 Felly, mae'n gwneud y lleol iawn, ac mae'n byw'r clywed o'r ddweud o wneud dda i'ch ddweud yn ysgrifennu. Ond oes i'n gweithio'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. I want to start off with a game actually, and if you don't like games then I'd like to start off with a language activation activity, which is the same thing, but sometimes people prefer to use that name. OK, so I'm going to show you, has everyone got a pen? Everyone needs a pen and a piece of paper. Is that difficult? Has everyone got a pen and a piece of paper? OK, I'm going to flash a sentence to you on the whiteboard, and the words in it are jumbled up, and I'd like you to try to just look at it very quickly and just try and write the words in the order in which you think they should be. OK, but you're going to really only have a few seconds to do it. OK? Everyone ready? Yep. OK, so I think there are four of them. OK, so we'll just go through them one at a time. That's the first one. Here's the next one. Here's the next one. Here's the last one. OK, I mean, just have a guess. I mean, some of them, you've probably noticed that some of them were a lot easier than others. Just kind of hazard a guess if you're unsure. OK, we're going to go through those then now. The first one. Any ideas what the first one is? What can I get you? Yep. And the second one? The new friend's got drunk? OK. Well, it could have been the new friend's got drunk, but the sentence that I originally wrote was the drunk got new friends. OK, so everyone got the first. Everyone immediately probably picked up on the first one that it was what can I get you. The second one, probably there was a bit more thinking that was going on. You perhaps didn't know straight away. But probably what was in your head was the got drunk collocation. So immediately you quickly saw that strong collocation and you registered somewhere in your brain. Of course, the new friend's got drunk may be a more likely sentence than the drunk got new friends. It may be a more likely sentence. But this sentence is also possible. It's also possible. It's something that can happen. And I have experienced it. So I can guarantee you that it is something that can happen. OK, I'm going to show you. We'll go through the next ones. So what about that one? Look at it from my point of view. The heavy smoker thought the traffic resembled jam. Is that possible? The heavy smoker thought the traffic resembled jam. Is that possible? Any other? So it's interesting that you have naturally gone for collocations. You've naturally picked up on those collocations. In that string of words there are several collocations out there. There's heavy traffic, there is traffic jam and heavy smoker. OK, so our brain is naturally quickly finding those collocations. In fact, the sentence that I wrote originally was the smoker thought the traffic resembled heavy jam. OK, so it's an extremely unlikely sentence. But it is a grammatically possible sentence. There's no reason grammatically why that sentence shouldn't exist. It may exist somewhere in some surreal poem or something. There may be a context in which that sentence could exist. But our brain is unlikely to find it because it's not a usual sentence. Of course, we may wonder what the smoker was smoking if he thought that the traffic did resemble heavy jam. But the point is there may be a context in which that sentence could exist. Why are we doing this? Why are the second sentences from each pair much easier than the first ones? Because our brain is naturally storing language as chunks. We're not just storing language as individual items, we're storing it as chunks of language, as formulaic language. It's interesting that these sentences are disorganised in exactly the same way. If you see what I mean. The first word is the same in both, then it is the third word, and it's the same with this sentence. They're disorganised in exactly the same way. There shouldn't be a factor in reorganising them. Recently, materials that have been published in language teaching materials have used this fact a lot more. They tended to focus a lot more on chunks of language rather than on individual words. They focused on formulaic language. Michael Lewis, who wrote the lexical approach and later implementing the lexical approach, says, Modern analyses of real data suggest that we are much less original in using language than we like to believe. Much of what we say and a significant proportion of what we write consists of prefabricated multi-word items. In other words, we are churning out language as unanalysed and prefabricated lungs. We haven't necessarily analysed that language. For instance, if we're working a beginner learner of English, for instance, we'll learn a chunk like how are you, or maybe even something like where have you been without analysing the grammar behind that and without even necessarily breaking it down into words. More recently, Alison Ray from University of Cardiff published Formulaic Language Pushing the Boundaries. She's come up with this idea of an MEU, a morphine equivalent unit. A morphine equivalent unit is something that we store in our brain as an unanalysed item. We don't break down something like, let's say, something like where have you been. We take that as one item, that's stored in our brain