NYT Connections - Why Establishing Meaning is Important

As part of my daily morning routine, I do Wordle, Connections, and the Mini Crossword Puzzle on the NYT Games app. For me, it is a great way to start my day and helps me keep my mind honed rapier sharp. I would say that I am probably 90%-95% successful every day in completing each game. However, I was not very happy with yesterday's Connections! 

Connections is a game where there are 16 random words, and the goal is to create 4 groups of words, with each group of words having something in common. Also, each of the 4 groups differ in difficulty of commonality. Because it was April Fools Day yesterday, Connections had a different look to it - it used emojis.

While I do enjoy a challenge, I found myself getting frustrated, because I had difficulties interpreting the pictures: was the bread emoji communicating bread, loaf, or slice? Was the emoji of a brain expressing brain or mind? Was the sheep emoji signifying sheep, lamb, or ewe? In other words, WAY too much ambiguity for the meaning which each of the emojis was conveying! If you play Connections, you know how important it is to know the meaning of the words provided in the game! Because there were too many possibilities of meaning with the emojis, I ended up giving up after awhile.

In the same way, it is VITAL that we establish meaning of unknown L2 words to students. When the brain encounters unknown L2, immediately it will attempt to create meaning of some kind in L1; that L2 language for which the brain cannot create meaning, it will discard. While some students are meta and tenacious enough to keep at it in determining meaning of unknown L2, most students are not. Like me with trying to decode meaning of the emojis and experiencing frustration, that is how most students will react with unknown L2. The easiest way to establish meaning is by simply providing the target L2 word and its L1 meaning, referring back to it when needed, and moving on.

For the record, today's Connections was back to using words, and although it did require some thought, I formed all four groups!