The Story of English in 100 words. By David Crystal

Something I've always found fascinating is seeing how passionate people can get about almost anything. What fascinates me further is listening to those people speak at great length with such gusto about their passion. I once listened intently to a good friend of mine speak for two hours about the difference between coffee grinders. Now, I love coffee as much as the next man but I never thought I could be so captivated by the subject of grinders. Obviously, it isn't simply the intensity with which someone imparts their knowledge. Of course, said person has to do so with at least a modicum of charisma.

It is for that very reason that I try to impart as many as my intersts as pòssible on my students. It does, unquestionably, make a difference if your students are also intersted in the subject matter. Such as with my recent football class. But that is not in any way vital. If you can show students why you find things intersting they will often take up a liking themselves. I do, of course, also like to give my students the chance to go about showing their passion in class and providing a platform for them to share their ideas and zeal for whichever subject they find enticing.

Since becoming an English teacher my love for the language has only become deeper. Whilst some areas of grammar are really rather captivating, it's the etymology of the language I find truly alluring. The most recent books I've read have all been wordbooks and from one of those I've found some wonderufl material for my higher level classes and I've also peaked their interest greatly. It has become hugely apparent that when students know something about a word they find it an awful lot easier to use it in context. Added to that there are always otherwords that come connected. The next three classes I'm going to write about are all from David Crystal's book "The Story of English in 100 Words."

The first word I used for my classes was debt. It explained how and why many silent letters appeared in our langauge. My students found this extremely interesting as, especally to a Spanish learner, silent letters can often be a real pain in the derriere.

The next word I spoke about was dilly-dally, which talks about why we repeat sounds in words and provides a great number of examples. Examples which my students knew existed but now have a nice compartment to put them in and use them again at will.

Word three was Rep. It talks about how words are reduced and then reused in their shorter forms.

The final word I have used in class, so far, is Americanism. As a great number of my students have been to the states and often complain of the differences I like to flash up some examples and then use Prof Crystal's example of Harry Potter to show just how much the language can change by simply crossing the atlantic.

I'm going to get to putting these classes up on the web over the next week or so. I have a few materials to adapt. Most of the classes involve students reading extracts of the book but I have turned a few sections into "exam style" activities. When I get to a scanner I'll get them up

If you are a teacher, particularly of higher levels, I would strongly advise getting your hands on a copy of this wonderful book.