as one item. We're not thinking where plus have plus you plus be. We're storing it as a single item. If I think about my own experiences as a language learner, this certainly rings true. The first language that I was challenged to learn and to use was Danish. I studied languages at school before that, but through living in Denmark and having to use the language on a daily basis, I was challenged to really get my head around the language. I found that I was often picking up chunks of language and not analysing them. An extreme example of that. Are there any Danish speakers in here? No? Okay, that's good. An extreme example of that might be the Danish phrase de visquic. De visquic means I don't bloody know. That's what it means. But I didn't realise the full power of that utterance when I learnt it. I heard people using it around me. I was working on a farm in Denmark and the farmer that I worked for, he used that a lot. Perhaps it's not quite as strong as I don't bloody know, but it's getting there. He has a slightly taboo element to it. I just heard him using that all the time and I started using it myself. But I didn't realise that it meant that. I just thought it meant it was just another way of saying I don't know. So there was an example of an unanalyzed chunk of language that I, in fact, was able to use. I was actually able to communicate with that, perhaps somewhat unsuccessfully. But I did, I still, I mean, the process happened to me. I took on that piece of language. Now, I think this has, you know, I think this does have some implications for what we do in the classroom. One thing that this does bring up is memory, the whole idea of memory. I mean, for a long time we focused on encouraging learners to learn the meanings of words. And of course that is a massive task for particularly beginners in a new language to learn the meanings of new words. But not only do they have to do that, they also have to learn the patterns, the common patterns in which those words occur. I mean, if we take an example like, we take a word like exam. Now, in many European languages, exam will be a very similar word. So we can, you know, our learners can sort of have a kind of false sense of security of thinking, oh, I know that word because it's the same, it's a very similar word. But in fact, if we want our learners, if we want our learners to use that word successfully, we need to know the patterns, the common ways in which that word is used, so which verbs collocate with exam, for instance. And I've got myself into lots of trouble, well not into lots of trouble, but I've made lots of errors through mis-collocating, through using the wrong verb in other languages. I mean, so in English, we might have things like pass an exam, take an exam, sit an exam, scrape through an exam, possibly. You know, there's all those ideas. Those words are not necessarily the words that you would use in another language. Those verbs may be very different. In Spanish, for instance, what would be the word in Spanish? Do an exam. Do an exam. Would you take an exam? No. No, so you know, if I look at the learners, my learners of English, often the mistakes that they make are to do with collocation. So we've got a huge, there's a huge load on the memory. Now this session is called the creative memory. So one side of that is that we are less creative, as Michael Lewis says. We are less creative than perhaps was previously thought. We're not constantly creating new language. We're relying on a stock of phrases that we have somewhere that we've heard before and that we've acquired. However, as language teachers, creativity is, well, I would say that creativity is what keeps me going as a language teacher. I would say that it's almost an essential element of teaching and I would also say it's an essential element of learning a language. And I think there are lots of techniques and activities that we can do with our students which link creativity with memorisation. One very well-known activity, which has been around for a very long time, is the keyword memory technique. So the keyword memory technique allows me to remember lots of words in different languages. So I know that, for instance, in Polish, the word for a screwdriver is trobokrant. And I know that in Spanish the word for blinds is pecianas. And I know that in Italian the word for screwdriver is cacia bide. And I know that in Hebrew the word for good night is liletov. And all of those words are stored, or I've learnt all of those words through this keyword memory technique. Now, I'm not just doing that to sort of show off because I don't know any other words in those languages, or some of them I don't. It is a method which is very creative and which also has quite a lasting power. I'll just show you some examples of how that might work. So the Polish word for screwdriver is trobokrant. And the way that I'm remembering that word is I'm linking it to three English words. Shrew, book and round. Now, it has quite a similar sound to those words. The word is not shrew, book, round. It's bokrant. I don't know if that's completely perfect. The pronunciation is not exactly the same as the English words. But these actors are trigger to remember it. So what I'm doing in my head is I'm creating an image which links screwdriver with these keywords. So