New Boy lesson plan

The following lesson is one that I did with most of my classes this semester, and it worked quite well in all of them. After trying it out once, I shared it with 2 of my co-teachers, Dan Deacon and Joseph Doucette, to see if it would work for other teachers too, and both said it increased participation and interest in the class.  The lesson plan below is fairly detailed and the result of trial and error (especially in deciding where to pause the video for clarification discussions).  Changes made along the way will be explained in the discussion afterwards.

Goals

             The video has so much meaning and language that a variety of goals can be achieved by watching it with students. This paper is focused on the critical reading aspect, but I'll briefly mention other possible objectives, too.

1. Exposure to unfamiliar accents: The students are confronted with both an Irish and a African accent, neither of which is familiar to most Korean students. As the narrative is quite visual, it is fairly easy to understand for even beginner-level students, but understanding the language intensifies the impact and also the emotional involvement of the students.
2. Pragmatics: Since the video wasn't made with ESL learners in mind, dialogue is often imbedded with meanings that are obscure to someone from a different cultural background (see Christian Kelly, “Do they know it's Christmas?”) As the story progresses and themes are established, student schemata are created and the story gradually becomes more comprehensible, which increases the enjoyment.
3. Fun: Most classes (and I dare say most students!) were visibly engaged with the story, and as a result didn't view the explanations and discussion so much as a lesson, but a part of watching the movie.
4.  Introduction to critical reading: Discussing the different characters and guessing at their future actions are low risk ways to engage the students, but also to give them a chance to give their different opinions. Care should be taken to explore every possibly valid suggestion by a student, as the point here is not whether it fits in with the ultimate conclusion of the story, but making it clear that people view other people and their actions in different ways, and that it is okay to speculate and be wrong sometimes. Here it is also helpful if the teacher admits to having been fooled by the build-up, too.

Lesson Plan

The  lesson uses “New Boy” , a short movie by Steph Green based on a story by Roddy Doyle.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdeioVndUhs )

Introduction:

     

 1. Write “New Boy” on the board and ask students to guess at the meaning.

  2. Students discuss how it feels to be new at school, and what problems new boys and girls have. Vocabulary is provided as necessary, but prompt students in the direction of “bully” and “clique” if they don't arrive there by themselves.

   3. Make it clear to the students that the accents will be difficult at first, and that understanding them will become easier as they get used to it.

Watching the movie:

To follow this lesson plan, it is best to be exact in pausing the movie, as some transitions happen very quickly and the element of surprise is quite easily lost.  

1. Watch 0.0 to 1:17: Why did the one boy suggest Joseph should sit next to Pamela?

                 Why did the teacher tell the students to put their hands in the air?

                 What did Seth Quinn do with the small boy’s book? What do you 

                                       think about Seth?

2. Watch 1:17 to 2:05: How is Joseph's old school different from the new school? How are the 

                   students' attitudes different?

                  What does Christian Kelly ask Joseph? What does it mean? (Students

                  commonly think it is a question about cultural differences, so a brief

                  explanation of the Ethiopian Famine and Band Aid will probably be

                  necessary, after which students can discuss the real meaning of

                  Christian's question.)

                  What did Hazel tell the teacher? (Explain “poking”)

3. Watch 2:05 to 4:20:  Who was Joseph's teacher in Africa really? (His father)

                   What did they talk about? (a soccer game, Joseph scored 3 goals in the 

                           last game, he's a star, etc.)

                    What does Christian say to Joseph about Hazel? (“Speccy fancies you. 

                            You're dead!”) How does Joseph react to this?

4. Watch 4:20 to 5:58: What did Christian say to Joseph? (“Are you hungry? Chew on                 this!”) How is this related to Christian's previous comment?

                   What happened next? What would you have done if you were 

                   Joseph?

                  What did Seth Quinn say to the other boys? (“I seen her knickers”: 

                  see discussion) What do you think about this kind of behavior?

5. Explain to students that everything up to this point will now be watched again to allow them to see the bigger picture. Watch 0:24 to 5:58, then let the students discuss the following questions.:

 1. What do you think about Joseph? How is his behavior different in the new school?

    2. What do you think about Hazel? ( Good chance to introduce new vocabulary such as “teacher's pet” and “telling on someone”, etc.)

