A good story has lots of elements but essentially it’s going to have a lead character we care about who is facing some kind of challenge or problem. And the plot is going to keep moving – that’s really important. It has to have ‘rising action’ as Aristotle would say, all the complications of the plot that build up to the climax. So there are universals at work in a good story.
Movie trailers are condensed stories – designed to tantalise, tell us just enough to make us care about the characters, and then leave us on the hook wanting to know more. They’re a great source of input for lessons for many reasons including:
not too short and not too long
natural conversation in context
an unknown ending so we can discuss what might happen
And the universal features of a story provide us with comprehension questions we can use again and again, with almost every trailer.
What genre of movie is it? e.g horror, action, romantic comedy…
Who is the hero?
What problem or challenge are they facing?
What other characters do we see and how are they related to the hero?
What happens to the hero?
Do you care about the hero or not? (Why?)
How might the story end?
Do you want to see this movie? (Why/Why not?)
Click here to download a free worksheet that works with practically every movie trailer. And click here to visit my new Simple English Videos website which has 34 of the latest movie trailers to choose from, plus clickable transcripts. I’ve been thrilled to find the site is attracting visitors from all over the world and I’m adding new videos almost every day. If you have any tips or suggestions for the site, please pass them along.
To get updates on new videos as they are added, follow me on Twitter here: Follow @VickiVideos
If human beings communicated like most ELT course book characters, the world would be a much simpler place. There’d be next to no hedging or vague language or ambiguity or politeness strategies. Everything would be very literal. We wouldn’t have to consider issues like context, culture, power or gender and how they might affect meaning. In fact we’d just have to focus on getting our grammar and vocabulary right. That’s how course books generally work. If the grammar and vocabulary is correct, the message gets understood.
What a curious world it would be. No differing interpretations. No shades of grey.
I’m not having a go at ELT course books here. A good syllabus needs to transform the sprawling messiness of the English language and make it into something managable and learnable. To some extent writers have to simplify. Taking a black and white perspective on communication is one way to do that. And it’s easier to include the answers in the back of a book if there’s only one correct alternative.
But I do think we have to be aware of it and compensate. We shouldn’t be implying that if the grammar and vocabulary is correct, all will be well. It’s just not true. Human beings are often indirect, and they often have good reasons for being ambiguous. So rather than presenting models of language that ignore ambiguity, I suggest we present examples that explore it.
And that’s what the lesson below is about. It’s based on some research that readers of this blog kindly helped me with some time back. Click on the picture below to start the program. Hope you and your students enjoy it and find it useful.
To see the original research question: click here. Please comment or hit the ‘like’ button and let me know what you and your students think of it.
What’s your take? Should ambiguity be explored in the ELT classroom and if so why and how?
Ask an American what the polite way to respond to a compliment is and they usually tell you to smile and say thank you. I don’t think they mean to mislead you. They are just unaware that that’s not what they actually do in practice. In studies, it’s been found that around two thirds of the time they’ll do something like deflecting, downgrading or questioning the compliment to avoid accepting it. There’s a handy summary of some research into American compliments here:
It’s generally easier to pay a compliment than respond to one because there are competing politeness principles at work. On the one hand we need to be agreeable, but on the other, we need to be modest. For more on this see here.
There’s a nice video over at the British Council site that demonstrates how to give compliments. But more importantly, I think, it demonstrates different strategies for responding to them. For example:
Thanks, it wasn’t too difficult (downgrading the praise)
Do you think so? (questioning the praise)
Thanks for noticing (repaying one compliment with another)
It’s just an old thing (commenting by adding information)
Another common strategy people use that doesn’t appear in the video is sharing the praise – e.g Oh, I couldn’t have done it without the help of your wonderful team.
If you’d like to use the video in class, after your students have watched it, perhaps they can work out what strategies the woman used to avoid accepting the compliments. A nice round off activity could be getting the students to think of and pay a compliment to another student in the class. In my experience, the students listen avidly to one another’s compliments, and then you can analyse what strategies everyone used to respond. Do you think it’s something your students might find useful?
Quite a few of my technical English students have been involved in testing in some way – conducting experiments, reporting results, evaluating test data or whatever. So I was pleased to come across a scene in a public domain movie that depicts scientists performing various experiments and tests on a fabric. I wondered if it could provide some useful extra practice after a lesson on the topic of testing or the properties of materials – for example Unit 11 in Tech Talk Pre-intermediate or Unit 9 of Tech Talk Intermediate.
The video comes from an old 1953 movie. The original sound track was pretty poor and after clean up work, it’s still not great so I’ve prepared a transcript. I’ve also tried to jazz the first part of the video up a bit to give it a more contemporary feel.
So here’s a possible lesson idea – see what you think.
1. Tell your students that they are going to watch a 2 minute video. When it finishes they should tell you what they saw. (A neat way to do this is to have half the class looking at the screen so they can see and listen. The other half turn their chairs round so they can only listen. Then the first students pair up with one of the second ones and tell them what they saw. After that they have to keep quiet while you quiz the second ones.)
With any luck there may be some discussion because the effects I’ve added have made it tricky to see what’s happening at some points in video 1. Key points to establish:
The story takes place at an oil refinery in Texas in 1953
The police are chasing someone/something that’s wearing a space suit/deep sea diving suit. (Let’s call this thing Mr X)
Mr X runs into a building where he takes off his helmet and suit.
Mr X seems to be invisble. So we see his suit being folded up and placed on a table but we don’t see him doing it.
