Sexist lyrics (4º ESO)

On the occasion of International Women's Day on the 8th of March, I designed an activity that would make my students use their critical thinking skills to decide whether some popular songs have sexist content, whether hidden or not. The aim of this activity was, in a way, to activate the 'sexist radar' in my students and to be aware of sexism in our society.


I chose some current hits but also some older songs, in an attempt to show that these issues are not new. Terms such as infantilisation, objectification and banalisation were discussed and we looked for instances of them in order to create awareness of how they can be put into words and images. If there was something I really wanted to achieve was to promote feminism as an equalitarian movement, which favours equal rights and equal treatment between the genders, and that a wrong is a wrong regardless of who does it.

This activity encouraged a lot of debate in class- students helped each other understand the difference between healthy behaviours and attitudes (for example, a feeling of sadness after a relationship breaks up) and unhealthy and potentially dangerous ones (jealousy, manipulation, stalking). We also touched on the role of social media in human relationships, but did not explore this in a lot of detail as this alone would make for a long and complex project.

The assessment rubric was quite simple:



I definitely think this activity works well for older groups of students. Some of the songs and videos chosen were quite explicit and this needs to be taken into consideration in order to choose whether to show the videos in class, or to just talk about the lyrics. The most interesting presentations were, unsurprisingly, about the songs which attempt to hide sexism and about the ones which display deep-rooted sexist behaviours that have, to quite an extent, been normalised to such a point that a lot of people do not perceive them.

I would definitely like to repeat this activity in the future.

Thanks for checking in! See you in the next post!

Maite

Songs of Innocence and of Experience Project (4º ESO)

One of my favourite works of literature is William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Published in 1789 (Songs of Innocence) and 1794 (Songs of Experience), in the middle of a buzzing period to say the least (the French Revolution, the conflict with the American ex-colonies, the Englightenment, and more importantly for this particular project, the industrial revolution), these poems encapsulate the duplicity of progress, society, human relationships and many other issues which, over 200 years later, are still relevant.

As usual, I made a presentation to show my students:



Although all of them knew about the industrial revolution, as they had recently covered it in History (this is the beauty of inter-disciplinary topics!), none of them had heard of Blake and only a few of them had considered the artistic output inspired by it.

Connecting the 18th Century social issues with the 21st Century was a bit of a revelation for part of the class and triggered a fruitful, improvised class discussion on the effects our lifestyles are having on developing countries. My aim was to focus the issues on childhood, and the impact that adult decisions and actions have on children.

Although writing creatively isn't always received positively by students (most of them wanted to make a short film about this), because of time constraints, it is often the most sensible option. The visual part of this project, in the end, had to be abandoned because of the same reason; if I do this project again, I will certainly try to involve both the History and the Art teachers to fulfil its potential.

You can read the students' stories clicking on the Stories at Base blog.

Thanks for reading this post!

Maite

Halloween Stories (4º ESO)

Hi all,

This is a bit of a tradition for me now, since it's the third year I have done this activity. As usual, I introduced the topic of Halloween and launched the creative writing task in my 4º of ESO class, which this year are working towards a C1 level. They're a really strong class, with plenty of creativity and language skills to match.

The stories have been published in Stories at Base blog, and you can enjoy them by clicking on the link.

Enjoy!

Maite

Project: reworking classic literature

I love literature, and when you love something, you try to share it... don't you? Back in November, my 1º Bachillerato students worked on Poe's masterpiece The Raven, and the experience was really good. However, I thought it would be good to challenge them a bit more, by asking them to look at classic poets differently and therefore, to consider their works more relatable in spite of the time and cultural distance between, say, Lord Byron and a 17-year-old girl from Madrid.

When I was at university, I managed to change my view of classic poets- from cold, statue-like, unapproachable, venerable figures to warm, human and immediate people with day-to-day problems just like anybody else. I likened them to modern-day artists, and in a way they were. In an era (and a long one!) when the only way to make your works known was by writing them down, the immediacy artists enjoy nowadays,with Twitter accounts and media coverage, was unavailable to them, but that is not to say that poets in the past didn't behave unlike modern-day rockstars and had their quirks, eccentricities and diva moments... not forgetting that the reason why they have gone down in history is because they wrote wonderful poems, in the same way that, say, John Lennon has written wonderful songs and they supersede his personal life.

I digress. I presented my students the following:

The first step, of course, was to try to understand the poems. I didn't dwell in the literary devices, figures of speech or structure more than was strictly necessary- these are English language learners without a huge interest in such things-, so I tried to reach the meaning of the poems by asking the following questions:

- what is the topic of the poem?

- have you experienced something similar?

- have you read/watched/listened to anything similar?

- what sort of situation might have led to this poem being written?

