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For those who study and teach English as a second or foreign language, the sheer number of English verbs (not to mention the complex rules of tense and aspect) can be daunting. How will we ever learn them all?

For those who create and write using English words as a medium, the magnificent number of English verbs can be equally overwhelming. How will we ever use them all?

Part of what increases this language’s population density is the presence of both single-word verbs and phrasal verbs (verb phrases that are generally made up of – and defined through – a combination of a verb and a preposition).

An example of the difference between the two is this: to capitulate means to surrender, wave a white flag, or admit defeat. A phrasal verb with the same meaning would be to give up.

The modern conventions of writing, especially in the world of fiction, may drive a person crazy with the need to kowtow to tight word count limits and always choose a more active or dramatic verb over a less colorful one for fear that we might tell the reader something instead of showing it.

But I would like to argue that the verbs we choose (especially in our written communication) should not be chosen based solely on such factors. Rather, they should be chosen on a case by case basis, according to their basic meaning, their meaning in a given context, tone and register of the genre or audience preference, their weight or feel in a sentence, and the rhythm or texture they add to the piece as a whole.

To return to the first example, observe (or check out) these sentences:

It sounds much more noble for the king of the land to say, “I shall never capitulate, never give my self and my kingdom over to that fiend!” And it sounds much more realistic for the teen punk to yell at his brother while they are wrestling, “Come on…man! I don’t…want to…hurt you. Give up already!” Imagine how odd it might sound if we exchanged those two words in these cases.

To get your creative juices flowing, here is a list of ten more great verbs and their possible phrasal verb equivalents.

  • Circumvent –> Get around
  • Distribute –> Give out
  • Investigate –> Find out
  • Establish –> Set up
  • Announce –> Talk about
  • Display –> Show off
  • Divide –> Divvy up
  • Convert –> Change over
  • Involve –> Draw in
  • Cooperate –> Join with

I encourage you to add to the list in the comments section and also in your own writing notes. And the next time you’re working on a piece, don’t stress over adding an extra word to your count here or there if it means communicating your meaning and feeling more adequately.

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My little buddy, Mr. Whiskers, is the ideal pet for me.

But we had a little adjusting to do when he first came home. He was rescued by the Humane Society and, as an adult animal, he had already developed some habits and fears of his own. He’s not a cuddly beast – and is definitely king of his cage. Yet, as we’ve gotten to know each other better, I think he’s learned to trust me.

My new landlord stopped by recently. Part way through his visit, Whiskers started going nuts, begging me for some more food. (There is a distinctive “I’m hungry” squeak guinea pigs make.) The landlord was amazed: I could interpret for and communicate with a two pound ball of fur! I smiled. “Oh, yes. He’s clever and always lets me know what he needs and what he doesn’t like.”

Caring for Mr. Whiskers brings me a great deal of joy, and I firmly believed he feels safe in my care. How do I know? Guinea pigs do not fully relax and rest or sleep deeply unless they really feel like nothing or no one is going to hurt them. These days, Whiskers has been progressively more at ease, fully resting during times when I am home and sitting nearby.

Here are a few things I’ve learned (or relearned) from having a piggy to love.

First, he craves the good stuff. No unhealthy choices for Whiskers. When I tried to give him sugary pet snacks that were supposed to be good for him, he refused to eat them. Only the fresh stuff will satisfy him: timothy hay from the bail, cilantro, parsley, cucumber, watermelon, tomato, celery, carrot, lettuce, kale, and spinach. When he eats any of those things, he goes after them with gusto. I need to crave and be satisfied with the good stuff.

Second, he tells me its okay to have fun. Every now and then, Whiskers will display his zany side. He will grin at me while stretching high in his cage and make a certain grunt to show the food is outstanding, popcorn (jump straight up in the air) to show happiness and excitement, hide in his hut and then stick his nose out when I ask where he is, or play peek-a-boo with me around his water bottle. Interestingly enough, he usually does these things on days when I especially need a laugh, a smile, or a heart lift. It is great to be grateful for everyday things and stop to relax or play.

