Teach Secondary 13.5

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 Culture is a fantastic vector of language and vice versa, with sport and art providing great opportunities for encountering words of foreign origin. The artform of ballet, for instance – itself a word of French origin – has brought with it some interesting terminologies. One is the postural ‘ plié ’ which literally means ‘folded’. Immediately, the semantic and morphological connections to the Tier 2 word ‘pliable’ (meaning ‘foldable’) are evident. Another past participle, this time from the discipline of fencing, is the word ‘ touché ’ – a term that means ‘touched’, and which is shouted by fencing referees when a duellist has been hit. LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS It’s often said that ‘ English is the hardest language to learn ’ – but is there any veracity to that claim? All languages are, in their own way, highly complex entities. To compare linguistic complexity across languages, however, nuance and context are essential. It’s certainly true that the 44 phonemes of the English language can lead to more orthographic idiosyncrasies compared to the simpler spellings of other tongues such as Spanish, but this is often exaggerated. Only a quarter of English words are spelt irregularly, with the most important being used so frequently that they’re typically learnt by rote. Nor does English’s huge vocabulary mean that the average Anglophone ‘knows more words’ than speakers of less lexically- endowed languages. Grammatical complexity is comparatively easy in English, with regular verbs having only four forms (e.g. ‘play’ / ‘plays’ / ‘played’ / ‘playing’). In French or English, there can be considerably more. One thing we can say, though, is that the complexity of other languages depends on how they relate to yours. The more languages you learn, the better you understand your own. TEACHING TIP: EXPLORING SPACE All teachers would agree that time is one of the most problematic hurdles in education – but what about space? Can we, as educators, exploit it fully to our advantage? Every teacher will be familiar with the saying ‘walls must teach’, but this goes against the competing claim that overloaded displays can generate a form of cognitive ‘clogging’. I would contend that a judicious use of space, combined with a good sense of timing, can be of considerable help when it comes to vocabulary instruction, and would suggest trying the following two strategies: Strategy 1 When reading in class, you don’t want to interrupt the flow. For this, a set of specially designed bookmarks can be a useful tool. Ensure that one side is erasable by applying white vinyl to its surface. Readers can now quickly jot down any words they don’t know, along with the relevant page number, so that they can run said words by their teacher later. On the reverse side, interesting Tier 2 words selected by the teacher can be permanently written on a series of lines, alongside their definitions. Strategy 2 In exercise books, the margins will often be left neglected.Whenever we encounter any interesting vocabulary, I’ll make a ‘big V’ hand signal to my pupils. Immediately, they’ll write a capital ‘V’ in their margins, and we’ll collectively adduce a definition of the newword. This can also help evidence that vocabulary instruction is a regular occurrence within your lessons. David Voisin is a head of MFL Before elementary particles were discovered, the word a tom literally meant ‘which can’t be split’ Adicho tom y is a separation or split into twomutually exclusive or contradictory entities ATracheo tom y is an incision in the windpipe 17 teachwire.net/secondary