By answering these questions, students had a more direct way to find themselves in the poem, as it were- they found links to their lives (either first-hand experience or witnessed events), and imagined situations which could have inspired the authors to write those lines, or other situations where the content of the poem would apply.

Their imaginations were working and their creative muscle was being exercised. Exactly what I wanted!

I split the students into groups of 4. I gave them a grand total of 5 periods for this. As usual, some of them threw themselves into it while others went through the motions-- but nobody was in their comfort zone.

You can check the final products clicking here.

Have you done anything like this in class? How was it? Please share your experience! 

Project: news stories (2)

And we're back after the Easter break!

My 4ª ESO students showed their news stories projects on the last day before the holidays began. As the group is so reduced (only 11 students), there were only 3 projects to present, but the experience was really positive for everyone. 

The first group had chosen a kids' programme. They adapted the topics to children and included songs and a dance to highlight the importance of taking care of the environment; interviews with experts to talk about the importance of health and vaccines (no doubt an important aspect of every child's life!), and they gave news of a celebrity baby in the most tender way possible. The students wore animal onesies as well, so they definitely had the target audience in mind. 

If anything could have been improved, I think it would have been the setting in which the programme was recorded, as it was fairly obvious that it had been filmed in a classroom and no attempt was made to hide desks, chairs, and other school paraphernalia. I guess that if we do this again next year I'll have to make students think of this aspect as well, and bring easy-to-use decorations and props to dress up the classrooms a bit better. 

The second group had chosen a standard news programme. In this case, the main difficulty was to adopt the right formal tone usually found in this kind of show. The students had to work a bit to remove opinion and bias from their news stories, achieving a more neutral register. This group used Touchcast Studio, and they benefitted from more professional-looking backgrounds and format for their videos. They thought their project lacked spark in comparison with the previous one, but I think that they still produced a decent news programme. 

The final group had chosen gossip, and this was a bit harder to adapt as there are few TV shows that combine gossip with current affairs, so they reached a compromise by producing a talk show with guests who were commenting on news stories, including dramatic fall-outs between them, heavily opinionated contributions and the hostess trying to keep the peace. It was fun and there definitely was a lot of thought behind it, but I think this group could also have made a bigger effort to make the classroom elements less obvious. They used the IWB to project a background for their programme, including a picture and their logo, but this could have been done more 'professionally' using a green screen as the background. 

The students had a lot of fun making these programmes, and they said they also learned about different reporting styles, apart from practising writing, speaking, audiovisual skills, teamwork, critical thinking... 

Have you done anything similar in your classroom? How did it work? 

Project: news stories

Last week, we started working on a new project in my 4º ESO class. In this project, the students have to research a journalistic style and report three news stories according to their chosen style.

Here you have the presentation I used in class:

First of all, the students got into groups, and before choosing a style, we discussed some common characteristics of each of them together. We discussed things such as bias, neutrality, focus, the importance given to personal commentary by the person reporting the news, the general tone, the role of the audience, and some other generalities. Then, each group chose a style and they started working on their scripts. 

Although I have given them three stories to report and examples of raw news to my students, I've actually given them the freedom to develop their stories as they like. In other words, they all have to talk about an oil spill, a new vaccine and a celeb becoming a mother, but the stories described by each group can differ. 

I am really excited about this project because, although we are working on fictional news, the students will gain a deeper understanding of the role of the media in news reporting, and hopefully, this will make my students a little more critical when they read or hear the news, by asking themselves the same questions we discussed at the beginning of the project: is this biased? What political agenda does it have, if any? Is this news or opinion? ... 

All the groups have decided to record a video, and one of them has asked to use Touchcast. As I write these lines, however, we're still at the script-writing stage of the project. I shall update again in a few days. 

Thanks for reading!

Project: a survey (2)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the surveys on role models, which my 4º ESO students had made. These surveys were filled out by other students at school. Once enough responses had been received, the authors collated and analysed the data and presented the results to the class. 

Google Forms is great because it simplifies this job for you. It makes pie charts and and bar charts, so it makes the job of interpreting data easier. The open questions (short or long answers) yielded different results, sometimes unexpected or even wasteful, as the students who took the surveys didn't always take the questions seriously. I think my students learned a lesson there. 

Finally, the results were interpreted and analysed. My students used Google Slides to make their presentations, using some of the graphs provided by Google Forms, and conclusions were drawn in insightful ways, which made this part of the project meaningful and informative. 

The general feedback from the class was positive. They had never done a project like this and they relished the challenge. It was nice to create a questionnaire that was treated like a real one (by most people, anyway), and not like a classroom activity that stays within the same four walls where it was created. 

They did say that making three different surveys about the same topic (role models) was a bit samey, though, and that it would have been better to have used different topics instead. I have to say that I agree with this, and for next year I will probably ask my students to make surveys about a few different topics, such as stereotypes, independence, the rights of young people, and so on.  

