Teach-Secondary-14.1

DICTIONARY DEEP DIVE Join David Voisin on a rich, and sometimes surprising journey through the points at which literacy, language and vocabulary intersect... SAME ROOT, DIFFERENTWORDS PARDON MY FRENCH Meaning is sometimes lost in translation, particularly when it comes to feelings and emotions. There aren’t any satisfactory synonyms for ‘zen’ or ‘schadenfreude’, for example. French has its fair share of exports to the English lexicon. You may be ‘ nonchalant ’ – navigating the vicissitudes of modern life with a carefree attitude. If you have an implacable ‘ joie de vivre ’ ( joy to be alive), then your ‘ insouciance ’ (literacy bereft of worry) may well define you. LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS In my teens, I remember being impressed by a French classmate’s command of English after he’d spent a year in the US.What set him apart wasn’t his vocabulary, but his natural use of ‘ ...you know? ’ Those two words gave his speech a sense of fluency, immediately rendering it more organic-sounding. Fast forward a few years, and the modern equivalent – the discourse particle ‘ like ’ – doesn’t seem to generate quite the same level of appreciation. Indeed, its rather overenthusiastic use by millennials on reality TV shows has prompted opprobrium and consternation frommany viewers. In some schools, it’s even been banned altogether. But are we missing a learning opportunity? The word is popular because of its practicality. It is, like 1 , really rich . Even if you’re not as like 2 -minded as those younger generations, we must recognise that ‘like’ is nothing if not versatile.Whether deployed as an adverb (1), adjective(2), preposition (3) or conjunction (4), it has many uses. Christopher Hitchens once remarked that some were using the word like 3 “ A crutch and a tic .” He had a point. ‘Like’ is a legitimate player – so long as it oils language, rather than clutter it up. Like 4 some might say, eloquence stems from lexical choice and self-control. So let’s give students the means to employ ‘like’ parsimoniously. TEACHING TIP: LET’S HAVE AWORD The ‘Word of the Week’ is a well-known literacy activity. Some use it enthusiastically, while others will see it as a waste of time. So which is it? Students are meant to be learning thousands of words during their teenage years. Hypothetically, proficient readers (those who understand at least 98% of the words they read) can encounter dozens of new words within a single chapter of a book – far more than a whole year’s worth of ‘word of the week’ sessions. Teaching vocabulary, however, is about more than just numbers. Not calling those Tier 2 words ‘posh’, or ‘better’ words would be a good start. A more judicious approach would be to teach a lemma (words that are morphologically linked), or lexical fields (words organised around a shared theme or meaning). The teaching of word structure can often be neglected. A further underexploited variance is the use of MFL translations. For instance, the term ‘agitated’ is obviously linked to the French ‘ agiter ’. Yet beyond the fact that both words are cognates, the truly interesting thing is that agiter means ‘to shake’ (‘agitated’ meaning shaken, metaphorically). The French translation for ‘agitated’ might be ‘ perturbé ’ (cf perturbed), thus opening the door to lexical exploration even wider. David Voisin is a head of MFL If you re spect someone, you hold them in high ‘ regard ’ (French for ‘look’) Intro spect ion is akin to ‘looking inside one’s mind’ Even without my spect acles, the visual display looked spec tacular 11 teachwire.net/secondary