Third, he knows when it’s time to rest. About the time I should be heading to bed at night, Whiskers finishes up his late evening snack and lays down contentedly in his preferred sleeping corner. If I stay up much later, it upsets him and he wants to know what the problem is, getting worked up and making a ruckus. I am learning to wind down earlier. 🙂

Thank God for the gifts of goodness and love in every package – no matter how big or how small.

In the comments, please share about a favorite pet or what you have learned from an animal.

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Labor Day weekend is upon us. What better way to celebrate than to work? 🙂

I do look forward to a bit of rest and family time, but before that I will be providing training for some volunteer tutors in my community. They want to be effective helpers to their friends who are learning English, but many of these tutors have not formally studied education or language teaching theory.

Our training time is limited. And the sea of theory/practice in the ELL world is wide. How will I cross it and keep all of them in the boat with me during our short session today?

In planning and creating materials for the session, I had to ask myself, “What does it all really boil down to?” I had to go back to the basics.

For this session, that will mean focusing on the most fundamental principles of language learning and teaching (such as maintaining a balance between accuracy and fluency in progress) as well as a reminder of the elementary pattern for a solid lesson plan.

It will also mean telling myself multiple times throughout the day that we will not cross such a wide sea in one session. And that is okay.

Just as learning a language is a long, challenging process (especially for adult learners), learning how to teach a language well and help a language learner are things that take much time, practice, and patience.

From all of this, I draw several important recyclable lessons.

Anytime we need to explain something or teach others in life, no matter the topic or subject, we must always start with the most basic blocks and terms and work from there. And it never hurts to revisit the basics.

Every teacher trainer must keep the basics in mind when preparing additional materials or explaining more advanced principles.

Every language teacher or tutor must find hope in each teaching experience – both the ones that go very well to lift up the heart and the ones that ride roughly, where we learn from mistakes.

Every language student must join the ones they are learning with and from on the journey, recalling always that it is a journey. Today and tomorrow, we will learn something new. Or recall something previously learned. Or both. 

And in the end, hopefully, we will all look back and be able to see how far we have come.

In the comments, I invite you to name one of the most basic principles from your life or field/work that you always (want to) keep coming back to.

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Next in my series of writing posts, I would like to highlight five great nouns (and a few of their synonyms) that can be used to identify internal things/traits people may possess.  As you read my list, I hope it will stir up some fresh thoughts for your writing, written communication, and descriptions of others.

  1. Contentment – state of having an easy mind because one is satisfied with what one has or because one has “enough”. Ease, gladness, equanimity, satisfaction. How often could you use this word to describe people you know? In our modern world, I find that people who claim to be content are often looked down upon because they aren’t driven and ambitious enough – and that having “enough” can be an extremely subjective thing depending on one’s personal philosophy.
  2. Prowess – superior ability, skill, or strength to excel in something. Aptitude, expertise, talent, command, deftness. I have seen or heard this used in a mostly negative sense. But the truth is that many people possess prowess in one area or another. Whether we are arrogant, showy, or pushy about it is up to us.
  3. Sensibility, Sensibilities – capacity to feel and quickness to respond; capacity for intellectual and aesthetic distinctions, feelings, and tastes. Insight, appreciation, discernment, sentiment, perceptiveness. Most people have common sense (though some of us pay less attention to it than we should), but some have sensibilities which are more heightened or prone to offense.
  4. Tenacity – holding fast to something, not giving up, persevering.  Determination, doggedness, perseverance, steadfastness. This is another word that can be used in either a positive way (a school principal who works hard for years through a very lean budget to help struggling students achieve high goals) or a negative way (the businessperson who demands to make a higher profit not matter what harmful production byproducts might do to the community).
  5. Gumption – Initiative or resourcefulness someone displays. Acumen, savvy, astuteness, get-up-and-go. When I hear this word, I often think of a person (like the Energizer bunny) who seems to have an endless supply of energy, hopefulness, ideas, or solutions. A person with gumption may get knocked down, but he/she won’t stay down for too long.

