Guessing, constructing and deconstructing stories

It is the second time we’re meeting this week – maybe that’s why at the beginning there’s only a few of us – and Tim starts the lesson showing the class three examples of the didactic unit we had worked on the previous day. These units are from another group and Tim goes through them quickly. We comment on them aloud: they’ve used quite a lot of Internet material, which will surely have a good impact at the students. Everybody agrees that they are clearly very good.

To begin with, the atmosphere suddenly becomes more intimate: a dim light, a picture on the class screen and all of us watching expectantly. We can see a picture of Batman and Robin trying to rescue a man trapped in a building on fire. It looks like a real picture but, actually it is a completely flat drawing painted with chalk on the pavement. It’s just a matter of perspective!

Now Tim focuses on the while reading activities, as they are usually the most difficult to be dealt with. This activity is called “What’s the next word?” The class is divided into two teams. We are shown an extract from a text by Laurie Lee, As I Walked out one Midsummer Morning. The text, which appears on the class screen, stops at one point and we have to guess which word comes next. All the members of the team must agree on the word but only one speaker gives the final answer. We get points if we say the right word, a similar one or at least one which shares the same speech category. Tim advises us to choose a mixture of easier words at the beginning of the text and some more difficult ones at the end. Predicting words turns out to be a really funny, competitive activity.

We move on to another task: “Deconstructing and reconstructing more complex sentences”. We are going to work with real short stories – one-sentence long – that appear in newspapers. Again divided into groups, we are given a different short story each and we have to deconstruct it, that is, taking the original information and transforming it into several sentences, e.g.

“Plans for a romantic dinner went wrong for Cardiff man when he thought his wife’s plastic breast enhancers were chicken fillets and fried them”.

1. There was a man in Cardiff.
2. He wanted to have a romantic dinner.
3. He intended to fry some chicken fillets.
4. He fried his wife’s plastic breast enhancers.

So each group deconstructs its story and then passes it to another group, whose task is to construct the text again. Then each group reads the reconstructed version aloud and the group that deconstructed it previously comments on the changes. Finally Tim reads the original texts and we all have a good laugh, as some of the stories are really funny!

Now we read some more of these stories together and we have to choose one, which will be transformed into a longer story. After some discussion, we finally make our choice, a very good one indeed: The Referee story

“The kick-off in a soccer match at Shawbury, Shropshire, was delayed for 20 minutes until the referee was discovered locked accidentally in the toilet”.

This is going to be a writing task following different stimuli:

1. First it’ll be a written stimulus. Each group writes four questions about what happened before the incident. Then we swap papers and the groups must write the beginning of the story making sure they answer the questions they’ve just been given. Then we swap papers again.
2. Now we are responding to a hearing stimulus: music. The instrumental music that we are going to listen to will inspire us to write the development of the story. It’s a rather frightening, dramatic music and we write the feelings or ideas it suggests. Then we use this information to continue writing.
3. In the final stage, we pass the story again to another group and this time we must follow a visual stimulus. Tim shows us two pictures on the class screen: a plump, smiling man and a rather unusual car. One of these visual elements must be included somehow in the end of our story…

When all the stories have been completed, it’s time to relax and just listen to Tim, who reads them all aloud. We have a great time as the stories turn out to be really funny and Tim, as usual, helps with his amusing mis-en-scène.

It’s time to go, but before leaving tireless Tim proposes a lateral thinking problem in which, again we have to continue guessing. It has to do with Italians, mothers, fathers and secretaries…. It’s late and we are exhausted but, at the end, we manage to beat him!

Lucía Ayuso Palacios

WORKING WITH STORIES: Common points

It was another long Tuesday evening. The day had been hard for all of us, struggling to make our students learn some English. Probably knowing this, tim decided to start the lesson with a kind of joke, English humour? Could be. He pretended to tell us a story with a happy ending which happened to have a terrible and shocking ending, in fact. It was a story about an Englishman killed by the elephant he thought was a friend of him. Nice, isn't it?
After this funny introduction, we began working seriously. Tim told us to reviewed the stories we had seen in the previous lessons: the letter by Ian Brown: "The Old Days", the article about the Pacific Islanders and the story of The Rabbits. We did the following:
First, we discussed the topics or ideas of the stories in groups of two. Then, we tried to find common ideas for two of the stories and finally, we looked for the common point in all three stories. This apparently simple activity led us to a wild discussion about changes in society, about nature and civilization, about good and bad… and so on. Therefore, when Tim saw that the discussion was becoming wild and philosophical, as if Plato or Rousseau had abducted us, he had the excellent idea of stopping us. At that time, we really needed a break!
After the break, being more relaxed, we continued with the lesson. We began working on "The Crocodile Blues", which we had read in a previous lesson. Tim gave us the texts we had written about the story and while he was reading his own version, in pairs, we edited our texts making some changes we thought were suitable. At the end of the activity, Tim made some comments about the importance of making our students interact with texts. As an example, he told us to make our students write not the exact words we are dictating, to make them do some paraphrasing.
The lesson ended with a game intended to make us remember the onomatopoeic words we had learnt with "The Crocodile Blues" story. Tim read a poem, "The Sound Collector" then we were divided into two groups. One part of a group had to remember, without writing, the onomatopoeic words they were hearing and the others had to remember the household items associated to these sounds in the poem. At the very end of the lesson, Tim read the poem "Gruesome". And that's how the lesson finished, with some of us wondering what "gruesome" meant, others not knowing what was better: nature or civilization, and some others probably thinking they had to improve their onomatopoeic vocabulary. I

Carolina Rodriguez Contreras

Storytelling

In the last session of English alive we worked with the story: The rabbits.

See John Marsden's homepage

The rabbits is a deeply impressing book both regarding the story and the pictures. Once more Tim showed us that children’s literature is not just for children and that books with pictures should not be always in the children’s section at bookshops.

The book tells the story of the arrival of a group of rabbits to an unknown place inhabited by other animals. It is always seen from the perspective of the other animals that merely observe the incomers.

The book is an allegory of colonisation and of the arrival of Englanders to Northern America which deeply changed the way of life of the natives. The book faces us directly with the issue of the use of natural resources and the destruction of the environment. Tim gave us a nice worksheet to work on so that we drew attention to the detailed pictures and extract conclusions. The gradual way in which we worked was great!

Dilemmas and choices

This was the main topic of today’s class: things going one way or another, decisions and predictions.

We began with a speaking activity, which can be adapted to any topic. This was a physical activity, since we had to stand in two ovals, one in the inside and the other one in the outside. The people in the outside oval stood facing the people in the inside oval, and Tim gave us three situations in which we had to play a role and face some dilemmas:

1. A Cuban hip-hop band was visiting Sagunt: some people didn’t find it appropriate because of the ofensive lyrics they used, and the others stood for it, since they thought art shouldn’t be censored.
2. A man had to look after his sick mother and his two children; his girlfriend had a very good job, and they had been talking about living together, but where? They lived quite far away, and none of them was supposed to give up.
3. A doctor had committed a “small mistake” which had taken an old woman into a deep comma. Luckily, she was now well, but two colleagues were discussing whether to denounce what the other doctor had done or not.

This activity took about 10 minutes and was quite funny, since we had to play a role and we couldn’t agree with the other people, we had to look for confrontation and defend our ideas.

The second activity was longer, and it involved working in groups. Tim presented us with a children’s book with no words, only pictures. He asked us to predict the kind of language we would use to describe it, including onomatopoeic words, verbs about running and walking, and feelings. The story was a bit surreal, since it included egg-shaped machines, crocodiles sleeping in fridges, and so. We stood in groups of 5 people, each of us with a role, although they changed from time to time. One of us should be the writer, another one the reporter, and the rest of us were “sentence makers”. The latter would speak to Tim about the pictures and, after thinking one sentence that described the actions, the reporter would dictate it to the writer. Then, we would change: the reporter became the writer, and one sentence maker became the reporter, and so.

After having finished the story, we read it in groups to see if we liked it, and we edited it. It was a fun activity which involved co-operative writing, and we enjoyed ourselves.

Finally, the last activity included 74 cards with three choices: we had to read number 1, and decide if we would choose a, b or c. “A” took us to card number 5, “b” to card number 7, and so on. The story talked about a person and the dilemmas he had to face in life: we had to choose whether to say in our town in a badly paid job, or move to the city to look for a better job. Of course, it wasn’t easy: we had to work in groups to make decisions, which weren’t very appropriate in our group. We went to the city, got robbed, asked money from our boss who wasn’t very happy about it, moved back to our town to set up a business that didn’t work, set fire to it to get some money from the insurance company, went to jail for it... Tim asked us to think of a morale for our situation, and ours was easy to find: “never set fire to your business”.

Tim told us that this exercise was like a maze: we were presented with problems to look for a solution, but our choice took us to a new dilemma. Some groups were lucky and could finish their activity safe and sound, but others had a dramatic ending. This activity took about 15 minutes, and it was funny, although it also was a bit frustrating, because no matter what we decided, it all turned wrong in the end and our problem grew bigger and bigger. In our group we ended up with lots of money but no happiness, but at least it was an end (if you play this game, you’ll understand what I mean: after lots of wrong decisions, you only want to finish no matter how!

This was an interesting session, because we worked in groups and had lots of fun thinking about what we should do in every situation. Hope next session is as much fun as this one

The Crocodile Blues by Coleman Polhemus is a nearly wordless book.

Violència a la societat i a les aules

El cas de l'agressor del metro de BCN i de la mort de l'estudiant valencià que intentava defensar a una xica de l'agressió del seu nuvi estan apareguent a les converses diàries de tots els extractes socials. Fins i tot els mitjans de comunicació més morbosos estan fent-se ressó de la notícia amb la intenció de pujar els índex d'audiència. I la pregunta és, què en fem des de les aules per analitzar la presència de la violència en la societat. Consultades fonts expertes recomanen que aquest temes s'han d'introduir a les aules de manera transversal i incloure-les en els projectes educatius de centre.

Nosaltres en aquest blog de llengua i literatura volem plantejar algunes respostes des de la nostra àrea perquè pensem que no es pot desaprofitar els recursos literaris per a contribuir a la formació de les persones no només en "sabers" sinó també, com diu la LOE, en "saber ser". A continuació us posem algunes idees esboçades per plantejar el tema de la violència des de la nostra àrea.

POESIA.-
En poesia podeu trobar molts exemples que tracten aquest temes. Ja sabeu que hi ha molts poetes sensibilitzats per la justícia social i per la contribució de l'art a una vida més plena de les persones. Però em seleccionat aquest text de Brecht perquè pensem que il·lustra molt bé l'actitud de molta gent enfront del sexisme, el racisme, la violència de gènere, etc. i que només es preocupen quan els toca directament.

Primero vinieron a por los judíos, y no dije nada por que yo no era judío.

Luego vinieron a por los comunistas y no dije nada por que yo no era comunista.

Luego vinieron a por los sindicatos obreros

y no dije nadapor que no era uno de ellos.

Luego vinieron a por mí y no había nadie para hablar por mí.

Bertold Brecht

NARRATIVA.-
Els contes són un vehicle d'allunyar les pors de les persones (hi ha alguns mitjans de comunicació que utilitzen aquest recurs de la manera més simplista, com si fos una medicina que s'aplica cegament front determinades ocasions, és a dir com els llibres d'autoajuda). És més, des del conte tradicional fins a les actuals llegendes urbanes, les metàfores literàries han servit per exorcitzar les pors dels humans. Mireu alguns contes com aquest de "Es mi naturaleza!"

FILMS.-
Són molts els films que tracten el tema de la violència en un sentit o en un altre. Ací us en posem dos exemples un que representa la idea clàssica "L'home és un llop per a l'home", i un altre, molt dur però molt enriquidor, sobre la violència a les aules.
- El método (basada en l'obra de teatre de Jordi Galcerán El mètode Grönholm que està ara en cartell a València).
- Bienvenidos a la casa de muñecas ("No a totes les xiques els agrada jugar amb nines").

REFRANYS I PROVERBIS.-
Els refranys, proverbis i sentències són una font inexaurible de reflexions sobre la vida, però compte! es poden usar com a arma ofensiva. La salvació és que sempre hi trobareu un contrarefrany o si no l'inventeu.

CÒMICS.-
Hi ha molts dibuixants de còmics que han les seues imatges han sabut captar els problemes i fer-nos reflexionar sobre aspectes que abans ni se'ns havien ocorregut. Us recomanem alguns com Frato o Tonucci, el Roto, Quino, Forges i molts altres ens poden servir per exemplificar la violència i lluitar contra ella.

English through films

Laura, Pilar i Rosa del curs "Englihs alive" han creat un Seminari de treball i estan elaborant materials per a treballar la didàctica de l'anglés a través dels films. Ací teniu un dels PPT que han elaborat per al film Nightmare before Christmas.

També han creat un blog des d'on volen compartir amb tots nosaltres les idees, experiències i recursos que sobre les festes populars i el cinema troben per aplicar a l'àmbit de l'assignatura d'anglés. El nou blog s'anomena, com no, English through films, visiteu-les>>>