Americanisms and Harry Potter.

Following on from yesterday's blog where I spoke about David Crystal's book "The Story of English in 100 Words." I've posted the first part of my three classes. It's not exactly in the order I said yesterday but it is part 1.
As you may or may not have guessed it is about the difference between British and American English and how it can change meaning, cause confusion or simply enhance your language.

The worksheet here in Materials  called Harry Potter goes with the PDF here:Words 

As an intro to the class I like to ask which of my students watch TV in English. It is usually quite a high percentage of the class. I then ask if they have problems when it comes to deciphering  between some vocab they come across in there televisual travels and those presented to them in class.
The invariable answer is no.

This isn't because they haven't come across the subtle differences between British English and her transatlantic counterpart. They simply haven't noticed them on.

The next step is to elicit any Americanisms (or Britishisms depending on where you're teaching.)

My students usually come up with five or six. Pants being the most obvious and, of course, amusing to a group of boys.


Then I simply allow my more advanced students 10 minutes to read over the text.

I then repose the question as to whether they have in the past encountered any of the Americanisms in the text and if they feel changes in spelling from across the pond have enhanced understanding or made it harder. In this case the resounding response is in favour or should I say favor of the simpler American spelling.

Next I get my students to do some research into the differences between some of the words to find if there is room for confusion within these two very different dialects.  If they come across the word Fanny they do invariably fall about laughing.

When the vocab has been covered and the understanding has been verified I give the students the worksheet attached.

Then they return to class the following day we debate our answers to task 3 and see how many Americanisms we can compile.

Until the next time when I'll be repping some clippings.

H