Page 43 - ELG1909 Sep Issue 466

RESOURCES . REVIEWS & RESOURCES

Recipes for success How to cook up an English class

in language learning Gill Ragsdale gives seven top tips for teaching English with food

At intermediate level and above, pairs or
Collect students’ groups can watch several videos and report on 6
Gill Ragsdale first learned the value of 1 recipes which they like best, and which are easier or Pop up cafés
cooking with students when she worked KATE McALLISTER Before introducing a recipe, test your more difficult. This is a project for either children or adults.
If you don’t have a screen, have students
with refugees in Calais students’ knowledge of food nouns and watch the videos on their phones - a much It could be as simple as a few drinks and
cooking verbs, such as ‘mix, pour, bake,’ and under-utilised classroom resource. snacks prepared by the class and opened up
t was early 2016 in the Calais Jungle camp. Shelters were few: it pre-teach as necessary. For lower levels, do Different groups could watch different to students from other classes, or inviting
was cold and often wet. We had students asking to learn English not make this list too long. videos and present their favourite recipe to younger students’ families. Or, it could be a
and French but in no mood to learn grammar or long lists of Give one or more example of an English the class. menu offered to members of the public.
Ivocabulary. recipe. A pancake, biscuit or Eton Mess recipe Many venues with small cafés are willing to
Opportunities for role plays were limited. But there was one topic is a good choice for lower-level students. host pop-up cafes. For example, Colchester
that interested absolutely everyone: food. Encourage students to suggest favourite Refugee Action runs a very successful
Food and cooking have become mainstays of many refugee foods from their own culture. In pairs or Cooking without a occasional Syrian Pop-up Café hosted by a
education projects and it’s a great topic for the English classroom groups, ask them to write a simple recipe 4 kitchen local gallery and cultural centre.
more generally. following the style of the examples.
Recipes use relatively predictable and restricted vocabulary that You may want to use a specific focus as You do not need a kitchen or cooker to try
can be easily adjusted for language level. The grammar can also be a prompt, for example breakfast, or types out recipes in the classroom. For example,
constrained to the imperative: ‘First chop the onions. Then fry them in of bread (or other starch) tend to be very there are no-bake cookie recipes at https:// Recipe cards and
oil.’ This creates a good opportunity to work on pronunciation, word culturally specific. www.thereciperebel.com. 7 books
stress and intonation using authentic materials: ‘Chop the tomatoes ‘Poule au Pot’ at the Darfour ‘School, Calais. You can also make milkshakes and
and add them to the onions’. mocktails: this is popular with younger Students can collect and save their class
I first used cooking for language-learning while working WIKIMEDIA students. Students in pairs or group can recipes as either individual recipe cards, or
alongside Kate McAllister with a community of male Sudanese “It’s actually taking the principles of task-based learning and make a mocktail from juices, cordials and/or together as a book. This could be very simple
refugees in Calais who had organised themselves around a teaching out of the classroom and into the kitchen. Generally, other soft drinks, as well as pieces of fruit and – just a few pages (even one page) printed
small communal kitchen with a cooking rota on the door. the principles are used in the classroom and you’re not actually various sprinkles of the kind normally used for and/or photocopied and stapled together.
It was very primitive. It was only a small producing anything real, whereas in the kitchen you are ice creams. They should write out the recipe, Involve students in the process of making
garden shed with two gas burners run from We talked. producing something real and then you are eating it… giving the proportions of each ingredient. The the pages, printing and/or photocopying.
a gas tank, but some great meals were and it brings in the cultural aspects of the foreign resulting concoction can be presented in a jug Allocate pages to pairs or groups of
cooked there, usually with very limited We learned. We language as well.” or clean soft drinks bottle that can be labelled students to finalise. If IT resources are
ingredients. The app was developed with a grant from the EU with their chosen drink name. scarce, pages can be clearly handwritten
Kate planned lessons around simple cooked. We laughed. and launched in October 2018. The instructions and photocopied – handwritten text and
