Hjv.B .Lb
A proverb is a short and simple sentence well - known and repeated by the members of the target language community. It is usually a universal truth, based on common sense or experience of people.
Examples:
You cannot teach old dog new tricks.
Learn wisdom by follies of others.
Never put off till tomorrow what can be done today.
A saying is a witty and bright sentence of truth or wisdom.
Bad news travels fast.
There is no place like home
All roads lead to Rome.
What applies to authentic texts in general is appropriate to proverbs and sayings too and there are a number of positive reasons for an inclusion of them in the lesson plans:
* meaning has priority over language * has its specific length * learners are more or less familiar with the text type from their mother tongue/culture * learners can easily predict kind of information it contains * it brings reality and culture into the classroom * it can be used as a springboard for other useful and interesting activities such as role play, project, discussion games and so on.
Typical stylistic features of proverbs are alliteration, parallelism, rhyme and ellipsis (Arora, 1984) which can cause initial misunderstanding. However the teacher can benefit from “negative” features as learners cannot often understand the main message of it at first sight mostly in cases when the English proverb contains words which are not used for the same message in the Slovak equivalent. Here the way how the teacher works with it is more important than the content of the text.
Classroom tasks
When we decide to make use of proverbs and sayings in the lesson we have to consider its aim. The teacher should not forced learners to memorize them, although it often happens that many learners remember them without any effort.
Proverbs and sayings can be used in any all stages of the lesson as warm – up activities, for presenting and practicing lexical items and grammar structures/functions, practicing
Examples:
You cannot teach old dog new tricks.
Learn wisdom by follies of others.
Never put off till tomorrow what can be done today.
A saying is a witty and bright sentence of truth or wisdom.
Bad news travels fast.
There is no place like home
All roads lead to Rome.
What applies to authentic texts in general is appropriate to proverbs and sayings too and there are a number of positive reasons for an inclusion of them in the lesson plans:
* meaning has priority over language * has its specific length * learners are more or less familiar with the text type from their mother tongue/culture * learners can easily predict kind of information it contains * it brings reality and culture into the classroom * it can be used as a springboard for other useful and interesting activities such as role play, project, discussion games and so on.
Typical stylistic features of proverbs are alliteration, parallelism, rhyme and ellipsis (Arora, 1984) which can cause initial misunderstanding. However the teacher can benefit from “negative” features as learners cannot often understand the main message of it at first sight mostly in cases when the English proverb contains words which are not used for the same message in the Slovak equivalent. Here the way how the teacher works with it is more important than the content of the text.
Classroom tasks
When we decide to make use of proverbs and sayings in the lesson we have to consider its aim. The teacher should not forced learners to memorize them, although it often happens that many learners remember them without any effort.
Proverbs and sayings can be used in any all stages of the lesson as warm – up activities, for presenting and practicing lexical items and grammar structures/functions, practicing