Kids love rhymes and so do the parents. Think about the many hours of fun that you had reading nursery rhymes to your kids : the alliterative sounds of Hickory Dickory Dock; the repetitive rhyme-song, Polly Put the Kettle On; the exciting huffing and puffing of The 3 Little Pigs, and countless other memorable rhymes.

These rhymes never go out of fashion despite the pervasive influence of cable TV and smartphones. and it's a great way to get children hooked on the language. And, I think it's not only kindergarteners and elementary school kids who love rhymes ; rhymes will also appeal to secondary school students if they are well-chosen to suit their age level and interest. Here's a rhyme I wrote recently for my new book:

I see the moon

The moon sees me

I smile at the moon

The moon smiles at me

I wink at the moon

The moon winks at me

I frown at the moon

The moon frowns at me

I scratch my eyebrow

The moon scratches her eyebrow

I say goodnight

She turns off the light.

Essay Writing in the UPSR English Exam - Paper 014

In Paper 014, one of the questions requires candidates to write a picture composition between 80-100 words. This is what the instructions for the question say:

"You may use the words given to help you."

 Students should use the given words in their writing as the words explain the plot or key events in the story. The difficulty many students face is to write their composition within the number of words specified. From experience, it is better to write between 90 and 100 words as your composition would then cover enough details to make the story more interesting. If your writing is about 80-90 words, it could make the story weaker in terms of the development of your plot. Here's an example from my e-learning course that you can find at my website: www.myenglishbooks.com :

Man Saved Elephant in London Zoo.

“Elephants love reunions. They recognize one another after years and years of separation and greet each other with wild, boisterous joy. There's bellowing and trumpeting, ear flapping and rubbing. Trunks entwine.”  ― Jennifer Richard Jacobson, Small as an Elephant

I visited Bangalore, India, twice in 2001. In my second visit, I had a chance encounter with a 500- year-old sage who related to me an anecdote about an animal. I vouch that this incident really took place because it involved a world-famous personality. The story goes…

Some time in the 1920s, India gifted an elephant to the London Zoo in England. The elephant was a big draw for the zoo and it attracted huge crowds. For about five or six weeks the elephant behaved well and visitors were even allowed to get close to the elephant to touch it. However, its behavior changed and it became a danger not only to the visitors but also the elephant keeper. The zoo had no choice but to put the elephant down before it killed someone. Instead of simply killing the elephant, the zoo authorities advertised in the papers inviting the public to witness the event. In that way they could also raise money for the zoo. The Indian gomen was duly informed about the decision.

The fateful day came and thousands of people came to witness the event. A speech was made and soldiers held up their guns ready to shoot. At that point, a man rushed forward to stop the shooting: ‘Let me talk to the elephant.’ The crowd roared with aghast. ‘Is that man crazy? The elephant will trample him!’ someone shouted. After listening to the man’s explanation and assurance, the zoo keeper relented. So, this man, who was no more than 158 cm, approached the elephant cautiously. He kept a distance of about 2.0 m from the elephant. The elephant raged and it looked like it was going to break the chains. He muttered a few sentences to the elephant-almost  prayer-like.  The elephant seemed to calm down after that. The man took a few measured steps towards the elephant. The crowd held their breath. The man stepped quite close to the elephant and almost whispered into its ears. Soon after he was able to get close to the elephant and pat its trunk. The elephant wagged its tail happily and trumpeted. It also shed some tears. The crowd burst into thunderous applause!

After that public spectacle, the zoo authorities decided not to kill the elephant.

Here’s a question for you: What did the man say to the elephant?

Answer : 
The Englishman knew the elephant when he was living in India. I don't know what he said to the elephant, but he spoke in Hindi - the language the elephant was familiar with. This man was Rudyard Kipling, the English short story writer, poet and novelist whose works include Jungle Book and Kim.

NOTE:  I read this story many years ago, so there may be some inaccuracies with the dates and some other details. 