In the comments section, I invite you to share some of your own favorite nouns – especially positive or negative character traits that people can possess – or to give an example of how you might use the above words in a sentence.

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The news is ugly. So I watch little of it. Just enough to know the basics – and to be reminded of the fragile, broken world I inhabit.

It makes me sad to think of all the hateful things that have been said and done in both the past weeks and the past centuries. It makes me even sadder to recall all the zealots, fascists, bigots, and other radicals who have backed up their beliefs, claims, and propaganda by waving a banner of religion over their proud heads.

There have been many things done in Jesus’ name that Jesus would never condone. And any claim of ethnic superiority is one of them.

How do I know? Because Jesus was bi-racial. And so am I.

“What?” you say. “Jesus wasn’t bi-racial. He had one of the purest Jewish blood lines possible, well-recorded in ancient manuscripts. And you certainly don’t look bi-racial.”

But He was, and I am.

True, I am of European decent, with ancestors from at least six countries – a bit of the Scandinavian and a lot of the Anglo-Saxon. So by nationality I am American, and I always mark myself as Caucasian on surveys.

And after I had lived in China long enough, though I had no real shot at becoming a Chinese citizen, my students did me the honor of proclaiming that I was now an “egg” – white on the outside but yellow on the inside. I was deeply touched by their observation.

Those things are fine, but they are not what I’m talking about. Let me tell you about the races I identify with most strongly.

The first race is the human race. Human beings are my family. You are my family. It doesn’t matter where your ancestors came from, what country or state you grew up in, or what type of immediate family background you have. You are my brother or sister in humanity, and each of us was made by God’s hand, in His image. In the eighth psalm, King David writes that God made people amazingly well, just a tiny step below angels, and crowned us with glory and honor. And He created wondrous variety.

The second race is the life race. We are all running from our earliest years to the day we die. Some of us will run a longer race than others. However, the race can be grueling and the completion can get ugly. That’s because the honored, crowned products of the Creator have all fallen short of His glory, the glory we were originally endowed with. This is where we start to outdo each other in peer and self destruction. As with any race, life has a goal. And I’ve found that what or who I’m running toward at my finish line makes all the difference in how I live my life now.

Jesus was a part of the human race, but He was the only one to ever complete life’s race without falling short of that original goodness. I, on the other hand, am fully human and have fully fallen (before being lifted again by mercy). But the point is that both of us–and each of you–are bi-racial, no matter what our ethnic identification.

Now… if we could only remember those details every time we view the individuals around us.

 

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Have you ever attended a presentation, class, or meeting and watched another attendee use their phone, tablet, or camera to take pictures of PowerPoint slides, posters, or whiteboard lists instead of taking the time to write down or type out that information for later reference? (And have you ever done the same?)

I’m not saying this is a wholly bad thing. I’ve done it myself when a teacher’s diagram on the board was incredibly complex and replicating it on the spot seemed impossible. Technology has its advantages and, correctly used, can help make our learning lives easier.

But I am fearful that if students (and language learners more specifically) start to increasingly take notes simply by taking photos of things instead of recording information in some more engaging and personal fashion, such lazy note taking will result in numerous negative outcomes. Here I will share three of them.

  • Students will be less likely to really recall information later. For many learners, there is something that connects in our brains when we both listen and write or see and write at the same time. This opportunity to more actively process the information even as we are introduced to it makes a way for us to remember things longer and in a more meaningful way.
  • Student listening abilities will continue to decrease. At this point, I’m not necessarily speaking of a student’s language listening level. Rather, when students are busy taking a picture, they are often not listening closely to what the presenter or instructor is saying. As with many aspects of our technologically-driven world, the art of listening seems to be lost while we stare at devices and develop consistently shorter attention spans.
  • Students will not develop the ability to effectively organize and summarize information. The student who tries to transcribe a fast-speaking lecturer’s speech in her notebook will often become very frustrated, since the point of taking notes is to listen closely and write down things that are key, useful, or thought-provoking. In order to listen well and take good notes, a student must practice. By doing so, she can gain valuable experience in organizing information, prioritizing what she hears, and summarizing a speakers main points. All of these skills are useful in both professional settings and effective daily communication with relatives and friends.