3. What do you think about Christian Kelly?

4. What's going to happen next?

6. Explain to students that the rest of the movie will be watched without interruptions, but that the class will go back afterwards to look at individual utterances. Watch 5:58 to 9:40 (the end).

7. Discuss the following questions:

1. What had happened to Joseph's father? How did this affect Joseph's life?

2. Why did Hazel come out of the classroom to speak to the teacher?  How did the teacher respond?

3. What did Hazel say as she was walking back into the class that made the teacher angry?  What did Seth Quinn say to Joseph and Christian? What did Joseph say?

4. What do you think about the children now? What's going to happen after the story?

5. What do you think about the teacher?

Homework: Watch the movie again and write a letter to Joseph.

Reflection

The lesson worked quite well from the first time I tried it, but there were a few issues that had to be addressed at times. I'll briefly summarize them over the next few paragraphs.

                The movie navigates us through a day of the lives of several children, central of whom is Joseph, a Rwandan refugee in his first day in class in Ireland. He is confronted with racism, gets into a fight (sort of), and makes friends with his tormentors of earlier. At the same time, we are privy to Joseph's memories, which tell a back story that emphasizes the difficulty of the experience for him. Joseph eventually becomes a member of the class by holding on to certain unwritten rules: not telling on people, not backing down, and making fun of the teacher.

                The first problem that arose was the density of the dialogue in parts of the movie. Since the characters spoke at normal speeds in what constituted difficult accents for the students, often using using idiomatic language, a lot more time had to be spent replaying crucial parts to prepare the students for the 2^nd half of the movie. This was of course a blessing in disguise in terms of listening practice, but the extra energy spent on comprehension took its toll for the beginner level students, and in one class there was a clear drop in engagement after the first half of the movie.

                The language also included some crude expressions, which made it important for me to make it clear that I was not teaching this language for usage but for comprehension. Some of these were shocking for the students but easy to explain in context (Hazel calling the teacher  “a bitch” and Seth saying the teacher “thinks she's robbin' a fockin' bank”), but  the “seen her knickers” -scene was more problematic. At first I just didn't highlight it as the screen class's attitude towards the teacher / authority was by that time clear, but  there were a few fairly fluent speakers of English in 2 or 3 of the first classes, and a few of them mistook “knickers” for a racial epithet. The first time it happened, I just explained it to the individual student, but the second time I went back and verbally transcribed the whole scene for the class, tying it in to the contrast in class cultures between the Irish and Rwandan school. It certainly amplified the students' awareness of the cultural change that Joseph had to deal with, but it also took more time. I probably wouldn't cover it in future if I were to do beginner-level classes, but for mixed or higher levels doing it might be unavoidable.

                There was no significant resistance from the students, but  some of the beginner-level students seemed to suffer from information overload towards the end of it. In spite of that, the result was in line with the stated objective of providing a topic for discussion that didn't carry risk along with the necessary potential for disagreement.  Students responded with some very negative comments about the actions of some characters, but some others contradicted these without seeming concerned about public opinion in the class. Whether this was due to the lesson or not is debatable, but it established that the foundation for further critical lessons was in place.

                The stimulus towards critical reading happened in 2 places; at the end of the first period with Joseph on his way to the playground, and at the end of the movie with the situation resolved and the transition complete. After the events before break time, several students were able to predict a fight later on, but no one in my classes imagined Hazel standing up to the teacher the way she did, nor the ease with and the manner in which Christian and Seth accepted Joseph in the end. This situation in which many people were partially right but no one completely, created an atmosphere where speculation at the end was freer and opinions differed strongly, for example while discussing the teacher. 

                I didn't use the question about the future of the characters in class, but it was actually brought up in the homework by the students. After that, I used it as a question in the speaking exam (along with other questions discussing the story and the characters). Several students had opinions that were contrary to my intended reading, and a few came up with genuinely oppositional readings.  One student who had lived in Canada told his exam partner that he had experienced the same kind of situation on account of being Asian, and that the teacher's apparently unbiased approach to the 3 boys was in fact proof of racism, as she had taken the boy whose book Seth had thrown out the window at his word. Another said that Joseph had made a mistake in becoming friends with Christian and Seth, as they “were bad boys” who would “make problems”.