'Docile' Snow Monkeys in Monkey Park, Kyoto

Let me begin with a Monkey Doggerel:

Is it Zen?
Kai Zen?
Or Sake-in-
Ebriated
Do
Ci
Li
Ty?
IIE
IIE?

A couple of weeks ago ma famille and I visited Monkey Park in Kyoto's Arashiyama district. After a short climb, we came to the park, which is the home of snow monkeys. These monkeys live in the wilds but they appear quite docile. I've seen monkeys in the hills of Kuala Selangor and elsewhere where they would come up close to visitors and snatch their plastic bags or food. Why do these snow monkeys behave so well unlike their counterparts in Malaysia and other countries? Does it mean that Malaysian monkeys are less disciplined? Do these snow monkeys also have the discipline that Japanese people are well-known for?

When we arrived at the foot of the hill, we had to purchase our park entrance tickets. We were told to leave our bags there at no charge. Visitors also have to observe some rules or advice such as not to look the monkeys in the eyes and not to feed them in the open. At the park, there's a small shop where you can buy food to feed the monkeys. The shop has an annex with wire netting where visitors go to to feed the monkeys. We didn't go into the shop; so we didn't feed the monkeys. From the outside, looking at the visitors feeding the monkeys from inside the annex, I just couldn't help but feel that the roles had been reversed.

Back to the question of why these snow monkeys appear to be so well-bahaved. Well, the park authorities didn't set out to train or discipline the monkeys. They discipline the visitors by imposing rules before they ascend the hill. When all visitors do not carry bags, there's nothing for them to snatch. Feeding of the monkeys is also confined to a certain spot by having the visitors "caged" in the annex. Over time, these snow monkeys get used to going to the annex for their food. Elementary Pavlovian psychology.

Quite often when I pose this question to people, the common answer is to train the monkeys. In this case, the park authorities "train" or "discipline" the visitors so as to synchronize their behavior with that of the monkeys'.

Note: 'Iie' in Japanese means 'No'.

The Joy of Traveling

I was bitten by the travel bug very early in my teens. I remembered the time when I hitch-hiked with my classmates to Penang and Singapore after our exams. Since then, I have traversed this earth to more than a dozen countries, and still I yearn to travel more. I find traveling an enriching experience. It gives me the opportunity not only to see the sights of the places I visit but also to interact with the local people.

Do we apostrophe 's' or don't we?

That diminutive symbol which marks a noun to signal possession or ownership was the subject of an amusing discussion in my workplace not long ago. Yes, I mean the apostrophe. We place the apostrophe right after the proper or common noun to indicate that someone or something belongs to the person or thing in question. Here are some examples: the woman's dog; the boy's bike; the city's residents; the cat's tail; the car's doors; Dora's car; Nora's husband; James' skis; Jesus' teachings; the women's dogs; the children's school; the boys' teacher; the girls' bags.

The example, the car's keys may run into trouble with strict grammar rules which restrict ownership to only living things. In this case, a car cannot own keys. To circumvent this problem, some writers would phrase it as the car doors, where the words car and doors are taken together as a noun. Likewise, it may be awkward to say the table's legs. Instead, we would say the table legs are broken, for example. So far, so good, but what about lamp's bulb. I have no trouble with that although strict grammarians may insist on saying the bulb of the lamp.

The use of the apostrophe with proper nouns such as Nora's husband presents no difficulty. However, traditionalists may argue that James' skis would be out of sync with the traditional rule that requires the letter 's' after the apostrophe for names that end with 's' as in James's skis. The same rule says that it's not necessary to have the letter 's' for Biblical or classical names as in Jesus' teachings and Hippocrates' Oath. The trend now ignores this traditional rule and it's common to see writers writing Jess' speech alongside Jesus' teachings. I think Jesus wouldn't object to that.

