Humor4u

Christmas is magic. This time of winter with short, gloomy evenings and eerie weather due to climate change, can still be transformed by the power of human imagination. An alternative Christmas commercial in the UK has caught the British people's imagination in the tough winter of 2022 and has become viral in the pre-Christmas season with a sad story, a melancholic song and a simple slogan. You can watch it here: The video has no subtitles, but, thanks to my colleague Pablo A. you can find here a lesson plan with the transcript , which was originally published by Film English , and it is suitable for C1 students and above. In the commercial, you can find interesting words like: mate , poorly , [this one]  is on me , cheers , get well soon, well wishes. Pablo A. has also passed me the script for the bacground song, Constellations by Ellie Holcomb , where you can find these words: to long for [you], underneath, a canopy [of stars], to collide , the mess [in my life], to see through ,...

 Zaragoza has recently hosted the World News Media Congress, WAN-IFRA , where news corporation leaders, editors, journalists and academics have discussed the latest trends, innovations and challenges in the profession: disinformation wars,  polarization , fake news, social media, trust, press freedom, female leadership, young readers, monetization of news services, audience engagement, financial sustainability,  Web3 , artificial intelligence,  blockchain technology , metaverse, diversity and inclusion have been some of the subjects of debate in the different summits and seminars of the conference. Here you can watch a short video clip (4':30") of the World Editors Summit "Resetting Newsroom Priorities" by Adriaan Basson , Editor-in-Chief of News24 , South Africa, where he explains the successful transformation of the company. The video comes with  a listening task entitled "A Successful News Website" and the answer key . This task is suitable for C1 stude...

That is the question that some BBC reporters asked a few children back in 1979 for the programme Junior That's Life. The answer is this funny video clip about the perception of wealth by innocent children that can be found on BBC Archive .  Some of the most interesting words you can come across in this video are: cabbages, lettuce, carrots, a platinum ball, a display cabinet, a pistol, miserable, a piggy bank, a booby, jolly [rich], to polish, silly me! This video with subtitles can be watched by B2 students and above. This video can be used to end a class about the topic "Money" with a touch of humour.  Here you can find a speaking task to discuss "Attitudes to Money",   and you can add a split reading task about two historical figures of Capitalism in the USA, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie , which come with a simple vocabulary matching task with a key entitled "The Birth of Capitalism (... and Philanthropy)" .  All these tasks are suitable...

Nasir is a Marketing student from Pakistan who has done an internship in the town of Fitero  for a university project called KiNESIS. In the video below, Nasir explains what the project is about and what he has learnt in the project.  In this entry you can find a listening comprehension task , and you can also find the answer key .  The vocabulary in the video (4': 41") is not really a barrier, and the video is divided into sections, which can help the learner to follow the narration, so the task can be recommended for B2 students, if they are familiar with the Pakistani accent. Otherwise, the task would be more suitable for C1 learners. The video has subtitles, which can be used after the listening exercise for consolidation.  Some of the most interesting words you can pick up while watching this video are: rural development, an impact, mayor, brand, heritage, gastronomy, professors, municipal authorities, a monastery, monks, landscape, to be interlinked, to perform...

You are going to hear Megan, a History student who works as a tour guide in the summer, talking to a group of tourists about the application process and student life in general at Oxford University. This homemade video lasts 5':35" , and it comes with a listening comprehension task for C1 students and its answer key . There is neither a script nor subtitles for the video, but you can use this list of interesting words to follow the speech, which is casual, humorous and fast at times, but also meticulous in word choice.  You should look at this vocabulary list, after you have done the listening task: application process, undergraduate study, postgraduate studies, All Soul's College, a top [university], so they say, [Oxford is] way, way [better], a college, stage one, to sit an entrance exam, unique, to my knowledge, a subject, a handful [of interviews], [it's pretty] intense, you guys, [so] rigorous, one professor, the lecturer, one-on-one learning, a tutorial, resear...

The British Museum has recently opened the exhibition "Female Power: the Divine to the Demonic" which shows how women have been represented throughout history in various mythologies around the world. Here you can find a 3 hour lesson plan about Art , which complements unit 7B of  English File C1.1 , O.U.P.  The first lesson includes some speaking activities to discuss Art, exhibitions and Public Art; a power point presentation of local Public Art in Zaragoza and an intensive listening comprehension task, based on a clip of  Today programme on BBC Radio 4 (17/05/22) , which is more suitable for C2 students.  The second lesson is focused on Street Art and it includes some conversation questions about Art, education etc., and another power point presentation about Street Art in Zaragoza . You can access the list of key words below in Word format here and  the 5' recording of the Today radio report here . Some of the key words you will come across in the recordin...

