Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone

Harry Potter has led a whole generation of children into the pleasure of reading a long book, but, advanced learners of English may find it quite hard to read a Harry Potter book because they will certainly come across a large number of unknown words in the descriptions of the book.  

This lesson focuses on the descriptive vocabulary that is often found in fiction by analysing a passage in chapter 3, The Letters from No One, from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The lesson also incorporates two scenes of the film (The Hogwarts Letter and A Visit from Rubeus Hagrid) to set the background and to show the aftermath of the text. The task includes a reading comprehension exercise, a short vocabulary matching exercise, and a longer word pairing task, which can be used as a revision, after the oral discussion. You can find all the materials on this link.

As a lead-in, you can ask students if they have read Harry Potter's books or seen any of his films. Then, you can elicit information about Harry Potter and his adopted family, uncle Vernon, aunt Petunia, Dudley, and how they treat Harry.  Finally you should introduce "The Letter Scene", which describes the days before Harry's 11th birthday.

After reading the description of the rickety, old shack on the coast and doing the exercises, you can play the second film clip, A Visit from Rubeus Hagrid.

The speaking part of the lesson can be a discussion about books and reading:

• What do you prefer, reading print or e-books? 
• What is better, reading the book or wathching the film? 
• Which was the first book that you read as a child? 
• How can you introduce children to reading books? 
• Do you read for pleasure or for school? 
• Do you read more or less than years ago?

This lesson is suitable for C1 students.

St George's Day

St George is part of an ancient tradition both in England and in Aragon.  He is the saint patron of England and also of Aragon and its flag is in the shirt of the second kit of Sociedad Deportiva Huesca.   The story of St George slaying the Dragon to rescue the Princess is still very popular in schools and it is often celebrated in the streets.  On this Wikipedia link you can read a detailed explanation of the legend and its iconography (this text is C1 level).




On the right, you can watch a short video for children that tells the tale of St George in a very simple way.  The video has subtitles both at the foot of the cartoon and underneath, in the configuration spur wheel, so it can be understood by B1 students:

It is not easy to find references to Saint George's Day in the British press, but you can try these: an article in the progressive newspaper The Guardian about the historical facts behind the legend of St George, or, on the other side of the British media spectrum,  a number of recipes to celebrate St.George's weekend in the conservative tabloid The Sun (both can be recommended to C1 students). 

If you want to find children's games and more to celebrate St George's day in confinement, you can visit the webpage of History at Home from English Heritage (C1 level). On the right, you can watch a video of a 2017 edition of St George's Festival at Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, in 2017:

If you want to read more about the celebration of St George's Day in the course of history, and its current revival within the political debate about Britishness and English nationalism you can check this Wikipedia article, which can be suitable for B2 students.

5 Coronavirus Love Stories and 1 Obsessive Relationship

Coronavirus isolation is creating new couples.  This BBC report tells the love stories of 5 couples around the world whose relationships have been rushed by the coronavirus lockdown. The article contains some very interesting colloquial language, like "to juggle" (to deal with and balance two important things), "to have a blast" (a great time), "to cuddle" (to hug, to embrace), "to wrap up" (to conclude), "to grab" (to take), "to hang out with" (to go out with), "to shack up with somebody" (to cohabit), "a craving" (a strong desire), "to latch on to" (to get hold on to) etc. C1 students should be able to read the article without too much trouble.

And, in addition, here you can find a link to the BBC Reel video "How I Became Obsessed With a Stranger", where a Spanish young woman tells a compelling story of love, grief and Instagram obsession. The video has subtitles and half of it is in Spanish with English subtitles, so it can be accessible to B1 students.

Coronavirus Spanglish in Gibraltar

The coronavirus epidemic has spread fear and disease around the world, but it has also spread a colourful array of funny videos and memes to laugh at our plight.  A good example is this video with a conversation in Spanglish in Gibraltar, a British colony in Spain.

This video is basically in Spanish, so it is suitable for B1 Spanish  students and above, In the case of other L1 students, a C2 level of Spanish is advisable.

