Exercise D
Task 1): Arrange these proverbial expressions into pairs of opposite (or at least "near opposite"!) meaning:
1) No man is an island
2) Necessity is the mother of invention
3) Spend and God will send
4) The more, the merrier
5) We are ships that pass by night
6) He who hesitates is lost
7) You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear
8) Many hands make light work
9) Too many cooks spoil the broth
10) Fools seldom differ
11) Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise
12) A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
13) Look before you leap
14) Great minds think alike
15) Two's company, three's a crowd
16) A man's reach should exceed his grasp
17) Look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves
18) We can't go through life with our heads buried in the sand
(Answers are: 1 & 5, 2 & 7, 3 & 17, 4 & 15, 6 & 13, 8 & 9, 10 & 14, 11 & 18, 12 & 16)
Task 2): For each of the following two proverbs find a proverb in the
above list which is very similar to it in meaning?
19) Faint heart never won fair maid
20) Fools rush in where angels fear to tread
(Answers are: 19 & 16, 20 & 13)
Comment: This exercise is again best done in small groups or pairs. Learners should be encouraged to look for "easy" pairs first, rather than going through the list one by one. Sometimes the lexical items are clues to the contrasting pairs (e.g. 1 & 5, where "ship" and "island" function as mutual clues and cues). The exercise can be made less demanding by the teacher prompting and helping the learners in this way. Sometimes the lexical link is not quite so obvious, but nevertheless can be uncovered (e.g. 4 & 15, where "two, three" cue "more"). Note, how "fools" in 10 contrasts with "great minds" in 14, whereas within 20 the contrast is between "fools" and "angels", a contrast which may not be at all obvious to all learners, involving as it does what Leech calls "historical meaning" of the word "angel". Learners should be encouraged to puzzle over this and access their world knowledge, but the teacher must ultimately be prepared to provide elucidation. It is less important how many of the pairs learners get right than that they get to grips with the detailed semantics of these proverbial expressions, becoming conscious of both literal surface meaning of the individual parts and the total metaphorical meaning of the expression. In this respect reference to how L1 expresses the same ideas may be helpful. A tolerant attitude to some "second best solutions" should be adopted by the teacher. For instance, 1 and 18 could also go together as opposites, and this solution is rejected only because 11 and 5 form a poor pair of opposites. This exercise can be used as a point of departure for discussion in various directions, and has certainly been far from exhausted when the tasks listed above have been done. The exercise thus provides a lead-in to these literary texts, excerpts from which could be read to show how the expression was first used. Experience proves that if such expressions are not to go in one ear and out the other, then intensive work of this nature is necessary. It is interesting to uncover the basic image underlying these expressions which in some cases is not obvious, for example, the ostrich in 18, the metaphorical force of "mother" and the sense of "invention" (i.e. "initiative", "inventiveness") in 2.
I would like to offer one final exercise to show how the metaphor approach towards idiomatic language may be extended to teaching vocabulary more generally, not only to firmly fixed idioms. The point I wish to make is that certain lexical fields can be applied to various contexts in a way which is not always realised. It is in this way that words acquire a range of meaning, even if the proficient language user is not aware of this, precisely because the given non-linguistic context already delimits his or her meaning expectations for various lexical items. Situational and communicative approaches to language teaching often stop short of showing how vocabulary learned for a particular context can be reapplied in others, although this is what is continually being done in language use, for example, as mentioned above, when the economy is discussed in terms of the lexis of sickness and health.
The following example exercise would be intended as a follow-up to a comprehension passage done in the previous lesson and seeks to activate the slumbering vocabulary recently encountered. It takes the vocabulary of emotion as used in a passage from a novel dealing with the death of a young boy, and places it in a very different context, namely a football match. Cognitive effort is thus required by the learners to lift vocabulary out of one context, perceive its semantic characteristics and apply it appropriately in another context. Below is a condensed version of the comprehension passage.
Comprehension Passage to precede Exercise E
It was about three weeks after my little brother had died. Barely were we all sitting together in the living room when my mother and aunts began talking about Edward. At first their voices were subdued, but gradually they rose as the women became more and more excited, and the words came flooding out. "Yes," cried my Aunt Lucy and my mother in chorus. He was too good to stay with us, too good. He was a saint!" Carried away by their own emotion, they became almost ecstatic in their exaggerated utterances. I sat there very quiet and afraid, I too was carried away by the emotion; I felt feverish and my eyes grew moist. My father was perfectly still. Once in a while I glanced at him. He looked very upset and he didn’t join in the conversation. I knew there was going to be an incident. The tension mounted. Suddenly he rose to his feet. His eyes flashed violently.
