Hello viewers of TRCS,
Thank you for visiting the second edition of The Real Canadian Songbook. I have changed the format from the first edition to make it more accessible to pads and mobile phones. And I added images, yes! How images can make a lesson come alive.
The distractors have been reduced from three to two for easier completion and with phonological, syntactic and spelling considerations. As a former ESL instructor, I thought it important to include in my distractors:
minimal pairs: b/p—bear/pear; t/d—to/do; f/v—ferry/very; etc.
homonyms: our/hour; pain/pane; lone/loan; sole/soul; etc.
contractions: cannot/can't; will not/won't; do not/don't, etc.
words with the same root even in different cases: beauty/beautiful; honest/honesty, etc.
words with the same prefixes or suffixes: obvious/oblivious; advice/advise, etc.
adjectives and participles: interesting/interested; exciting/excited; etc.
common errors of usage: it's /its; there/their/they're; further/farther; lay/lie; etc.
reductions of words: until/'til; because/'cause; doing/doin'; going/goin'; etc.
comparatives/superlatives/equatives: good/better/the best, etc.
common phoneme errors made by different linguistic groups: thank/dank/sank; etc.
respect for collocations, and if possible, chunking of phrases instead of discrete words.
prepositions and phrasal verbs: put up/put in; think about/think over, etc.
common reductions in words of colloquial usage: I want to/I wanna; I'm going to/ I'm gonna; *isn't/ain't—that will have to be explained. Personally, I don't like teaching it, but it is heard in the songs and in the streets.
In the wee hours of quizzing, I was often stuck for a distractor because nothing worked, so I dug into my addled brain for something humorous. Forgive me.
If you see any errors, please be patient because they will be caught in time. All the best in bringing music and merriment into your classroom. Enjoy.
~Sharon Michiko Yoneda
February, 2023