Teach Secondary Issue 13.4

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 Root words of French provenance are so ubiquitous that English speakers are likely to employ French words or expressions daily without even noticing. For example, if you’ve forgotten the French word for ‘day’, a little linguistic ‘mise a jour’ (update) may be ‘de rigueur’ (required). ‘Jour’ is contained within ‘bonjour’ , which literally means ‘good day’ , just as our Australian and German friends would say. Jour is also found in ‘journalists’, who may work for a ‘daily’ tabloid.Was your meeting ad jour ned? Then it was postponed to another day. And then there’s jour ney – which used to refer to a ‘day trip’. LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Should standard English prevail in the classroom? Linguistics professor Rob Drummond once (rightly) observed that ‘non-standard’ doesn’t mean ‘sub- standard’. SE is, after all, just one facet of the English language. In our diverse society, students may come from backgrounds where other idiolects predominate over SE and represent an integral part of their identity. In his book How To Teach: Literacy , however, Phil Beadle advocates for the sole use of SE by both teachers and students – and as a language teacher, I can relate to his view. The language we choose should respond to a need. If students lack exposure to SE, it’s our role to provide that linguistic environment. Giving pupils another register of language is therefore not an imposition, but empowers them with the freedom of choice and ability to adapt their language to given situations – what linguists call ‘code switching’. TEACHING TIP: MAKE USE OF THE CONTEXT The Frayer model is a well-established paradigm for exploring words via visual means, which sees students create examples and non-examples of target vocabulary, before creating illustrations to further drive home the meanings of said vocabulary. There are, however, some alternative approaches that are also worth looking at. John Sweller, the godfather of cognitive load theory, has previously said that the limitations of working memory that apply to novel information soon disappear when dealing with familiar information already stored in long termmemory. Explicit vocabulary instruction is all about helping students establish those links – so here are some tips for encouraging a semantic exploration of new vocabulary: • Our diurnal brains rely heavily on the visual cortex. To that end, visual stimuli to complement the processing of written words (dual coding) can help cement semantics into our memory. • One powerful strategy you can deploy is to systematically break up words. This doesn’t have to produce meaningful morphological components, such as inflections or root words; a charade-like decoupage can just as effective when it comes to memorisation, and perhaps be more fun! ‘Crepuscular,’ for instance, resembles an amalgamation of ‘ crêpe ’ and ‘ muscular ’. I personallymemorised the word ‘uxoricide’ based on the pyramid of Luxor (my own cultural capital) and the suffix ‘ cide ’, meaning killing – as in suicide, fratricide, regicide, genocide, infanticide, etc. (morphological knowledge). • What we’re ultimately talking about is ‘bouncing off’ existing knowledge to facilitate memorisation. This can be achieved through phonetic patterns (like homophones), orthographic ones (as in ‘insolence / indolence’, ‘insidious / invidious’, ‘arrogate / abrogate’ etc.) or indeed both. David Voisin is a head of MFL An extra- terr estrial is, literally, an outlandish creature In French, ‘La Terr e’ means ‘earth’ or ‘soil’; a sub terr anean lake is situated underground A terr itory is a piece of land; the Terr itorial Army operates on the ground, sometimes using all- terr ain vehicles that can negotiate rugged surfaces 17 teachwire.net/secondary