Words to do with ageing

Found this new word - 'Octogenarian' - today.  Found that it meant a person from the age of eighty-something to ninety.  It sparked off my dormant interest in vocabulary words.  I know it is tough to differentiate and it could be tested: words like toddler, teenager, adolescents, and such.

I did a search and thanks to answers.com, I finally found the exact words - look under the sub-header "Dividing the lifespan".

Quite an enriching read!

Composition writing in PSLE

1.      It is imperative to write a relatively good story!  Of the ‘200’ marks for English, we are always harping on getting the main bulk, i.e. – ‘Paper 2’, as high as we can.  But if you look at the every grammar / vocabulary / cloze question and say that it is important, is it not the same that you have ‘lost’ ten to fifteen questions wrong if you score ‘30’ or ‘25’ for continuous writing?

2.      Opening – The normal openings are ‘sound’ and ‘dialogue’.  You can use a question, an adage, or just a statement of exclamation.  E.g.  That had to be the worst day of my life! / I had to score that penalty in the last minute of normal time! / I would never go on a trip to the zoological gardens again! as a hook, and explain.

3.      Plotting – Whenever possible, design your plot to have a climax near the end.  Lead the reader on an emotional roller-coaster ride.  Skilful writers are able to lead the reader to think that the story is destined for an expected ending before reining them in to an unexpected, pleasant closure. 

4.      Ending – Never end the story immediately after the climax; have a (few) paragraph(s) to explain the feelings after the climax and what the story you wrote meant to the main character.  The reader might ask: “So what does this mean to the main character?”  Be sure to answer that!

5.      Flashback - For a flashback, conclude by bringing the story back to the start of your story (present situation).  Your last paragraph could entail your main character snapping out of his/her thoughts back to the present situation with a grin, a shudder, etc.

6.      Language – It is possible to score for language!  Try your utmost to use different terms to mean the same people / things.  E.g. Police = men in blue = capable crook-catchers (notice alliteration!) = law-enforcers.  Ensure that you use a few instances of a particular creative writing technique taught.  This could be deliberately thought of but used subtly.  Techniques include:  creative similes, alliteration, idioms, good phrases, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, personification, rhyme, question, etc.

7.      Describe characters / actions / setting – Consider these: [The girl cried in the canteen.  No one cared about her.]  vs [Curling pitifully in a heap at the secluded corner of the school canteen, the primary three girl sat alone.  The shoulder-length haired girl wailed pitifully.  It must have been a hundred-decibel loud – louder than the noise emanated by a subway train.   Something was apparently wrong.  Yet, no one seemed to take any notice of her.]  Which did you prefer reading?

8.      Feelings – Write about your characters’ feelings!  We experience many different feelings within the space of an hour.  Your characters should too.  Make the feelings explicit!  Tell your readers how they felt at different points in your story.

9.      Proofread – Students feel they have nothing to check after writing.  They choose to lay on the desk and sleep.  How wrong they are!  Make use of the invaluable time to reread your story as a reader, not an author.  You might have spelt words wrongly in haste to get your writing done!  Check for possible errors used in tenses.  See if you can add any description, feeling, anything!  Improve upon your writing!

Hope these help!  Next, I will try to consolidate some examples of good phrases and creative writing,  I wish you all the best in writing!

Non-conforming plurals

We know a lot of singular nouns are changed to plural using an addition of 's' or 'es' at the end of the noun.  There are a few that do not conform to this rule.  What are they?

1.  man -> men; woman -> women; gentleman -> gentlemen; ox -> oxen
2.  child -> children
3.  tooth -> teeth; foot -> feet; goose -> geese
4.  half -> halves; life -> lives; wolf -> wolves; leaf -> leaves
5.  baby -> babies; fly -> flies; army -> armies; puppy -> puppies; berry -> berries
6. passer-by -> passers-by; son-in-law -> sons-in-law; bride-to-be to brides-to-be
7.  forum -> fora
8.  phenomenon -> phenomena
9.  criterion -> criteria
10. mouse -> mice

These words are the same for singular or plural:
bison; sheep; fish (some argument here); deer; moose; advice; salmon; bread (and all uncountable nouns)

Some words, however, have two plural forms:
hoof -> hoofs or hooves; dwarf -> dwarfs or dwarves; zero -> zeros or zeroes

Finally, there are some words that seem plural but are really singular:
news; sunglasses; trousers; scissors; spectacles; clothes; goggles; jeans; pliers; binoculars; pyjamas; sandals; stockings; sneakers; slippers; shorts

Anymore non-conformists that we can add on to the list?

Pair words

Some words often appear as a pair (as a phrase).  Do you know them?

