How I Met your Mother S01E01: Have you met Ted?

This is actually the activity that gave a name to this blog. It helps assessing how much of the present perfect the students could retain so far.

How I met your mother is an American sitcom set in Manhattan that follows the social and romantic lives of Ted Mosby and his friends Marshall Eriksen, Robin Scherbatsky, Lily Aldrin and Barney Stinson. As a framing device, the main character, Ted, using voiceover narration, in the year 2030 recounts to his son and his daughter the events that led to his meeting their mother.

Cheers,
G.

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Suburgatory S01E02: She had already kissed him.

This one is actually an activity intended for high-intermediate students. It has both the purpose of revising past perfect with students and of showing that the same snippet can be used in many different ways, no matter how hard or simple are the dialogs. If you don't focus on them, the task is only as hard as you make them : )

Suburgatory is a series about George Altman, a single father who decides to get away from New York City to the suburbs so he can give his teenage daughter, Tessa, a better life. However, their move to the suburbs leads to unexpected events in both their lives.

Have fun!

Cheers,
G.

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Watch the video:

Suburgatory S01E02: What would you do if...?

This is actually an activity to make them think about actions and then personalize them using the second conditional. It is a very simple activity that the students consider fun because it deals with a theme very close to their reality: dating a hot guy only because he's hot : )

Suburgatory is a series about George Altman, a single father who decides to get away from New York City to the suburbs so he can give his teenage daughter, Tessa, a better life. However, their move to the suburbs leads to unexpected events in both their lives.

Cheers!
G.

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Modern Family S01E09: What will happen to them?

This is a longer activity. I noticed that in most English courses, and even in coursebooks, the future is something somewhat forgotten. The books focus more on the difference between will x going to than in consolidating the 'tense' itself in student's minds. They have little time to practice, and thus they don't really learn how to use it well. This is simply an activity in which they can think and use the future one more time.

"Modern Family is an American television comedy series that debuted on ABC on September 23, 2009. Depicted in mockumentary style, the fictional characters frequently talk directly into the camera. The show revolves around three families that are interrelated through Jay Pritchett and his children, Claire Dunphy and Mitchell Pritchett. Jay Pritchett, the patriarch, is married to a much younger woman, Gloria, a passionate mother, who, with help from Jay, raises her son, Manny. Claire is a homemaker mom married to Phil, a real estate agent and self-professed "cool dad". They have three children: Haley, the stereotypical teenager, Alex, the smart middle child and Luke, the offbeat only son. Mitchell, a lawyer, and his partner Cameron have adopted a Vietnamese baby, Lily." [source: Wikipedia]

I hope this is useful.

Cheers!

G.

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Watch video part 1:

Watch video part 2:

Breaking Bad S04E10: Writing strategies for past narratives

We all know how hard it is to make them write. And write well, willingly. This is an activity I created to inspire them in this sense. It has worked well so far. I used it with Advanced students, but some teachers have pointed out that they would try it even on lower levels. I'm still not ready.

It comes from a monologue from TV series Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad "is set and produced in Albuquerque, New Mexico, ans tells the story of Walter White, a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with advanced lung cancer at the beginning of the series. He turns to a life of crime, producing and selling methamphetamine with a former student, Jesse Pinkman, with the aim of securing his family's financial future before he dies." [source: Wikipedia] In this particular snippet, Walter White tells his son about a past memory of his own father.

I use this video to make students identify and reflect about strategies to tell a story in the past. They watch the video and receive the script, watch and then read, and after discussing and learning about how you can use different techniques to tell a story in the past (the use of 'would' and the use of the simple present are examples), I ask them to write themselves a narrative piece in the past. I have had nice surprises with this one : )

Cheers,

G.

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Watch the video:

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If you want more information about writing strategies, here are some suggestions:

Writing for Advanced Level English Learners
Theory: A Taxonomy of ESL Writing Strategies, by the Congjun Mu Queensland University of Technology, Shanghai
Thinking Writing
Teaching Writing - eHow
Teaching writing, from the TEFL bootcamp

Freaks and Geeks S01E01: what were they doing?

This is an activity intended to reinforce and contrast simple past and past continuous. They start discussing school memories (so maybe it's best to use with adult students), then they have a somewhat simple task to identify moments of the video using these tenses (and it's the teacher task to call attention to when we use one or the other) and then practice asking questions, which I think it's something they have a hard time doing even in higher levels.

"Freaks and Geeks is  an American teen comedy-drama that centers on a teenage girl, Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini), and her younger brother, Sam (John Francis Daley), who both attend William McKinley High School during the 1980–1981 school year in the town of Chippewa, Michigan, a fictional suburb of Detroit.

Lindsay's friends constitute the "freaks" and Sam's friends constitute the "geeks" of the title. The show's starting point is Lindsay's transition from her life as an academically proficient student, star "mathlete", who hangs out with troubled slackers. Her relationships with her new friends, and the friction they cause with her parents and with her own self-image, form one central strand of the show; the other follows Sam and his group of geeky friends as they navigate a different part of the social universe and try to fit in." [source: Wikipedia]

Hope it's useful.

Cheers,

G.

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Dexter Opening Credits: Routine

This is a simple activity that reinforces routine verbs while assessing students for simple present. There is a speaking stage, they have to write, plus they practice questions, the third person "s", and negatives.

"Dexter is an American television drama series which debuted on Showtime on October 1, 2006. The series centers on Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a blood spatter pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department who moonlights as a serial killer. 

Set in Miami, the show's first season was largely based on the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, the first of his Dexter series novels. Subsequent seasons have evolved independently of Lindsay's works. It was adapted for television by screenwriter James Manos, Jr., who wrote the first episode." [source: Wikipedia]

Cheers!

G.

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About this blog

Hi there,

I started using TV series to consolidate grammar points for students because I love series and it was a way to connect with them. It is first and foremost a way to engage students in an activity using something of their interest. It has proven to be highly effective and I have obtained great results with them.

This blog was an idea that started taking place inspired by Claudio Azevedo's blog and because I wanted a place to show my activities after presenting them at BRAZ-TESOL Rio Chapter 2012.

I know the videos are not in great quality, but I still don't know how to sort that part out. Maybe in the future I'll have more space to post them, if this project has any success. Anyway, if you want better quality, e-mail me and we can think of something.

Every post has in its title the season and episode numbers for the activity, so if you have the DVD you can find it and select the parts I use.

I hope you find them useful. I will also post some friends and colleagues' contributions on this page. It's all about sharing!

Cheers,
G.
gabrielafroes [at] gmail [dot] com