AUDIO ALERT. There is a recording error that can't be fixed on the 17th slide. The rest of the presentation is fine. Please accept my apologies. Now back to our show: English is changing faster than gasoline evaporates. This presentation reviews the evolution of English, identifies what hasn't worked well in the past, where we are today and what we have to do to teach literacy and ESL speaking in the future.

1. The Picture on the Box for
Teaching English
Judy Thompson
CEO
Thompson Language Center
Home of the English Phonetic Alphabet

2. TESL Ottawa
For professional development at TESL Ottawa in 2011 we
started with a lightening fast overview of English.
The big picture of English helped teachers plot themselves
on a continuum that has spanned over 2,000 years
When teachers saw where they were, how they got there
and where they wanted to be, something huge shifted.
I want you to experience this seismic shift as well.
This presentation is an opportunity to reexamine some old
thinking, introduce some new ideas and then choose the
tools and techniques to best help your literacy and ESL
students in the 21st century.

3. Agenda
• Highlights in history and how they live on
in your classroom
• Walk a mile in your students’ shoes
experience learning from their eyes
• Identify some advances in education for
literacy and ESL/EFL English speakers

4. English is a Mess
blue
you
few
juice
through
who
shoe
school
Spelling is random and English is idiomatic.
Our dirty little secrets.

6. Highlights
• Old English was a combination of German and Norse
from 450 AD
• 500 years later French was added by William the
Conqueror in 1066 and Middle English was born
• In 1476 William Caxton destroyed English forever by
writing it down with the wrong alphabet and
severing the critical sound-symbol bond. That was
the start of Modern English that we use and teach
But before all this what did printing look like?

8. Magical Reading and Writing
• People who could read and write where considered
to have special powers
• Writers were called upon for two main reasons:
1) delineate property
2) put curses on others
• To this day we call creating messages with symbols
spelling
• People who can do it still have special power over
those who can’t

10. • Dated circa 1000 AD.
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum si þin nama
gehalgod tobecume þin rice gewurþe þin willa
on eorðan swa swa on heofonum urne
gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg
• Dated 1384 AD.
Ovre fadir þat art in hevenes halwid be þi name;
þi revme or kyngdom come to be.
Be þi wille don in herþe as it is dovn in hevene.
• Dated 1611 AD.
Ovr father which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

11. •
Dated 2003 AD.
•
dad@hvn, ur spshl.
we want wot u want & urth2b like hvn.
giv us food & 4giv r sins lyk we 4giv uverz.
don't test us! save us! cuz we kno ur boss,
ur tuf & ur cool 4 eva! ok?"

12. You Might Need a Beer
•
•
•
It’s clear that English is tricky
What is not clear is how teachers
compound student failure and
suffering
There is nothing in your education
that helps you help students in the
21 century

13. Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make
• “Sound it out” – blue, through, shoe, you, two..
• “Look it up in the dictionary” – non-phonetic language
4 things in a useful dictionary:
1) what it means
2) how to spell it
3) how it sounds
4) how it is used
“Loo ki du pin the dictionary” “Ja wanna cuppa coffee”
• ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ – hundreds of exceptions
either, height, being, caffeine, their, weird, science…
• “Two vowels go walking…”

14. When Two Vowels Go Walking
By Matthew Davis
Here’s a bouncy version of the tune by Korean
students. For an acoustic guitar version by a
young strummer, click here.

15. How Does Reading Work?
According to a reasearcher…
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde
Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the
ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng
is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit
pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can
sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae
the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by
istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

16. Rules of Reading Revealed
Or rather...
According to a researcher at Cambridge
University, it doesn't matter in what order the
letters in a word are, the only important thing
is that the first and last letter be at the right
place. The rest can be a total mess and you can
still read it without problem. This is because
the human mind does not read every
letter by itself but the word as a whole.

17. Rules of Reading
1. It doesn’t matter the order of the letters
2. First and last letters must be correct
3. The right letters have to be present
We have no idea how English works
- not reading, not writing, not speaking
And we have never taught any of these skills well.
We teach a language that is outdated to students with
unidentified needs using tools that don’t work.
If you are still here, you are my hero and you deserve an award.
None of this is easy to accept at least it is easy to fix.
Here are the solutions I promised you:

18. Finally, Some Reasonable Solutions
BRAIN POWER – E-book by Rita Baker
The human mind does not read every letter… she
explains how the brain learns. It’s an easy read for $8 from
Amazon that will change the way you teach and parent.
• 80% of our brain cells are INTERNEURONS – whose
function is to detect patterns and make meaning
• Patterns not details
• Rita is a founding member of Radical English
www.RadicalEnglish.com which is all pattern solutions
• Rita has the 3 triangles that represent all grammar
possibilities in her Global Approach (but not in Brain
Power)

19. Literacy Solution
The Logic of English by Denise Eide
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ilthoEG39M
Also a pattern solution.
Because spelling doesn’t make sense, learning to read
is difficult. Denise’s rules/approach is a heck of a lot
Easier and more effective than pretending spelling is
fine and blaming the student for poor results.

20. ESL Speaking Solutions
• Teacher Judy’s Sound Dictionary app solves spelling and
pronunciation of North American English for $1.99
• English is Stupid, Students are Not for ESL students and teachers
based on the 6 simple rules of conversation that are always true –
no exceptions.
$35 on www.Amazon.com or $15 PDF from the E-Store
www.ThompsonLanguageCenter.com
• Grass is Black, Sound Dictionary the first dictionary students can
use for spelling, pronunciation, definition and expressions based on
Thompson Vowel Chart
$35 on www.Amazon.com or $15 PDF from the E-Store
• free English Phonetic Alphabet (EPA) download and wiki
www.englishphoneticalphabet.pbworks.com

21. 6 Rules of Speaking
Basic CLB 1-3
• Spelling is random – English Phonetic Alphabet
• English is a stress-based language
• All words are not equally important
Advanced CLB 4+
• Linking or Words don’t start with vowels
• Expressions - abstract
• Body Language – 80%

22. Global English
• Jennifer Jenkins, Kings College
Features of International English to consider
incorporating in ESL/EFL classes
• Global English Outline is a free download from
www.thompsonlanguagecenter.com
• Basic English Word List by Charles Ogden’s is a free
download from www.thompsonlanguagecenter.com
• We are 30-50 years into the transition to Global English
and it is not going backwards.
Be aware of the changes happening in education.

23. Recap
• English has been two separate languages since 1476
and that impacts every lesson we teach
• Experience learning English from a student’s
perspective it wasn’t that much fun
• Pattern solutions that solve every aspect of
learning/teaching English are popping up all over the
world and available to anyone through the internet
• English isn’t as difficult as teachers have been
making it, we need new tools and techniques.

24. Teachers for Tomorrow
• We looked at the big picture and found hard work and caring
deeply for students wasn’t enough when we didn’t have the
right basic teaching tools.
• We are caught in the changeover from Modern to Global
English that began before many of us (you) were born.
• Our responsibility to prepare our students for their world is
more than we can manage with the education we received.
• To have watched this presentation you must be either
visionary or unemployed. Either way, I applaud your interest
in educating yourself. You will soon be better equipped than
your contemporaries to make a real difference for your
students.

25. “I believe classrooms in 10 years will be
unrecognizable from what we see today.”
Judy Thompson
judy@thompsonlanguagecenter.com
or
www.EnglishisStupid.com