Thursday, March 19, 2020

How to Teach the Future - ESL Education

How to Teach the Future - ESL Education Teaching the future in English is relatively simple in the beginning. Students understand the future with will and learn the form quickly. However, the problems begin when discussing the future with going to. The key issue is that the future with going to is logically a better fit when speaking about the future. The future with going to tells us about our plans, whereas the future with will is mainly used to discuss reactions that occur at the moment of speaking and speculation about the future. Of course, there are other uses, but this main issue leads to a lot of confusion among students. Choosing when to introduce the future with will and going to carefully can make all the difference in comprehension. It is recommended to delay introducing these forms until students are comfortable with some basic tenses. Start by Speaking about Plans and Hopes To help students become familiar with both forms, discuss your future plans as well as your thoughts about the future. This will ensure that you use both the future with will and going to. If you are teaching beginning level students, separating the two forms will help students understand the difference. If your students are intermediate level, mixing the forms can assist in teaching the fluidity between the forms in everyday usage. Beginners I have some predictions for next year. I think that you will all speak better English at the end of this course! Im sure I will have a vacation. However, I dont know where. Ill probably visit my parents in Seattle in the summer, and my wife will ... Intermediate Next year, Im going to take up the guitar. It will probably be very difficult for me, but I love music. My wife and are going to fly to New York in September to visit some friends. While were in New York, the weather will probably be good... In both cases, ask students to explain the function or purpose of the different forms. Help students understand that the future with will is used for making predictions, or what you think will happen. The future with going to, on the other hand, is used to state future intentions and plans. Future with 'Will' for Reactions Introduce the future with will for reactions by demonstrating various scenarios that call for reactions: John is hungry. Oh, Ill make him a sandwichLook its raining outside. OK, Ill take my umbrella.Peter doesnt understand the grammar. Ill help him with the exercise. Explaining Future Forms on the Board Use a future with will for promises and predictions timeline to illustrate the future used for speculating about the future. Contrast this timeline with futureƃ‚  with going to for intentions and a plans timeline to illustrate the difference between the two forms. Write positive sentences of both forms on the board and ask students to change the sentences into both questions and negative forms. Point out that will not becomes wont in most everyday use. Comprehension Activities Comprehension activities focusing on specific functions will help cement the understanding of differences between these two forms. For examples, a reading comprehension on the weather can help students use the future with will. This can be contrasted with a listening comprehension discussing future plans with going to. More extended dialogues and reading comprehensions can be used to mix the forms once students understand the differences between the forms. Quizzes asking to choose between future with will or going to also help to solidify understanding. Challenges with the Future As discussed above, the main challenge is in distinguishing between what is planned (going to) and what is a reaction or speculative (will). Add to that the fact that many native speakers mix the forms themselves, and you have a recipe for trouble. I find it helpful to boil teaching down to two questions: Was a decision made about this statement BEFORE the moment of speaking? - If yes, use going toAre you thinking about future possibilities? - If yes, use willIs this a reaction to what someone has said or done? - If yes, use will Not all uses of these two forms can be answered with these simple questions. However, raising students consciousness of these key points will help them become more accurate in their use of these two future forms.

