TV Show Listening Worksheets

I don't always think it's beneficial to use to use TV shows in class time because while it's definitely more fun for students, the learning objectives of these longer activities are not always clear. I usually reserve TV show activities for substitute lessons or test days. The following worksheets have been designed to teach phrasal verbs and colloquialisms, help students listen both for gist and for detail, and challenge students to make inferences based on character dialogue. Each episode relates too to the topic of the unit it's used in conjunction with.

Psych: Lights, Camera . . . Homicidio!

My Latin American students get a kick out of this 44-minute episode because it features a murder on the set of a telenovela. The over-the-top accented Spanish in the episode gives them a laugh. The dialogue of this show is very brisk and peppered with pop culture references, so I use it exclusively for Upper Intermediate - Advanced levels.

Black-ish: MLK Ski Weekend

I usually use this worksheet for lower levels, Pre-intermediate - Intermediate, because the questions are more fact-based and less inference-based, and can be answered even without hearing every line. And it's only 22 minutes. I usually also leave the subtitles on for lower levels on this one. It can still be a great discussion catalyst for higher levels, given that it hits on racism, protest, and why we study history.

Gilmore Girls: Gilmore Girls Only

I use this 44-minute episode as a lead-in to talking about interpersonal conflict, family drama, and conflict resolution. Gilmore Girls episodes are great for Upper Intermediate - Advanced levels because they speak so quickly and the dialogue is quite sharp and witty. I try to use with predominantly female classes; male students have reported being amused by it, but still find the show "girly."

I also use The Office episode "Conflict Resolution" with a rotating set of discussion questions because it is so on point for this topic, and the Upper Intermediate students really respond to the humor.

Gilmore Girls: A'Tisket A'Tasket

This episode is my lead-in to my lesson about small town Americana. (Usually part of a unit that includes dystopias/utopias, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," and socioeconomic status across the globe.) Over 44 minutes it shows some of the fun traditions small towns can have. The worksheet is simple enough to be used with Low Intermediate - High Intermediate, but in this case I leave the subtitles on, because the dialogue is quite challenging because of speed.

The Holiday

Admittedly, this is a movie, not a TV show, but I reserve this lesson for those class days where no one comes to school, either because of the weather or because of holiday traveling days. Our class blocks are three hours long, so I can comfortably show the whole movie while stopping periodically to check in with students in plenary regarding the worksheet. I've used this with the Intermediate level without subtitles.

Hopefully these worksheets can provide some ideas of how to use your favorite TV shows in the classroom. Please let me know how these worksheets can be edited or improved to hit on listening skills and target language!

Paper Chain Discussion

Give each student a blank piece of paper.

Refer back to the prompt. Maybe it was a documentary segment they watched as a listening activity, maybe it was a news article they derived a key word outline from. I've used this activity after reading a short story, to generate discussion about its themes. 

Instruct students to create a discussion, comprehension, or interpretation question about the material and to write the question at the top of the piece of paper.

Set the timer. The level and complexity of the prompt should dictate how much time you allow them, but keep the pace brisk. I've found three minutes to be on point for the high intermediate -- upper intermediate levels.

When the timer goes off, pass papers to the left.

Instruct students to write a sentence or two in answer to the question written on the top of the paper. Again, set the timer, and again pass papers to left when the time runs out.

Then instruct students to elaborate on, support, or contradict the answer to the question. They should add more color and detail to answers they agree with, or explain their reasoning for disagreeing with the existing answer. Again, they should add one to two sentences.

Set the timer.

When the timer runs out, pass to the left. By this time there is a question and two answers on the sheet of paper. (You could continue and do three or four answers, but I find they get redundant past two.) Now instruct students to write a sentence or two that synthesize, summarize, or paraphrase what has already been written on the paper.

Since they have a bit more to read and because this task is a bit more complex, set the timer for a minute longer. (I upped it to four.)

Pass papers to the left. Explain that this is the last step and they will be peer-correcting the sentences on the paper in front of them. Use your preferred method for peer correction. I usually have students check for subject/verb agreement, spelling, and punctuation. Sometimes I have them diagram the sentences produced. You may also modify this activity to require inclusion of target language and have students check that the target language is present or used as you instructed.

I then collect the papers for class assessment, to see where I should focus grammar instruction for the following week based on what errors crop up most often.

I like this activity because it is language producing but also incorporates many skills concurrently. It's a great activity for the end of a three-hour block class because it moves fast, is short form, but allows students to focus on precision rather than quantity. This can be a catalyst to class discussion; often students will want to talk about some of the questions and answers their classmates supplied. 

Please let me know if there are any tweaks that come to mind that could make this a more effective activity!