"Stop it," he said, and real anger was in his voice. "Stop talking about him like that. He wasn't a saint; he was just an ordinary boy, guilty of wrong like anyone else, and I won't have you talk about him like that." The underlined words represent those that will be required in the following exercise. To what extent the teacher would single these out for pupils and focus attention on them is up to him or her and the level and ability of the class in question. Of course, there are other vocabulary items pertaining to emotion in the passage (e.g. "moist", "flashed", which it has not been possible to incorporate into the exercise. This is in the nature of things if the following contrived passage is to be both short and reasonably natural.
Exercise E
Task 1): Fill in the blanks in the passage below with the underlined words and phrases from the passage above. Use each word or phrase once only. You may change the morphological form of words (e.g. tense and aspect of verbs, number of nouns) or the grammatical class (e.g. you may make a noun from a verb or an adjective from an adverb etc.).
(The passage is presented below with the blanks completed)
Once in a while I go to see a football match. Last Saturday I joined the thousands of fans flooding into St. James's Park to watch Newcastle United play Leeds United. I arrived two minutes before kick-off, so I was barely in time. The first few minutes of play were rather subdued, but then the tension mounted, the crowd cried out in chorus, and, carried away by the emotion, I joined in. Soon Newcastle was feverishly attacking the Leeds goal. The Newcastle fans became almost ecstatic when their team scored. However, the goal was disallowed. This upset the Newcastle fans, who believed the referee had been guilty of showing favoritism, and there were some violent crowd incidents as angry fans ran onto the pitch.
Comment: As a further exercise for an advanced class learners could be asked to continue the football passage for themselves, trying to use some more vocabulary items from the original passage.
Alternatively they could be asked to paraphrase the vocabulary items used for both passages as follows: half the class would paraphrase the vocabulary as used in the original comprehension passage, and half as used in the football passage. This will underline for learners how the same words actually mean very different things in the two passages, but that there is a unifying common thread of meaning between them in the two contexts; For example, "upset" in the original passage means something like "deeply grieved", "near to tears with grief", "sad and angry". In the football passage it means (as a verb) "to annoy", "to irritate", "to exasperate". Note also the difference between "to feverishly attack a goal" and "to feel feverish", between a "violent incident" and "eyes flashed violently". Learners should be alerted to the processes of metaphor and metonymy at work here, for these are the processes by means of which the proficient language user finds words
for thought, and which we as teachers usually expect our learners.
Exercise:
Using the list of idiomatic expressions given below
a) make up a story;
b) make up dialogs.
Try to use as much idiomatic expressions as possible.
to be in a bind box;
to keep one’s eyes peeled;
to go at it hammer and tongues;
to lose one’s temper;
to take it on the chin;
to turn thumbs down;
to paddle one’s own canoe;
big frog in a small pond;
by word of mouth;
to burn the midnight oil;
bent out of shape;
to bite off more then one can chew;
to jump all over someone;
until you are blue in the face;
to be all ears.
The next task is to render the poem using the idioms under study.
They walked in the lane together,
The sky was covered with stars.
They reached the gate in the silence,
He lifted down the bars.
She neither smiled nor thanked him
Because she knew not how:
For he was just a farmer’s boy
And she the farmers cow.
To broaden the students’ language awareness of idioms we can suggest the following exercises:
I. Insert the missing element; use each idiom in a sentence.
shoot ... one's mouth make ... one's mind
fly ... one's handle prick ... one's ears
go ... one's head turn ... one's nose
II. Supply the necessary words.
play ... /действовать наверняка/ keep ... /скрывать/
drop ... /упасть замертво/ go ... /спятить/
take .../застать врасплох/ go ... /умереть/
think ... /хорошенько подумать/ make ... /удостовериться
make ... /быть высокого мнения/
III. Give Russian equivalents for:
back and forth once and for all
up and down on and off
to and fro then and there
through and through one and all
over and above all and sundry
now and again first and foremost
IV. Think of fifteen idioms that initiate with the preposition in
V. Insert articles if necessary.
take ... dislike to produce ... impression on
take ... liking to keep ... secret from
take ... fancy to cast ... glance on
make ... fuss about make ... attempt at
lend ... hand to pay ... visit to
VI. Analyse the structure of the idioms; compare the three groups from the viewpoint of grammar.
gain ground take an interest take the trouble
give way run a risk get the hang
get wind take a chance have the cheek
leave effect win a victory have the guts
take heed make a stand spill the beans
do good stretch a point know the ropes
mean harm lend a hand take the lead
eat dirt produce an effect take the starch
take action keep a secret tell the truth
lose interest make a crack blow the gab
give consent lift a finger save the day
make pretence cast a glance
VII. Define the meaning of each idiom; use thorn in a story.
take pains take chances
make friends make arrangements
speak volumes take steps
take decisions make plans
VIII. Arrange the following into groups of semantically related idioms.
at best at least at first
at last at worst at latest
at most at farthest at nearest
IX. Reproduce an episode from the book you are reading; employ the given idioms.
come to a head take into account
arrive at a decision come into existence
fly into a passion come into sight
X. Recall some more idioms of a similar structure: Verb + Preposition + Noun.
fall in love take by surprise
keep in check keep in mind
take in tow roll in money
XI. Give an idiom for each number.
1. pass away 5. fall for
2. take to 6. see through
3. make out 7. chime in
4. give in 8. pass on
XII. Group the idioms according to their structure.
in any case, in a whisper, in full cry, at all costs, on no account, in bad shape, at any rate, into the bargain, in deep water, at the same time, under the weather, in the long run, in a tight corner, at a moment's notice, in no time, by no means, on excellent terms, in a bad way, in a flash, in good humour, at arm's length, in the end, At close quarters, on a high horse, with breakneck pace.
Puzzle - making
The next task for students is to work out the puzzle by marching the idioms and their definitions. First, put puzzle-pieces on the desk with the word facing up Take one and match the idiom to the definition. Having done that, place the puzzle-piece, word-side-up, in the chosen rectangle. When you have used up all the pieces, turn them over. If they form a picture of a landscape, the choices are correct If not, rearrange the picture and check the idiom-definition correspondences.
The game objectives. To work out the puzzle, students had to match idioms with their definitions. The objective of the game was for each pair to cooperate in completing the activity successfully in order to expand their vocabulary with, in this case, colloquial expressions.
All students were active and enjoyed the activity. Some of their comments were as follows: "Very interesting and motivating" "Learning can be a lot of fun" etc.
Students also had to find the appropriate matches in the shortest time possible to beat other participating groups. The element of competition among the groups made them concentrate and think intensively.
Translation activity. The other group of students had to work out the meanings of the idioms by means of translation. Unlike the previously described group, they did not know the definitions. The expressions were listed on the board, and students tried to guess their proper meanings giving different options. My role was to direct them to those that were appropriate. Students translated the idioms into Russian and endeavoured to find similar or corresponding expressions in their mother tongue. Unlike the game used for the purpose of idiom introduction, this activity did not require the preparation of any aids. Fewer learners participated actively or enthusiastically in this lesson and most did not show great interest in the activity.
Administering the test. In order to find out which group acquired new vocabulary better, I designed a short test, for both groups containing a translation into English and a game. This allowed learners to activate their memory with the type of activity they had been exposed to in the presentation. The test checking the acquisition of newly-introduced reading vocabulary I. Match the definitions of the idioms with the pictures and write which idiom is depicted and described:
to he inexperienced
to listen very attentively
to be terrified
to be dominated by someone
to be attentive
to be insincere, dishonest
The proper answers are the following:
d., to be wet behind the ears
a., to be all ears
e., to have one's hair stand on end
f., to be led by the nose
b., to be all eyes
с., to be two-faced.
II Translate into English (the translated sentences should be the following):
He is soft in the head.
She is two-faced, always criticizes me behind my back.
Mark has a sweet tooth, so he is not too slim.
Will you hold your tongue if I tell you something?
Why are you such a loose mouth?
Don't be nosy! This is none of your business.
Description of vocabulary picture puzzle
To prepare the puzzle. I cut two equal-sized pieces of cardboard paper into rectangles. The selected idioms were written onto the rectangles in the puzzle-pieces board and their definitions on the game board. On the reverse side of the puzzle-pieces board. 1 glued colourful photographs of landscapes and then cut the puzzle-pieces board into individual pieces, each with an idiom on it. The important thing was the distribution of the idioms and their definitions on the boards. The definitions were placed in the same horizontal row opposite to the idioms so that when put together face to face each idiom faced its definition.