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[Solar Strength]

I have just inherited a course for young college level EFL learners that was designed by a former and recently departed Canadian teacher that focused on English culture learning through video and commercials.

My understanding was that she was using that as a platform for teaching a CALL related English course and also discussing media advertising techniques in addition to teaching English.

She's now gone, I am a new teacher recently hired, and she hasn't left much for me to go on. The manager doesn't want me to change the course but told me to teach it however I want. The course has been advertised to the students as above, so I assume that's why she doesn't want me to change the course.

Anyway, my question is, does anyone have any experience teaching such a course and, if so, do you know of any online resources we could use? Anything that would help with understanding advertising techniques, media and maybe some CALL theory or info for these students. Most of the students would be at about the FCE ~ CAE level, it seems.

For media manipulation and propaganda related issues I've had a look at some Chomsky but that's just way too difficult and boring probably for the students to mess with.

Finally, any ideas on how to get the students working on mid-term and final projects - individual or small group - would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[MotherF]

I taught a class a of college students, little lower level than that, engineering majors, in which we watched one episode of The Big Bang Theory a week. This was a general English class, so apart from watching that they were working through a syllabus that was mixed grammar-functional. I was able to get the transcripts of the show online and each week read through them looking for examples of the language they had been studying. Then I worked up a video activity for the sceen that included that langauge. We watched the sceen and did the activity in class (45 minute session) then they watched the rest of the episode with some comprehension checking questions to answer for homework. They really enjoyed it and it was actually easy to find the language I was looking for in the episodes and I saw evidence of them using phrases we had learned from the show in their writing and speaking exams.

So not what this previous teacher had in mind, but you could work some of that in.