A Winner at the Grammy. A Winner in the Classroom

One of my favourite songs of late is Somebody That I Used To Know by Belgian-born Australian artist Gotye, featuring New Zealand singer, Kimbra. It is no surprise that this song won an award at the 55th GRAMMY AWARDS.

Interestingly, when I decided to write this lesson I was surprised to find another lesson on the same topic at http://www.english-attack.com/videobooster/gotye/somebody-i-used-know-feat-kimbra.  I hope you find my ideas a good addition to the theme.

Start by showing the learners the pictures of the two artists and ask the learners to imagine they are ordinary people. Get the learners to give them names. if they wish.

In pairs, get the learners to brainstorm adjectives to describe the two characters’ appearance and personality.  Tell learners to suggest both positive and negative descriptions as in Figure 1.

Figure 1

After that, get the learners to discuss whether these two people should or shouldn’t have a romantic relationship. Get them to present their opinions like this:

Listen to the ideas around the class. Write some of the learners’ opinions on the board. Then, tell the learners that you’re going to play music video entitled ‘Somebody that I used to know’. Before they watch video and listen to the song, tell the learners that the song tells the story of a romantic relationship between a man and woman. Put up the song title on the board and get the learners predict the content of the song. Get some feedback and then play the music video for them to confirm their guesses. You might have to play the song various times.

Give the learners a copy of the chorus and tell them to read it and discuss who they think might be speaking in it, the man or the woman, and why.

Conduct a discussion with the class about their ideas. Then, play the song again for them to listen to the lyrics and check who says these lines.  The answer is the man.

Now, divide the class into two teams, A and B.  Give team A. WORKSHEET 1.

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Give team B, WORKSHEET 2.

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Focus the learners on the VOCABULARY DEFINITIONS at the bottom of the worksheets.

Tell them to work together and match these definitions with the words in italics in the sentences in the table. Monitor and assist them here.

Sit with each group separately and get feedback on the answers, clarifying pronunciation and other relevant aspects of form and meaning as well.  Move on to the table and show the learners the examples given on each worksheet.

It is the learners’ task to interpret what the speakers are trying to say in each line, preferably in their own words. Repeat feedback with each group.

It is time now to work on pronunciation!!!

Give the learners the PRONUNCIATION WORKSHEET below:

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Instruct them to find different pronunciation features in the sentences on their worksheets and place them in the boxes under the appropriate category.  Emphasise that one example of each category is done for them.  The learners should also use the chorus for this. Monitor and assist where necessary. Get feedback from around the class. Be prepared for a full-on discussion about the answers to the task.

Move on to the final stage of the lesson. Tell the learners that they are going to role-play a conversation between the man and the woman. Before they start, give them time to prepare within their own groups. For this, give them the following instructions:

• make small notes about what you want to say
• try and use some of the lines from the songs in the conversation
• focus on the pronunciation of what you are saying

Wrap up the lesson by playing the music video for the learners to sing along and enjoy.

Have fun!

A Lazy Song for Listening, Vocabulary and Pronunciation Practice!

Happy 2013, everyone!

I thought I’d start the year with an activity which combines listening, pronunciation and vocabulary. This activity can be used with any level but works better with  higher level learners.

It uses ‘The Lazy Song’ by Bruno Mars, a song which talks about taking time out from the busy pace of life and spending the day doing nothing.

Procedure:

Start the activity by getting learners to talk about a day in their lives when they didn’t feel like doing anything. Get them to brainstorm what happened on that particular day by completing the following sentence with their own ideas:

I didn’t feel like doing anything so I….

 Write the learners ideas on the board e.g.

…stayed in bed the whole day

…ordered take-away food

…turned off my mobile phone

It is likely that the learners will suggest some everyday words such as bed, food, phone etc.  Circle these words and get the learners to suggest as many collocations as possible for these words e.g.

Deal with the meaning and grammar of these collocations. For example, in the language above, you may notice the different uses of the definite article ‘the’. Also, words like ‘scoff one’s food down’ are very idiomatic and should be used with caution.

After that, do some work on pronunciation with the learners. To do this, I have borrowed an idea from Reis and Hazan (2012) and their notation system called Speechant, in which vowel sounds are organised on a scale from high to lower timber sounds (p. 158).

Unlike, Reis and Hazan’s system, however, I suggest that you focus the learners on the direction of the voice from low to high sounds and vice-versa.  To demonstrate to the learners how this works, introduce them to the following  code:

͟   low sounds       ͞    high sounds

Then, write a couple of lexical chunks on the board such as ‘to get out of bed’ and ‘to order take-away food’. Tell the learners that grammar words should be said in a lower voice and content words in a high voice. For example, the lexical chunks above would be pronounced like this:

͟ to͞ get͞ out͟ of͞ bed         ͟  to͞ order͞ take-͞͞  away͞ food

Get the learners to use this system to pronounce the lexical chunks written on the board previously. Supervise this and assist where necessary.

It is now time to move on the listening part of the activity. Use the music video below for this.

Start with a listening for gist task. On the board, write these questions:

a)    What is the song about?

b)    Who do you think is telling the story behind the song?

c)    How does the person singing the song feel?

Some possible answers:

a)    The song is about taking time out from the hectic life.

b)    A young man, possibly a collage student.

c)    The person feels tired of their busy life and is happy to simply laze around.

Play the video once for the learners to complete the task. Get them to check their answers in pairs and then feedback on the answers with the class.

Now, tell the learners that they are going to listen to the song again. This time they are going to complete a listening for specific information.

Give the learners the worksheet below and tell them that their task is to listen and select the appropriate word.

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Play the video as many times as possible for the learners to complete the task. Follow this with peer-checking and feedback.

Then, focus the learners on the lines of the song by getting them to annotate them using the system described above e.g.

͞   Today ͟  I ͟  don’t ͞  feel ͟ like ͞   doing ͞  anything etc.

Get the learners to read the lyrics aloud, focusing on the pronunciation of the phrases.

Once that is finished, and if you have technology available, direct the learners to Urban Dictionary online.

Get the learners to look up the following slang words: chilling, lounging, snuggie, dougie, P90X, hang loose and birthday suit.

Make sure the learners are clear about the pronunciation, meaning and register of these words.

Finally, get the learners to sing along to the song.

If you have time left, get the learners to mingle and talk about what they might do or not next time they don’t feel like doing anything.

I hope you enjoy this posting. Watch this space for more classroom ideas.

References:

dos Reis, J., & Hazan, V. (2012). Speechant: a vowel notation system to teach English pronunciation. ELT journal, 66(2), 156-165.