The radio programme " All Things Considered ", has recently reported about the African migrants that are temporarily being sheltered in hotels in the Canary Islands.  Here you can find a link to the audio (3':42") and the transcript on NPR's webpage .  And on this link, you can download  a lesson plan which includes a listening comprehension exercise, the key and some questions for discussion which can be used as oral exam practice for a monologue or an interaction at C1 level. The vocabulary is not particularly difficult, some of the words you will come across are: pandemic, to halt [global travel], to host, a wave [of visitors], a surge, packed with [tourists], the occupancy, to be down to [COVID restrictions], to soak up [the sun], asylum seekers, [to play] draughts, apprehensive, to flee [conflict], risky, to starve, to scrape a living, the mainland, to bounce back.

" I Have a Dream ", Dr. Matin Luther King's speech, has inspired several generations of civil rights activists to fight peacefully but unyieldlingly for justice and against any kind of discrimination. American Rhetoric.com ranks " I Have a Dream " as number one in the list of the most influential speeches in the USA, it is powerful, moving, rich in literary and biblical references and very rhythmical -a well-crafted mixture of political speech and Baptist sermon.  You can also watch the whole speech on the YouTube video below.  The speech needs a certain historical introduction, as it contains numerous references to the struggle against segregation laws in the 1950's and 60's, which students will problably miss otherwise. This lesson plan for a two-hour C1 class includes some reading, speaking and vocabulary tasks  (1h 30'), based on extracts from the  Wikipedia's page on the Civil Rights Movement , with a slide presentation to illustrate the ...

This is a lesson plan based on the Common European Framework of Reference and the European Language Portfolio , which can help students to reflect upon their history as language learners, their goals, beliefs and interests, and to do informal self-assessment of their language level using the Self-Assessment Grid of the CEFR .  It can be used the first or the second day of the course, before starting with the textbook, but it can also be used as distance conversation practice in the topic "Languages". The questionnaire is supposed to be for C1 students, but, with minimum changes, it can be adapted for B2 and even C2 learners. Here you can find a link to the Questionnaire "Language Learning Experiences and Beliefs" for conversation practice, again the Self-Assessment Grid of the CEFR and a lesson plan with suggestions for teachers. The less frequent vocabulary includes the following words and expressions: concening, current affairs, delivery, [to be] implied, pred...

December is a good month for oral presentations. Students have a long bank holiday in Spain and not many university exams yet, so they can prepare a short, five-minute presentation about a topic of their choice. This activity takes only three lessons, one to give them encouragement and basic guidelines and two lessons for the presentations themselves, all in all, from 5 to 6:30 hours of classroom time and the results are always impressive. Here you can find a Lesson Plan for B2, C1 and C2 students which revolves around an Interactive Exercise that was originally published by Allyn & Bacon Public Speaking (www.abpublicspeaking.com, but this link is no longer available on the web), which has been adapted for B2, C1 and C2 students. You can also find the Key to the Interactive Exercise, which the teacher can use to give students the main guidelines for the task, and an Oral Presentation Checklist to help the teacher assess the presentations.  You can also find three more hando...

Can we categorize people's personality? Psychologists have tried to do so, it is part of their job.  The video below,  "The Myers-Briggs Personality Types Explained  by Psych2Go, shows a well-established questionnaire, the  Myers-Briggs Type Indicator . which was constructed by two American female psychologists following Jung's theories, to find out your personality in a short list of 16 possible personality types. Personality tests, horoscopes etc. could be priceless materials to introduce character description adjectives in the EFL class.  This lesson plan for C1 students includes the Myers-Briggs test, a list of synonyms and some horoscope work, to present and practice this lexical area. You will come across words like: to check out, proper, at face value, eccentric, to flex muscles, a gut instinct , to spot , hands-on , to give away, to have a hard time, to excel, to crave , [to be] in the spotlight, to dive deep, reluctant, willing, to thrive , to carve, to...

This BBC article tells the story of an old stone quarry that has become a new tourist hotspot in Nigeria after it became popular through Twitter.  The article is short and it has very illustrative pictures, so it can be accessible to B2 students. But here you can find a lesson plan which focuses on vocabulary and speaking, basically, for C1 students. B2 learners (and above) will find rich, descriptive vocabulary here, like an abandonded quarry, a tourist hotspot, a cliff, a moss-lined footpath, to shimmer [in the sun], [the views are] breathtaking, on the outskirts, to be thronged, food vendors, a burgeoining community, expatriates, lockdown, to be somewhat bemused, city-dwellers, tiers, a stunning view, sightseers, a winding footpath, the top terrace, [the path] snakes down to the water's edge, the brave, to plunge into, an aquifer, a fracture-prone area, tremors, to warn amateurs against hiking, fun-seekers seemed not to be deterred, chagrin, to put measures in place, to clear up...