The next step is to do a writing on the back of this. We're working on reports and proposals at the moment. I'll write a post about this once we get there. 

Thanks for checking in!

Scottish English

There are a lot of difficult accents and, I'm not going to lie, the Scottish accent is one of them. It's not only the pronunciation that makes it a bit hard to understand, but also the fact that there are a lot of Scottish words most other native English speakers have never heard of, and they are used widely. This is because in most informal situations, people use a variety of English called Scots, which a lot of people from Scotland consider a language in its own right (and a lot of visitors do, too), and many Scottish people take pride in their distinctive sounds and words.

They do say that one of the clearest varieties of English is spoken in Scotland. In Inverness, for example, people speak in a recognisable Scottish accent, but one which is clear enough for anybody to understand without trouble. Go to Glasgow, on the other hand, and you may well need an interpreter.

What are the main characteristics of the Scottish accent, then?

Pronunciation

Broadly speaking, this is what makes it different from standard English:

- Scottish speakers roll their 'r', and it's a strong 'r', not the soft sound Americans make. It's sharp, it's short, and it's there. As a result, a word like 'girl' is not pronounced 'gal', but almost 'gerrrrral', with a small vovel sound between the 'r' and the 'l' (unpronunciable otherwise). Words like this include 'curl', 'whirl', 'Carlsberg'...

- Scottish long vowels are far less frequent than in standard English. 'Bath' contains a short /a/ sound, whereas in RP it's long, /a:/. Thus, there are some words that become homophones, like pull and pool.

- Some dipthongs become long vowels. For example, house is pronounced 'hoose', about is pronounced 'aboot'... and not all dipthongs stay the same. Home is commonly pronounced 'heim', toes is 'teis'...  And some words turn short vowels into dipthongs, like head: 'heid'.

- In some areas, speakers drop the sound /t/ when it's between vowels: be'er instead of better. 

- The sound /x/ ("j" as in "jamón" for Spanish speakers) exists, although it is a bit softer. Common words include loch (=lake), dreich (=wet, damp weather), och (sound people make to express annoyance)... it's very common in names of Gaelic origin, which are ubiquitous once you venture into the Highlands.

Vocabulary

There are a lot of common words that don't resemble regular English:

aye = yes

nay = no

ken= know

gie = give

bonnie = nice

kirk = church

bairn = child

lass, lassie = girl

blether = chat

braw = beautiful

haar = mist

how? = why?

crabbit = grumpy

loan = alley

wifey = woman

In Scottish English, it's common to use 'no' as a shortened form of 'not', although the word order is not always the same as in standard English.

'I'll no tell ye any lies" = 'I won't tell you any lies"

'Don't' is often pronounced 'dinny', and 'didn't' is 'didny', with the stress placed on the first syllable.

'I dinny ken him' = 'I don't know him"

It's also fairly common to use 'ye' to mean 'you', or 'yes' and 'youse' to mean 'you' in plural.

'I'll meet youse outside the pub' = 'I'll meet you all outside the pub'

All of these make it quite exciting (and, if you're new to the country, quite nerve wrecking) to decipher what people are saying to you.

Once you get used to it, it's quite alright, really.

Here are a couple of videos to illustrate some Scottish accents.

First, David Tennant reads Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. Tennant comes from Renfrewshire, in the West of Scotland. 

Next, a short clip from Brave, the Pixar film. Merida is played by Scottish actress Kelly MacDonald, a Glaswegian actress. Her mother, Elinor, is played by English actress Emma Thompson, who does a sterling job at speaking with a broad Highland accent. 

The trailer for Sunshine on Leith is a good example of the accent generally found in Edinburgh. 

Finally, in these videos you will find out some of the problems some Scottish people face because of their accent. 

Thanks for reading! See you next time! 

The Raven

I've come to realise that, no matter how old my students are (ahem, ahem...), they always enjoy celebrating foreign holidays such as Halloween. Last October, I decided to humour them, but I had my rules.

1-. They were going to read a poem.

2-. The poem was long.

3-. It had lots of strange words.

4-. I wanted to record their voices reading it.

Their enthusiasm somewhat subdued, I showed them the following video:

Some of them were touched by this point. Most of them, though, still had their suspicions. It was long, it had a lot of long, difficult words, and the subject matter wasn't all that clear. Who was Lenore, anyway? 

Printed copy of the poem in our hands, we went almost line by line, focusing on the rhythm and the sounds, just getting used to the cadence and the images conjured up by the extensive use of alliteration, repetition and rhyme. Even those students who still didn't understand the poem were starting to let themselves get carried away by the intricate, elaborate and resounding mechanics of the poem. 