Your Creative Meridian Point

You might find this hard to believe: The meridian point for one's creative energy lies somewhere between the hallux and the second toe. Whenever I run into one of those writer's blocks, I'd wiggle my toes in order to stimulate the release of the creative qi. This stimulation often results in a tingling in my tailbone followed by an electric current coursing through my spine, and, finally, a heightened sense of awareness, bringing with it a thunderclap of a new idea or a burst of new ideas. You don't really believe this, do you?

Was this How the Universe was Created?
What Vijay, Dolores and Stephen Hawkings didn't Know

Find out more at the National Visual Arts Gallery

Needs Analysis in Language Teaching

Recently I had the opportunity to teach an Intensive English course to a foreign student for one month. My slot was on Speaking. I was required to do a Needs Analysis, which I found quite useful as I was able to introduce speaking topics based on information obtained about his job, family, education, and interests.In the field of training and development, conducting a needs analysis on training participants is de rigueur. Yet, in schools, colleges and universities, it is almost unheard of.  Students could be asked to fill up a form at the beginning of the year to obtain not only general information but also the students' different learning styles. A good understanding of the students will go a long way in helping the teacher tailor his or her lessons based on their needs.

Click this LINK for more information.

What Makes a Good Teacher?

Read What Makes a Good Teacher  at:

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.gblogID=405169403434717802#editor/target=post;postID=6387775198304747098;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=postname

Lessons from a Stump

I've been looking at this stump for over two months since my wife felled the red palm that had graced our little garden for about 18 years. This once tall leggy beauty has now been reduced to a midgety dull, prosaic stump, standing there daily in our garden in stoical silence. Despite having been brought down from her lofty heights, she never complains- not a hush, nor a rustle; how could she. anyway, when she's been shorn of her glorious green plumage. No, no, I'm not getting sentimental over her loss; I'm no tree-hugging nature lover. One day, for no apparent reason, I decided to take a close look at her, and this is what I find most amazing: even in her death throes, she's giving life to others-tiny plants sprouting to life and feeding off her. Walaoyeh!

Dateline: Sri Lanka, August 6, 2013
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigiriya
There I was climbing up the steps of this ancient heritage site: Sigiriya. At one of the stops to catch my breath, I was standing next to a French-speaking group when the local guide called out: Venez ici. Regardez! La statue de Buddha. Elle est plus grande! Imagine my excitement. I was able to understand what he was saying. Je peux comprenais! Bravo! 

What's your condition?

I often tell my students that English is a language where it's quite common to see writers making mistakes. A case in point is the opening sentence of a recent article in a local English daily: "If you live in Petaling Jaya, you would probably have heard of it. Three armed men rushed into a famous chilli crab restaurant shortly after closing time-and they were not looking for food".

The sentence in italics is a conditional sentence, but it's faulty. If the writer had intended to write in the "third conditional" the sentence should have been written thus: If you had lived in Petaling Jaya, you would probably have heard of it. However, we use the third conditional to express regrets for something that happened or didn't happen. Here's an example: If I hadn't missed the bus, I would have arrived at the office on time. It's quite obvious that the third conditional is not appropriate in this context.

The writer should have expressed his idea in the "first conditional": If you live in Petaling Jaya, you will/would probably know this. This sentence is possible as it expresses the idea that if the condition is fulfilled, the result is likely to happen. The use of would makes the writer's assertion more tentative.

A Coma Way to Speaking a Foreign Language

For most people, learning a new language incurs many hours of formal classroom lessons and daily practice of reading, writing, listening and speaking. In the case of a Croatian teenager, she awoke from a coma in 2010 to find that she had forgotten her native Croatian and spoke fluent German instead - a language she had just started learning in school.

I'm relearning French the hard way. I learnt the language in university a long time ago and I've forgotten most of it. Anyway, I still prefer learning it the hard way to speaking the language effortlessly after some traumatic experience. Anyway, there's no guarantee that one would speak a foreign language after waking up from a coma. Worse still, what if, instead of speaking French, I end up speaking a dead language like Latin!? Quid agis!