When I start teaching a new set of classes later this month, I’m going to offer my students notebooks and pens, because I have a feeling some of them will come to class without these inexpensive but important tools. Whether or not they accept my offer, I will stress that they are to either write things down or type them instead of simply capturing screenshots. In this way, I hope that they will learn more in terms of both language and content throughout the term.

Feel free to comment below. What are your thoughts about “lazy note-taking”?

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A dear friend named Nyla came to visit my family this past week. While shopping together one delightful afternoon, we came across a unique floor rug from India, a long one in which the weaver connected many pieces of brightly died and tightly woven silken rope.

Later, Nyla presented me with the rug. She had purchased it when I stepped out of the store temporarily, and it was her housewarming gift for me and a home I will be purchasing in the months ahead.

I took the rug home and studied it. Many thoughts flew through my mind, about how this rug represents my life. Here are a few of them…

  • It is brightly colored and beautiful, despite (and perhaps because of) the irregular pattern.
  • Someone certainly worked for hours to make it, probably sweating and perhaps bleeding in the process. The only way my life has become what it is now and the only way I’ve been renewed is because of the blood and sweat of the One who loved me most.
  • One color runs into the next in a clear-cut way. Recalling plans, dreams, and intentions, my life is so different now that I imagined it would be as a child, teen, and young adult – often because of 90 degree turns in the road of life that I had little or no control over.
  • What looks like old rags and scraps of cloth has been made into something that the product tag says was used in the palaces of past Indian leaders and kings. In the right hands, with the true value known, what was before called worthless, ordinary, or disposable now becomes treasured, extraordinary, and glorious.

These thoughts inspired me to write a short poem.

from rags to glory

my eyes absorb

for one spun moment

the whole of life

in love’s outpouring

my days restored

through threads close-woven

a plan packed tight

a life: rich, colorful, useful, reclaimed

a plan: unforeseen, hope outshining shame

Today I invite you to ponder the tapestry of your own life, consider all the wonderful and hard things you’ve lived through, and think about how beautiful you must appear to the One who made you – the same one who can and does remake us, when we allow Him to.

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Why are we often taught or encouraged not to cry by other members of society? Men may feel they’ll be seen as lacking masculinity, women may fear being branded as unprofessional, weak, or overly-emotional – depending on the setting they are in, and children may receive cruel taunts from their peers.

But tears are a wonderful thing, given to us by God. He designed us fearfully well, and that includes every last detail: not a mistake among them. Pause to think for a moment about what tears do for us.

They keep our eyes moist. A doctor recently put me on a prescription drug I’d never been on before. I woke up early this morning to discover one of the drug’s side effects in me – some of the driest eyes I’d ever had. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to grab some eye drops (something I almost never need to do).

They keep our hearts tender. Life circumstances over the past six weeks have driven me to cry far more than I have in a long time. While I am still careful about who I cry in front of (a trait I cannot seem to avoid), I know that releasing emotion through a good  cry – sometimes more than once a day – has helped me to keep a healthy perspective and a heart that flies above fear to continue loving.

They keep our souls open. No matter if they are tears of sadness, happiness, frustration, or some other emotion, they open a temporary chasm where, sometimes only for a moment, the deepest core of you and I can be touched by the fingers of eternity. In our rawness, with nothing to hide us, we are simply self before God and any other(s) who might witness our tears.

Yes… That is why we are afraid to cry. Because when we are that real, we are that fragile. And the one(s) listening to us cry have a choice. They can either mock, despise, or punish us for our tears. OR they can respect our need to open up and drive out what should not remain – the flushing of the impure or the painful from the eyes, the heart, the soul.

If you need to cry today, find a space in which to do it, whether alone or with others. And if you find yourself near a crying person today, recognize the power you hold in how you choose to respond: the power to crush and harm or the power to nurture health and healing.

In the comments, I invite you to share your thoughts about tears.

