After a long summer break and a very busy start to the new term, we’re back to update our neglected blog with a lesson based on Steve Job’s 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University.
In the speech, he told three stories about his life – stories which were quite personal, very revealing and extremely motivational - and the speech went on to be a huge success on YouTube. Since his death on 5 October 2011, extracts from the speech have been widely quoted in the media. The text is reproduced in full here .
We decided to use this speech both as a listening exercise, to start with, but more importantly as a good example of public discourse in terms of chunking, rhythm, stress, and rhetorical techniques.
This song has long been a guilty pleasure, and one that I feel I can admit to now that a reasonable amount of time (27 years!!) has gone by. I originally just thought of using it for the nice chunks of colloquial language it contains, but then realised I could exploit it for pronunciation purposes. Specifically, for those “shoulda, coulda, woulda” phrases that students often have such difficulty saying quickly and convincingly. But of course it would also be a crime to use this song and not discuss the hilariously sartorially-suspect low-budget video……
There are two versions of the worksheet. This one uses translation from L1 to L2 in the first activity, in this case Spanish to English:
This video sequence, which rapidly went viral, is a brilliantly conceived idea with a strong emotional impact. It’s perfect for eliciting language – both to describe what’s happening and how it makes us feel. It was part of a road safety campaign which also involved graffiti artists, so this lesson plan uses both topics and combines art, article and advert.
