Ÿ
"Using Limericks to Practise the Rhythm of English" by Bernadine McCreesh
Ÿ
"World
Wide Audience – Creative Writing on the Net" by Gavin Dudeney
USING
LIMERICKS TO PRACTISE THE RHYTHM OF ENGLISH
by
Bernadine McCreesh
University
of Quebec at Chicoutimi
Chicoutimi,
Quebec, Canada
bmccrees@uqac.ca
Level: grade 6 to adult
Time: a minimum of one class-period,
but can be increased by doing the optional activities
Aims:
·
to acquaint students with the rhythm of English
(recurring stressed and unstressed syllables)
·
to give students practice in producing stressed and
unstressed syllables
·
to acquaint students with an English verse-form used
for non-serious purposes
·
to give students practice in scanning texts for
specific information and in reading carefully once the information has been
located.
Resources/ materials:
1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerick_(poetry) (encyclopedia article with facts about limericks)
2.
http://www.harbeck.ca/Reg/limerick.html (enables
students to write their own limericks)
3.
http://www.math.fsu.edu/~mesterto/Unscramble/limericks.html (limericks, some of which require knowledge of idioms
and English culture and are suitable for advanced classes)
4.
http://www.freewebs.com/grahamlester/classics.htm (many based on word-play and suitable for advanced
classes)
5.
http://theblarneywell.com/silly_limericks.htm (mainly about
animals, suitable for younger students)
6.
http://home.earthlink.net/~kristenaa/nice/ (30 pages of
limericks, some of which do not scan)
Possible problems:
1. Many
limericks are dirty or indecent. For
this reason, it is not advisable to ask teenage students to type limericks
into a search-engine. They will
probably enjoy what they find, and they will undoubtedly increase their
knowledge of slang and colloquial English quite considerably, but you may end
up in trouble with parents and school-principals if the youngsters recite bawdy
limericks at home.
2. For
the same reason, limit the amount of time students are given to find the
answers to the questions on Worksheet One and/or correct as soon as the first
pair has found the right answers.
3. Activity
c) in the pre-stage can be carried out only in classes in which students have
room to circulate.
Procedure
Before class.
Go to the last four websites in the list above and
find limericks which would be suitable for your class. If you have between 26
and 30 students, you will need six limericks; if you have between 21 and 25,
you will need five, and so on. In large type, print out the limericks
double-spaced and then cut them up into lines.
For the optional activity, take another limerick and
cut it up into phrases, three for lines 1, 2, 5 and two for lines 3 and 4. Make as many copies as there are groups in
the class.
1. Pre-stage
a) Ask
students if they know what a limerick is.
Put an example on the board or overhead projector. Ask a volunteer to read it aloud. The students are usually struck by the
rhythm. Ask them to define/describe a
limerick--number of lines, rhyme-scheme, rhythm.
b) At
this point, you may wish to do one or more of the activities found in the
worksheets below, depending on the students’ level and the time available.
c) Give
out the cut-up limericks, one line per student. Any left-over lines can be
placed on the teacher's desk for consultation. (Make sure that the left-over
lines are all from different limericks.) The students walk around the room
trying to find the people who have the other lines of their limerick. Then they rearrange the lines to make the
limerick, taking missing lines from the teacher’s desk if necessary. Completed limericks can be written on the board, written on sheets of
paper and posted on the walls, or recited to the rest of the class.
d) (Optional
activity) Give each group the chopped
up limerick and ask them to reassemble it.
(This activity takes less time than you would expect.)
e) Give
a copy of Worksheet One to each group of five (or less) students. In their groups, students try to come to a
consensus on what the right answers are to the questions on the worksheet. (5 minutes maximum.) In the meantime, the teacher draws the following
chart on the board (assuming there are five groups) and gives a copy of the
chart to a student if the class is not taking place in the computer lab.
|
Question/Group
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1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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A
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B
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
C
|
|
|
|
|
|
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D
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E
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|
The teacher asks each group for their answer and records
the answers on the chart. The student
does the same thing on his/her chart.
2. While-stage ( 30 min)
a)
The
students now are divided into pairs and go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerick_(poetry). They are
given 5-10 minutes to try to find the answers to the questions on Worksheet
One. When the time is up, the teacher
corrects the worksheets with the class.
The scores are then tallied to see
which team had guessed the most correct answers.
b) The students then go to http://www.harbeck.ca/Reg/limerick.html and answer the questions on Worksheet Two. Sheets can be corrected in class or handed
in at the end of the class.
c)
Using one
sentence/phrase from each line, each pair makes up the most sensible limerick
they can and gives it a title.
Using one sentence/phrase from each line, they then make up the silliest
limerick they can and give it a title.