Learning English by Listening

Having taught English for a good number of years, I have often reflected on how to help my students learn the language in the quickest way possible. I must say that there's no shortcut to learning English, or any other language for that matter. Much has been written about how one can learn a language through listening, so what I'm about to share here is nothing new. 

Listening. This skill is often overlooked in the school system. Today,students are fortunate in that they have easy access to a wealth of free listening resources on the Internet. A quick search on Youtube using the keywords English listening exercises reveals 140,000 results. Pick the ones that you like which might not be too difficult for you to understand. Listen to each video several times: Understand what is being said, and after having understood it, learn to speak like the person in the video. I'm not saying you should mimic the person's accent because you may end up speaking as though you're parroting the speaker. If the video is good, you'll somehow know it, learn to adopt the speaker's fluency, pacing, and pronunciation. You might also want to pay attention to the speaker's body language, for example, eye contact and hand gestures for emphasis. Do this over several videos. Not only will you learn the language but you'll also become a good public speaker. 

What are you waiting for? Go to Youtube now!

Charming Cherating

This Chinese New Year I made my way to Kuantan and onwards to my favourite spot in Cherating. As I've stopped swimming in chlorinated swimming pools, the few annual trips to any sea is something I always look forward to. There I was, soaking it all up in the South China Sea when an idiom nibbled at my toes and I found myself out of my depth! Gr-up-gr-up-gr-up...I was gasping for breath, struggling to keep my head above water when something gave me a swift tug and, before I knew it, I was plumbing the depths of the more than 5000 m deep South China Sea. I guess by now you're already saying that all this doesn't hold water - it's all bunk, a load of baloney!

Yeah, baloney, alright. I'm just having fun with some water-idioms. Good thing it wasn't a sea snake that nibbled my toes!

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Eureka!

What can we learn from famous personalities, be they scientists, business icons or artists?

I can still recall the vivid tale we read in our science book eons ago about the discovery of the Archimedes Principle: the upthrust experienced by a body immersed in a fluid. Apparently, he proclaimed Eureka! - a word derived from the ancient Greek word heureka, meaning I find - when he stepped into a bathtub and understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body that was submerged. The story has it that he was so excited about his discovery that he ran naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting Eureka!

So, what can we learn from Archimedes apart from the amusing spectacle of a disheveled-looking flasher shouting Eureka!?

Was his discovery of the Archimedes Principle the result of a stroke of good luck, much like striking a lottery? Like Sir John Newton who discovered the law of gravity after an apple fell on his head, Archimedes's discovery was not pure luck. If at all it was luck, it was luck that was caused by the collision of two speeding cars: HARD WORK and OPPORTUNITY.

BING! BANG! BOOM!...EUREKA!!!

Apart from the one-in-a-million chance lottery winner, success for most people comes from hard work and perseverance. If Archimedes had not been thinking and working hard in trying to solve this problem, I doubt if he would have had his breakthrough Eureka moment.

Can you do this?

This is not some Photoshop gimmickcry. See the lady standing beside me? She's a hypnotherapist. I remember when she put me under (subconscious), I was conscious of what she was saying. She was telling me, with my eyes closed, that my body was becoming as stiff as a rod. Then she got two assistants to place me in the position that you see in this photo.

What can we learn from this demonstration?

It demonstrates the power of the human mind. It's often said that we use only 10% of our mental capacity. If we could just tap into the full potential of our brain, we would be able to do much more in terms of what we are capable of. For example, if you're used to learning only one word a day - like we used to do in the old days- from now on, tell yourself that you are going to learn five, 10, or 12 words a day.

Don't limit yourself. Challenge yourself !

Our mind is capable of achieving a great deal more than what we think it is capable of.

 Big bad Wolf Book Sale 2012

Dear Parents, Students & Visitors of this Blog:

I just got back from the world's largest book sale- the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale 2012. It's on from the 7th to the 23rd December. Book prices start from as low as RM5.00! Hurry, and head over to the Mines International Exhibition & Convention Centre (MIECC) !