Agh! Each week I keep promising to catch up on my TEFLology reviews, and instead each week I just get further and further behind. Apologies. (I say "apologies" as if anyone cared. I know that literally the only person in the world who cares if this blog stays up to date is me. So apologies to myself, I guess.)
Anyway, I've been crazy busy with work, and life, and everything. But I still have ambitions of catching up on all the episodes, and returning to timely reviews.
This episode is from all the way back on August 30th. You can listen to it here.
I don't have a lot to say about this episode, so I'll just make some brief comments.
Peter Strevens--I didn't know anything about Peter Strevens, but it was interesting to find out.2
English Learning Ventures: I'm not sure this is the first time I've heard about the idea of practicing English by going out on expeditions. But I really like the idea. (Especially as I've been trapped in classrooms in the middle of the city for far too long, the idea of English class on a mountain hike sounds really, really nice).
About the drama: The TEFLologists mention that these kind of dramas for English learning purposes have been done before.
Indeed, I use to see them on Japanese TV way back in 2002.
I couldn't tell you the name of the drama. And I never really watched it all that carefully. (I would usually just catch bits and pieces of it while I was flipping channels). But one I remember was some sort of Easy English drama about a soccer team. It seemed to be produced in Britain (all the actors were British) but that's about all I know about it.
And I think there were a couple other similar dramas on the same station.
I think the idea of a graded television drama is a great idea. But unfortunately it doesn't always work well in practice. At least not as compelling input.
The TESOL industry produces a lot of graded books, audio recordings, and videos, but unfortunately the talent behind the writing and production never seems to equal the talent that Hollywood attracts. So it doesn't really catch the learners interest the way Hollywood movies do.
In my classes, I find it preferable to just use authentic Hollywood movies that the students are already interested in, and then just grade the task instead of grading the text. And I feel like I've had good results in getting my students to learn from it.
Post-human Applied Linguistics--I don't really have anything to say about this, largely because it's so far outside of my expertise.
At least some of the ideas sound like they might be similar to what I'm currently reading in The Language Myth, but I'll have to wait until I finish that book to say for certain.
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