 

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Writers – and language speakers in general – have a tendency to fall back on go-to words that are comfortable for us. In the case of adjectives, this may mean that we describe too many things as big or small, nice or good, interesting or all right. These can become “weasel words” – words that sneak into our communication to make it commonplace and far less powerful than it could be. Why not use over-sized for big, enjoyable for nice, captivating for interesting, and passable for all right? Variety is the zest and spice of grand writing.

On that note, my next several posts under the label of the written stuff in coming months will highlight sets of rich words that you can build into your own writing (and speaking, when appropriate), to more specifically, meaningfully, or delightfully communicate to your audience.

Let’s start with five potent adjectives…

  1. Lavish: sumptuously rich, elaborate, or luxurious. (Wow, in that definition, there are a string of other great words!) When was the last time you experienced or imagined something lavish? And what elements of your current lifestyle might seem lavish to a family in a developing country?
  2. Chivalrous: having such qualities as courage, courtesy, and loyalty, especially used for men who are gracious towards women and honorable towards their enemies. Some would call this word archaic because it smacks of gender inequality and a bygone, sexist society. But it’s still a great word to use in writing historical pieces. And I, for one, find chivalrous men to be the best sort. 🙂
  3. Objectionable: offensive or causing disapproval and protest. This is another one that doesn’t sit well with some folks presently because it may accompany an intolerant attitude or judgmental set of ideals. But the truth is we all have opinions and we all find certain things to be uncomfortable to the point of being NOT OK. We must learn to screen such feelings and instincts for truth, but such feelings and instincts are there for a purpose and can be used to do a great deal of good when rightly acted upon.
  4. Ambivalent: having mixed feelings or being unable to choose between two or more things or courses of action. It’s ironic – how ambivalent I can feel about picking the right word in a given sentence while revising a draft. 🙂
  5. Leery: wary, suspicious, or distrustful of someone or something. Adding a variety of feeling words such as these can enrich the description of a character’s emotions, one the draws the reader further in to the character’s personal experience.

Happy vocabulary building! If you have other useful or enriching adjectives you have discovered or successfully used, please share them with us in the comments section below!

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One of the joint challenges and joys of being an English as a Second Language teacher lies in describing the meanings of words. English is a complex language, and trying to explain the different meanings of and ways to use various lexical items can be daunting. Why do we say that we put on our clothes and we put up with an annoying person but we put away our things and we put aside our differences? What’s the difference between “I’m sorry for what I did” and “He was a sorry excuse for a coach”?

A critical aspect of this teaching responsibility comes when I have to explain the true meaning of words that native speakers often overuse or use incorrectly. I dealt with this in a recent book club meeting, when the main character realized he hated someone and the author used the character’s thoughts to give a very clear definition of hate. I paused to tell the international student club members about how this was an accurate usage of the word hate, and therefore cautioned them about using it with other people, even in a joking sense.

I was thinking today about a couple more words we use a lot in a very casual manner. One is amazing and the other is awesome. I hear these words used in advertisements, announcements, meetings, and casual conversations. They can now be used to describe everything from movies to hot wings and haircuts to car engines. These things may be entertaining, delicious, intriguing, or impressive. But are they really amazing and awesome?

According to Webster’s Dictionary, amazing means “causing astonishment, great wonder, or surprise.” Awesome means “inspiring awe” and awe means “an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime.” In other words, things that are truly amazing will leave us speechless, feeling small in the face of the noble, the heavenly, the beautiful, or the powerful. (Hot wings are nice, but this is not the feeling I have when I eat them!)

So if everything is awesome or amazing, we should be falling over in shock and wonder, speechless at every turn. Yet, here we are: talking, texting, and face-timing with more repetitive words than ever before about things that are good and nice but not truly extraordinary.  I would like to suggest that we have so watered down what makes us feel amazed and awestruck that we don’t know how to stop and really notice the truly amazing, awesome, wonderful, and exceptional blessings God puts in our lives each day.

That’s what I want to model for my students, even as I answer their questions about English. I want them to hear me use amazing and awesome correctly because I am quietly, wonderingly observing every good gift and powerful deed that comes from the Giver.

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