Film Soundtrack Task

August 2, 2019August 2, 2019 / textploitationtefl / 1 Comment

So, the origin of this lesson came when I was still teaching exams. I wanted a task that replicated the skills and language needed for Speaking part 3 in FCE / CAE / CPE, I wanted to show that the language for the task had genuine use outside the exam. I also wanted it to be a bit of fun. I decided to use some music as it would allow students to use high level vocab and in the feedback sessions I would have scope to add input and also to check comprehension. There are other examples of how to use songs in class on the site, for example: https://textploitationtefl.com/2018/03/04/the-cure-pictures-of-you-present-perfect-continuous/

https://textploitationtefl.com/2015/01/27/writing-lesson-based-on-a-song/

There are a lot more for you to explore.

Anyway, in this lesson, the songs are used for a slightly different reason.

So without delay, let’s get down to it.

Time: 90 minutes
Level: Intermediate / Upper Intermediate / Advanced / FCE / CAE / CPE (it could be used with lower levels with some scaffolding)
Aim: To encourage discussion and practise decision making language.
Sub aim: Practising presenting a decision to the group.

Procedure:

Pre-listening: Select 5-7 songs that you intend to use. Try to ensure that the songs have a different feel and that they will evoke a different emotional response.

Listening

Tell the students you are going to play them 5-7 pieces of music/songs. You are only going to play about 30 seconds of each. Ask them to write down any feelings they have about the song. Tell them that you don’t want things like “I like it”, “it is rubbish”, but want adjectives or description of feelings the songs evoke or where it reminds them of being etc.
Play the songs allowing time after each for them to write up notes.
After all of the songs have been played ask the students to compare what they have written down in small groups. Try to make sure the groups are 2-4 people each.
Do group feedback, this allows you to share ideas, but also share any high level / interesting vocab.
You may need to play the songs again at this point in order for them to complete the next task.

2. Task – the script outline

Ask the students to skim read the scenes. Ask them what type / genre of film they think it is.

Then, ask students to work in groups and complete the task on the worksheet. 10-15 minutes. There may be some language that the students are unsure of. Try to elicit meanings from them. Encourage them to think about context where possible.

Task: You have been asked to select music to match the scenes. The songs we played you earlier were the ones we have the rights to. We can probably just about afford to license one more song. So if you have a suggestion for one that would work, we can probably manage that.

Direct them to the suggested language on the worksheet (please add extra language to this that you would like them to practice). Encourage as you monitor and also take notes so you can do error correction after.

Give the students 5 minutes to prepare to present their ideas to the group. Try to encourage them to use reasons. This is a chance to recycle the lexis they used earlier and to practice summarising a group discussion.

Optional: Board the different ideas for how the film ends. The students can then vote on the best.

Post task reflection: Ask the students where they can use the language that they have been practising. The aim is that they recognise that this is language that could be used in the exam. If not exam students in business discussions, meetings etc.

Also encourage the students to offer each other feedback on the language they all used. Ask the students which of the phrases they did use, which they didn’t and why. It is about them making choices about the language they use and developing their own personal lexis.

Possible extension activities:

Ask the students in groups or individually to write dialogue for part of one of the scenes. This can then be edited and improved as a writing task. You could also ask the students to film it. This is a great chance for a student to act as director and help students improve. For a similar idea: https://textploitationtefl.com/2017/07/11/modals-of-deduction-a-murder-part-1-2/
Use one of the songs and treat it as a text and textploit it. See other ideas from the song lessons on the site.

Materials:

Using a song for reported speech.- Madness: Shut up

February 15, 2017 / textploitationtefl / 1 Comment

So, this lesson arose from my desire to get students to think about filling in listening gap fills while thinking about the grammar and language of the gap, not just robotically writing what they heard.

I chose this song as it tells a story, or is like two people telling their side of a story to a policeman. V cartoon-like and simple which served the purpose.

I’ve expanded it here to include a little section on reporting verbs and comparatives and also suggested a couple of follow ons.