French and English recipes (like Poule We ate. It was a are in several European languages, while recipes can hand-drawn illustrations can be a very
au Pot – poached chicken) in exchange be uploaded in any one of a long list of languages. attractive option.
for Sudanese recipes from our students. good day. Recipes are uploaded as a series of very short videos Cooking for video: This can be a great fundraiser, whether it’s
Recipes were presented with simple diagrams with accompanying text and lists of ingredients Eton Mess, a simple English recipe. 5 Linguacuisine a small booklet for students and their families,
and pictures, to be annotated in English and/or and utensils. or a larger scale project such as the recipe
French and Arabic. “Breaking the task up into short steps like this makes it easier for Encourage students to upload their own book ‘Something to share’ produced from
Cooking is also a great opportunity to take students shopping learners to digest,” noted Paul. cooking videos and recipes to Linguacuisine. the recipes used in the Syrian pop up café in
– an authentic task of buying real food. Best of all, these lessons I was interested to hear that Paul had involved local refugees and 2 Jigsaw recipes Recipes uploaded before August 31st 2019 Colchester: https://refugeeactioncolchester.
went beyond language learning, fostering a sense of community asylum seekers in developing the app. “This offers a two-way process, will be entered into a competition with a org.uk/product/something-to-share/.
in the class. as normally refugees learn English and don’t get to do anything from £200 pound prize. Spiral binding is a great option for recipe
their point of view.” There are many variations on this, for example: Instructions are given in English, French, books as it’s both practical and cheap.
Linguacuisine This also means that they can put their own recipes, from their own Give students parts of a recipe cut up and Italian, German, Spanish and Greek. The recipes can also be put online on a
Language teaching through cooking has now gone high tech, with countries and own cultures, on the system and English speakers can have them put it in order. The parts could be Students will need help with the instructions dedicated website or blog, which has the
apps such as the freely available https://linguacuisine.com/. learn about them and where they’ve come from. diagrams or pictures only, which students can if they are below intermediate level in the advantage of being able to add new recipes
I spoke to Paul Seedhouse, Professor of Educational and The app can even be used in mainstream schools: “Schools could annotate in English. language. gradually over time.
Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University, about his new cook the recipes as part of a French or Spanish food technology Give many possible recipe instructions,
Linguacuisine project, which enables students from all over the lesson.” and ask students to create recipes in pairs or
world to learn languages by exchanging recipes. How did he first The app is still very new, and the more recipes uploaded the better groups. Recipes can be judged by the class.
get the idea? the resource will be.
“About eleven years ago I went to the computer science labs at Food sharing is one of the oldest social activities, and while teachers NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY
the university, and they had something called the ambient kitchen, may despair at the potential mess of using food in the classroom, REFUGEE ACTION COLCHESTER
which was nothing at all to do with language learning - it was I recommend actually doing some real cooking and food sharing. Recipes for authentic
for people with dementia. The idea was that it would talk them It promotes a much needed but neglected aspect of education 3 listening practice
through cooking a meal. So, when I saw that I saw immediately generally: social and emotional learning. This is not only good for
that this would be a very good idea to use for language teaching the mental well-being of your students, but promotes more efficient Instead of giving a written example of an
for two reasons. learning: a win-win. English recipe, have students watch a video.
“First, everywhere in the world there are very strong links between Keep it short and simple for lower levels.
language, food and culture and this would then maximise those links. n Kate McAllister now works for Crisis Classroom https://www. Pre-teach key vocabulary, or just present
And second reason is that this is a very good application of task- crisisclassroom.com/, she previously worked the School Bus Project the words and ask students to work out the Paul Seedhouse, the man behind Something to Share, a book of
based learning. https://www.schoolbusproject.org/. meaning from the video. Lunguacuisine. Syrian recipes.

42 September 2019 editorial@elgazette.com 43