Using Stand-Up Comedy In The Language Classroom
Gary Collins, Switzerland
Gary Collins, lic. phil. I, is an English language teacher and teacher trainer at the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET). His current interests include using web resources for language teaching and writing short stories and novellas.
E-mail: collins.com@me.com , website: www.garycollins.ch
Menu
Introduction
Copyright laws
Downloading video material
An example from stand-up comedy: Eddy Izzard’s Death Star Canteen
Conclusions
References
Successful teaching is largely a matter of the right mixture of motivating material you provide and of course the way, in which you provide it. Most schools today work with one of the teaching packages offered by the large publishing houses, i.e. a textbook cum an increasing number of add-ons. Students, however, more often turn reluctant to such material, because they associate it with the general stuffiness of the educational pressure on them. Bright students actually notice the artificial context they are welcomed to in textbooks. I was playing a famous pop song from one of the course book audio CDs, when one of the students told me: “Mr Collins, this sounds nothing like Shania Twain!” I was positively surprised at my student’s comment and told her, she should think about why that song is a cover version despite being a remarkably good shot at the original. In the next lesson partially native Rowena came up with the following explanation: “Big publishing companies don’t want to afford the royalties to provide us with the original. So, they furnish a semi-professional band with a few thousand pounds to produce a cover and secure the rights. It is much cheaper.” And then I thought to myself ‘If Rowena knew how much fiction a course book actually contained, she might not want to learn as eagerly as she did before’.
The point I am trying to make is of course: ‘genuine, original teaching material’ is often recognized as that, and shows a marked advantage as to its acceptance. Moreover, such ‘true life’ material - particularly video shorts - are at present accumulating out there on the web at a terrific speed. But suitable tracks for teaching are not easy to find. But once you have found one you want it to be of high resolution, HD (high-definition), and possibly contain English captions. And due to the fact of some web contents being unreliable as to its future existence you want to download it to a flash drive for safekeeping. But once you’ve got it, it makes very attractive teaching material indeed.
So, despite having to serve some supermarket tikka marsala in the classroom you might want to season it up by using original material from time to time. But some teachers simply feel reluctant to use the free opportunity. They feel they are doing something wrong. Why?
Is it actually legally sound for a teacher to show commercially produced audios or videos even if shown via the web? In the US copyright is handled more liberal when it comes to teaching. Teachers who use movies as an instructional aid are exempt from copyright law. Movies used in the classroom are considered beneficial to the public rather than an attempt to steal money from the studios. But countries like Canada and Britain have different laws on copyright. Graham Davis, a professional as for media in the classroom and copyright issues for schools, runs a sophisticated blog for teachers (ICT4LT – Information And Communications Technology For Language Teachers). Concerning commercially produced video material he writes: Most commercially produced DVDs and videocassettes carry a warning indicating that they can only be used for private and not public screening. DVDs or videocassettes shown in educational institutions for the purposes of "instruction" are normally not considered as public screenings, so they can be shown if they are used for teaching rather than for "entertainment". www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm
The aim of the teacher is clearly to ‘instruct’. Moreover, teachers will rarely show full-length movies unless they are art teachers or are doing a literature project. In an every day context you will show a short excerpt, anything between 3-5 minutes, i.e. part of a work, in order to discuss it or use it as a language input. Here, you are clearly on the safe side, particularly if you write out lesson plans with didactic goals. You are positioning yourself in the realm of teaching and ‘instruction’.
So what about downloading tracks from YouTube, MySpace, or National Geographic? Firstly, you are downloading the clip for personal use on your computer, which is legal. Secondly, you will shorten the track to meet your instructional purposes and even add your own captions, which has been shown to assist the learning process. In their abstract in PLoS One Mitterer and McQueen (2009) write:
We therefore investigated whether subtitles, which provide lexical information, support perceptual learning about foreign speech. Dutch participants, unfamiliar with Scottish and Australian regional accents of English, watched Scottish or Australian English videos with Dutch, English or no subtitles, and then repeated audio fragments of both accents. Repetition of novel fragments was worse after Dutch-subtitle exposure but better after English-subtitle exposure. Native-language subtitles appear to create lexical interference, but foreign-language subtitles assist speech learning by indicating which words (and hence sounds) are being spoken.
Downloading a video track in order to modify it clearly shows that you have an instructional aim when using media in the classroom. So let’s move on to an example.
The following example makes excellent B1-B2 teaching material.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6Kp8EXJwFg
In order to produce the track I bought Eddy Izzard’s entire DVD collection. Then I recorded a short excerpt using Screenflow to incorporate English captions such as to facilitate students making an educational profit. Before I use the video I give the class an input on the language used using a beamer OHP. Depending on the target level I introduce language structures such as to nip down, sarnies, weird bleeders, a tray, to hack, the neck, to challenge, head of catering, to form a queue, autograph, peas, or tubes. Later I ask students to pair up and talk about their favourite comedians, YouTube tracks, or videos. I will then elicit any knowledge they have on the Star Wars Trilogy and ask them about recent movies they have seen within the genre of science fiction. Eventually, I might ask them to form a few sentences using the newly introduced vocabulary from the video.
Making use of audio-visual resources is far from illegal the more you can actually show by documenting it that you are using some such material with an educational purpose, i.e. ‘instruction’. Emphasising that very purpose by showing very short excerpts, adding captions and providing vocab input, designing and applying follow-up activities, and making the students work will not be turned on you as an infringement to copyright laws.
We know, however, that teachers show full-length movies just to fill some indeed hard-going space after marking deadlines. While this might be considered an infringement to copyright, it is more likely felt to be an infringement on the teacher’s professional code of conduct and should best be avoided completely. The offered example in this article is clearly a viable alternative. Moreover, your students will also respect you for it. They know exactly, but will unlikely mention to you, what is ‘entertainment’ and what is ‘instruction’.
Davies G. (2011) General guidelines on copyright. In Davies G. (ed.) Information and Communications Technology for Language Teachers (ICT4LT), Slough, Thames Valley University
Mitterer H, McQueen JM (2009) Foreign Subtitles Help but Native-Language Subtitles Harm Foreign Speech Perception. PLoS ONE 4(11): e7785. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0007785
Please check the ICT - Using Technology in the Classroom – Level 1 course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Improving English through Humour course at Pilgrims website.
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