Let's talk about ART

To use a cliché, I don't know a lot about art, but I know what I like. I am always looking for ways to make students talk more and share their opinions in the English class. Why not try to discuss art for a change? When I went to school, art simply served as illustrations in our textbooks. I still associate certain authors and titles of short stories, poems and novels with particular paintings. For example, my Norwegian textbook introduced me to J.M.W. Turner who I have loved ever since. The light is just incredible! I don't expect my students to jump for joy at Turner's light, but I would love it if they would take a look and share their opinion without worrying whether they understood the painting or not. If you too would like to have your students talk a little bit about art in the English lesson, maybe this TED talk can help them understand that it is okay to look at art in unconventional ways: Ursus Wehrli tidies up art. I am certainly going to try to incorporate art in my lessons more often. Illustration from flickr: Whaam

Analyse a music video

Working with film in the English-class is interesting and useful, but it is also very time-consuming simply due to the length of most films. It is therefore difficult to make time for more than 3-4 films during a one-year English course. Furhtermore, since we seldom or never take time to see a film more than once, we are unable to look as closely at the genre as we sometimes might want. Music videos are shorter, but may give students a good opportunity to practise their ability to analyse, interpret and assess multimodal genres. We are analysing music videos in Norwegian class right now, but it is also a task suitable for the English subject. If you would like your students to analyse a music video I have published a step-by-step assignment here: Analyse a music video One can of course find videos for the students, but I think they have more to say if they can choose a video they like. An old classic that caused a lot of stir when it was released is Madonna's hit video "Like a prayer". Analyse this: