Small Talk

It's been a whole month since I posted!  

Did I mention earlier that I was taking the 2nd half of the Color Vowel Level I course in January and February?  Well, I finished it up in spite of coming down with a nasty chest cold and cough which hung on forever.  I got a lot out of the course but feel sorry for the teacher who had to listen to my croaking demonstrations.

Just this week I finally got back to Jazzercise.

As always, my days have been cheered by my ESL classes and I've even added a couple of dialogs to the ongoing Inter-Galactic Agricultural and Mechanical Corp. (IGAMC) saga.

The latest addition is a theme that many teachers/courses present as the very first class, rather than as a subject for the middle of the year -- Small Talk. 

Since all my students are adult professionals, our lessons have focused around more serious matters.  However I realized that everybody needs the ability to hold their own in an informal conversation with strangers or bare acquaintances.  In addition, the who-what-where-when question/answers and coulda-woulda-shoulda gossip provide practice on the speech reductions that give students problems in all levels of conversation.

Therefore it was time for IGAMC to sponsor a convention at which people would meet informally and enjoy themselves with small talk.

Prosody for Dogs

I'm still working on how to best teach Prosody as it applies to whole sentences.  The dogs in the cartoon, below, seem to be getting it.  Maybe I'll go beyond chants and try writing sentences as full-fledged tunes.

Thanks to Lisa Tarulli Breeden who posted in the Facebook "Music Humor" group.

🐶 🎶 from Mark Parisi - Off The Mark

The Opposite of ...

 Thanks to Jean McLeod Mulroy for posting the below article in Facebook's "My Color Vowel Community".  It is hilarious.

Linguistic humor, How I met my wife

Source: Jack Winter. 1994. How I met my wife. New Yorker, July 25.

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate.

I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, [or should that be hevelled?—BES] and she moved in a gainly way.

I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it, since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do.

Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or a sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion.

So I decided not to risk it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of.

I was plussed. It was concerting to see that she was communicado, and it nerved me that she was interested in a pareil like me, sight seen. Normally, I had a domitable spirit, but, being corrigible, I felt capacitated—as if there were something I was great shakes at—and forgot that I had succeeded in situations like this only a told number of times. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings.

Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. Wanting to make only called-for remarks, I started talking about the hors d'oeuvres, trying to abuse her of the notion that I was sipid, and perhaps even bunk a few myths about myself.

She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory character who was up to some good. She told me who she was. "What a perfect nomer," I said, advertently. The conversation became more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.

Poems Have A Mind Of Their Own

Almost a month ago, on December 21, I wrote about a new series of poems I'd started writing to illustrate the fact that multi-word verbs are metaphors.  My first effort included phrasals with the preposition "up" used in a business-meeting setting.

The next group of rhymes was supposed to feature the preposition "down", again in a practical setting.  Unfortunately, I had started reading the wonderful book "Grammar for a Full Life" by Lawrence Weinstein.

Here's the result.

The Old Mosaic Floor and Run-Down Path

The rules of grammar pave my way
Throughout the rooms with grace and style
Between the bookshelves, down the aisle,
Familiar patterns guide my day.
Across the hall and out the door  --
The colored tiles pour down the stairs.
A few are cracked; could use repairs.
I'll glue them down. Revise once more.

The paving stones across the lawn
Are rules laid down long, long ago.
In gentle arabesques they flow
With  commas, quotes; they travel on;
With patterned grace the norms unfurl.
What would I do without this lane
That lets me cross the rough terrain
As I write and dance and swirl and twirl?

Vowel Sounds Matter

Cartoon from "Non Sequitur" by Wiley Miller

      originally posted by The Heinlein Society

      reposted by Rex Alexander in the My Color Vowel Community on Facebook.

What Was the Question?

 The "Color Vowel Basics One" class has already paid off in terms of teaching my current students more effectively.

One of the class requirments is reading the book "Teaching Pronunciation Using the Prosody Pyramid" by Judy B. Gilbert".  This book suggested a listening exercise in which the teacher reads an answer. Then, based on the intonation and word stress, the students choose an appropriate question.  

Of course I created this as a game. Take a look at it.  

Since my most advanced student has just asked for more help on English intonation, having this all ready to go is a bit of serendipity!

So far I've found my students don't do nearly as well at this game as I thought they would.  They have been using the color vowel system to hear and replicate the syllable stress in a single word successfully, or even in a short line of a poem or chant.  However, our practice sessions have not been enough for them to hear the stress in a sentence or group of sentences.

I need to give them more, more, much more!

Finally Completing the Second Half of Class

Since the Color Vowel® Basics One course can be taken in two parts to save on both time and money, I took the Part I last summer immediately when I first discovered it.  It's name, "FAST", is very appopriate because you can do it totally online in however many hours it takes you to watch the videos, read the downloaded material and complete the quizzes.  If you dedicate all your waking hours to study you can finish over a couple of long weekends.

The second half, which includes in-person-online classes, has been more difficult to schedule.  I finally got it launched yesterday morning.  This is the more "fun" half because it includes hands-on projects, instructor input and class discussions.  For me, an added benefit is that the projects involve recording videos, something I haven't been able to do very successfully and need a lot more expertise on.  After numerous tries I got the first one created and submitted last evening.

I'm sure I'll be posting more about the class as it progresses.