1
USING PROVERBS IN THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
'A change is as good as a rest.'
This activity can easily be adapted for use in teaching any foreign language.
It can make up just part of a lesson, a complete lesson, or even two – depending on your decision (or better to say curriculum).
The activity can be used in young, adult or teenage general English (foreign) language classroom.
It can be used as a warm up activity.
As it can be interesting activity with plenty of opportunity for social contact it can be used at various times in a lesson, as warm-up, break and filler activity.
Sometimes when students get tired with a section of the coursebook you are teaching, you may make a break with something quite different but still something your students will have benefit of. Or perhaps after a long battle with one topic it might be more appropriate to change to something completely different: proverbs.
This activity can be used to keep a certain section of the coursebook but precede it with an introductory activity of some kind.
You may use proverbs as some kind of extension of a section.
Sometimes you spend too much time on one section mainly to kill time because you know you don't have enough time to get through the following section in the time available in that lesson. Now you can use this activity as a filler activity.
The proverbs and their usage in the classroom:
-level of students: elementary to upperintermediate
-age of students: young learners to adults
-time needed: according to your own choice and planned activity (from 1-10 minutes up to 45 minutes)
-focus: vocabulary, pattern memorisation, pronunciation, writing, discussing, storytelling, learning proverbs as an end in itself,
-materials: none
-preparations: a brief note about the activity the purpose of which is to orientate you about rationale and other useful background information, careful plannning of the complete lesson
-procedure: the steps to follow in class
-variations: warm-up activity, filling activity,break activity, a complete lesson
Depending of the level and age of your students and time you have, you will have a diferrent approach to this activity:
- If you spend a few minutes per lesson it is best to teach one or two proverbs at a time (never in batches). You can use the main idea or one of the review ideas in tens or scores of different lessons.Later on, new proverbs can be introduced by you or by students as you go along.
- Low level students in particular like learning proverbs.
- For beginners, learning a proverb has extra value since learning a proverb is learning a complete text.
- The importance of students learning masses of prefabricated chunks of language (as opposed to rules for creating their own chunks from scratch) is academically respectable (Nattinger and de Carrico 1992).
- One sometimes hears it said that proverbs aren't all that commonly used anymore. That is probably true for some proverbs (e.g. 'Haste makes waste') but not for others (e.g. 'You win some, you lose some').
Procedure:
1. Make sure your students know what the word proverb means.Proverbs are popurarly defined as short expressions of popular wisdom. If your students are beginners and you understand their language, ask what proverbs they know in their mother tongue. If they are not beginners, ask what English language proverbs they know. (If a student offer English version of mother tongue proverb, and it is literal translation of the proverb, don't accept it as an English language proverb. If you are teaching intermediate or higher level students, this can lead to fruitfull discussion). Note that different English-speaking countries don't have exactly the same proverbs.
2. Choose or elicit the first 'proverb of the day'. Your basic options are:
- Translate a student proverb into English. This sometimes yields a good result.
- Present an English-language proverb of similar import to a mother tongue proverb suggested by a student.
- Use an English language proverb suggested ba a student.
- Choose a proverb from the lists below – one that your class can grasp without too much explaining.
3. Make sure your students understand the proverb!
-If necessary in low-level classes, give or elicit a literal translation.(You may allow the usage of bilingual dictionary, sometimes they include proverbs and give L1 equivalents.)
- Sometimes filling in 'missing'words can help students to understand, e.g.: (If you sew) a stitch in time, (that often) saves (you from having to sew) nine (stitches later)!
- If possible, clarify by paraphrasing, e.g.:
Haste makes waste.
Being in a hurry causes wasted work and useless products!
-Suggest or elicit a situation in which someone might say the proverb.
4. Help students say it well. Pay special attention to rhythm.
- To get the right rhythm students will need to make natural catenations. For example, words that appear to begin with a vowel may actually begin with the final consonant of the word before , e.g. 'A stitch in time…'
-They will also need to weaken all naturally weakened sounds. For example, have them say /t èbed/ not /tu:bed/ in 'Early to bed, early to rise…'
-They should, as well. Elide (drop) sounds in a natural way, e.g.: 'wealthy an' wise…'
After giving initial guidance on pronunciation, encourage your students to silently chant or whisper the proverb for a half a minute or so.
5. Ask your students to copy the proverb into a special proverb section of their notebooks.
6. Move on to some other activity if you choose this activity as warm up activity. Perhaps, once or twice later in the lesson ask, 'What was today's proverb?'.
7. To continue in other lessons, at the beginning of the lesson, you may ask, 'What was yesterday's proverb?', 'What was the proverb before last?', 'What was our first proverb?'. You may address one student and ask him or her 'Of all our proverbs, which is your favourite?'
-Orally quiz students (or they quiz each other) by calling out the first (or last) one or two words of different proverbs.
-Give the class (or ask students to call out) prompts such as these: 'Tell me a proverb with X words in it', 'Tell me a proverb with the word 'a' in it.' (Rationale: This tends to get students mentally reviewing a number of proverbs before they finally speak.)