                In future, I would like to use this lesson as a springboard at the beginning of the semester, to launch the class into more difficult critical readings using short stories, newspaper articles or scenes from movies (Jack Bauer justifying torture on Fox springs to mind).  

                 

In conclusion, once the students realize that it's okay to say things that other people don't agree with, and once they start thinking from the points of view of the characters involved, students will naturally come up with oppositional readings.

Korean weddings and the way up

I went to a wedding in a small village south of Daejeon last weekend and was a bit disappointed that I'd missed the discussion on Wendell Berry's piece, but the wedding turned out to be a lesson in itself.

Over the last couple of years I've attended numerous weddings of co-workers and friends (not to mention my own) in wedding halls, and the jarring experience that the first one was, turned out to be a template for the rest of them: people talking throughout the ceremony, children running around, and from my perspective, a basic disregard for the couple who was getting married. Comments from fellow guests have generally included the word "rude", with varying amounts of salt and pepper for flavour.

Which is why I am so happy I finally went to a more traditional wedding, under a tree in a farming village, with chickens being thrown in the air and panseori singers urging the groom to (repeatedly) kiss the bride. Everyone still talked and laughed throughout the wedding, and the kids caused havoc (but at least they brought the chickens back). This time round, however, it was fun!

At some point under that tree, it dawned on me that the behaviour that so bothered my and my fellow-waegooks made perfect sense in its original context, a celebration of marriage and a good laugh for everyone there. The problem is that everyone wants to move up, and "up" in the world of weddings is defined by Charles and Diana and a complete collection of Hollywood wedding movies.

Completely out of context, but as Wendell Berry commented, "it does suggest that 'up' may be the wrong direction."

A Nigerian perspective on Ngugi and Phillipson

I wanted to post this link a while ago but kept forgetting -an interesting read!

Click on the link -you can download the pdf for free: http://www.google.com/search?client=gmail&rls=gm&q=ngugi%20joseph%20bisong

Lesson Plan

I've used this article in its full form for a few writing classes, and my students came up with very different opinions, so I thought I'd push things a little bit further. 

The basic idea is to use a topic where they wouldn't feel I or the other students care strongly about their opinions, and then to first let them do an oppositional reading in 1 group, and then form an opinion in another group with someone who had done the opposite oppositional reading.

Goals: 1. Introducing students to critical reading

2. Providing students with ideas and vocabulary to produce evaluative output.

Material: An article reporting on a controversy. The article has been simplified and then divided into two with one article (Part A) including some background and the for-arguments plus evidence, and the other (Part B) including some background and the against-arguments and evidence.

Class Plan:

1. Divide the class into groups of 4. Have a warm-up group discussion about bias in reporting, asking the students to come up with examples. Korean students are generally quite distrustful of the chaebol-owned newspapers, which could be useful in getting the lesson rolling.

2. Explain that they will be reading an article, and that they will be critically analyzing it. Do not explain that there are two different articles.

3. Hand out Part A to half the groups and Part B to the other half. Introduce some questions that can be used for a critical reading (“Who is speaking?”, etc.). The students read the articles and write down a short list of possible criticisms. In a low-motivation class it might be necessary to tell them that the group will receive a grade for the report. Grading will be in terms of reasoning and clarity of explanation.

4. After this task is completed, collect both the group reports and the articles.

5. Re-divide the class into pairs, with one student who had read and criticized Part A (the pros), and 1 student who had done the same with Part B (the cons). Do not tell them that they had read different articles; just that they have to come up with 3 opinions on the topic and reasons for their opinions. Once again, these reports can be graded if necessary.

Memorization vs. Critical thinking Part 2: Use the system don't fight it!

Looking at a couple of blogs I suddenly realized that I hadn't explicitly linked our topic to oppositional thinking, so here goes!

Considering how much memorization Korean students supposedly do, I have often been shocked at how little general knowledge they seem to have. The ethnocentric quality of my casual observation was highlighted by Curt's story of his wife's comments on Kant - we certainly didn't cover that in high school, but apparently Korean students do!

The implication is that the South African education system and one of their products, me, have a different definition of general world knowledge than the Korean system. This is important in terms of Bloom's cognitive levels (as mentioned  in the previous post), since basic knowledge is a prerequisite for higher cognitive thought. When I receive new information, I measure it against previous information, and when I ask my students to read things critically, I often expect them to evaluate the readings using my background knowledge, not theirs.

