LESSON OVERVIEW

REDUPLICATION IN ENGLISH

First, in the lead-in task, students learn the term reduplication, discuss its meaning and brainstorm examples. In the next exercise, they look at five reduplicatives used in sentences (e.g. hoity-toity, easy-peasy) and match them with their meanings.  Afterwards, they look at a set of questions with different reduplicatives missing letters ‘a’ and ‘o’. Students have to add missing vowels and guess the meanings of the six reduplicatives. After that, they discuss  the questions. Before discussing, you could ask students to briefly explain the meanings of the reduplicatives in the questions. Next, students analyse five dialogues with gaps and complete them with a few examples of exact reduplication (e.g. so-so, night-night).  

DIALOGUES & GAME

The second part of the lesson focuses on practising reduplication in a less controlled way.The aim of the first exercise is to create dialogues and include two reduplicatives studied earlier. Students have to leave blank spaces where the new language should be. Then, they exchange the dialogues with their partners and guess the missing words in their partner’s dialogues. For stronger groups, there is also an optional exercise which familiarises them with contrastive reduplication – we use it when we want to stress the word’s prototypical meaning. The lesson finishes with a game. Students in turn choose a card and perform small tasks consolidating the new language (e.g. Name three things that can be hoity-toity or Give three examples of knick-knacks).