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7969 · Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 5782 Location: Coastal Guangdong

for my last lesson with each class this week, i decided to lighten up and do nothing but show a DVD of a typical american sitcom. now, in most classes, the students enjoyed the DVD overall. however in a few classes, more students had their heads buried in their desk or their nose into some book doing homework (which is ok since they were quiet). but i thought that since this is really a once a term thing, they would have jumped at the chance to see something funny and interesting. the lack of interest in a few classes was a bit surprising to me.

a side note, i was asked by a chinese colleague today if i showed these middle school students anything pornographic. do they seriously think that i'm an idiot?

for the record, i showed an episode of seinfeld, which does mention a few words such as "orgasm" "sex" "period (menstrual cycle)" and so on, but my judgement (after watching the episode at home prior to class) told me this wasn't too offensive for 16-17 year olds to hear.

kev7161 · Joined: 06 Feb 2004 Posts: 5880 Location: Suzhou, China

I think 16-17 year olds here are more akin to 12-13 year olds back home. Not as "worldly". Last year I showed Grease (with English subtitles) and I was somewhat embarrassed as this PG movie was so . . . nasty. I don't know how my kids felt but another Chinese teacher made some negative remarks. Sometimes I feel like showing Friends as it can be quite funny, but the bed hopping that Joey et al do is potentially offensive - - but I have met a few university students that just LOVE this show.

I have that phenomenon of kids not watching when I show movies, but I think they may tire of reading the sub-titles all the time or they simply don't like movies. To each his (or her) own.

tofuman · Joined: 02 Jul 2004 Posts: 937

I thought Seinfeld would be great for teaching American culture and listening skills. Is this not a good way to teach listening, especially with English subtitles, so they can read and listen at the same time?

shuize · Joined: 04 Sep 2004 Posts: 1270

"a side note, i was asked by a chinese colleague today if i showed these middle school students anything pornographic. do they seriously think that i'm an idiot?"

The next time someone asks you a stupid question like that, say "yes" just for fun.