- Ask the class if, as a group, they can tell you all the proverbs learned so far within a set period of time (e.g. two minutes). One student looks at the full list and ticks proverbs off as they are read. When the time limit is up, the student with the list reads the one that weren't mentioned.
- Ask everyone to write a stipulated number (two to eight) of the proverbs introduced so far. Circulate and check as they write. Ask early finishers: 'Can you think of one more?' When most have finished, call time.
- Ask individuals to read out proverbs from their lists. When listeners hear a proverb on their list, they cross it off. Keep going until all proverbs have been read once. Or, ask everyone to look at the lists of a couple other students.
- Ask someone to write a proverb on the bord. Other students come up and add on other proverbs int he fashion of a crossword puzzle. A half a dozen proverbs per time is enough. It's not necessary to review all the proverbs you've done each day!
- After your students have learned ten or so proverbs, you may want to introduce a new proverb, not in every lesson but in every other lesson.
- Where proverbs are concerned, I like to avoid any activity which takes up more than five minutes, though from time to time I make exceptions if the activity includes speaking practice. Basically, except for occasional checking that students do know how to write their proverbs, the aim of the activity is oral fluency and good pronunciation. Consequently, I avoid long fill-in-the-blank, matching, find-the-mistake and other potentially time-consuming written exercises.
- For homework, after every twenty or so proverbs, ask students to group them in some way, for example:
-proverbs that have similar ('What's done is done.'; 'The past is past.')
-or opposed imports (' Clothes make the man.'; 'Don't judge a book by its cover')
-ones that have counterparts in Croatian
('When the cat's away, the mice will play.'),
- and ones that don't (Two in distress makes trouble less.)
-ones they like and ones they don't
Proverbs can be used as a theme for classroom work that goes beyond reading:
-to promt your students to tell stories or anectodes on the theme, or the 'message', or moral of a proverb (for example: 'Rome wasn't built in a day.'; 'Don't judge a book by its cover')
-You may encourage discussion using morals or wisdoms from the proverbs (for example: 'Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, weathy and wise.')
-morals or wisdoms contained in proverbs can be used as a theme for a homework activity: writing an essay using a suitable proverb as its 'title' (e.g. 'A friend in need is a friend indeed.)
-Rhyming proverbs can be written on a peace of paper. You cut the paper in two so that one the proverb is divided into two parts. Each student gets just one peace of paper with a part of a proverb (for example: 'Haste makes' / 'waste'; 'If you snooze', /'you lose') The students circulate to find their match. When the match is found, they stay together as a couple. At the end of the activity, they read their proverbs. If the classroom is too big, you may put the peaces of the proverbs in a pot (a hat?) and give the peaces of papers to the students. One student come out, pick randomly a piece of paper with a part of a proverb, read it aloud. The student who has the other part of the proverb, stands up and read it. This can go on until all the proverbs that have been learned so far are completed. The proverbs can also be written on the blackboard depending of the time you have on disposal or the level, age or interest of your students.
Rhyming proverbs:
Haste makes waste.
Love many, trust few; always paddle your own canoe.
If you snooze, you lose.
A stitch in time saves nine.
Two in distress makes trouble less.
Birds of a feather flock together.
Finders keepers, losers weepers.
A friend in need is a friend indeed.
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, weathy and wise.
Trouble comes double.
A friend in words and in deeds is like a garden full of weeds.
Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky in the morning to sailors a warning.
When money talks, nobody walks.
When the cat's away, the mice will play.
No pain, no gain.
If it can't bec ured, it must be endured.
Health is wealth.
An apple a day keeps a doctor away.
Fretting cares make grey hairs.
Alliterative proverbs:
Live and learn.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
All that glistens is not gold.
All roads lead to Rome.
Look before you leap.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Penny wise, pound foolish.
Poor planning makes for poor perfomance.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
The more the merrier.
Waste not, want not.
What gets measured is what gets managed.
Repetitive proverbs:
First come, first served.
You win some, you lose some.
There's no fool like an old fool.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
All's well that ends well.
What's done is done.
The past is past.
Don't get mad, get even.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.
Like father, like son.
Nothing ventured nothing gained.
Winners never quit, quitters never win.
Plan you work, work your plan.
Other proverbs:
There's an exception to every rule.
A leopard never changes its spots.
You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be.
Rome wasn't built in a day.
Experience is the best teacher.
Don't count your chickens before they're hatched.
Charity begins at home.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
A new broom sweeps clean.
Clothes make the man.
Don't judge a book by its cover.
Where there's smoke there's fire.
There's more than one way to skin a cat.
A man's home is his castle.
It's the early bird that catches the worm.
If the shoe fits, wear it.
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Two heads are better than one.
Many hands make light work.
Silence is golden.
Children should be seen and not heard.
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
Into every life a little rain must fall.
It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Bad luck comes in threes.
Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.
Once bitten, twice shy.
You can't get blood from a stone.
You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.