1.  ins and outs
2.  ups and downs
3.  dos and don'ts
4.  hustle and bustle
5.  ebb and flow
6.  round and round

Pronunciation

We are nearing oral for the P6 students.  Hence, let us begin a little collection of words that are pronounced differently.  Many of these words have a different pronunciation from what they seem as they are borrowed from foreign languages (e.g. French, Spanish, etc.).

Words with different pronunciation than what is spelt:

NOTE: I am not following IPA or any convention of phonics especially here; am just sounding them out using familiar words)
1.  Alkali (al-ka-lie)
2.  Alibi (a-ler-by)
3.  Facade (fe-sard)
4.  Subpoena (sub-pee-na)
5.  Rendezvous (ron-day-voo)
6.  Quay (key)
7.  Parquet (par-kay)
8.  Suite (sweet)
9.  Photographer (Fer-to-grapher)

Usage of short forms, informal words

Students somehow do not understand that short forms of words and contractions (I'm, didn't, can't, etc.) should not be used for proper writing.  If they are to appear, they should always appear within quotes.

If you were to abbreviate a term, you should write it out in full the first time it is mentioned and provide its abbreviation in brackets.  For example, I had been to the United States of America (the USA).  The USA is a very very big country.

You simply should not use words like 'didn't', 'couldn't', etc., in proper writing, lest you are writing them in dialogue.

Also, the usage of informal words should be shunned.  I am not sure if there is a proper stand on this but when I was teaching in school, words like 'mom', 'dad', etc., are always marked as spelling errors.  True, even the tuition centre that I teach in has its model compositions using 'mom' and dad' outside quotes.  However, I always caution the children that I teach that I believe that school teachers frown upon the usage of those words in proper writing.

Last but not least, I do not like to use the word 'kids' to meant 'children'.  Check in the dictionary if you do not know what I mean!

Different spellings for different forms of the word

There are some words coming from the same root word that have different spellings when the forms are changed.

1 - curious -> curiosity
2 - vigour -> vigorous
3 - pronounce -> pronunciation
4 - explain -> explanation
5 - furious -> ferocity
6 - monster -> montrous
7 - generous -> generosity
8 - four -> forty (but nine -> ninety)
9 - labour -> laborious

Are there any others?

Common errors

This starts my collection of common errors of words mixed up by many of my students in their writing:

respond (verb) vs response (noun)
WRONG:  I had no respond from my father when I asked him for permission to go out.
CORRECT:  I had no response from my father when I asked him for permission to go out.

advise (verb) vs advice (noun)
WRONG: Father adviced me to study hard for the upcoming examinations.
CORRECT: Father advised me to study hard for the upcoming examinations.

save (verb) vs safe (noun)
WRONG: I tried to safe my neighbour whose house was on fire.
CORRECT: I tried to save my neighbour whose house was on fire.

relieve (verb) vs relief (noun)
WRONG: I heaved a great sigh of relieve when he got down safe.
CORRECT: I heaved a great sigh of relief when he got down safe.

letter vs alphabet
WRONG: 'A' is an alphabet.
CORRECT: 'A' is a letter in the alphabet.

horn is a noun, not a verb!
WRONG: Father horned at the inconsiderate driver who changed lanes suddenly.
CORRECT: Father sounded his horn at the inconsiderate driver who changed lanes suddenly.

Commonly mis-spelt words:
embarrassed; referred vs offered; stifle a yawn, immediately, curiosity (no 'u' after 'o'), continuous, refrigerator (no 'd')

Vocabulary: Ways of saying 'praised' or 'scolded'

When students are younger(primary three and four), many like to end compositions with the fact that their main characters are praised or scolded in the end.  What other ways can we express the same feelings, without using those two words over and over again?

Well, we can say that elders commended the person for doing the right thing, or that parents / a parent (either father or mother) complimented the person for doing well.  Another way is to say that he /she was given a pat on the back, or lauded for doing the right thing.

On the other hand, they could be berated for being mischievous (note the spelling of this word!), chided, castigated, rebuked, admonished or reprimanded.  We could say that someone was given the cold shoulder or rebuffed too.

Why are there more words to scold than to praise?  Beats me!  It is just so 'world-ly' that we nit-pick than to praise others, isn't it so?

Vocabulary - Restaurants

Let me attempt to do a little vocabulary work here.  It is, no doubt, all there is to what I list; or what they say - the list is non-exhausive.

I was thinking of doing this over the weekend when I was buying food for my family and pondering if we could ever understand and write well on the stated topic, with the many terms already around.  Do we understand them all??  I am not sure.  We live, we learn.  Oh yes, not forgetting that we eat too.

There are many types of restaurants.  The familiar ones we have are our fast-food restaurants, hawker centres and coffee shops.  The working class and younger generation will be able to associate with cafes and bistros better.  To get a little reading on the types of restaurants, visit this page from Wikipedia.

