Title: Clever ciphers – around abbreviations and emoticons

Lesson plan elaborated by: Katarzyna Maciejak

Topic:

Clever ciphers, or language on the internet.

Target group:

8th‑grade students of an eight‑year elementary school.

Core curriculum

II. Language education.

1. Differentiation of language. Student:

2) recognises the diversity of vocabulary, including recognizing national vocabulary and limited vocabulary (eg scientific terms, archaisms, colloquialisms); recognizes native and borrowed words, knows types of abbreviations and abbreviations – defines their functions in the text;

3) knows ways to enrich vocabulary;

5) distinguishes environmental and regional varieties of language;

6) distinguishes the content and scope of the word;

7) understands the concept of style, recognizes colloquial, official, artistic, scientific and journalistic style.

3. Language communication and language culture. Student:

4) understands what linguistic politeness consists of and uses it in statements;

5) distinguishes between the standard and functional language standards and applies to them;

III. Creating statements.

6. Elements of rhetoric. Student:

1) functionally uses rhetorical means and understands their impact on the recipient;

7) agrees with other people's views or polemicizes with them, substantively justifying their own opinion;

IV. Self‑study. Student:

7. reliably, with respect for copyrights, uses information;

8. develops his talents and interests.

The general aim of education

Students learn the features of language on the Internet.

Key competences

• communication in the mother tongue;

• communication in foreign languages;

• learning to learn;

• cultural awareness and expression.

Operational objectives

Student:

• characterises the language of the Internet;

• indicates the characteristic features of communication via the Internet;

• understands the functions of emoticons and knows what emotions they express;

• explains what these acronyms are.

Teaching methods / techniques

• giving: talk;

• practical: exercise exercises;

• programmed: using a computer, using an e‑manual.

Forms of work

• individual activity;

• activity in pairs;

• collective activity.

Lesson plan overview (Process)

Introduction

1. The teacher defines the purpose of the course: students will talk about Internet language. Together with the students, the teacher sets the criteria for success.

2. The teacher asks the students if they often use emoticons and abbreviations in their messages. The teacher also asks about the reasons for this. What does their use facilitate? Students write down their observations in the form in the abstract (Instruction 1) or in their notebooks.

Realization

1. Students do task no. 1 - they read various examples of e‑mails and answer questions (e.g. about the function of emoticons, the characteristics of senders and recipients, etc.).

2. Students do interactive task no. 2, which consists in combining emoticons and names of emotions/states in pairs.

3. The teacher encourages students to create a story using emoticons (at least a dozen of them) and write it down individually, and then exchange picture stories in pairs and try to decipher them. At the end, the students compare their versions.

4. As a curiosity, the teacher informs the students that the emoticon „Face with tears of Joy” was chosen by the Oxford Dictionaries as the word of 2015.

5. Students read an excerpt from the conversation of two players of the „League of Legends” and answer questions: what are the players talking about, would the content of the conversation be understandable to everyone (without explanation), or whether the explanations allow for a full understanding of the dialogue. Then they discuss in pairs the language of Internet players and try to point out its characteristic features.

6. Students do an interactive task consisting in assigning expressions used by players to appropriate groups: words from colloquial language, words from English, words from English with elements of Polish grammar, abbreviations created from the first letters of words.

7. The teacher introduces the term acronym and then asks the students to do an interactive task, in which the acronyms used in Internet communication and their explanations (e.g. IMO, OMG, LOL) should be paired.

8. In order to sum up the knowledge acquired during the lesson, students do an interactive task - they choose elements that are not specific to the Internet slang.

9. If there is enough time, the teacher can propose students to play charades using emoticons. Students, divided into groups or in pairs, are to present an emoticon drawn from the pool (e.g. from previously prepared pictures) using gestures and facial expressions. The task of the opposite group will be to guess the emoticon being described and name it.

Summary

The teacher distributes questionnaires to the students to evaluate their own work and that of the teacher.

Next, the teacher sums up the lesson.

Homework

As part of the charitable action, you will be collecting unused computer games and various electronic gadgets at school. Write a text message in which you will inform about this action and encourage your colleague to participate in it.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

Clever ciphers – around abbreviations and emoticons

The world is rushing forward in an amazing speed. We all want to be the first and to stay on top of things. That is why the technology develops so quickly and its main task is to serve people. At the same time we think that we have less and less time, so we want the information flow to be rapid – we care for the message, not the quality. The language is a living matter and it quickly reacts to the changes in the ways of communication. For older people the language of the contemporary media is very often difficult to understand, even ciphered, but young people treat it as something natural and use it on everyday basis in their e‑mails, SMS, on Skype or in discussions. Is it a cipher or a modern e‑language that some people can use without problems while others struggle to understand?

In pairs discuss the language of the on‑line games players (“gamers”) List its characteristic features.

When we contact people on the Internet chat, forum or via SMS, we usually want to express things quickly and in the shortest possible form. For this purpose we use the abbreviations. Acronyms are abbreviations created from the first letters of the subsequent words.