Suitcase Mood

I was talking with a friend at our language center graduation after-outing (context, man) and he asked the question our students seem so curious about, “So what do you do now that classes are over?” Great question. Dolefully I explained to him the slow death the week is shaping up to be, how I had already done a casual preliminary cleaning and had begun taking decorations down around the flat, and how unpleasant it was to be caught between going and not being home yet.

“Ah,” he says, “Yes, we have a word for this in Russian, suitcase mood.”

“Huh?” I was intrigued.

“Yes, чемоданое настроение. Your feelings when you are preparing to leave.”

“Yup,” I affirmed, “It’s exactly that.”

All these months I have clung to the assumption that these last two weeks would fly by. Full of tying up loose ends, cleaning the flat for the new team, visiting our favorite places for the last time, packing, shopping, saying good-bye to our friends. We are indeed doing all of those things, and yet, time seems to be dragging by slower than it ever has before. And this in-between-y-ness sucks so much.

We’ve been doing some mental preparation for going back. Bet and I listen to Top 40 music when we do the dishes, we’ve been reading American news. We are practicing talking about our experience here, we are guarding against attitudes of comparison and criticism. We’re doing our re-entry homework even though our organization doesn’t exist anymore and nobody’s making us! And while all of this prep is probably wise and a good use of time, it doesn’t help me now. 

I was overcome with a wave of jealousy when Skyping with some of our friends from here who have arrived in the USA for the summer. They showed a quick view of the ocean (the ocean!) and told about drinking black coffee at McDonald’s. (They didn’t know cream and sugar were on the condiments table, and I feel their pain so much!) I’m so happy that my friends whose culture I experienced all year are now experiencing my culture; it’s cool and it’s awesome and it’s really interesting! But I am so jealous that they are in my country and I’m still here.

But I have these moments. When I step into the shower, when I sit in our reading nook, when I wait at the Tourist bus stop, when I climb the steps in our apartment building. This life has become normal, and in a few days it’s going to stop. It’s going to be a memory. A weird memory of that time life in a different place became normal. I try to remember the former normal, my routines back home. How it felt to step into the shower there, how it felt to walk up the stairs in my house, what Providence Place Mall is like, what walking in the woods behind our house is like. It too is a memory, because even home will not be just the same as when I left it. 

So I have the same problem I always have. Different context, same heart issue. The ache of change. 

I like having a word for it now, though. All week, the answer to the question “How are you?” or “What’s new?” has been the same: “Suitcase mood.” And maybe the all the details and complexities of that mood are difficult to understand, but one thing is understood: leaving is a process, and that process is hard. 

And that’s okay.

Fact: music motivates learning

It sounds silly to write it here in black and white, but one of the wins I have most appreciated about the laborious task of learning Russian is being able to understand the bit from that Regina Spektor song "Apres Moi." Shockingly, I didn't discover the text for this reprise until just now. It's the first stanza from a poem by Boris Pasternak. I'm not saying I can sing along perfectly just yet, but I will hopefully have something to show for these hours of Russian practice. I'm so delighted to have something small and relevant to my home culture to contextualize what I'm learning.

Words are below in Russian Cyrillic script, Russian Latin script, and English.

Февраль. Достать чернил и плакать!
Писать о феврале навзрыд,
Пока грохочащая слякоть
Весною черною горит.

Fevral'. Dostat' chernil i plakat'!
Pisat' o fevrale navzryd,
Poka grokhochashchaya slyakot'
Vesnoyu chernoyu gorit.

February. Get ink, shed tears.
Write of it, sob your heart out, sing,
While torrential slush that roars
Burns in the blackness of the spring.

(Poem and translation accessed from http://www.kulichki.com/poems/Poets/bp/Rus/bp_3.html. Discovered thanks to Hope Johnson.)

Seeking the lost

It’s been a week of silly screw ups. First I lost the cellphone Bet and I have been sharing, then I’m pretty sure I gave us cancer by cooking our kielbasa with the plastic wrapper still on. In terms of the day-to-day banalities of living, lately I've been struggling. In an effort to remedy the first problem, though, I stopped at the supermarket by our school to inquire after their lost & found. 

“Excuse me,” I said to one of the cashiers, “Do you speak English?”

“Eh? No,” was the reply.

“Alright, do you know if my telephone is here?”

“Eh? No,” she answered.

“Okay, thank you.”

It seemed dumb to give up so easily, especially since I guessed she was blowing me off. My pronunciation is horrendous and understanding me takes some work, work that she’s not being paid to put in, especially when customers appear in her checkout line.

I did a lap around the store to see if I could find anyone looking more official than a stock boy, but no dice. In the corner by the beer counter there were several employee lockers and some binders with records, and I assumed this was as close as store administration as I was going to get. 