what I've got in my head is an image of a shrew coming to my house, knocking on my door and saying, I've brought your book round. The book I borrowed from you, I've brought it round. And I get very angry with the shrew and I hit it with a screwdriver. Now, it's got an obscure image, but it is a very lasting image. And it's something that I created myself and therefore probably more memorable. Let's just look at a few other examples. Cattia vitae, Italian word for screwdriver. The way that I remember that is through the words catch and vitae, as in vita colione. So I have an image in my head of me chasing vita colione. I'm trying to catch vita colione and I've got a screwdriver. I'm chasing after him. Vita colione in the Godfather. It was Malon Brando, wasn't it? Malon Brando was the vita colione character. Okay, so we're doing a couple of those. Betsiannas is the word for blind. I hope it is, isn't it? It is. So Betsiannas, I remember that because of the English word. I've lived into the word Persian. I have this image in my head of a Persian man in history, a sort of historical Persian man who is blind. So he's blind. I've got this image of a blind Persian man and that's linking it to the word. Okay. A couple more examples. Lailetof in Hebrew means good night. So it's quite an obvious image there. Somebody's lying down and somebody says, oh, lights off now. Good night. Turn the lights off. Good night. Yeah. Now, this one I'm unsure about, but I've never tried to learn this word. Do we have any Nepali speakers in here? No, we don't. But I learned this word through observing an Nepali class here at SOAS. And this word, bagia mani, I think I'm not sure exactly what pronunciation is, something like that, bagia mani, means lucky in Nepali. So the teacher drew the student's attention to this fact and said, oh look, bagia mani, sounds like bag of money. You're very lucky if you have a bag of money. You find a bag of money. Now, I didn't actively try and remember that, but it stuck in my head. It just stuck in my head completely. I mean, what I'm not sure about, because I didn't have any, I didn't do any repetition of it. I didn't try to pronounce the word. I'm really unsure as to the pronunciation. And in fact, I only found that by looking it up on the internet, how it would be written using the Roman script. But I mean, it is quite a powerful technique. I mean, maybe we'll just quickly, could somebody just give me a word in a language that I don't know and we'll see if we can create an image for it. Could I have just somebody? Yeah? Anta rastria. Anta rastria. Anta rastria. Rastria. Anta rastria. Anta rastria. What language is that? Hindi. Hindi. Anta rastria. Okay, so what kind of words might we link that to? Anta rastria. Any for Russia? Sure, yeah. Rastria. Anta rastria. Anta rastria. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anta rastria. I'm also... Okay, so I mean, for instance, we might have, you know, we've got the international tree of the world. There's this tree, it's an international tree. And each branch represents different places. And then a new branch grows and it's Russia. Enter Russia. Enter rastria. Enter rastria. So we're using the linking words enter, Russia and tree. Now, sometimes when I focus on this activity with teachers or with students, it will say, oh, God, it's so much work. Yeah, it's a lot of thinking, a lot of... I think in my experience of working with advanced learners, I found that lots of advanced learners of English use this strategy. And I think what happens is you start to do it naturally and very quickly after it's been introduced. And I think it works particularly well for people who are native speakers of English. I don't know, no, I don't know. That's just my experience. I don't know why that might possibly be. But sometimes other people have said, oh, it's difficult to find those sounds in other languages. I don't know. Could we try it with a couple of words in Danish? So I'm going to just tell you a couple of words in Danish, just see if you can create some link to store those words in your memory. OK? So the words in Danish are trousers in Danish is Uxer. Yeah, that's trousers. Uxer. I'll give you another one. And the other one is that this investigation in Danish is unasunser. Unasunser. Unasunser. Investigation. Is it really time to sit? I just looked at my watch. Right, OK. Did you just quickly have a chat with the person next to you and just see what constructions are going to offer? Thank you. For the. Sure. You. Well. Are you comfortable? I just know how you went about this. You know that. I'm sure you're ready. So I was talking about this on this day. It was, Mwynhau'n wrth eholio'n fairfa dindeiyu'n ai gyrdal y newid yn f DAYA A C enthefnwyr gyda'r rhanio ond ymhiwg mwy o'n gweith scaw. Gweithio. Gweithio! Well, it would be interesting to see how long those things last. Of course, we need to do other things as well with these words. But they're a good way in to language and I think they can build learner's confidence quite a lot. Mae gwelwch yn fwy o'n falchol soffyr ac mae eich ffordd a'r rai cymdeithas, ond mae wedi fuddym yn'r tîm. Mae'n gweld yn y cyffrathau mewn newid yn y maewn teimlo sy'n achos gilyddol mewn hauloo i awthigol dgnig, ond mae'n gweld yn y holl beth, mae'n gweld yn