Just a Minute - discourse

1.    Students choose a topic and challenge the teacher to speak for one minute on this. The teacher does so, emphasising the use of discourse markers (Well, right, anyway, then, I mean), or chunks of language related to the context. Record this if you can - use your mobile and play the recording through a computer / speakers.

2.    Ask students which words you used often (the discourse markers), and repeat if necessary.

3.    Elicit the discourse markers, board them and decide on their function (e.g. anyway: to change the subject).

4.    Students do the task themselves. Turn this into a game by asking their partner to count the number of discourse markers they can use in one minute.

5.    If necessary, they do the task in L1, and then translate into English. This will demonstrate the use of discourse markers in their L1, which will lead to them asking for a translation which they can use in English. 

Affix of evil

English is a language awash with prefixes to alter meaning (overpaid, counter-productive, anti-war) and suffixes to change word class (happy, happiness). Suffixes can also alter meaning, such as the very useful -ish ("What time do you get off? - About sixish"). I always like teaching this suffix as students identify its vagueness with the actual name for the language they're studying: Engl, ish.

Many languages, for example Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia, use internal affixes, or infixes, adding to the middle of a word to alter meaning. In English we can use tmesis -  inserting lexical items into words to alter meaning, most notably in the wonderful adjectives "fan-bloody-tastic" and "abso-fucking-lutely". I wonder if it's just the beautiful rhythm of these extended adjectives which leaves, to my knowledge, few other examples if this lexical building in English.

P.S. "diddly" is not an affix, internal or otherwise.