Morgan Bullock is a 20-year-old African American from Richmond, Virginia, who uploaded an Irish dance version of Beyoncé's " The Savage Remix " on Tik Tok, which went viral. Many people loved her artistic performance, but there were some who accused her of "cultural misappropriation".  If you want to find out the end of the story you can click on the following BBC link to watch a 4:15 video of the story with subtitles, which could be accessible to B2 students:  bbc.in/30p2Y6w But if your level of English is higher, you can try the full BBC video report below, which is 10:51, and has no subtitles The video above is more suitable for C1 or C2 students, but I have taken rough notes of some salient words on this worksheet, which can be used as a viewing guide in class or as homework, for those students who might often get lost in the long flow of speech.  There is also a simple lesson plan to use this video with C1 students in class.   Finally, if you want some more...

Bruce Springsteen published a memoir in 2016, entitled " Born to Run ", after his greatest hit, where he reveals some hidden aspects of his life and personality, so, he was interviewed by Terry Gross, to present his book on NPR's Fresh Air radio programme.  The listening is long, 22 minutes, so, it is problably very suitable for "extensive listening", that is, to listen to while you are doing something else, like walking, driving, or ironing, but you can always go the the script, if you are lost or if you want to check a word that you didn't pick up. I have used this interview as listening homework with my B2 students, although it is problably more suitable for C1 students.  I include some notes about how we discussed the interview in class and the cultural information I had to give my students to help them understand the context of the book, the musician and the journalist. Here are my notes on a link to Google Drive.

Elisabeth Moss plays the role of writer Shirley Jackson in the movie Shirley, which began to stream on virtual cinema platforms on June 5th.  Here you can read and listen to a 7 minute review of the film by Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang, broadcast on NPR's Fresh Air . Film reviews are usually very rich in language, and when they are broadcast on the radio, they are particularly difficult to understand for the density of information, as they are usually literary essays read out loud, so both the audio and the text are classified as C2.  You will come across words like bond, fraught, glimpse, to chime, to deserve, script, loosely, insight, bout, to pursue, chore, vicious, to thrive, to get back on track, to root, wrinkle, muse, stand-in, layers, dizzyingly, jagged, close-up, to swerve, handheld, score, to pulse, to grapple with, conundrums, to blur, uncannily, to excel at, exertion, to tease out, odd, tenderness, prickly, to awe, to bind, to cheat on somebody, to endur...

Harry Potter has led a whole generation of children into the pleasure of reading a long book, but, advanced learners of English may find it quite hard to read a Harry Potter book because they will certainly come across a large number of unknown words in the descriptions of the book.   This lesson focuses on the descriptive vocabulary that is often found in fiction by analysing a passage in chapter 3,  The Letters from No One , from  Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Ston e. The lesson also incorporates two scenes of the film ( The Hogwarts Lette r and  A Visit from Rubeus Hagri d) to set the background and to show the aftermath of the text. The task includes a reading comprehension exercise, a short vocabulary matching exercise, and a longer word pairing task, which can be used as a revision, after the oral discussion. You can find all the materials on this link. As a lead-in, you can ask students if they have read Harry Potter's books or seen any of his f...

American Pie is, problably, the most popular, long song  (8:33) in the history of modern music and its lyrics are the most widely debated too.  It is number 5 in RIAA's project " Song of the Century",  which promotes the musical and cultural heritage in American schools, and it has been covered by many artists, including Madonna in 2000. The meaning of the lyrics have been discussed all over, in forums, books, in the press etc., but  Don McLean has  always refused to explain its symbolism and hidden references, he often tells his fans "American Pie means I never have to work again", as the BBC reported in 2015.  The song contains a deluge of references to the leading artists in pop music from 1958 to 1971, and some of the landmarks of the social history of the 1960's like segregation, the fear of nuclear war, flower power, Woodstock, the drug culture and heroin etc. According to the analysis on the webpage The Rare Exception, which is a dead link now, but...

Are there gender differences between men and women or are we just talking about sterotypes? Are there biological differences between men's and women's brains or are the differences social and cultural? Many English coursebooks for adults use this topic to raise debate in the classroom:  Gender or individual differences? Nature or nurture? Here you can find a selection of materials to teach a lesson about gender issues, which I have used to expand the reading " How Men and Women Argue " on p. 64 of Christina Latham-Koenig's & Clive Oxenden's, English File Upper-Intermediate, 3rd Edition , Oxford University Press: "Men & Women", a set of controversial statements which students can discuss, first in pairs and then, as a class. Some links to TED Talks videos that could be given for listening/oral homework (students are assigned one video, they watch it at home, take notes and in the first 15 minutes of the next class they share the information in...