The Five Word Rule

[kellogg]

Seong-eun likes RULES (or maybe she DOESN'T like them!)

Here's a rule. It's called the "five word rule", and it says that you cannot use FIVE words of somebody else's sentence unless you QUOTE (with quotation marks) and put a NAME (and usually a year, a page number, etc.).

I mention this five word rule because some of us are going to be writing a thesis together. The five word rule applies to anybody you quote--even your supervisor!

Let me show you.

b) How does the teacher get attention, give information, and check for integration of knowledge? Can you think of a BETTER way?

  I think it is not clear to find where and how the teacher gets attention and checks the integration of knowledge in the instruction of Teacher's Guide Book. Most part is seen for giving information about game instructions, although they are mostly for the teacher, not for the children. But if I have to do it though, the beginning part of the teacher's talk through the way of statements ("It's time for a game", "I'll tell you how to do the activity"), commands ("Let's play the game", "Work in pairs"), question ("shall we play a game?") to motivate the students to pay attention what they are supposed to do is seen for getting attention. Commands are recommendable for getting attention, because they have advantages: short/simple and clear/canonical to stand out not to distract the kids, iconic and indexical for the kids not to ignore.

Good. Of course, there are other things that have these advantages too. (Names, for example! TEACHERS do use names to do these things, and that is why using a family name without a title is rather rude!)

The teacher is giving information by command ("Put the cards in the middle of the desk"), statements ("You need only one set of cards.", The tiger is stronger than the cat."), and some other ways ("When I say...", "If you touch the card...", "The students who...").  But those ways of giving information don't seem useful, effective, and desirable, because it's not possible for the young kids to understand those grammatically complicated (made of complex symbols for symbols) fearful teacher's long explanations.

Good. Notice that "because" is actually like "if" and "when". it's not like "But" or "So" or "however". We use it WITHIN a sentence and not BETWEEN sentences.

(I'm pointing this out because we have to write a thesis together!)

The teacher is also checking integration of the information by asking a question ("Can you say it in English?").

Good.

The better way to get attention, give information, and check the integration of the information might be suggested like this:

T: Let's play a game.

   The game is "Catch a Fly."

   We will play... what?

Ss: Catch a Fly!

T: Right. Let's play "Catch a Fly". We have strong, fast, or big flies. Which one do you want? A strong fly? A big fly? A fast fly?

   Look. I have many flies here. One, two, three, four,...How many?

   Good. You play with your partner. You need cards. Only one person cuts.          Who will cut? You or your partner?

   Good boy/girl.

   Hands up. Listen. The tiger is stronger than the cat.

   Whose fly? Who caught the fly? Can you say it in English?

Good.

(The game will continue)

As you see in the small part of the transform above, we can notice that the teacher uses commands ("Look", "Let's ...", "Listen", "You play...", etc) to get attention, statements ("This is...", "We have...", "I have ...", etc.) to give information, and questions ("We will play... what?", "How many?", "Who will cut?", etc.) to check understanding. It is a better way to do so, because there are advantageous functions respectively. Especially statements are useful to give information, because they usually longer, relatively flat in their intonation, so the important information is carried at the end of the sentence with clear stress, which is indexical to help the children well understood. And we can see that they begin with the information giver (the speaker; the teacher) but end with the information receiver (the hearer; the students), which is the way of the kids' understanding from indexical to symbolic meaning step by step. Then what is the advantage of questions for checking integration? Apart from the hearer's (the student's) free of burden with grammar, they also have indexical advantages. The intonation goes up or down at the end of the questions, which INDICATES that it's time for the hearer to speak; the turn moves from the teacher to the students. Another advantage of questions is that they are giving clues to the hear about how to answer; "do you" questions require "Yes/No" answer, "what" questions need some kind of noun, "when" questions will select time adverb, "where" a place adverb, "how" will take an adjective or adverb, "how many" a number, etc. So questions will provide the students with opportunities to move from dealing with iconic, indexical meaning to symbolic to second-order symbolic to ...

Now, let's look at the comments I wrote about Seong-eun's answer. Here they are:

b) Questions often BEGIN with a clue to the nature of the answer. For example, "do you" questions have "yes" or "no" for the answer, "what" questions will get some kind of noun, "when" will be a time adverb, "where" a place adverb, "how" will be an adjective or adverb, "how many" a number, etc..

Now, which of these advantages is an INDEXICAL one? What about the other one?

The first thing we notice is that Seong-eun did NOT answer my question. She never said whether this advantage b) is indexical or symbolic (it's symbolic!)

The second thing we notice is that Seong-eun DID use a lot of what I said. Did she use FIVE consecutive words? Let's find out:

Another advantage of questions is that they are giving clues to the hear about how to answer; "do you" questions require "Yes/No" answer, "what" questions need some kind of noun, "when" questions will select time adverb, "where" a place adverb, "how" will take an adjective or adverb, "how many" a number, etc.

You can see that the last part is a clear violation of the five word rule. And she's in trouble anyway, because the BRITISH five word rule says you cannot use five content words (that is, not functors) in a sentence if somebody else has used them in a sentence.

So she has to QUOTE Professor Kellogg, and put my name on it. Of course, it's not published. But she can use this: (Kellogg, 2008: Private Communication).

 

[홍성은(Julia)]

I'm sorry again and I'll have to practice and practice to keep the rules: The Five Word Rule and One New Idea Rule and...

[kellogg]

Yes, particularly since this one is a rather BORING mistake! Poor Seong-eun!