Awareness of such an error of perspective immediately brings to mind 2 possible remedies:
1> Introducing EFL teachers in Korea to the basic content of the Korean high school curriculum.
2> Supplying students with more background knowledge before expecting them to comprehend the context of the readings.

English as a dominant language in a multilingual country: South Africa

Just came across this article while supposedly studying for my midterm tomorrow -interesting perspective on English as an instrument of class division in post-Apartheid South Africa.

Yet it is also true that these people -- both black and white -- are the beneficiaries of a post-apartheid dispensation marked by increasing inequalities. Thus the elite has become distant from the masses, who have derived little, if any, benefit from the new era. The elite's embrace of English is both a sign of this distancing and a means by which it is being achieved.
http://mg.co.za/article/2011-04-21-the-future-will-be-spoken-in-all-tongues

Memorization vs. Critical Thinking

        Let me just first say that I loved the format of the final discussion in class last week; if I didn't have 30+ students in my too small classrooms I would do that on a regular basis myself!

        Our discussion topic was the effect of memorization in Korean education on the ability to think critically, and my 2 discussion partners (both Korean) had quite different views!

        Michelle said that the top universities had a nonsul, or essay, that you had to write to gain entrance and that it required critical thought. As I had no idea of this, we spent our entire time as a pair discussing this and never got to possible solutions! My next partner was Miran, and she had 2 very interesting things to say: firstly that there are hagwons (cram schools) that teach you to answer the nonsul questions, and secondly that she disagreed that memorization was all bad.

          Now on the hagwons, Miran's point was basically that you were taught how to beat the test, not think critically. This made me think of Yoshinori Shimuzu's short story, Japanese Entrance Exams for Earnest Young Men: the protagonist, Ichiro,  can't pass the Japanese proficiency test necessary to get into a good university and decides to take on a tutor, Tsukisaka, who specializes in helping students ace the exam. Allow me 2 quotes!

Tsukisaka after watching Ichiro struggle with a question on a reading passage:
This kind of problem is a game, Ichiro, and you want to score as many points as you can. It has nothing to do with the essay passage. All you have to do to choose the correct answers is know the rules.

After passing the test and getting into a good university, Ichiro writes a thank-you letter to his mentor, which the narrator describes thus:
His letter was eloquent testimony to the fact that expertise at answering questions on Japanese tests had no relation whatsoever to skill at using the language. If anything, it suggested that being able to answer those questions correctly led to a degeneration in his Japanese skills.

Hyperbole, to be sure, but food for thought!

         Miran's second point concerned the necessity for memory work in high school, and I had to agree. In current educational theory there seems to be a tendency to contrast memorization with thought; I consider this a false dichotomy. Thought built on knowledge is potentially much more rigorous, and merely browsing through some information doesn't provide most of us with a solid foundation for critical thought. We need to graze and digest ideas before we can make them work for us.

        My geography teacher in high school introduced Bloom's cognitive levels to us in grade 10. Here's a quick look at them:

He explained that in order to apply any of the higher levels, you needed the lower levels; in other words, you had to make sure you knew the material before you were in a position to analyze, synthesize and evaluate data using the theories in the book.  In my first semester writing his tests, my grade dropped by 30% and it was a long slog getting them up again, but his teaching principles still make sense to me today.

The counter-argument is of course that critical thinking should be taught concurrently with factual knowledge, but in my opinion that doesn't detract from the  necessity of learning the value of information as well as the ability to commit them to memory. Memorizing in itself does not limit thought, but the lack of critical thinking practice does.

           So, if our interpretation is correct and memorizing in itself is not the problem, where should we go and look? I believe that this brings us back to English education in Korea, testing, the unreasonable demands tests place on students, and consequently how much study-time is  wasted on memorizing vocabulary, expressions and grammar. The point is not to learn to use the language, but to pass the test. Whether or not the government and universities mean for this to happen, it is a direct cause of the proliferation of  hagwons and the unhealthy study habits often exhibited by our students. The resulting fatigue and boredom with learning arguably have a greater effect on students' ability to think critically than the physical act of memorization itself.