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Using Stand-Up Comedy In The Language Classroom
Gary Collins, Switzerland
Gary Collins, lic. phil. I, is an English language teacher and teacher trainer at the Swiss
Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET). His current interests
include using web resources for language teaching and writing short stories and novellas.
E-mail: [email protected] , website: www.garycollins.ch
Menu
Introduction
Copyright laws
Downloading video material
An example from stand-up comedy: Eddy Izzard’s Death Star Canteen
Conclusions
References
Introduction
Successful teaching is largely a matter of the right mixture of motivating material you provide
and of course the way, in which you provide it. Most schools today work with one of the
teaching packages offered by the large publishing houses, i.e. a textbook cum an increasing
number of add-ons. Students, however, more often turn reluctant to such material, because
they associate it with the general stuffiness of the educational pressure on them. Bright
students actually notice the artificial context they are welcomed to in textbooks. I was playing
a famous pop song from one of the course book audio CDs, when one of the students told me:
“Mr Collins, this sounds nothing like Shania Twain!” I was positively surprised at my
student’s comment and told her, she should think about why that song is a cover version
despite being a remarkably good shot at the original. In the next lesson partially native
Rowena came up with the following explanation: “Big publishing companies don’t want to
afford the royalties to provide us with the original. So, they furnish a semi-professional band
with a few thousand pounds to produce a cover and secure the rights. It is much cheaper.”
And then I thought to myself ‘If Rowena knew how much fiction a course book actually
contained, she might not want to learn as eagerly as she did before’.
The point I am trying to make is of course: ‘genuine, original teaching material’ is often
recognized as that, and shows a marked advantage as to its acceptance. Moreover, such ‘true
life’ material - particularly video shorts - are at present accumulating out there on the web at a
terrific speed. But suitable tracks for teaching are not easy to find. But once you have found
one you want it to be of high resolution, HD (high-definition), and possibly contain English
captions. And due to the fact of some web contents being unreliable as to its future existence
you want to download it to a flash drive for safekeeping. But once you’ve got it, it makes very
attractive teaching material indeed.
So, despite having to serve some supermarket tikka marsala in the classroom you might want
to season it up by using original material from time to time. But some teachers simply feel
reluctant to use the free opportunity. They feel they are doing something wrong. Why?
Copyright laws
Is it actually legally sound for a teacher to show commercially produced audios or videos
even if shown via the web? In the US copyright is handled more liberal when it comes to
teaching. Teachers who use movies as an instructional aid are exempt from copyright law.
Movies used in the classroom are considered beneficial to the public rather than an attempt to
steal money from the studios. But countries like Canada and Britain have different laws on
copyright. Graham Davis, a professional as for media in the classroom and copyright issues
for schools, runs a sophisticated blog for teachers (ICT4LT – Information And
Communications Technology For Language Teachers). Concerning commercially produced
video material he writes: Most commercially produced DVDs and videocassettes carry a
warning indicating that they can only be used for private and not public screening. DVDs or
videocassettes shown in educational institutions for the purposes of "instruction" are
normally not considered as public screenings, so they can be shown if they are used for
teaching rather than for "entertainment". http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm
The aim of the teacher is clearly to ‘instruct’. Moreover, teachers will rarely show full-length
movies unless they are art teachers or are doing a literature project. In an every day context
you will show a short excerpt, anything between 3-5 minutes, i.e. part of a work, in order to
discuss it or use it as a language input. Here, you are clearly on the safe side, particularly if
you write out lesson plans with didactic goals. You are positioning yourself in the realm of
teaching and ‘instruction’.
Downloading video material
So what about downloading tracks from YouTube, MySpace, or National Geographic?
Firstly, you are downloading the clip for personal use on your computer, which is legal.
Secondly, you will shorten the track to meet your instructional purposes and even add your
own captions, which has been shown to assist the learning process. In their abstract in PLoS
One Mitterer and McQueen (2009) write:
We therefore investigated whether subtitles, which provide lexical
information, support perceptual learning about foreign speech. Dutch
participants, unfamiliar with Scottish and Australian regional accents
of English, watched Scottish or Australian English videos with Dutch,
English or no subtitles, and then repeated audio fragments of both
accents. Repetition of novel fragments was worse after Dutch-subtitle
exposure but better after English-subtitle exposure. Native-language
subtitles appear to create lexical interference, but foreign-language
subtitles assist speech learning by indicating which words (and hence
sounds) are being spoken.
Downloading a video track in order to modify it clearly shows that you have an instructional
aim when using media in the classroom. So let’s move on to an example.
An example from stand-up comedy: Eddy Izzard’s Death Star Canteen
The following example makes excellent B1-B2 teaching material.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6Kp8EXJwFg
In order to produce the track I bought Eddy Izzard’s entire DVD collection. Then I recorded a
short excerpt using Screenflow to incorporate English captions such as to facilitate students
making an educational profit. Before I use the video I give the class an input on the language
used using a beamer OHP. Depending on the target level I introduce language structures such
as to nip down, sarnies, weird bleeders, a tray, to hack, the neck, to challenge, head of
catering, to form a queue, autograph, peas, or tubes. Later I ask students to pair up and talk
about their favourite comedians, YouTube tracks, or videos. I will then elicit any knowledge
they have on the Star Wars Trilogy and ask them about recent movies they have seen within
the genre of science fiction. Eventually, I might ask them to form a few sentences using the
newly introduced vocabulary from the video.
Conclusions
Making use of audio-visual resources is far from illegal the more you can actually show by
documenting it that you are using some such material with an educational purpose, i.e.
‘instruction’. Emphasising that very purpose by showing very short excerpts, adding captions
and providing vocab input, designing and applying follow-up activities, and making the
students work will not be turned on you as an infringement to copyright laws.
We know, however, that teachers show full-length movies just to fill some indeed hard-going
space after marking deadlines. While this might be considered an infringement to copyright, it
is more likely felt to be an infringement on the teacher’s professional code of conduct and
should best be avoided completely. The offered example in this article is clearly a viable
alternative. Moreover, your students will also respect you for it. They know exactly, but will
unlikely mention to you, what is ‘entertainment’ and what is ‘instruction’.
References
Davies G. (2011) General guidelines on copyright. In Davies G. (ed.) Information and
Communications Technology for Language Teachers (ICT4LT), Slough, Thames Valley
University
Mitterer H, McQueen JM (2009) Foreign Subtitles Help but Native-Language Subtitles Harm
Foreign Speech Perception. PLoS ONE 4(11): e7785. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0007785
Please check the ICT - Using Technology in the Classroom – Level 1 course at Pilgrims
website.
Please check the Improving English through Humour course at Pilgrims website.