebooks in use today have already incorporated email writing and text messaging. I wonder how many more new media and social networks will be featured in next year’s editions of the same coursebooks we use today. Whatever the changes, the world will always need good listeners.

Take a look at the JJ Wilson’s list  of listening strategies below and see how many of them  you are using while listening. Is there anything you might want to add? 

The List of 12 Common Listening Strategies of the Good Listeners

Good listeners…

1. Own the conversation.

2. Provide constant feedback.

3. Are worldly listeners.

4. Use visual clues.

5. Are experts at self-monitoring.

6. Tolerate ambiguity and persevere.

7. Question the completeness of their understanding.

8. Identify specific problem areas.

9. Listen between words.

10. Think ahead.

11. Focus on what is valuable.

12. Listen to different things in different ways and ignore anything else.

At the end of the 50-minute training session I was testing my own abilities of using these strategies while listening and realised that the presentation title corollary  is equally valid: great listeners need great speakers, which JJ Wilson most definitely was. Attending sessions like his is one of the reasons why I love ELT Conferences.

The Realities of Writing

The last session of the day, “Getting Writing Right” by Daniel Brayshaw, focused on the re-integration of writing into the space of the English lesson from its common-place exile in the “homework assignment” area.

Another focus of Daniel Brayshaw’s presentation was the reality of the writing process. Students should be directed towards writing to real audiences  and writing with a real purpose. Example of potential recipients of the students’ letters could be Universities, NGOs, singers, actors, sport players, or even Government institutions. Sending messages that are relevant reflections of the students’ aspirations, communicative goals or creativity are essential activities for the improvement of their writing strategies and skills, as well as for the style and register approached.

The same quote JJ Wilson used in his sessions could be applied to Daniel Brayshaw’s presentation:  people do not only construct their speech in order to get something, but they also write in order to obtain something.  One of the initial questions asked during this  presentation was: What do we write?

The top answers, as you can imagine,  were emails, text messages and Facebook statuses, closely followed by notes, post-its, blog posts, essays, articles and exams.

What about hand-written letters? the question rose around me.

We did not get into the topic of letter writing, much less into letter hand-writing, as this topic fell outside the focus of Daniel Brayshaw’s session. On the same day of the Conference, however, I happened to come across an article in The New Yorker magazine about the rise and fall of the US Postal service as it was captured in 14 New Yorker magazine covers from 1927 until now. The article was posted by Mina Kaneko and Françoise Mouly. Its content is summarised below, in this last part of my post, under each cover of the magazine, which leads me to other reasons why I love ELT Conferences: namely for what happens after these conferences, for the associations triggered by the sessions and, last but not least, for the connection with other ELT professionals sharing their passion about learning, teaching and some of their multifarious aspects.

The Rise and Fall of the U.S. Postal Service in Fourteen New Yorker Covers

In this

Valentine’s Day cover,

Irvin depicts

the mailman

in one of his many guises:

Cupid.

 

 

This early Steig cover shows the reach

 of the postal system to the remote countryside.

Rural delivery became a permanent service in the early twentieth century, and personal mail receptacles were required for delivery by the twenties.

 

 

 

  

 For soldiers

sent overseas in the Second World War,

the postal service was their only link to family, loved ones—and money orders.

 

 

 

Barlow’s cover

 illustrates the

“neither snow”

clause of the

postman’s

motto.

 

 

 Santa Claus,

the postal service’s

most popular

addressee, 

works through a snowbank of

children’s letters, with the aid

of a state-of-the-art Dictaphone.

 

In 1955, even city folks’ schedules still revolved around the mailman’s last pickup.

Taxpayers

scramble to get

their returns postmarked

by April 15th,

in the days when

the mail service

was the only

means of filing.

 

A lone mailman stands in the darkness of a foyer 

entrusted to

sort through

the personal

correspondence

of everyone

on his route.

 

Steinberg’s love of mail itself:

postcards,

rubber stamps,

postage stamps, handwritten scrawls

on scenes from abroad—

tangible marks of a

person writing from a

different place, thinking

of you.

 

Aside from

a couple of years

during the Depression,

the volume of mail

handled by the Post

Office increased

steadily throughout

the twentieth century.

 

Colourful greeting cards 

made Christmastime

one of the postal

service’s busiest

times of year.

 

 

 

 

By the mid-nineties, 

the downpour of mail-order catalogues was a rite of fall. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2001, the volume of first-class mail reached its apex, at ten times its 1925 level, and 2006 was the peak year for all classes of mail combined. 

The mail

has been

declining

precipitously

ever since. 

 

 

“Every time I come out of Penn Station,” David Macaulay said, “I look at that post office with the wonderful phrase ‘Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds’ ”—the unofficial slogan of the U.S. Postal Service, derived from a line in Herodotus’ Histories about the ancient Persians’ courier service. “And I just saw these empty spaces at the end of the building and I thought, ‘Well at least they have space to make corrections,’ ” he said. “And that’s the kind of thing that amuses me after a seven-hour train ride from Vermont. Then again, at that point, almost anything does.”

* * *

Filed under: 3. SPEAKing, 4. WRiTing, ACTIVITIES & ELT RESOURCES, Blaving, DIY, Facebook, Learn More from Talks & Conferences, NETWORKS, On-line Assignments, The Teacher, They say... & what they mean is..., They write... & what they mean is..., Voice Matters, WHAT DO THEY MEAN?, YouTube