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 Sunday March 25 2007

Twisted Sister

Next week is special listening week for my freshmen classes. During this week we don’t use the textbook but rather do a number of listening exercises and talk about how to improve listening and various resources including podcasts & audio books. I have a couple of activities from the past that I decided to scrap because I wasn’t satisfied with them. This semester I’m replacing them with a 25 minute lesson around a music video by Twisted Sister. 


This exercise is more about enjoying the video and song at a holistic level rather than at a discrete word by word level. There are no gap exercises and I only have four vocabulary items explained. Students are expected to respond to the general message (gist) of the song and video. I feel that the comedic nature of the video will appeal to the students as will the general rock anthem and parents vs children theme. Overall it’s a fun video that should get students laughing.

I have the video on my hard drive but it’s a very low resolution file 320x240. If I could only get a higher resolution file 640x480 would be great, even better would be a full DVD quality. Oh well, I’ll work this as is for now.

I’m really enjoying having video facilities in our classrooms this semester. I’ll be taking my Grinch activity and extending it to include the DVD which I own.


Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Mar 25, 2007 at 09:59 PM
Video | Materials | Lesson_Plans |

Picture of jd

jd wrote 3 words  on  Monday Mar 26, 2007  at  06:53 AM United States

here you go:

Sean.

Sean. wrote 31 words  on  Monday Mar 26, 2007  at  06:58 AM Korea (South)

JD,
I removed your link because it is leads to pirated material and if I link to things like on this blog, my host can cancel my contract with no notice.

Picture of jd

jd wrote 40 words  on  Monday Mar 26, 2007  at  07:00 AM United States

oh, i’m really sorry about that. i found out it’s dead, anyway… sorry.
i won’t post another link, but you can find a higher resolution copy of that video if you look around.

good luck with your lesson… sounds fun smile

Sean.

Sean. wrote 50 words  on  Monday Mar 26, 2007  at  07:08 AM Korea (South)

JD,
don’t worry about it. It’s not like I have that broadcast on my site. I have looked for a couple of weeks and that is the best file to be found. Anyhow, if my lesson goes well (today and tomorrow) I’ll buy the DVD if I can find it.

Picture of jd

jd wrote 102 words  on  Monday Mar 26, 2007  at  07:22 AM United States

cool. i’m sure it’ll be great.

although i don’t quite get what differentiates a 320x240 youtube video posted by ducky1964 from anything else on the internet. file sharing isn’t illegal by nature, as i’m sure you understand. what gives “ducky1964” the right to fair use of that video? the fact that it’s only vhs quality and taped off of mtv? doesn’t really seem logical to me. but i understand covering your back. it didn’t take me more than 2 minutes to find a 53 megabyte copy of the same video on a popular filesharing service, though. you do what you have to smile

Sean.

Sean. wrote 19 words  on  Thursday Mar 29, 2007  at  07:57 PM Korea (South)

JD,
that’s the exact same file I have, but the quality is crappy. Just wish it had higher resolution.

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