American Pie (1971), by Don McLean

American Pie is, problably, the most popular, long song  (8:33) in the history of modern music and its lyrics are the most widely debated too.  It is number 5 in RIAA's project "Song of the Century", which promotes the musical and cultural heritage in American schools, and it has been covered by many artists, including Madonna in 2000.

The meaning of the lyrics have been discussed all over, in forums, books, in the press etc., but Don McLean has  always refused to explain its symbolism and hidden references, he often tells his fans "American Pie means I never have to work again", as the BBC reported in 2015. The song contains a deluge of references to the leading artists in pop music from 1958 to 1971, and some of the landmarks of the social history of the 1960's like segregation, the fear of nuclear war, flower power, Woodstock, the drug culture and heroin etc.

According to the analysis on the webpage The Rare Exception, which is a dead link now, but you can read here  (http://www.rareexception.com/Garden/Pie.php. ) and to Bob Dearborn's analysis of the meaning and references in the song, American Pie tells the story of a young newspaper boy who was stunned to read about the death of  three top music idols at that time: Buddy Holly ("Peggy Sue"), Richie Valens ("La Bamba") and The Big Bopper ("Chantilly Lace"), "the day that music died" in 1958. Then, the song goes through the musical history of the 1960's, with references to Bob Dylan ("the jester"), Elvis Presley ("the king"), the Beatles ("the quartet"), The Rolling Stones & Mick Jagger ("Jack Flash" and "Satan"), and Janis Joplin ("the girl who sang the blues"), to name a few, while it drops hints about the social background of the 1960's.  But then, after Janis Joplin, who died of an overdose, the melody slowly grinds to a halt... and dies. Don McLean goes back to the religious imagery he used at the beginning of  the song, in the fifth stanza ("Do you have faith in God above"... "Do you believe in rock'n roll") and he says "I went down to the sacred store" [...] "But the man there said the music wouldn't play" and he goes on to mention the three aspects of Catholic deity "the father, son and the holy ghost", a double reference, perhaps, to the three dead musicians (McLean attended several Catholic schools), and, at that point, the melody slowly picks up momentum, until the song is reborn again.

Is "American Pie" a metaphor for the resurrection of God at Easter and his belief in the resurrection of rock'n roll music? Or is it a catchy pop song to celebrate spring and the regeneration of life after a long winter? The jury is out, it is up to you to figure out, what do you think?

The lesson  includes a simple fill-in the gap exercise and the full lyrics as the key.  The speaking goal of the lesson would be to encourge students to speculate and make guesses about the meaning of the lyrics, before and after they hear the teacher's explanations about the references in the song.  The lesson can be used with B2+ students, but it is problably more suitable for C1 students.

Dylan Thomas: Do Not Go Gentle...

Understanding a poem like Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" is a tremendous achievement for any learner of English, and a considerable challenge for the EFL teacher. The topic is hard and the syntax is disjointed by the metric of the poem, a villanelle, but the pathos of the poem can be felt, if not understood, when you first watch these Welsh actors reciting the poem for BBC Cymru Wales:

It is fascinating to hear the sounds and the words of a foreign language and to understand almost nothing, just like when you first started learning English a long time ago.  Reading poetry or song lyrics has a power, it can take you back to that initial stage when English had the magic of unintelligibility. 

Yet, we want to know, we want to understand. This lesson shows how I tackled the challenge for a B2+ class, but, this class is problably more suitable for C2 students. The plan starts with some simple warm-up questions to get the attention of the students.  The listening task is a fill-in-the gap exercise, to give them a purpose to listen to the poem twice (good poems, like good songs, need to be heard several times to feel them in your heart), there are several questions for discussion, a glossary, to ease students painstaking task of looking up words in a dictionary and a Powerpoint presentation to help the teacher introduce the main points of the analysis of the poem.