It obviously fits neatly into a unit on crime or as an extension to reported speech.

PS When I first did this, I didn’t tell them it was a song. It was an exam class and I wanted to surprise them. I am still unconvinced as to whether telling them or not is better. I leave it up to you to decide.

Level: Intermediate / Upper-Intermediate / Advanced (at a push)
Aim: to focus students on the grammar of the gaps they are filling / to practise listening to language at a faster pace than normally presented.
Time: 30mins +

Procedure:

Activating stigmata / pre-listening:

Write “I didn’t do it” on the board. Ask students when they might say this?

Listening:

Ask them to predict what is missing and think of answers that could work.

check in pairs / small groups

Listen and fill in. – listen as many times as needed, I have normally found twice is enough.

Answers

do
listen
remember
T.V. set
watching
married
honest as
less

They will probably make a fuss about number 3 / 5 / 6 as it is not the words used. Explain that the meaning here is more important. (if you are doing it for an exam class they would never do anything as nasty as number 3 but it pays for students to think about the sentence meaning, not just note down the word.)

*You could ask them to listen again and take notes of what is actually said for the answer to each.

grammar focus:

Reporting verbs

Ask the students to underline all of the reporting verbs in the worksheet.

claim / say / ask / boast / deny

Now ask them to turn over to the second page.

This is about getting them to notice the structures used. For most this will be revision

Which are followed by a direct object? ask
Which are followed by that + clause? deny / boast / claim / say

Getting them to think of their own words that are similar is great as it allows you to see what they do / don’t know and also to correct any misconceptions.

Maybe ask them the difference in meaning of the words, or at least clarify it.

‘claims’ often expresses doubt from the speaker about whether what is being said is true and students may not know this.

Comparatives

‘As honest as’

As ________ as – which type of word completes this structure? – adj
If you were going to make it negative, where would ‘not’ go? not as adj as

‘The longer the daylight, the less I do wrong’

The + comparative + noun / clause, + the comparative + noun / clause

What does this phrase mean? possibly crime at night, accept different interpretations that work
Why would someone English use this sort of structure? to emphasis something

“The more I practice, the luckier I get” – what does this mean?

See if you can write one yourself, e.g. the more I sleep, ….

Follow ups

Ask students to find examples of reporting verbs in newspapers and bring them into class. I normally ask for 5-10 different verbs. It encourages them to be autonomous as well as getting them to notice language. Plus it gets them reading outside of class.

Also, you could ask them to turn the song lyrics into a short news report, recycling the reporting verbs.

Maybe give them a short introduction such as

“police were called yesterday to a burglary in London, when they arrived they caught two men red handed. They arrested both and took them for interview where the first man claimed …

Materials:

word: worksheet-word
PDF: worksheet-PDF

Bowie: Pronunciation in songs

June 15, 2016 / textploitationtefl / 1 Comment

Look, the fact is we just can’t resist a Bowie lesson. There it is, plain and simple (If you missed our previous one, you can check it out here) and I can’t promise that this one will be the last Bowie lesson we ever do. In fact, I can almost guarantee you that there will be more. This one came about because I was listening to Hunky Dory and got a wee bit obsessed with the song, Kooks. I thought I’d share it with you.

It’s a simple enough lesson using a song to look at vocab, “will” and connected speech. I’ve always felt that songs are a great way for students to practise their listening as they’re usually in quite natural speech (not always) and in real life there is very often background noise that you need to filter out when you’re trying to listen. Songs replicate that quite well. This is something I always point out to my students when I do a song. I think it’s important they see the benefit and don’t just think that songs are something we do on Fridays for fun.