We will discuss a few common types here.  Fine-dining restaurants offer dedicated full-course meals (think appetizer, main-course, dessert).  They are visually appealing - from decoration to cutlery and crockery - and aim to provide diners with good ambience.  Even their waiters and waitresses are supposed to be specially dressed and trained.  Some of these fine-dining restaurants have al fresco dining - an area that has tables and seats for customers to sit around the restaurant with enjoying their food.

Most of these restaurants offer a-la-carte orders.  You can choose different dishes instead of the courses of meals offered.  Some of these belong to a franchise - the brand name is established and separate individuals purchase rights to set up restaurants under that brand.  For example, Kenny Rogers.  Another example, crossing over to the fast food arena, are your McDonald's, KFC, Long John Silver, etc.  Buffets are quite commonplace too.  Diners pay a flat-amount and take all they can from the food lay out.

Hawker centres do not spring up as commonly these days.  My impression of them is that they are beside wet-markets.  They have many stalls lined up side-by-side, offering a variety of local delicacies.  Prices of dishes sold there are definitely more affordable compared to fine-dining restaurants.

Then we have coffee shops.  No, not coffee houses that offer coffee with perhaps one of two other types of light refreshments.  I mean those that we find commonly in the vicinity of housing board estates.  In one such shop, we have a handful of stalls offering a smaller variety of food choices.

Then we talk about the words to describe the food we eat.  The food could be sweet, sugary, spicy, bitter, sour, salty, cheesy, tangy (having a pungent, fresh, or briny flavour or aroma), etc.  I hope you do not get rotten or uncooked food.

The smell could be fresh, aromatic, sweet-scented or having a frangrance.  It better not have an odour (American-spelling is odor) or some stench!

How can our food taste, overall?  The meat can be succulent, juicy and tender.  Good experiences will leave comments like tasty, delicious, scrumptious, delightful, appetising, delectable, palatable, mouth-watering.  Informal words (can be used, but have to be restricted to dialogue or within quotes) are 'yummy' and 'heavenly'.

Try describing the food that you eat during your next meal.  With a vast vocabulary on food and all, you might become a food critic or connoisseur in the field.  Bon appetit (French: I wish you a hearty appetite)!

Composition - The juicy inside

After writing an introduction, you need to, in your next few paragraphs, tell a good story. You need to make sure that the story makes sense.  Many times, students will also mix up the presence of 'I' in the story and do not bother to reread the story through after writing it.  If only they had read their own writing like reading someone else's story, they would have noticed some of their own errors!

How then, can we write a story that has a 'good' plot?  Well, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.  I can only use my own version of how I see work as a gauge.

'Safe' stories that are not well developed, but may just pass the mark.  For the use of discussion, I have 'lifted' this picture from another website that discusses composition writing.

How would you plan for a story based on this picture?  A 'safe' one that just makes it would write about two friends going to play at a park / near a lake or pond with their kite.  The kite was blow and got tangled up with a tree's branches, and one of the boys climbed the tree to get it down.

A story that is a little better would write about a lesson learn at the end.  One even better would write about how they got there, why they were there.

I suggest a few other point of views:

- Think out of the ordinary.  Instead of the boys playing with the kite, they may happen to be there and notice a young child crying for a kite that got tangled on a tree.  The boys then played 'hero' and tried to get it down for the child.  Climax / Complication arise when the boy fell (normal) or tore the kite (did you expect that!).

- A prank.  The child asked them to help get the kite down, but upon climbing the tree and getting to the kite, found sticky 'stuff' on the kite, plus many insects getting onto their bodies from the tree.  It was a prank by their class 'joker', teaming up with his younger sibling.  Or it may be a plot to get back at them for having ruined the 'joker''s plan in school.

- Have an unexpected 'twist'.  Boys' teacher / parent appears on the scene, berating them for forgetting to attend a 'make-up' tuition class, and playing in the park instead.

- It was a staged effect for part of a show.  The boys were going home after school / tuition together.  Walking through the neighbourhood park, they noticed a 'fighter kite', one that they had always wanted, perched high up in a tree.  Overcome by greed, they decided to get it and make it their own.  It was during this that they realised that this was a set-up by 'Gotcha!' to see how Singaporeans may react to seeing an expensive kite on a tree.

  See how I have come out with four possible plots out of the ordinary, just like that.  You can too!  Just think of the possible, and veer from it!  Introduce one of two characters to help you twist the story!  Be wary though.  Introducing too many characters may also give you a problem that you are unable to concentrate on the story and fail to comprehend what you are writing.  For that, you need a clear mind and a distinct personality for each of your characters!