Korean Job Discussion Forums

[earthbound14]

What do you use in your class?

Things like 5 minute animated shorts, short films, short comic books, short stories, short news articles and biographies, youtube vids, commercials, comedy skits (SNL), interesting images....


So far I'm trying to get various commercials (from the Cannes advertising film festival). Really good stuff.

Animated shorts - Pixar shorts, Looney Tunes and a few random shorts taken from Youtube. Most Pixar shorts have no speaking so students must create a summary (sometimes half the class may watch the video and then tell their partner who didn't watch it what happened, then the other student watches the video to see how well they did)

a few animation series - The Spectacular Spider-man, Star-wars - The Clone Wars, Wallace and Gromit and Avatar. They seem to go over well for more advanced students and take up only 25 minutes of class time. These are great for every day slang and idioms. In one episode of Spider-man I pulled out more than 30 different phrases, wrote the definition on a seperate sheet and had students try and match them.

Comics - Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, Garfield and Archie (I dislike Garfield and Archie but they are easy to read and students seems to like them).

I use some vids from Youtube, sometimes to demonstrate something as simple as the fastest (the fastest clapping) or to talk about the difference in driving culture between places like Canada, India and Korea.

I'm also a big fan of using images of Korean celebs in order to get students to talk about appearances and personalities. Super heroes also work really well.

Another thing I like to do is download images from Google Earth, usually the area I'm working in, and have students locate as many buildings as they can. Then I start asking questions about the nearest post office or police station, followed by spoken locations (it's next to the library) and finally giving directions from one place on the map to the another one. Students can try and stump each other by asking the hardest ones.

I also find it easy to find short biographies about important people. I used this over a term to do a small segment on heroes. We did short readings about acts of heroism or heroic people (often followed by some sort of grammar and discussion to back it up). We also viewd Youtube videos about these different people. Short clips of Bruce Lee, Oscar Pistarius, Terry Fox for example.

I really want to get my hands on some more commercials, short easy to read comic books (their are a few short editions of Batman, or Tintin, or whatever you like out there) and more short animation and films.

Got any leads?

[Tommy]

I've used comics in class before - first I found out what they like (One Piece, Narutaru, etc) and then downloaded them online. I'd choose two pages and look at the content before I wrote a title at the top such as "Student's Revenge on the Principal" to give it a general theme. Next I cleared the text from the speech balloons so students could write their own story. This worked really well, but I found those types of comics to be a little too violent and didn't have enough variety in the panels, so I turned to Tintin. Recently I got my hands on the whole Bone series in PDF format and I think this would also work really well. Bone is simple enough that I could even leave some text in the speech balloons so students could read one character asking a question, and they'd have to write an answer in the next balloon.

I like you idea about google earth, I may have to try that if I get a chance.

Where do you work where you're allowed to use cartoons and comics in class for that length of time? I'd love to be able to have that amount of freedom.

[earthbound14]

I tried to find Tintin but haven't been able to get a good download.

I looked for Bone as well but couldn't find a torrent. Where can I find it?

I work at a university and have taught Anitmation and English as a subject for one term as well as a pop culture class. I've also used animated shorts, commercials and short youtube vids in my regular classes. 5 to 10 minutes every few classes is pretty minimal and I use it rather than the text book listening exercises or as a subject for discussion or writing. I also do a once a month animation day with my younger students (my wife and I have a study room at home).

Ya, the Google Earth thing worked really well and students were far more motivated to learn directions than they were with the crappy maps provided in their text books.

[Xuanzang]

I use the icnelly videos. SOme of the Genkijapan stuff and other educational videos that correspond to the National curriculum in one shape or form. There`s a Tintin black and white edition on Mininova. I used it for comic creation time in my after school program.

[Seoul'n'Corea]

I use full HD H264 1080i IMAX movies in my school before class starts. Kids love the rich moving images. I don't use blueray. I got a new macbook that I use for my kids.

[D.D.]

I have been using Silly Symphony from Disney- 3 Little pigs and stories like that.

Little kids talk a lot when I play Pokemon and stop it a lot and ask whats going on. They actually listen to Pokemon.

I had my students do a project where they brought one song with lyrics that they found on youtube. Lemon Tree was a good song and they like Westlife as well.

I have them use the word lyrics to find songs on youtube where they can listen, sing and read at the same time. I actualy feel this is one of the only ways they will learn listening.

Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry have always been popular.

Tyson the skateboarding dog on Oprah was popular.