“Excuse me!” I tapped one of the security guys on the shoulder. “Do you know if my telephone is here?” I could tell by the look on his face that he couldn’t understand my mangled Russian, so I whipped out my translator and showed him a phrase I hoped said “Lost telephone.”

He looked at it, still uncomprehending, and another security guard came over and joined him, speaking to him rapidly, maybe explaining what I was asking. He turned to me and said . . . something. I recognized one word: go. 

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand Russian. I need to know, my phone here, or not here?”

He shrugged his shoulders and moved to the aid of one of the cashiers who was calling him, saying to me, “No.” The other security guard smiled at me. “English?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered with a sigh and gathered my bags. “Good-bye!” he called after me, and even in my defeat I smiled at his effort. 

Riding home that night on the bus with Bet’s student Rakhat I shared with him my fruitless story. I repeated what I had tried to say to the store employees and asked him if it was correct. “Actually, I think your Russian is okay,” he said. Positively incredulous I asked him, “Why?!” He answered, “Because you know how to ask where is my telephone!”

It truly is the little victories. 

Anecdotum

Trying to carry out the basics of modern life in a city where you don't speak the language is always a good time. Wednesday is adventure day for Bet and I. Neither of us have night classes on this day, just a class in the afternoon (she at the language center, me at Daryn), so we galavant without the couple on this day. Here are a few anecdotes from one such Wednesday.

Rainy autumn Kazakh adventure time!

One of the electrical sockets in our flat has not been kind to Bet's power adapter. After a day of wire melting it had a kind of questionable functionality and we determined it needed to be replaced. Bet asked our administrator at the language center what she should say upon entering the computer store, and our administrator did a double take. Surely we were not thinking of venturing on such an errand without a translator! The best thing to do, she advised Bet, was to take the charger (visibly frayed), point, and say, "эта проблема." I met Bet at City Mall and we entered iPoint.kz together. Safety in numbers.

It wasn't busy inside, so we were immediately approached by a парень in an argyle sweater. Bet did as our administrator had instructed and handed him a piece of paper on which our administrator had written a question about the wire. I pointed to the right adapter in the display case, and realizing we spoke not a word of Russian, the associate whipped out a calculator and showed us the price both in tenge and USD. "I need more cash," Bet told me, and the guy looked at me expectantly. "Um . . ." I tried to remember the word for ATM. "One minute, банкомат!" We did a lap around the first floor of the mall, but couldn't spot one. I asked the lady at Ramstor's bag check, "извините, где банкомат?" And then she started giving me directions, not just a simple "there" or "to the left" or "on the second floor", but instead lots of words came out of her mouth, lots and lots of words. After we thanked her and walked away in the general direction she had pointed, Bet asked, "What did she say?" but I hadn't a clue. 

After some aimless wandering around all three floors of City Mall we located an ATM. And it was just our luck, the ATM had a big sign over it. "Do you think that applies to us?" There was only one way to find out. I guess it didn't because we withdrew cash without a problem, and were back in iPoint a few seconds later. As we waited to be rung out, the associate made small talk. "American or Canadian? Or Australian? Or German?" I don't know how he knew we weren't from the UK. "Students?" When we told him we were teachers he wanted to know where. I gestured vaguely, "Yermekov 49." There was another patron standing at the counter who clarified for me, "сорок девять." When she spoke, the associate started smirking. "She my wife!" he told us, and looped the display cabinet's key ring around his finger. "See?!" She rolled her eyes and said something to hurry the cashier (who was shaking his head) along. The cashier handed Bet a piece of paper and hesitated. He said something to the woman who turned to Bet and translated, "Signature." After Bet signed he handed the receipt to the associate who slipped it into the bag carrying the power adapter. "Good-bye!" he smiled teasingly and hid the power adapter behind his back. When the joking finally ceased, we left and Bet turned to me, "What just happened?"

I resolved in that moment to be goofy with foreigners; the best way to spare others of embarrassment is to embarrass yourself.

Picture frames for sale in ЦУМ. Someone tell Hilary Duff how beloved she still is in KZ!

We walked down the street to ЦУМ just to take a look around. I'm in need of a winter coat, so we stopped in a shop to take a look, and an ambitiously helpful clerk questioned Bet, who immediately broke the bad news of our Russian ignorance. Still, the clerk pointed at me and rattled something else off in Russian. All I heard was "понимать" and "тоже." I shook my head while affirming her statement, "да, I don't understand Russian either." This struck me as ironic, considering that for all intensive purposes I had indeed just understood what she had said. At that very moment, however, another patron of the store who appeared out of nowhere began translating. Through her were had a brief conversation about the coat I'd been looking at, she confirmed the coats were for winter, not fall. (Parenthetically, this has been super confusing for us. The coats meant for fall look like regular winter coats to me, but when I asked one of my students if the coat he was wearing was meant for winter, he laughed like I had cracked some outrageous joke. "Of course not, it is not [and he gestured to indicate a lot of missing padding, as though a winter coat ought to make him resemble the Michelin Man.]" Apparently there are coats meant specifically for winter, and you don't want to be stuck with the less warm autumn coat.)

