We had some unusually frigid weather around here recently, so my higher level class had a couple of unplugged lessons about the extreme cold. We looked at part of a news article and analyzed the language used to describe cold, icy conditions, and changing temperatures. Learners then looked at other news articles and discovered a lot of repeated language (treacherous conditions, black ice, temperatures plunging). They also found a pattern: when talking about general weather conditions, the word "temperature" is used in the plural. The singular is reserved for talking about a specific measurement.
What's the temperature? It's 46.
We'll see rapidly falling temperatures this evening.
Between lessons, I used COCA to examine some of the language we uncovered and I tried to include some of what I found in the next lesson. I had limited preparation time and I lack experience, so I didn't go as far as I wanted to (discovery activities using examples from the corpus) but when I get some time I'll return and work out what I might have done!
No comments:
Post a Comment