The police break open the door of the building, but they don’t find Mr X. They just find his suit and helmet.
2. Tell the class that they are scientists who are going to help the police. The police have brought them the helmet and suit and they are hoping for information that could tell them where Mr X comes from or anything else about him. Brainstorm a couple of experiments or tests they could run with the whole class to get them going. (You want a ‘what’ and a ‘why’ – e.g. weigh the suit and helmet in order to find out how heavy they are.) Then put your class into groups. Task them with coming up with a list of different experiments and tests to perform on the suit and helmet.
3. Collect feedback from the groups and make a list of the different tests on the board. (You can write the list yourself or give a student the job – good note taking skills practice.)
4. Tell the class that they’re going to watch some scientists performing some tests and experiments on the suit. They should see whether the scientists in the movie performed any of the tests they suggested, and if they performed any they hadn’t thought of. Play video 2 and then go back to the list on the board. See how similar the students’ list was to the tests the scientists actually performed. (Possible talking point: what tests can we do today that weren’t possible in 1953.)
5. There’s lots of vocabulary to check when you play the video 2 again. Click here for the script: Phantom From Space script
6. There’s also a third video but I have no idea how I’d use this. I did enjoy this line in the dialogue though:
This space suit is conditioned to function above 63,000 feet where human blood would
boil, resulting in the body expanding to twice its size, and death of course.
Ha! Well yes, I guess death would be one of the consequences.
If you find a use for any of these videos, please come back and share your experiences. All advice for changes and ideas for further exploitation will be really gratefully received.
Many years ago a friend passed on a funny document, knowing how much I’d love it. (Thanks Roger!) I’m not sure of its origins but as I understood it, it originated at Royal Dutch Shell where it was circulated as a joke between Dutch employees who were often struggling to understand the indirect remarks of their British colleagues. I could be totally wrong about that though, so readers do please tell me if you know anything about its history.
It’s three lists: phrases British people say, what they really mean and what their Dutch colleagues understood. Needless to say, what’s said and what’s understood are very different things.
If it’s hard to read my much copied version, you might like to check out another version that turned up on the Economist blog a while ago.
When I’ve shown it to students, I’ve often wondered if it would work better as a video exercise, so they could hear the tone of voice and see the accompanying body language. So when I get time and can find a willing British English speaker, I’ll have a stab at making a video. So watch this space and please tell me if you think your students might find it amusing. Also, do you think Americans would be as indirect?
There’s an obvious classroom task here – what’s the other person saying? But your students might just like to watch it for fun. Oh and click here for an earlier version.
It’s not often that we have a good excuse to enjoy a song in a business English class. But if you’re discussing customer service with your intermediate (or above) class, Dave Carroll has provided a great opportunity. Here’s the song:
Oh and the lyrics for the first verse (which they’ll need for the gapfill exercise) are here: United Breaks Guitars. Please let me know if you find it useful and if you see things I can improve.
PS. I’m travelling and I’m not sure what my internet connection will be like as I go, so I may be a little quiet for a while. (I’m looking forward to meetings teachers in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and London.)
What’s the AmE word for a (BrE) socket? Watch this video to find out. It comes from an episode of the 1960s Lucy show. It’s in the public domain so I’m expecting Youtube will let me keep it up. (Fingers crossed, eh?)
If you’re teaching technical English, you may be hunting for ‘troubleshooting’ conversations. This one marries well with several others that I’ve written in Oxford University Press’s ‘Tech Talk’ series. I’ve edited out some of the more obscure language but a lot of it was timeless – e.g. Did you plug it in?
I think it has a sort of period charm to it. Ask your students to guess when it was made. Clues: electric typewriters were ‘brand new’, the fashions, the terms of address (Mr. Mrs. Sir). Answer = 1967.
Click here to download the tapescript in pdf format. If you hover your cursor over the up arrow (bottom right on the video player) it allows you to turn the closed captions (cc) on and off. And below is another version of the video with some comprehension questions and a task inserted. Hope you and your students find it useful. If you get a moment, please click the red ‘Comments’ link below and let me know.
UPDATE
For more information on sockets and outlets and other ‘electrical’ differences between the US and UK, please see the comments on this post.
And something else I forgot to mention in the original posting: there’s often so much lexis to work on in technical English classes that I think it’s easy to skip over pragmatics. But relationships matter and for some techies, failure to pay attention to the feelings of others when communicating can even become critical in life and death situations.
There’s some pragmaticky stuff going on in the video that teachers might want to draw attention to, particularly with higher level students. Mr Mooney irritates Mrs Carmichael at various points. Where, how do we know, and why? (Body language and tone of voice are tell tale signs. He’s getting up her nose by talking down to her, being condescending, stating the blindingly obvious, not listening to her) Also what’s Mrs Carmichael thinking when she says ‘Oh plug it in! You must think I’m a perfect idiot’? Does she mean it or is she being sarcastic? What clues do we have?
Well, of course you haven’t, but in case some turns up, here’s a great way to spend it.
It’s is a video of a management training workshop by Marshall Goldsmith. He demonstrates an activity for developing skills in giving (and receiving) feedback – useful skills for work and for life in general. It lasts a little over an hour, but seems well worth the time investment if you can then integrate the activities into your classes. Plus, he’s pretty entertaining.
Movie trailers are condensed stories – designed to tantalise, tell us just enough to make us care about the characters, and then leave us on the hook wanting to know more. They’re a great source of input for lessons for many reasons including:
