Adult Education

1. USING VIDEOS or SHORT MOVIES

1. Infering  information out of images: giving opinions, talking about feelings and emotions by Aránzazu López.

The students are at the level II of the workshop, which means they have developed basic skills during level I.  They are able to read simple texts and extract general and detailed information from them, they are able to write simple texts related to personal aspects and everyday life issues, but their listening and oral skills still need to be improved.  This is the reason why the following activity has been designed.

TITLE: THE JOKE	TIMING: 1 session (1h and 15 min)	TERM: 3rd
OBJECTIVES: • To express opinions about immigration, racism and human rights. • To talk about feelings and emotions. • To infer or guess information out of images. • To listen to a song and understand its general meaning. • To read pieces of a song and put them in order. • To understand the meaning of a song. • To write a summary of the song.
MATERIALS: computer, projector, digital board, copies of the song “The Joke” by Brandi Carlile.
RESOURCES: • Youtube the Joke  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r6A2NexF88). • lyrics of the song taken from: https://genius.com/Brandi-carlile-the-joke-lyrics.
USEFUL TIPS: • The use of contractions: keep’em, let’em, gotta. • Reading between the lines.

The activities to be done are the following:

1.    Watch the video and guess what the song is going to be about. (The video will be played without sound).

The students participated and gave their opinions. When speaking they made some mistakes but they conveyed their ideas, which was the purpose of the activity.

Some answers from the students were:

-        Dancing with life.

-        Human Rights.

-        Racism.

-        Fighting.

-        Sadness.

2.    When you see the images, what do you feel?  What do you think the people in the video are feeling?

The students found it difficult to talk about feelings, mainly because they lacked the vocabulary to talk about it.  That is why I had to help them with it.  Some of the words they came up with were: sadness, freedom, rage, indifference, etc. most of the words provided had to do with negative feelings.

3.    Try to guess the title of the song.

Students felt that finding a title for the song was really difficult.  They gave more or less the same titles as for the topics that they gave for the song. 

4.    Order the pieces of the song.  Then listen to the song and check if you ordered it correctly.

Students were sitting in groups and all of them were given a copy of the song torn into pieces.  They had to order the song giving their opinion about what piece was coming at the beginning, in the middle and at the end.  They had to give the reason why they thought so.  Some of the students were mixing Spanish with English when doing the task.  I helped them with their English when they needed me.

5.    Listen to the song again and extract general information.  Compare it with your previous answers.  What are the differences between your answers and the real meaning of the song? What is the song about?

This song was extremely difficult for them to understand.  They could understand the objective part of the song but they could not read between the lines.  For this reason I had to explain them the meaning of it.  Next time, I will use an easier song or I would not ask them to tell me about the meaning the song.  I chose it because I thought the images were simple but interesting to comment when it came to talk about feelings.

6.    Write a summary of the song.  (100 words)

Since we did not have time to do this activity, they will have to do it at home.  I will not be able to tell you about the results because I have to send you the activity before.