Monday, March 2, 2020

Analysis of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Analysis of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson When Shirley Jacksons chilling story The Lottery was first published in 1948 in The New Yorker, it generated more letters than any work of fiction the magazine had ever published. Readers were furious, disgusted, occasionally curious, and almost uniformly bewildered. The public outcry over the story can be attributed, in part, to The New Yorkers practice at the time of publishing works without identifying them as fact or fiction. Readers were also presumably still reeling from the horrors of World War II. Yet, though times have changed and we all now know the story is fiction, The Lottery has maintained its grip on readers decade after decade. The Lottery is one of the most widely known stories in American literature and American culture. It has been adapted for radio, theater, television, and even ballet. The Simpsons television show included a reference to the story in its Dog of Death episode (season three). The Lottery is available to subscribers of The New Yorker and is also available in The Lottery and Other Stories, a collection of Jacksons work with an introduction by the writer A. M. Homes. You can hear Homes read and discuss the story with fiction editor Deborah Treisman at The New Yorker for free. Plot Summary The Lottery takes place on June 27, a beautiful summer day, in a small New England village where all the residents are gathering for their traditional annual lottery. Though the event first appears festive, it soon becomes clear that no one wants to win the lottery. Tessie Hutchinson seems unconcerned about the tradition until her family draws the dreaded mark. Then she protests that the process wasnt fair. The winner, it turns out, will be stoned to death by the remaining residents. Tessie wins, and the story closes as the villagers- including her own family members- begin to throw rocks at her. Dissonant Contrasts The story achieves its terrifying effect primarily through Jacksons skillful use of contrasts, through which she keeps the readers expectations at odds with the action of the story. The picturesque setting contrasts sharply with the horrific violence of the conclusion. The story takes place on a beautiful summer day with flowers blossoming profusely and the grass richly green. When the boys begin gathering stones, it seems like typical, playful behavior, and readers might imagine that everyone has gathered for something pleasant like a picnic or a parade. Just as fine weather and family gatherings might lead us to expect something positive, so, too, does the word lottery, which usually implies something good for the winner. Learning what the winner really gets is all the more horrifying because we have expected the opposite. Like the peaceful setting, the villagers casual attitude as they make small talk- some even cracking jokes- belies the violence to come. The narrators perspective seems completely aligned with the villagers, so events are narrated in the same matter-of-fact, everyday manner that the villagers use. The narrator notes, for instance, that the town is small enough that the lottery can be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner. The men stand around talking of ordinary concerns like planting and rain, tractors and taxes. The lottery, like the square dances, the teenage club, the Halloween program, is just another of the civic activities conducted by Mr. Summers. Readers may find that the addition of murder makes the lottery quite different from a square dance, but the villagers and the narrator evidently do not. Hints of Unease If the villagers were thoroughly numb to the violence- if Jackson had misled her readers entirely about where the story was heading- I dont think The Lottery would still be famous. But as the story progresses, Jackson gives escalating clues to indicate that something is amiss. Before the lottery starts, the villagers keep their distance from the stool with the black box on it, and they hesitate when Mr. Summers asks for help. This is not necessarily the reaction you might expect from people who are looking forward to the lottery. It also seems somewhat unexpected that the villagers talk as if drawing the tickets is difficult work that requires a man to do it. Mr. Summers asks Janey Dunbar, Dont you have a grown boy to do it for you, Janey? And everyone praises the Watson boy for drawing for his family. Glad to see your mothers got a man to do it, says someone in the crowd. The lottery itself is tense. People do not look around at each other. Mr. Summers and the men drawing slips of paper grin at one another nervously and humorously. On first reading, these details might strike the reader as odd, but they can be explained in a variety of ways for instance, that people are very nervous because they want to win. Yet when Tessie Hutchinson cries, It wasnt fair! readers realize there has been an undercurrent of tension and violence in the story all along. What Does The Lottery Mean? As with many stories, there have been countless interpretations of The Lottery. For instance, the story has been read as a comment on World War II or as a Marxist critique of an entrenched social order. Many readers find Tessie Hutchinson to be a reference to Anne Hutchinson, who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious reasons. (But its worth noting that Tessie doesnt really protest the lottery on principle- she protests only her own death sentence.) Regardless of which interpretation you favor, The Lottery is, at its core, a story about the human capacity for violence, especially when that violence is couched in an appeal to tradition or social order. Jacksons narrator tells us that no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. But although the villagers like to imagine that theyre preserving tradition, the truth is that they remember very few details, and the box itself is not the original. Rumors swirl about songs and salutes, but no one seems to know how the tradition started or what the details should be. The only thing that remains consistent is the violence, which gives some indication of the villagers priorities (and perhaps all of humanitys). Jackson writes, Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. One of the starkest moments in the story is when the narrator bluntly states, A stone hit her on the side of the head. From a grammatical standpoint, the sentence is structured so that no one actually threw the stone- its as if the stone hit Tessie of its own accord. All the villagers participate (even giving Tessies young son some pebbles to throw), so no one individually takes responsibility for the murder. And that, to me, is Jacksons most compelling explanation of why this barbaric tradition manages to continue.