Teaching/Learning the concept of Borrow/Lend & Boring

[tomthorne]

Mary's hoo-hah could also be arousing to many people in the class, which would further complicate matters.

[ehophi]

I give two or three humorous examples and show them part of the internal logic behind the distinction. The matter is really its extraction from sentences, which is what people generally don't catch.

"The angry bears frighten the small children. The small children are frightened. The angry bears are frightening."
"Dead animals disgust you. You are disgusted. Dead animals are disgusting."
"The new baseball pleases John. John is pleased. The new baseball is pleasing."

All that remains is to outline the silliness of the opposite picture. How could dead animals be disgusted? What do frightening, small children or frightened, angry bears look like? How could a new baseball be pleased?

If you have adults, use dirty examples, like:
"John's strong fingers arouse Mary's hoo-hah. Mary's hoo-hah is aroused. John's strong fingers are arousing."

It makes sense to YOU to say "How could a baseball be pleased?" but it doesn't make sense if you are a person who doesn't distinguish between the meaning of "pleased" and "pleasing" in the first place.

And yet, they do.

I also trust you are not serious about using dirty examples in a place like Taiwan. Maybe for an all-male class with a male teacher, where the foreigner is perceived as being (whatever), but that wouldn't fly in most other situations.

And yet, it does.

There's a lot to be said for memory retention and strong emotional response. It's easier to remember things that are funnier, grosser, etc., than things that are not stimulating at all.

[GuyInTaiwan]

ehophi: Very bad idea to get into anything like that with your students. I used to teach some middle-aged adults, and there was a core of perhaps half a dozen students (who all knew each other really well, I might add) who used to come out with all sorts of outrageous stuff at any and every opportunity. I used to downplay it or outright ignore it, and I never encouraged it. The thing anywhere, but especially in Taiwan, is that you're fine, you're fine, you're fired. It's just bad judgement to even go down that road.

[tomthorne]

I give two or three humorous examples and show them part of the internal logic behind the distinction. The matter is really its extraction from sentences, which is what people generally don't catch.

"The angry bears frighten the small children. The small children are frightened. The angry bears are frightening."
"Dead animals disgust you. You are disgusted. Dead animals are disgusting."
"The new baseball pleases John. John is pleased. The new baseball is pleasing."

All that remains is to outline the silliness of the opposite picture. How could dead animals be disgusted? What do frightening, small children or frightened, angry bears look like? How could a new baseball be pleased?

If you have adults, use dirty examples, like:
"John's strong fingers arouse Mary's hoo-hah. Mary's hoo-hah is aroused. John's strong fingers are arousing."

It makes sense to YOU to say "How could a baseball be pleased?" but it doesn't make sense if you are a person who doesn't distinguish between the meaning of "pleased" and "pleasing" in the first place.

And yet, they do.

In all honesty, ehophi, after you explain the difference do all the students start using -ing and -ed adjectives correctly? I mean, a lesson or three later if you fire off questions at them will they answer with the correct form? I just want to make sure that you aren't kidding yourself the way that I and many others have been doing.

[ironlady]

From a CI perspective, the way to teach two very similar words (the problem here is twofold: the words "interesting" and "interested" are fairly similar, and the meanings are opposite -- not much different from the situation with "mai3" to buy and "mai4" to sell in Chinese) is to present ONE of them first, exhaustively. Give input focusing on interesting, interesting, interesting, until they can produce it correctly without thought. Then (and only then) focus on "interested" without contrasting the two unless someone asks. When they are able to produce "interested" without thinking, then you can contrast the two.

Also, the two terms ARE different in Chinese: 借給他 is "lend to him" and 向他借 is "borrow from him". It is not the case that the only way to say "borrow" or "lend" in Chinese is just 借. Teaching "lend" and "borrow" this way is stronger than teaching them as individual words, and you also get the extra bonus of practicing prepositional phrases that go with those verbs.

[ehophi]

ehophi: Very bad idea to get into anything like that with your students. I used to teach some middle-aged adults, and there was a core of perhaps half a dozen students (who all knew each other really well, I might add) who used to come out with all sorts of outrageous stuff at any and every opportunity. I used to downplay it or outright ignore it, and I never encouraged it. The thing anywhere, but especially in Taiwan, is that you're fine, you're fine, you're fired. It's just bad judgement to even go down that road.

I wouldn't harp on it like a comedian, but I wouldn't downplay it or ignore it just because it was vulgar. You can nest them in trite examples, too, and not all funny things are of that nature. I've made no real efforts to filter my students in this respect.

It was actually a trick that I learned (and that my anatomy instructor encouraged) when we had to memorize the names, origins, insertions, and actions of the muscles of the human body for massage school. Any mnemonic device will work, and more graphic invocations work better than duller ones. I have probably lapsed on all of the muscles since I was in massage school almost ten years ago, but I know that the mnemonics helped then and would help again if I went into it.

I've never been fired from a teaching job, and I wouldn't worry about losing a teaching job in a place like Taiwan.

I mean, a lesson or three later if you fire off questions at them will they answer with the correct form?

I give students assignments that demand a lot of self-analysis. I might give a lesson on some grammatical points in one sitting, and then keep an eye on their written work. When they commit some common mistake, I can point it out and give them some similar examples. If I give them lame and dull examples, they barely remember. But if I give them some more stimulating examples, they remember it better. They do the analogous reasoning to fix their own work, and over time pieces and chunks become non-issues.

I give lessons for grammar, and I target it on things that most students are getting wrong most often. I don't feel that I'm repeating myself too often, but I do in some areas.