The class materials include this link to Shmoop's Study Guide of the poem for teachers:  basically, the topic of poem is "Dylan's lament for his father's  loss of health and strength, and his encouragement to cling to life", (can you think of anything for appropriate in times of a global pandemic?). The poet thinks that "old men shouldn't die peacefully, but they should 'burn and rave' struggling with a fiercy intensity". Then the poem uses different metaphors to express how "wise men", "good men" and "wild men" have tried to fight "the inevitability of death with all their might", but they have failed. "Grave men, near death" resist and fight death with the energy of meteors blazing in their blind eyes. Finally, Dylan Thomas addresses his dying father and asks him "to cry passionately, which will be both a blessing and a curse".  If you want to know more about the symbols, and how the metric of the villanelle forces the poet to twist English syntax to fit the rhyme scheme (AbA' abA abA' abA abA' abAA') (A and A' are the refrains, A: Do not go gentle into that good night; A': Rage, rage against the dying of the light), you can click here.

If you want to read some more about the life and works of Dylan Thomas, the poet who made Robert Allen Zimmerman change his name to Bob Dylan, you can start by reading this Wikipedia article. Or check the references under the text of the poem.

Royals by Lorde

Song lyrics can stir the imagination of the learner. Rhythm & criptic allusions can immerse the listener in a hazy atmosphere in which eyes must be open wide to try to catch a glimpse of the meaning of the lines. Undestanding song lyrics is always a challenge.  Listen to this song by Lorde, try to guess its message and discuss your guesses with your partner, if you can talk to someone. Here, there is a the gap-filling exercise to help you follow the song.

Your guess may be right or wrong initially, when you are learning a foreign language, that is not too important.  What is really important is that you have activated your guessing skills in your brain, which are essential to reconstruct fragmentary understanding of the flow of speech and the fact that you have produced some sentences to discuss your guesses with a partner. 

Here, you can find a link to a Wikipedia article that gives some insights into the lyrics of the song.
In short, the song expresses "detailed disapproval of the luxiourious lifestyle of contemporary artists".  Lorde criticises pop, rap and hip hop singers like Kanye West, Jay-Z or Lana del Rey because they often talk about luxury cars (Cadillacs, Maybach), expensive alcohol (Grey Goose, Crystal), jewellry (diamonds, gold teeth) etc, which is very far from her own reality: her house, her neighbourhood and her friends ("I'm not proud of my address", "no post code envy", "we'll never be royals" "my friends and I [...] count our dollars on the train to the party", "we didn't come from money").

Now, for a change, you can watch an acapella cover of the same song, by the Florida State University AcaBelles.  Which version do you like better?

Here you have the compete lyrics of the song, which can be used as a key to the fill-in the gaps exercise above.

This task can be done by B2 students and above.

The Lion King (1994)

The Lion King (1994) is one of the most popular animated films produced by Disney. The film was a box office and a critical success, it was praised for its music, animation and plot, which has echos of Hamlet and the Bible. Several sequels, spin-offs and remakes have been made, including a theatre musical.  If you want to know more about the film, you can click here to read the Wikipedia article.

On the left, you can watch the opening scene, "The Circle of Life".  The music of this song was composed and performed by Elton John and the lyrics by Tim Rice.

The film is a story about loss, power struggles, overcoming trauma, personal growth and coming-of-age.  In this short E! News interview, the original voice actors, Jonathan Taylor Thomas (young Simba), James Earl Jones (Mufasa) and Matthew Broderick (adult Simba) talk about the plot of the film, their own characters and how they recorded their voices over the animation. The interview has subtitles, so it should be accessible to B2 students.

The Long Reads by The Guardian

The Long Read is a feature section in The Guardian, a prestigious liberal/progressive newspaper in Britain.  They are long investigative reports about a variety of topics.

Recently, The Guardian has compiled 25 stories to share them with its readers in lockdown, who now have more free time to read.  The vocabulary and grammar they use is first class, there are many descriptive words that advanced students need to become familiar with little by little.  In this list of 25 articles, there is a wide range of stories: the recycling of oil rigs, the work of a special sound effects engineer in Hollywood, the Fifa video game, a real spy story, ethical wine making, the first sex robot, the casting director of "The Game of Thrones"...  Some of these reports can be heard on an audio podcast.

As the articles are long, rich in language and very thorough, this reading could be classified as C2. I would like to thank my colleague Isabel A., who passed me the link.