I was astonished, as was the clerk, while this random coat store shopper made us intelligible to each other. One of Bet's students had aided her in the purchase of her coat, asking the right questions and translating when necessary, and we would have had zero shopping success without her. And here kismet provided another unrequested aid: a right place, right time, right skill set doer of good deeds. "Hey," I told her, still a little pleasantly surprised, "Thanks for translating." She nodded and walked away. I gave the shop clerk a little wave, "спасибо." She also looked a little intrigued by the convenience of what had just unfolded. I wished I could tell her, these nifty little "coincidences" happen to me every day.

Where we purchased our pumpkin.

We started heading home just as the light was beginning to fade, and when we stepped off the bus we were met with just one more adventure. The бабушек who sold produce and pickles by the bus stop had pumpkins! We spotted one that seemed right and asked, "сколько это?" Lucky for us it looked like it was etched into the pumpkin rind, 500T per 2kg. The бабушка took it away to weigh it and when she came back told us a number. All I caught was 2. "It couldn't be two thousand, that's too expensive." I passed Bet a wad of bills, neither of us had any idea how much it cost. I pulled a notebook and a pen out of my backpack, "Would you write for us?" She pointed to a bag of carrots near the pumpkin. "No, just the pumpkin." She wrote 460 on my paper and handed us our change, smiling at the relief and sense of accomplishment that spread over our faces. "пожалуйста," she nodded at us and we walked away triumphantly.

If I could issue a thank you note to each kind citizen who graciously endured our comprehension-less state, I would need to buy out a Hallmark store. 

я не понимаю

I had a professor my last semester of college who tried to explain to the class what learning was. (Our actual topic was the rhetoric of courtroom dramas, but we stuck to that theme somewhat loosely.) He asked us what we hoped to learn in the upcoming semester and then turned our answers back on us. "If I'm doing my job right," he told us, "You'll learn things you didn't know you didn't know."

I feel this way about living in Karaganda.

I feel it when I tune out the conversations of the people at the bus stop, because I can't understand what they're saying. I feel it when I try to Google something and I realize I exclusively frequent sites hosted in the west. I feel it when I strain to look at the signs and circulars, attempting to decipher what I can't read. I feel it when I stalk the aisles of the grocery store, examining unfamiliar spices and attempting to fathom how they're used. I feel it when I stare at stores or establishments from the outside, trying to figure out what they are on the inside.

I know that I don't know stuff. But I don't know exactly what it is yet. When you're in a new culture, your only frame of reference is the culture you left across the ocean. You just don't know what it is you don't know.

A few days ago we visited Рамстор, a supermarket that occasionally stocks peanut butter and in general carries more western-style food. Because it was lunchtime, and because I had turned down a meal at Mac & Dak (Kazakhstan's version of McDonald's), I resolved to find something from their prepared food section. And so I proceeded to order a slice of pizza . . . entirely in sign language.

In retrospect this wasn't necessary. Pizza is pronounced much the same in Russian as in English. I know the word for "one." The price was even written in a little card next to the pie. The obliging and amused smile of the girl behind the counter made the whole encounter more funny than humiliating, but I left feeling that this was not a sustainable way to conduct business out in public. As a child I learned how to read because I was frustrated I couldn't read the signs I saw out the car window. A similar motivation drives me to my Russian study every night. I want to make sense of the society around me, and I want to be able to make myself understood. 

Not sure what this sign over the bear cages at the zoo says, but I'm sure its meaning can be inferred.

The language barrier aside (and from within our flat it all but vanishes), so much about Karaganda feels similar to my home. I close my eyes and can imagine myself back in the USA, maybe even RI. The hum of traffic outside the window, my daily morning Nescafe, the buy-in-bulk supermarkets, the nightly Big Bang Theory & Settlers of Catan teammate bonding time. And the things that are different (the toilet closet comes to mind) I could easily get used to. (Like seriously, I don't know why I didn't realize this when we were in France last summer, but having the toilet in a separate room from the shower is the best idea!)

I bank on the promise that the longer I live here, the more I will learn. And though my instruction is not strictly academic anymore, the prospect of learning though exhausting still thrills me. It's a different kind of back to school season.