R.I.Chalmers

An article

I have recently had an article published in issue 61 of English Teaching Professional. The article looks at ways to deal with plagiarism, a practice used by some students and made easier by the power of the Internet.

You can find a link to the magazine here.

Word games like Hangman and crossword puzzles are by far the most exciting way for homeschoolers to learn, remember and master new vocabulary. Word lists are by far the least exciting way for a homeschooler to learn. Word games make learning and practice fun, while word lists make it a chore. Kids don’t want to learn, they want to have fun, so if you can convince your homeschooler that they are not learning new vocabulary but are having fun, their progress will be so much faster.

One of the best ways to convince a homeschooler that they are having fun rather than doing chores is Hangman. Played since Victorian times, the motif of the gallows and the hanging man are thought by many adults to be inappropriate due to the imagery’s inherent brutality, but this very aspect of the game is what appeals to children and has kept the game popular. There have been attempts to sanitise the game by substituting less violent images but falling apples and lost ducklings lack the appeal that the hangman’s noose holds for children.

For the homeschool setting Hangman is often used to practice spelling, revise vocabulary while keeping the child focussed and motivated. It has been played for years with a piece of paper and a pencil. The child guesses which words fit in the gaps in the word and a piece of the gallows is assembled for each wrong guess. This continues until the “victim” is finally hanged or the word is correctly guessed.

The number of guesses a child can make is dependent on how many parts of the stick figure and scaffold must be drawn to end the game. Many children insist on having the eyes, nose and mouth drawn to prolong the game. The game normally allows around ten to twelve guesses. There are twenty six letters in the English alphabet. If too many guesses are allowed, the child will always win. Too few and winning becomes too difficult. The homeschooler can be taught some simple strategies to help in guessing the correct word.

Letter frequency is something that any homeschooler will benefit from learning, not just for playing Hangman and other word games, but for spelling and vocabulary in general. The six vowel sounds that appear in almost all English words, including words like rhythm, are a, e, i, o, u and y. Along with finding at least one in most English words, they also make up six of the twelve most commonly used letters in English. The others in the top twelve are in order of importance, t, n, s, h, r, d, and l. Any homeschool child who learns about word frequency will find it much easier to win word games and will achieve a better overall vocabulary.

For the homeschooled child sight words are important, but many other word groups are too. The correct choice of group, or lexis set, can help steer your child in the right vocabulary direction. By using a particular lexis set, you can focus your child’s attention on the words you want them to learn. Such lexis sets can be written in your child’s notebooks, placed on flashcards, or stored in a computer database where they can be reused again and again.

Though the Victorian inventors of Hangman would be astonished at the power of the modern computer, they would have been no less enthralled by playing the game on the computer rather than on paper than their modern counterparts in the homeschool environment. There are many sites on the internet where a homeschool child can enjoy playing Hangman and other word games. Some of these sites allow the homeschool parent to enter their own lexis sets rather than relying on a list of words that does not always coincide with what they want their child to learn.

A quick search on any of the most popular Internet search engines will soon bring up a list of sites that will help the homeschooler make great strides in vocabulary acquisition. With very little effort, the homeschool parent can transform the mundane into the magnificent and ensure their child will not get hung up about learning new words.

They say that opposites attract and the two poles of the magnet, positive and negative, do attract each other and form a strong bond. Such attraction may be fine for magnets, and it’s what makes a compass work, but when it comes to people’s personalities positive and negative need to be kept apart. Nobody needs a magnetic relationship if it’s going to cause problems for one or both of the people in the relationship.

Some people have a positive outlook on life, the optimists. Others have a negative outlook on life, the pessimists. There are times when each of us feels optimistic or pessimistic depending on the situation in which we find ourselves. Yet our overriding personality type is either optimistic or pessimistic.

The person’s disposition to be positive or negative in their outlook has a profound effect on the way they deal with many of the issues that arise in a relationship. The optimist’s reaction to having a small bump in the car is going to be quite different to the pessimist’s. The optimist may see a small pay rise at work has a great bonus, while the pessimist may see it as a slap in the face. Forgetting to go to the shops and having nothing in to eat could be seen by the optimist is a great opportunity to go out for a meal, while for the pessimist it could be an action bordering on neglect.

If you’re an optimistic person you will want to surround yourself with optimistic, positive people. You will probably find it uncomfortable to be around negative people. Yet it can be difficult in the first stages of a relationship to establish if your potential mate is a positive person like yourself or a negative person. During the early romantic rush of infatuation we tend to view the world through distorting rose-coloured spectacles. Your potential partner’s negativity will be submerged beneath an upswell of positive romantic attachment.

Many positive people find that when they’re around negative people that positive energy is drained by the negativity of the other. It’s almost as if the negative draws down the positive energy in an attempt to reach equilibrium. Typically what happens is that the negative energy so drains the positive that the positive personality finds themselves desperate to escape to somewhere where they can rebuild their positive energy reserves.

Often in a relationship the positive partner finds ways to escape from the negative partner in order to re-new their depleted positivity. They escape to play golf or football on the weekend, or they may stay late at work, preferring to busy their optimistic natures in work rather than have two face yet another drain on their positivity by returning home. While this may work for a while, perhaps even for many years, eventually the negative drain on the positive individual will prove too great and the relationship will come to an end.

Whenever you’re embarking on a new relationship it’s vitally important to establish that you are both compatible as regards your level of positivity. An overly positive, blindly optimistic type will find it very difficult to form a lasting relationship with somebody whose negativity and pessimism will stymie their own positivity. There are some ways you can ensure that the person with whom you are planning a relationship, be it a personal relationship, a business relationship, or a professional relationship, is a suitable match.

Begin by asking your potential partner some questions about things that are important to yourself. If your partner gives answers that you yourself would give this is a good indication that your positivity is of a similar level. Engineer some situations that will test your partner’s reaction to difficulty or crisis. Tell them that you’ve lost your wallet after taking them out from meal and ask if they wouldn’t mind paying for the meal. Arrive at the station a few minutes late and watch your partner’s reaction to missing the train and having to purchase new tickets. Pretend to have locked yourself out of your house when it’s pouring with rain and there’s nowhere else to go.

These “tests” may seem bizarre or even risky, but if you’re planning on spending the rest of your life or at least a good proportion of the rest of your life with another person, you can never be too sure. While people can change their opinions about things, and even their beliefs, and may change their stance even on issues of great importance, one thing they will never change is their level of positivity or negativity. If your potential partner’s reactions are as positive as your own would be, you can be more sure that they share your positivity.

When it comes to dating, whether in the real world, or through an online dating agency, it’s vitally important that the attraction you feel is not an attraction of opposites but an attraction of equals. If you fail to ensure this, whatever magnetic attraction you initially enjoy you will sooner or later find your differences repelling each other and you will once again find yourself searching for a new relationship.