Clines
What is a cline?
A cline is a useful tool for teaching some sets of vocabulary. Even if you don’t recognise the term, you have probably seen them before.
A cline is a visual representation of language items on a scale. The scale has two extremes, one at either end, and language items are distributed along the scale to show a gradual progression from one extreme to the other.
For example, when teaching adverbs of frequency, you have probably seen something like the image below.
Adverbs of frequency is not the only set of lexis clines can be used with. You could use one with the following:
General descriptors: terrible, bad, ok, good, great, fantastic
Temperature: freezing, cold, cool, warm, hot, boiling
Probability of something happening: definitely won’t, probably won’t, might not, might, will probably, will definitely
Why are clines useful?
Clines provide a visual aid which shows the relationship between similar words and allows students to pick the right option based on where they believe something sits on a scale.
How to get the most benefit from a cline?
A common mistake I see teachers making is that they prepare very beautiful visual aids for students to take away. The vast majority of the time, I hate to break it to you, those visual aids are going in the bin.
Or students will take pictures of the very beautiful cline you drew on the whiteboard. At best, your cline will end up on social media, but most likely, that photo will just exist in a folder of photos on their phone.
If you really want students to benefit from a cline, you need to involve them in constructing it.
In a physical classroom, this could mean giving them the words or phrases on pieces of paper and having them arrange them on the desk. Online, you might be able to achieve the same on a tool like wordwall or using a shared document.
This requires students to discuss the discuss the words or phrases, their related meanings and it encourages peer teaching. This could be a useful diagnostic tool which can then minimise your time spent presenting the language, which in turn maximises time for practising and producing the language.
Summary
A cline is a useful visual representation of language that shows a gradual progression from one extreme to another. They are most useful when they are constructed with input from the students.
