Six Other Notable Sixes
And how this substack got its name
Here is another one from my vault. When I first started Six Things in 2008 people asked me ‘Why six?’ The answer was less interesting than I think they hoped: I had read somewhere that seven was a ‘magic number’ in terms of memory and how many things people can recall short term (7 Wonders, 7 Deadly Sins…). So I wanted to call the blog Seven Things. But all the website domains with ‘Seven things’ were taken! So I dropped it by one number to get Six Things. Anyway, since then I have discovered there are many other famous ‘sixes’. Here are six more notable sixes and how connected they are or not to ELT.
1. Number Six
The codename given to the character in the cult British television show of the sixties The Prisoner. I loved this show (not the modern remake which sort of flopped anyway). Anyway, the main character is an unnamed prisoner in a model village and is referred to by the authorities simply as “Number Six”. His key phrase was: ‘I am not a number, I am a free man!’ What does this have to do with English teaching? Nothing. But it’s a favourite “six”, and I’m feeling self-indulgent, so it goes in.
2. Six word memoirs
A fantastic premise for creative writing. There is a legend that Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a story in six words and he came up with this: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. There are books of these, or check out this website. Now this DOES have potential in the language classroom.
3. Scott Thornbury’s “Six” talks
Scott Thornbury was using lists in his talks well before my original blog was started, and some of them included the number six (most notably, Six Things beginning with R – a fantastic talk I saw at IATEFL in the early 2000s). See abstracts and powerpoints of some these talks here. I can feel good about this one too on my blog as it is completely ELT related.
4. Six degrees of separation
The six degrees of separation theory states that everyone is at most six steps away from anyone else on the planet. For example, I am three degrees away from the Canadian singer Alanis Morrisette (a friend of a friend dated her in high school), two degrees away from the late Queen of England (I met her husband at Buckingham Palace) and… well I could go on name-dropping horrendously but maybe we’ll keep that for the socials. Relation to English language teaching? Well, it could provide gist for some interesting conversation with students!
5. Six-pack
Yes, I may be grabbing at straws but this was another one that jumped to mind on a very hot afternoon. A very Canadian English thing of a previous era, the six-pack referred to a pack of six bottles or cans of beer. This was a staple of my university days along with its bigger brother, the two-four (or twofer, a pack of 24 beers). I don’t know if it has the same cultural cachet in other places. A six-pack can also refer to very well-defined stomach muscles but let’s not even go there. Relation to English language teaching? None whatsoever but maybe I could include six-pack in a lesson on Canadian English. Maybe.
6. Sixth sense
This is not, as one student suggested to me, the ability to speak with ghosts but rather a special ability to feel or see things without using your other five senses. Good teachers have a sixth sense, I think, for what works in the classroom with their students.