This morning, like every Thursday, I met a group of women from different countries to practise English and share our experiences of living in London. As always I cycled there and it was very hard in the strong wind which seemed to be blowing from all directions, almost all the time against me. This is what we talked about first: how we get to classes. Some ladies walk, some come by bus, the more lucky ones come by car. However, if they didn't have a car, they would have to come on foot. One of them would walk , but her son would come by bike. Yes, most of us are mothers of small children and sometimes they accompany them. That's life. Anyway, I could go on telling you in great detail how come a 'conscientious objector' came about, but that's not the point. The thing is that was a new expression for everyone in our group so I needed to explain it to the ladies. It took us a good while as you can imagine. They knew 'brain' and 'mind', but not'conscience'. They knew 'an object' but 'to object' was new to some of them. You would like to witness our brainstorming over this linguistic puzzle, Dear Reader. And two noisy (at times) toddlers didn't make it easy to focus. Of course, mothers kept an eye on them all the time, but you know what it's like with children. The kids are lovely, but they are just kids. If you are a mother, you understand.
Anyway, later on I was looking for some listening material for a keen learner of English and came across a suitable podcast featuring Red Lion Square in London. Dear Wiki will tell you about many famous people who left their footsteps there. One of them was Fenner Brockway, a conscientious objector. You can read about him if you click here, hear the podcast here and read about the square here.
Tell me if you enjoyed reading this post and if you know of any conscientious objectors, please write about them in the comment section.
What is the connection between Doris the Wind that is blowing us about today and the conscientious objector in your lesson? Did one get blown into your path and you took him/her into the lesson with you? Please clarify!
ReplyDeleteI would really like to know how you came to be talking about conscientious objectors in your lesson! Was there one called Doris?
ReplyDeleteI can see Anthony that you are really curious about it. Sorry it's taken me a while to reply and thank you for your interest. Why don't you come to one of our Thursday sessions and find out what they are like? You see, we never really know how our conversation will evolve and that's why it is so engaging. We all know that it is a time for the participants to improve their English, to practice speaking and listening, but also to learn new things based on what they have already learnt.
ReplyDeleteAs to conscientious objectors, we talked about Doris and the destruction it caused and then about wars that cause destruction and suffering. Thus people who do not want to go into war were mentioned and that brought about the collocation. It is a conversation and we are not limited to following a lesson plan. Like in real life, we talk about things that are of interest and importance to the participants. A phrase like this can provide lots of 'food for thought' for a student. They find out that there is more to the word 'object' than they have thought. It can be a noun, but also a verb. They notice the difference in the word stress. They can use their knowledge of such words like 'teacher', 'constructor'or plumber to conclude that 'an objector' is somebody who 'objects to something', in this case to perform military service/go into war. It wasn't easy to explain 'conscience' and some ladies used their smartphones to find out. Then we could all agree that it is a person's sense of what is right and what is wrong. It is great to see the students interact, cooperate, improve their English and gain confidence in speaking.