Objective: to raise awareness of connected speech in songs / to examine different uses of “will”
Time: 2 – 3 hours
Level: Pre-intermediate and above

Materials:

Worksheet (word):Bowie Kooks worksheet
Worksheet (PDF): Bowie Kooks worksheet
Teacher’s Worksheet: Bowie Kooks teacher’s worksheet
Procedure: Bowie Kooks Procedure

Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsSlOGzPM90

Grammary Songs! The Script

April 15, 2016 / textploitationtefl / 1 Comment

I’m sorry…I may have gone too far this time and I completely understand if you want to turn your back on me and leave me to wither away into nothingness. I’ve made a lesson out of a Script song. In my defense, it’s not my fault. A student made me do it. This is what happens when you have Spanish teenage girls, who’ve spent a summer in Ireland as students. Honestly not my fault.

Anyway, you may remember that I once wrote abouthaving a short extract from a song for every language point. The idea was that it was engaging for students, it gave them a bit of access to the culture and it (hopefully) made the language point a little more memorable.

My first lesson was on “used to” and “would” using a Coldplay song…again, sorry. Check it out if you want to see what I was on about.

This one shouldn’t be a long lesson but it’s a nice communicative one with some guided discovery in there.

Level: Int and above

Time: 1 – 2 hours (depending on how chatty your students are)

Aim: see above

Objective: see above

Materials:

Procedure:

Listening for gist / engagement: Play the full song and have students discuss the questions at the top of the worksheet. The idea here is that they engage with the song and love it, hate it or loathe it but at least they engage.
Language focus (vocab): these are quite nice phrases and this activity will really encourage them to think about language in context instead of jumping to dictionaries. You can help them out with the individual parts of the expression (e.g. shoulder) if you think they need guidance.
Language focus (wish): this is all quite self-explanatory guided discovery. The hope is that students can analyse the language in context and decide how it would be used. You might need to walk them through the first one if they struggle with this kind of thing.
Practice: always good to practice.
discussion: This will bring the whole thing together and give them a chance to discuss the topic and use the target language.

Sing a song of Grammar, a pocket full of…hammers?

August 27, 2015August 27, 2015 / textploitationtefl / 3 Comments

So, over a pint…or ten, a friend of mine and I came to the conclusion that if we were going to teach our teenage students grammar, we needed a way for it to stick in their head. We decided that if they had a catchy line / verse from a song for each grammar point they might actually learn it.

Whether or not we were right remains to be seen but what did happen was that we came up with a lot of quick and easy grammar lessons based on one verse / chorus of songs from a variety of genres. Over the next while, I’ll hopefully share some of these with you.

Here’s one that worked well with my Spanish teenagers. They really liked Coldplay…don’t judge me.

I used to Rule the world by Coldplay

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

Possible Quick Activities:

Gapfill
Focus on pron
Changing the words but keeping the rhythm.
“used to” / “would” Guided discovery – see below

Possible Guided Discovery Questions:

Does the singer rule the world now? When did he rule it? Was it just one brief action?
Does he own the streets now?
Can you find another word that has the same use as “used to”?

Pronunciation:

How does the singer pronounce “I used to rule…”?
Which word is stressed?
How do they pronounced “would”? Is it stressed?

Benefits:

These are short musical lessons that can break up a grammar lesson.
With long term students, you can refer back to this if the language point arises again.
The lyrics can be placed around the room to remind them.
Students are encouraged to engage with the language and the culture. By fostering an interest in music inside the classroom, hopefully learners will go off and seek it out outside the classroom. The little taster of the song will hopefully whet their appetite.
Songs are perfect for a bit of guided discovery as shown above.

Pinball Wizard – Listening and tenses

August 4, 2015August 4, 2015 / textploitationtefl / 1 Comment

This idea came to me in class during a CAE class when students didn’t identify the phrase “ever since”. The song came to my head and as i ran through the lyrics I thought to myself, it might make a decent listening lesson, so let’s see if it does!

The advantages of doing songs are well catalogued, but in my experience some teachers don’t like them, and I think that is ok, you have to be comfortable with what you teach. For students though I think songs can give them something a bit different, they break the routine of class and prove a memorable example of language points.

The procedure is below and the accompanying worksheet shouldn’t be too hard to follow.

Aim: To highlight different tenses used to talk about the past

Level: Int +

Procedure:

Pre listening: A talk about talent and abilities, e.g. innate talents / being gifted etc.