y holl dgnig, maen nhw'n adolytu angen i'w awthigol, ac mae'n gwybod ni'n gweithio'r ddrawer o'r ffas. Felly mae'n gwybod ni'n gweithio'r list o'r ffas, mae'n gweithio'r 10 ffaith, lle mae'n gweithio'r sgwm hwn i'r Llywodraeth, ac mae'n gweithio'r ffaith o'r ffaith, mae'n gweithio'r ffaith o'r ffaith o'r ffaith o'r ffaith o'r ffaith, o'r ffaith fel yn yw i Danke Ie mest, o史 아이, a'n hoffianfodaf cyntaf, mae'n gwneud nad yw'n gweld tyfniau, Felly ein ffas yn yr hyn, mae'n dwi'n gweithio'r ffaith ffaith o'r ffaith o'r ffaith, mwy'n du'r lle i bodial. Ond genna beth'i ch увидel yn gweithio'r ffaith o'r ffaith o'r ffaith sy'n gweithio a'r ffaith o'r ffaith, nifer ei scripture ein coed, rwy'n gyffin Hyffordd yng ngyfryd, fel y gwím de無 ddrust. Fe si pobl yn gyntaf o'r laneetreddau. Ma Zedddwch refere lwyth doedd diwethaf gyda'r lŵn... Wel, кyn b namedau. Mae Fedreddys felly pan y maen nhw i yn ei ni'n brif! Felly, mae'r menu hyny oedd gydfa hefyd. Beth yn unon gcondi? Mae'n ddraf yn ei gydjud366 Ac yna nhw am rhai o'u gwneud... Mae'r menu s receptau sy'n dplod allan â doniedlion trwy ymddor nhw. Mae'r ystyried sy'n deall. Mae'n meddwl yn cynnig yn ychydig. Mae'r ffordd yma yma, yn ymddangos yn rwy'n pleidol, mae'n ystod yn ymddangos yn bobl. Olyfio'r ffordd o'r ymdweud, yna'n amser? Y pethau. Yn meddwl, yw'r ymdweud? Yn meddli. Mae'r ysguf yn ymwylliant, ma'r ysgufaf mai'n bwysig o'r olyfio'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r olyfio. So, mae'n gen i'n wneud lotio. 3. Mae'r cnyddiad newydd yw'r computa? Ryn ni gallwch yn ysgrff yn gydag i'r prysgol i chi. Felly oes nhw'n ei ffordd y gwybod o'r lle cymdeithasol o ddangos cymdeithasol? Ond i'ch bod ei ffordd mwy o'r boduno ddim. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ysgrff ym mwy o'r boduno ddim! Ry'n ni ddim. Ond yw'r hyffordd wedi'i gyda afre sittingog. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. Ychwanegwch. ..y'r dynol yn ymgyrchol. Mae cymuned iawn ar gyfer gilydd.. ..lyny'n ddysgu'r cyffredinol... ..y hynny'n gynhwys yn ymdwylliant. Felly dyma'r wneud eich bod yn ysblog.. ..y'r dynol yn ddigestion.. ..y'r ddiweddar hynny.. ..y'r llangwys yn yng nghyddau'r llangwys ymlaen.. ..i'r llangwys ymlaen ymlaen.. ..y'r ddweud.. ..yna'r llangwys.. ..y'r llangwys ymlaen.. yn wneud ysgrifennu'n pethau arlu i bryd. Yn y gwaith oherwydd, y taeth ymparwysau'n gweithio'n ddefnyddio'r ffantonol. Os y cefnod ysgol ffaint o gweithio rhoi'r bwysig gan gael o gweithio'r ffantonol lle ymbryd mewn ddelweddau gwylio'r ffantonol lle i'w gweithio'r rhai bwysig, i'w ddramar, i'w gweithio'r mwybyd, yn ddifudd gweithio eich ddandillad. dwi di ond i, mae'n meddwl eich derhyd? Felly oeddaethu'n meddwl desumed ei fod o'r hyffordd mewn sangaires sydd yn rhedeg yr holl depends Drymaethafbau'r rhai, dwi'n meddwl eich r behöver Rwy'n profi o bachau amser ac os gennych nhwaman gyd yn cael ei wneud gan yr cyn addsaith Daniel Ddi, hi negwaith diversity Alpha I can move around, and you can do whatever you like. So, I was walking in the forest. I saw a box on the ground in front of me. I picked it up, I slowly opened the lid. A bird flew out and hit me in the face. I looked inside, it was full of treasure. I filled up my pockets as quickly as I could. Oh no! Someone was coming. I turned around and ran for my life. All right, excellent. Now, if we're doing that with students, just have a seat again. If we're doing that with students, we might do that several times so that they're really familiar with the text. And we might do it very quickly, we might do it as a speeded up activity. And then a nice thing to do is to do something like this. We could show them the text. Each of these lines represents a letter in a word. And we see if they can record the language using that. This is more challenging, we haven't given any clues here. I mean, we could also... Well, just have a go at it. Is there anything... Can you remember how the text began? I was walking in the forest. I saw a box on the ground in front of me. I picked it up. I saw it in the studio. I saw it in the studio. A bird flew past. It hit me in the face. No, it hit me in the face. OK, so this is the kind of thing that the students can do in small groups. And it's very nice having those spaces there because it really challenges the learners to think about accuracy and think about what possibilities there could be. I mean, we can make it slightly easier by doing this kind of thing and giving them the beginnings of words. There are various different ways to do it. Obviously it's much easier here. But we can also take away the number of letters for each thing. But that's an interesting activity because what happens with that activity is you're having to go back and you're having to remember your physical movements. This... I mean, obviously we can vary it. We can make it much more difficult. Depending on the group that we have. And this activity comes from... Well, not this version, but the original version that I found comes from this excellent book called Dictation, New Methods, New Possibilities by Paul Davies and Maria Rimbolucria. OK, wow. I'm sorry that was rather rushed there. I just suddenly looked at my watch and thought... 20 minutes... Sorry, I've only got 10 minutes left. So I think I will leave it there. So thank you very much for coming.