3. Post-stage ( 5 min.)
a) Write
out/Print out the limericks. Students
write their names on the back of the sheets.
Post the sheets on the wall under Sensible Limericks or Silly
Limericks. The class votes for the
best limerick in each category.
Note
If you are
using this lesson-plan primarily for pronunciation-practice, the compound nouns
found in the answers sweetheart, bluejay, hearsay, heartburn are excellent for intrducing or practising primary/secondary
stress and the up-down intonation patterns found on compound nouns at the end
of a sentence.
e.g. äsweetæ
æheart
WORKSHEETS
Worksheet One
- Limericks are called limericks because
they were first written in the town of Limerick, in Ireland.
a) definitely true b) probably true c)
probably false d) definitely false
- The first poem in limerick form is thought to have been written
approximately when?
a) 1400
b) 1600 c) 1750 d)
1900
When was the
word limerick first used to describe this type of poem?
a) in the
early fourteenth century b) at the start of the seventeenth century
c) in the eighteenth century d)
in the last decade of the nineteenth century
- Who popularised the form?
a) William Shakespeare b)
Tom o’ Bedlam c) Edward Lear d) Ogden Nash
- Approximately how many limericks did this person write?
a) 200
b) 500 c) 1,000 d)
5,000
Worksheet Two
1. Go to line
1.
a)
Find a word which means boyfriend,
girlfriend.
b)
Find the names of two birds.
2.
Go to line 2.
a)
Find a word which means stories,
rumours.
b)
Find a word for something you ride
on in the snow.
c)
Find an expression which means sex. [(Omit with younger students.)]
3.
Go to line 3.
a)
Find a word for an ingredient in
granola. [or porridge]
b)
Find a word or expression which
means excellent.
c)
Find an expression which means became
fiancés.
4.
Go to line 4.
a)
Find a word which means partner,
companion.
b)
Find a word which means ate too
much.
c)
Find an expression which means becoming…heavier.
5.
Go to line 5.
a)
Find a word which means no.
b)
Find a word which means became
excited.
c)
Find a word which means indigestion,
a burning sensation in the stomach.
6.
Now find the name(s) of
a)
a town in the U.S.
b)
a city in India
c)
a country in the Near East
d)
two places in Canada
Note 1: Whitehorse and Yellowknife
exist in Canada, but not Yellowhorse.
Note 2. These words have been chosen with French-speaking
students in mind.
You may
wish to add more words or use different ones.
Optional Worksheets
I.
Fill in the blanks
asked balanced fell floor
fork
once peas pork schoolboy slices
I ____________ met a _______________
in York,
Who _______________
his _______________
on his _______________.
When they _______________
on the _______________,
He _______________
for some
more,
To go with his _______________
of _______________.
II.
Fill in the blanks (focus on grammar)
(With this exercise, you can either
dictate the limerick or leave the students to figure out the words themselves
depending on their level.)
__________Halloween
__________ Quebec,
__________
man __________ outside __________ deck,
When
_______________ surprise
__________
dropped _______________ skies,
__________
vampire __________ made _______________ neck.
(Cultural note: in North America, houses are
often decorated for Halloween (October 31) with pumpkins, witches, spiders,
spiders' webs, gravestones, skeletons, etc.
Vampires also belong to this tradition.)
Original limerick:
One Halloween in
Quebec,
A man was
outside on his deck,
When to his surprise
There dropped from the skies,
A vampire which
made for his neck.
III.
Scrambled Limericks (Advanced)
Instructions: The lines in the following limericks have
gotten into the wrong poem. Rearrange
them so that the limericks make sense. Line 2 should stay as the second line,
line 3 as the third line, etc., but in a different limerick.
There was a
young scholar called Cy,
On her
neighbours she wanted to spy.
To the pilot
she said,
The embarrassed
cook fled,
And hanged
his own self with his tie.
A farmer
decided on Skye,
But
something went strangely awry.
She hid in
the shed,
With a pain
in her head,
Great
knowledge they seemed to imply.
A certain
young lady called Di
To give
matrimony a try.
The books
that he read,
She blushed
brilliant red,
And the
doctor came past by and by.
One day a
good cook made a pie.
Whose marks
were abnormally high.
She took to
her bed,
Oh dear
Captain Fred,
Thus they
caught the old woman so sly.
There was a
young lady called Vi,
Decided she
wanted to fly.
When the
time came to wed,
The things
that he said,
And the
guests threw it out with a sigh.
There was an
old lady from Rye,
Who was so
abnormally shy,
The crust
was like lead.
But they
found her instead.
I'd love to
see earth from the sky.
A nosey old
woman did pry.
Who was sure
she was going to die.
If one word
she said,
He clean
lost his head,
And looked
's if she wanted to cry.
WORLD WIDE AUDIENCE – CREATIVE WRITING ON THE NET
by Gavin Dudeney
The Consultants-E
Barcelona, Spain
gavin.dudeney@theconsultants-e.com
Level: Intermediate and above
Time: 2 x 45 minutes
Aims:
·
To
improve IT and reading skills
·
To
revise and extend a wide variety of lexical and grammatical structures
·
To
provide practice in creative writing,
group work, negotiation, etc.
Resources/ materials: http://www.ryman-novel.com
and a worksheet
Possible problems: This
is a Net-based novel for native English speakers. As such, it has plenty of
low-frequency items of vocabulary unfamiliar at this level. Either deal with it
as you would normally, or give learners a link to a good online dictionary.
Procedure
1. Pre-stage (10
min)
It is important here, when working with students
– AND before doing the first activity - to go through the structure of the site
together – pointing out the basic navigation options and looking at how each
character is structured:
- The person’s
name
- His/Her outward
appearance (clothes, physical description, etc)
- His/Her inside
information (job, lifestyle, etc)
- What s/he is
doing or thinking
- His/Her
relationship with other passengers in the carriage
2. While-stage (20
min)
Once this has been done – and everyone is
comfortable with the notion, the worksheet below can be given out, and students
can work through the 10 questions on the sheet.
Have your students do this first part, then
go through it looking at the answers. They should have no problem with this as
it is merely a case of following hyperlinks between characters. If you have
more advanced students, consider making the task a little more demanding.
Should you not have access to computers
connected to the Net you can – as a last resort – print out the fifteen
characters involved, assign one to each student and have them go around the
class asking each other general questions until they find the connections. This
is, however, far more demanding and does reduce the impact of the novel
considerably.
3. Post-stage (15 min)
In part two, take a closer look at how each
character is put together. The sections adopted by the author apply very nicely
in an ELT context. Each character has a name and a number to identify him/her,
then three sections giving more information about them.
These three sections have a lot of scope
within the classroom, and can be exploited on many levels from simple lexical
fields such as colours, clothes, physical descriptions, etc. to more complex
grammatical issues such as past tenses and connectors.
Each student now works on his/her own to
produce a character (if you have access to the Net, consider finding some
photos of people to use). They should follow the same structure as the 253
site.
4. Lesson Two (45 min)
Once they have created their character, get
them into small groups to share
what they have written.
At this point they should
negotiate with the other people in their group and re-write parts of their
characters in order to be able to link them with the other characters in the
group. Repeat this activity in larger groups until all the characters in the
class are linked in some way.
The final activity
involves making a small version of the 253 story. This can be done in a low-tech manner, with
students creating their final project as a wall poster, linking the characters
with lines, or whatever. The high-tech way is to make them as a set of basic
webpages and put them up on the Net on one of the free web hosting sites – this
gives the students much more satisfaction and also the opportunity of showing
their work to a much wider audience. Information on basic web design and web
hosting issues can be found in Part C of Dudeney (2000).
Note
A
longer version of this article is available for download from http://www.dudeney.com/downloads/WorldWideAudience.rtf.
Reference
Dudeney, G. (2000). The Internet and The Language Classroom.
Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
WORKSHEET
253
a novel for the Internet about London
Underground in seven cars and a crash
253 is an interactive novel written for, and
published on the Internet. There are seven tube (underground train) carriages
full of passengers whose lives are inter-related.
We’re going to look at car one. Work with a
partner and see if you can find the answers to the following ten questions:
- Where do you
think Harry Migson and Lisa Jabokowski met?
- Which passenger
is wearing gold earrings?
- Which company do
Edward Gossart and Adele Driscoll work for?
- Jason Luveridge
went to a good school - which one?
- What's wrong with
Richard Tomlinson? Who shares his secret?
- Who is a
stand-up comic? What is her sister's name?
- Who used to buy
wine from Tony Mannocchi?
- Who plays piano
on a cross-channel ferry? Who works with him and what does he do?
- Who hasn't got
anywhere to live?
- What's the
connection between the driver and Ibrahim Gurer?
Answers: 1. They both work in a market, 2. Deborah Payne, Passenger 3, 3.
Lloyd’s
Bank, 4. St. Paul’s School, 5. He is very ill AND Tristan Sawyer, Passenger
235, 6. Danni Jarret, Passenger 27 AND Suze Morley, Passenger 99, 7. Maurice Hazlett, Passenger 31, 8. Douglas
Higbee, Passenger 11 AND Tony Colley – Magician, Passenger 18, 9. Justin Holmes, Passenger 21,
10. They are
both Turkish
