Talking about comedy

Students watch a few short clips and match them with different comedy genres. This video activity can be used to supplement a speaking activity in Innovations Advanced.

Innovations were the first series of textbooks
that truly embraced the principles of the Lexical Approach (LA). While other
books have started including collocation boxes and introducing some multi-word
units, Innovations (published by Thomson Heinle or what is now known as
Cengage) was the first one to embody the spirit of the LA focusing on chunks, formulaic
expressions and dealing with aspects of grammar relevant to the spoken language
which are rarely featured in other textbooks influenced by the written grammar
of English.

Innovations Upper-Intermediate is by far my
favourite. (I may be biased here because upper-int. is my favourite level to
teach). Not only does it have engaging, thought-provoking articles and
refreshing topics (Women in boxing, rave parties and hair styles), it introduces
the lexis that will make your mouth water and that you won’t find in any other
coursebook: “We get on like a house on
fire”, “I looked like death warmed up”, “They went out boozing” and “Go jump in
the river!”... My second favourite is probably the Pre-Intermediate one. What
other textbook at this level introduces learners to such grammar points as the Service Passive (You
should have it X-rayed) or Present Simple after Hope (I hope you have a
good time in Switzerland
next week)

However, I’ve been recently using the Advanced
book with a small group of students and have come up with and collected a few supplementary
activities which I‘d like to share with you here. Here is a simple idea that
can liven up Activity 6 on page 99 - Talking about Comedy.

Procedure

Show your students several video clips (trailers
or actual scenes from films) which illustrate different comedy subgenres. Here is a playlist I've used with my students:

Or follow the link below:

PLAYLIST: COMEDY

Ask students to have their books open and match
each clip with a description from the activity in the book. Tell them to compare their answers in pairs and then hold a whole class discussion.

Answers

it’s a spoof horror film

slapstick humour

the humour in it is quite dark

puerile lavatorial humour

a sitcom

it’s not laugh-out-loud funny. Most of the humour is quite subtle.

a political satire

it’s full of all these really corny jokes

some moments of real unintentional humour

Please note that the answers are largely a matter of opinion and other answers are possible too. The activity is aimed to provoke discussion, which
you can facilitate by providing some useful language on the board, for example:

I don’t know what’s so funny about it;
it’s just plain stupid.

Funny? It was outright hilarious!

I couldn't make out what they were saying.

I’ve actually seen this film.

If you like _____________ it should be
up your street.

You can also use this activity to revise
some of the language from Unit 13 Books, films and music.

Image credit

Ben Turpin & Charlie Chaplin by John McNab

Licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0

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