OK, then. Death, loss, insanity, obsession... the themes started to fly around in class. Written on the board, bubble diagram covering the white surface. The words started to gain meaning, up until then unclear. Mythological figures became more concrete and significant. Most students were on board and started to make decisions about how they were going to read their lines. 

They wanted to read their lines in pairs, so I gave each pair of students two stanzas. We went over difficult words, drawing their attention to internal rhyme so they could predict their pronunciation. Without saying they were turning into actors, the students were interested in the speaker's frame of mind in order to give their performance some substance. And then, the big day arrived. 

I used WavePad, a voice-recording app on the iPad, and recorded stanza after stanza. The students felt satisfied after we finished, our 10-minute long recording testament to their efforts, to the journey they had to make to reach the master of horror literature, even if it was only with their fingertips. 

When we finished, the general comment was... we should do this more often! 

I agreed. 

Have you used Poe's masterpiece in class? What was your experience? Let me know in the comments below! 

Australian English

Here's one of those accents most people would be happy to understand. However, few English learners try to sound Aussie when they try to sound 'natural'. At least, that is the case in Spain, where most native English teachers come from either the USA or the British Isles and, naturally, teach their students their own accents. 

There are two main differences between dialects: vocabulary and pronunciation. Grammar tends to stay more or less the same in every dialect, although we could make some generalisations about this as well and say that such-and-such a dialect is similar to British English or to American English.

I'd say that Australian English is similar to British English, as far as grammar is concerned, and thanks to TV series like Neighbours, a lot of Brits have adopted some Aussie words, and even some of the intonation typical of speakers down under. 

VOCABULARY

This video illustrates some differences between Australian English and American English. 

In this video, you can see how Australian speakers tend to shorten words in colloquial speech. 

PRONUNCIATION

Well, it's been a bit of a challenge to find good videos to illustrate pronunciation... most of them were either really boring, or had been made by non-Australian people. Anyhow, here we go. 

An Australian comedian, Simon Taylor, goes over a few Aussie accents. 

Here, you have a comparison between Canadian English and Australian English. 

I hope you enjoyed this post... see you next time! 

A class debate

As far as speaking activities go, class debates are both entertaining and educational. I like them because you can work a lot of skills, some of which go beyond the purely linguistic ones.

This week, I have done a class debate on the subject of ambition.

We looked at a couple of quotes about ambition, highlighting both its positive and its negative side.

Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in. Bill Bradley

He who sacrifices his conscience to ambition burns a picture to obtain its ashes. Proveb.

Then, the students were divided into two groups-- those who would argue that ambition was mostly a positive quality, and those who would defend the opposite. Not every student was going to argue according to their belief, which made it all the more interesting. I have an odd number of students, so one of the teams had one extra member.

We agreed on a few different subtopics: the business world, historical figures, people in our own personal circles, etc. Each team would research these to fit in with their position. I gave the class two periods to prepare, and we established the debate would last between 30 and 45 minutes.

Finally, both teams chose a main speaker, who would start the debate by stating their team's position and a short but strong supporting reason.

On the day of the debate, the classroom furniture was arranged in such a way that all students were sitting down in neat rows, each team facing each other. I had prepared a rubric measuring the 5 main aspects I wanted to assess:

• respect for the other team
• quality of the information used
• relevance to argument
• presentation (voice, body language, eye contact)
• language skills

The students were made aware of the standards required. We tossed a coin and the debate began!

After the debate, I assigned the students an opinion essay with the following quote by Thomas Morton to discuss: "Where ambition ends, happiness begins."

I think that having done the class debate prior to the writing assignment works well to help students generate valuable ideas to use in their essays. A lot of them suffer from writer's block when it comes to talking about abstract ideas, so doing an 'undercover' brainstorming by way of a debate is an effective way to get those creative juices running. 

I am really happy with the result because students have 

• researched a topic they had some pre-conceived ideas about
• worked as a team in order to build solid arguments, in some cases anticipating counter-arguments 
• listened to each other in order to rebuff arguments effectively
• put into practice some complex language, such as second and third conditional sentences, reported speech, relative clauses, modal verbs... 
• used both speaking and writing skills

How about you? What is your experience with class debates? 

History of English: double words

Hi all,

I came across this short video recently, and I would like to share it in this blog. It illustrates neatly why we have some words that mean more or less the same thing, but that look very different.

This phenomenon isn't exclusive of the English language. In Spanish, for example, the words perro and can mean the same thing (dog), and their origins are different (Basque and Latin respectively), and there are countless other words like that. Without going into too much detail, this depends on how much one language has been exposed to others, whether or not one of the languages was used by the ruling classes or was considered more prestigious, and so on.

Apart from the words illustrated (sometimes, literally!) in the video, there are others. Can you think of any?Why do you think they have both survived and are in use nowadays? Feel free to use the Comments section below to post your ideas.

See you next time!