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Teaching Teens with Task-based TV Shows

Stephen Reilly, France

Stephen Reilly works at the British Council Paris, where he runs secret film and drama clubs masquerading as language lessons. In this article he explains how he combines TV shows and drama in a task-based approach to enrich textbooks and motivate teenagers. E-mail: stephen.reilly.iii@gmail.com

Introduction

‘Shut up or you’ll get Latin’ our secondary school Latin teacher would roar at us unruly pupils at the beginning of our daily class. The deal was that if we sat quietly enough, we wouldn’t have to study it, nor he teach it. ‘Shut up or you’ll get exercises’ I in turn scream at my riotous teenagers every week. Needless to say, they don’t shut up, although they don't get exercises either. At the beginning of term, they compile a list of classroom activities they wish to do and after ‘go home’ and ‘sleep’, they write ‘watch TV series’. They then list their favourites and we spend part of each lesson watching them. Many teachers are still reluctant to embrace the new possibilities that video-hosting websites gives us. ‘Only as an end-of-term treat’ say some. ‘Ungraded material: risky and too difficult’ say others. ‘Can’t work the remote control’ say the remainder. Young learners themselves are ignorant of teachers’ debates on the merits of using authentic material in the classroom—they’re too busy listening to English-language songs and watching TV shows. Using these media and devising graded tasks has, in my experience, only facilitated learning, increased students’ motivation and enticed good behaviour.

Practical ideas

What follows are some themes of mainstream course books, suggestions of clips of TV series that enrich the said themes and tasks for students to carry out.

Advertising & commercials Mad Men (Season 1 Episode 1). Watch Don Draper's pitch to sell Lucky Strike cigarettes and discuss what makes it convincing. Give students script; make them practice the speech focussing on word stress, sentence stress and pauses. Compare with actors reciting the original. Give students a product and get them to devise a slogan, poster and pitch for it. Vote on the most effective.

Crime Prison Break (S1E1). Watch the hold-up and students say who, what, where, how and why. In pairs, students play at being Robin Hood. What would they rob, how would they go about it and to which worthy cause would they give their loot? Present their project to the class and vote on the most convincing.

English & languages The Ali G Show (interview with Noam Chomsky). Students note how Ali speaks and correct his grammar and misunderstandings. They then create their own nonsense questions with a chosen celebrity and perform the interview.

Family & teenagers World’s Strictest Parents (Alabama). Ask students how they would cope with the teenagers if they were the parents and get them to present their ideas to the class. Students imagine the dialogue and carry out a semi-improvised role-play between the misbehaving teenagers’ parents and the ‘world’s strictest’ parents.

Food Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (part 1). Students identify fruit and vegetables and determine if they’re more successful than the American children. Jamie attempts to persuade a city to adopt more healthy meals. Students imagine they do the same in their city and school. In pairs they produce and present plans. Students vote on which plans they would adopt).

Intelligence Are you smarter than a fifth grader? (Kelly Pickler version). Students answer the general knowledge question as it appears. They make up their own general knowledge quiz that they set classmates.

Jobs & interviews The Office (UK version, S1E1). Discuss criteria for a successful job interview. Watch David Brent interview a job applicant. Students describe his style and how it differs from a normal interview style. Students interview each other for a job and decide whether they get it.

Learning Friends (S10E13), Game of Thrones, Horrid Henry. Watch Phoebe teach Joey how to speak French. Students discuss outcome of Joey's language learning and rate Phoebe's teaching skills. Or watch Arya’s sword fighting lessons in Games of Thrones. Students note the attitude of pupil and teacher and discuss whether the teacher’s attitude is the most conducive to efficient learning. Students then list their own skills and teach them to others in mini-groups.. Examples of my own students' teachings: dance steps, The Cup Song, greeting phrases in Mandarin, pen-spinning, and how to draw in perspective, how to read palms, how to tell if someone is lying. Or for lower levels or young children, watch artist Tony Ross explain how he draws his cartoon character Horrid Henry. Students draw along before teaching each other their own practical skills.

Our students are our best resources for ideas, so get them to think of TV shows whose themes match those covered in the course book. When looking for clips, search beyond Google and Google-owned www.youtube.com and try websites such as www.metacafe.com, www.vimeo.com, www.dailymotion.com/gb and www.schooltube.com. Make video and task-based learning a vital ingredient of the staple diet of classroom activities and you’ll find that not only are they bait to encourage good student behaviour, but they also enhance students' taste for learning and nourish their creativity.

References

Please check the Teaching Languages Using Technologies course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology & Language for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Making the Most of a Course Book at Pilgrims website.

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Teaching Teens with Task-based TV Shows

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