Listening:

1. I am sure you have lots of listening activities you do as standard, so feel free to go for one of them. I would either:

chop up lines and get them to put them in order
do a gap fill
pick out words and ask them to say in which order they heard them

Language focus:

1. Recognition

ask students to underline examples of these different tenses:

Past simple
Present Perfect
Present simple
modal talking about the present
modal talking about the past

I’ve highlighted some examples for the students on the worksheet. The students may get confused by ‘has got’ used informally instead of ‘has’. Also, ‘aint’, which is here used to mean ‘has not’.

If you can use an IWB you can show this

2. Function:

For me without this, there is no point in looking at grammar, so here is a quick matching exercise.

2.1 Ask students to match these functions to the uses they have highlighted.

an experience in the past with no time phrase
present ability
A prediction about the past
an activity in the past that continues now
a completed event in the past
a fact

*Answers on page 2 of the worksheet.

2.2 Ask students if they can think of a synonym for ‘has to’

3. Ellipsis

Ask students if they can find examples of where language has been omitted and why they think this has happened?

e.g.

“Never seen him fall” – I’ve never seen him fail.
“Always playing clean.” – He is always playing clean

Ask students if the effect of this is to make it formal or informal? Here it makes it more informal.

4.1 Vocab from context

Ask students to do the exercise on page 3 (answers below)

A place where you can play pinball – amusement hall
Trusts his feelings / instincts – intuition
Numbers – digit
Very good (slang) – mean
Flexible – supple
Things that take away your attention – distractions
Sounds – buzzers / bells
Followers – disciples

5.1 Follow up discussion

How do you think the singer of the song feels? Why?
Is there someone you know who is super talented at something? Are you jealous of them?

Materials:

Song – easy to find online if you don’t own it
Worksheet: worksheet

Follow up

This is a bit of fun, but could work with some students.

Below is a link to an online pinball game, ask students to play and write a 100 word review of the game, saying what they thought of it in comparison to other games they have played, and if they would recommend it. Focus them on the production of the tenses seen earlier, e.g. the most boring/best thing I’ve ever done / Yesterday I played ___ which was ____ etc.

http://www.y8.com/games/Magic_Pinball

Writing lesson based on a song

January 27, 2015February 25, 2015 / textploitationtefl / 3 Comments

Sat listening to my ipod one day, this song came on and I started thinking as I heard the opening, hmmm, this could be a lesson on letter writing, it has taken a bit of time to properly come to fruition, but now here it is, ready to go.

Like some of our other lessons, this was born out of a frustration with teachers doing wonderful things with songs, gap-fills, questions on feelings, what the song meant, but then moving onto a completely different thing. Leaving language left untouched and with no real follow up exercise. I have tried to do that a little here.

Time: 90 minutes
Level: High Int +
Aim: To raise your students’ awareness of register
Sub aim: highlight conditionals

Materials:

Paperback writer lyrics by the beatles – easy to find online
Worksheet register
Worksheet Language focus
Answers

Procedure:

1. Listening: Cut up the song lyrics before the class and then do it as a listening exercise to order the lyrics, a lighthearted bit of fun and a good way to practice listening. (Feel free here to change this exercise and if you have good ideas let us know!)

You can do either stage two or three next depending on your main focus and also pre-existing knowledge of register in your class

2. Introducing the main aim: Ask students to think about the lyrics of the song and ask them if they notice anything about them, put them in pairs for this. Then if they haven’t found it, highlight “Dear Sir or Madam”. Ask the students where they would normally find this. Ask students in what situations they may have to write letters / emails.

3. Register: Ask them if they know the word “formal”. if they do, ask for examples of formal language. Ask them to look at worksheet 1 and complete gaps 1-9. Check in pairs and then as a class Then ask them to complete the missing two sentences.

4. Language focus: Go through worksheet two. Feel free to change the order.

5. Homework: Ask students to write a reply to the letter either agreeing to publish the novel or turning it down.