На чтение: ≈ 8 мин.Для многих учителей и школьников 1 апреля – день начала четвертой четверти. Ученики приходят после весенних каникул отдохнувшими и с большим удовольствием используют возможность пошутить как над своими друзьями, так и над взрослыми.
В этот день полезно помнить о чувстве юмора, не обижаться на шутки и розыгрыши. А на уроке английского языка можно провести не совсем обычное занятие, рассказать школьникам о традициях, о происхождении праздника, а также «мимоходом» проверить у детей знание лексики и грамматики.
В сегодняшней разработке предлагаю следующие задания:
Работа с лексикой. Особенно следует обратить внимание на слова joke и anecdote. Этот небольшой лексический набор может стать темой краткого доклада или сообщения, а более подробный разбор существительных, глаголов и словосочетаний с данными словами может стать темой реферата или выступления на школьной конференции в старших классах.
Говорение. Вы можете предложить учащимся разделиться на пары или группы и составить диалоги, либо просто обсудить традиции 1 апреля и составить список из наиболее удачных шуток.
Чтение. Предлагаемый текст из сетевой энциклопедии небольшого объема. В нем приводится пример забавного розыгрыша, который многие слушатели восприняли как сообщение о подлинном событии.
Дискуссия. Предложите ученикам обсудить прочитанное, следите за тем, чтобы они составляли полноценные предложения. Если им не хочется обсуждать текст, предложите им поговорить о роли интернета в современной жизни.
Грамматика. Пассивный залог – сложная тема. Для старшеклассников это будет хороший повод повторить и закрепить изученное перед экзаменами. Если вы ведете занятия в начальной школе, данное упражнение можно пропустить. Взамен предложите детям отыскать в тексте все артикли.
April Fools\’ Day.
Nina Koptyug, Ph.D.
Exercise 1. Vocabulary.
Fool, n. stupid person, idiot; v. to fool someone, to trick
Joke, n. a funny story or trick; v. to joke, to say something funny.
Anecdote, n. a short story based on someone’s experience (a true story)
Prank, n. a trick played on someone to make them look funny.
Hoax, n. an attempt to make a person believe something that is not true.
When discussing the vocabulary, teachers may wish to draw their students’ attention to the words joke and anecdote, since the latter is widely used in Russian, with a completely different meaning.
Exercise 2. Speaking.
Suggest that students work in pairs or small groups. Let them make a list of various jokes which were played on them or their friends, as well as those which they played on somebody on April 1, and ask them to talk about the jokes and hoaxes in turn. You may also offer your own example of a good joke played on you. For instance, every year, a boy will exclaim, “Teacher, look, your shoe-laces are undone!” Though I don’t have any laces in my slip-ons, I automatically look down at my shoes, which makes students laugh good-naturedly.
Exercise 3. Reading.
If you have an e-board in your classroom, open up the following text from Wikipedia. If you do not have the necessary equipment, just print out and use the text below.
April Fools\’ Day (sometimes called April Fool\’s Day or All Fools\’ Day) is celebrated every year on the first day of April. Popular since the 19th century, the day is not a national holiday in any country, but it is well known in Canada, Europe, Australia, Brazil and the United States, and it is celebrated as a day when people play practical jokes and hoaxes on each other. The jokes and their victims are known as \”April fools\”. Hoax stories may be reported by the press and other media on this day and explained on subsequent days.
As well as people playing pranks on one another on April Fools\’ Day, elaborate practical jokes have appeared on radio and TV stations, newspapers, web sites, and have been performed by large corporations. In one famous prank from 1957, the BBC broadcast a film in their Panorama current affairs series purporting to show Swiss farmers picking freshly-grown spaghetti, in what they called the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest. The BBC were later flooded with requests to purchase a spaghetti plant, forcing them to declare the film a hoax on the news the next day.
With the advent of the internet and readily available global news services, April Fool\’s pranks can catch and embarrass a wider audience than ever before.
Exercise 4. Discussion.
You may ask your students to discuss the hoax mentioned, or search for their own examples on the web. Alternately, you may suggest that they talk about the role of the internet in our life, and the effects of globalization even on the April 1 traditions.
Exercise 5. Grammar.
The Passive is traditionally difficult for the Russian learners of English, partly because it is not as widely used in our native tongue as it is in English. Ask your senior students to find all the passive forms in the text, and to turn them into active where possible.
The passive forms here are: is celebrated, is well known, are known, may be reported, explained, have been performed, were later flooded.
If your students are too young or their level is elementary/lower-intermediate, you may use the text to simply talk about this day in English; skip the Grammar exercises; encourage them to say as much as they can about this tradition.
Have fun!
Нина Коптюг, кандидат филологических наук, Новосибирск
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