Episode 4 – Tree Trunks from Gvtertje on Vimeo.
I found that Adventure Time works really well with teenagers. First of all, because many love this show, and also because language here is really something they’d encounter on a daily basis.
For this particular episode I prepared two different activities.
First one is a grammar worksheet on Past Simple and Past Continuous for Pre-Intermediate/Intermediate students. The students watch part of the episode while filling in the worksheet. There are several possible answers for some sentences. It is done on purpose, because the point of this activity is practicing grammar as well as listening comprehension. You can encourage the students to think of several possibilities for their answers and check with each other.
The second worksheet uses Lexical Approach to teach several phrases used in the video. The worksheet is based on suggestions from the book Implementing the Lexical Approach by Michael Lewis.
The worksheet features a few phrases, the grammatical structure of which would be new for Pre-Intermediate or Intermediate students (ex. “You were supposed to”). Lexical Approach, however, argues that higher level grammar is not a big deal as long as focus is on the meaning of the phrase and the context in which it’s used and not on form.
This strategy worked when I introduced this phrase to my Pre-Intermediate student.
You will also notice that one of the tasks is L2-L1 translation. Even though the usage of L1 in the classroom has been discouraged for years, Michael Lewis argues that translation is “an instinctive part of the way the mind approaches learning a second language.” So the trick here is to use it correctly. He suggests encouraging students to translate whole phrases (not words!) from L2 to L1 (and not vice-versa). Again, when I did this with my Pre-Intermediate teenager, it helped her understand the phrases better and use them correctly in the next exercise.
Both worksheets are available to download below. Enjoy and let me know about your experiences with Lexical Approach!
Pop Culture ESL 