Improve Your Students’ Circumlocution Skills, Part 2

Here are more suggestions for improving your students’ circumlocution skills.

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Responding to a teacher’s request for helpful phrases in the target language, Bill Heller provides this list for Spanish:

The most important ones I teach from the start are:

For nouns:
Es una cosa que... (It's something that....)
...se usa para... (is used to, one uses....)

Es una persona que.... (It's a person who...)
Es un lugar donde... (It's a place where...)

For verbs:
Es lo que hace una persona... (It's what a person does...)
...para... (in order to)
...que quiere... (who wants to...)
...que necesita... (who needs to...)


For adjectives:
Describe una cosa que... [It describes something that…]
Describe una persona que... [It describes a person that…]
Describe un lugar que... [It describes a place that…]

Heller, B. Re: [FLTEACH] Circumlocution. FLTEACH listserv (FLTEACH@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU, 20 Sep 2011).

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Responding to another person’s suggestion to use the game “Apples to Apples,” a listserv user says,

I also have that game in Spanish, Manzanas con manzanas, and the adjective cards are *perfect* for lessons on changing an adjective to an adverb by adding -mente. There are so many of them! I call about 4 students up to the board at a time, hand them a card (I look at them first because there might be some that don't work), and they have to change the adjective to the feminine form (if it is in the masculine form) and add -mente. There are lots and lots of adjectives in the game above and beyond what is in their book and it's good practice for them.

Meyer, C. Re: [FLTEACH] Circumlocution word ideas. FLTEACH listserv (FLTEACH@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU, 18 Sep 2011).

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Circumlocution has come up as a popular topic on FLTEACH several times; you can search the FLTEACH archives for more discussion and suggestions at http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S2=FLTEACH&m=208457&s=circumlocution

Some more circumlocution activities and other suggestions for staying in the target language are available at http://languagelinks2006.wikispaces.com/Staying+in+the+TL (scroll down).