This activity is based on an idea that I remember from my early TEFL years. I think I got it from Jim Scrivner’s Learning Teaching book. The basic idea is to prepare a text or number of sentences about an object. Instead of mentioning the name of the object, however, the word splurg (singular) or splurgs (plural) is used instead.

.

Try it for yourself - read the following and decide what splurg is:

The last two weeks in March are an anxious time for the splurg farmer. There’s always the chance of a late frost which, while not entirely ruining the crop, generally impairs the flavour and makes it difficult for him to obtain top prices in world markets. But now these dangers are over and the splurg harvest goes forward.

Splurg cultivation here in Switzerland is not, of course, carried out on anything like the tremendous scale of the Italian industry. Many of you, I’m sure, will have seen pictures of the vast splurg plantations in the Po Valley. For the Swiss, however, it tends to be more of a family affair.

Another reason why this may be a bumper year lies in the virtual disappearence of the splurg weevil - the tiny creature whose depravations have caused much concern in the past.

After picking, the splurg is laid out to dry in the warm Alpine sun. Many people are often puzzled by the fact that splurg is produced at such uniform length. But this is the result of many years of patience and endeavor by plant breeders who have succeeded in producing the perfect splurg.

Any ideas? These four paragraphs come from a larger transcription of a famous 1957 BBC commentary which can be seen on YouTube (you can scroll down the page to see it if you are feeling impatient).

I have put the four paragraphs onto a Power Point file (one paragraph per slide) and this can be downloaded here:

splurg.ppt

Here is one way that the text could be used in class:

Process

Note: Rather than printing off the four paragraphs, display them on a computer screen in class and ask students to copy them into their notebooks (you could lie and say the photocopier wasn’t working). The copying process allows learners to really get involved with a text. I find that students often appreciate this and besides, it gives the teacher a bit of peace and quiet for a few minutes.

1. Show the first paragraph and ask students if they can guess where it came from.

2. Explain any unknown language (including the splurg concept) and then ask students to copy the paragraph.

3. Ask students to guess what the word splurg could be. Write possibilities on the board (”It could be potato“, etc). One of the important things for students to consider is what type of noun they are dealing with: Singular, plural, countable or uncountable. The clue to this lies in the collocations and grammar that the word splurg finds itself in:

• The splurg farmer
• The splurg harvest
• The splurg weevil
• The vast splurg plantations
• The splurg is laid out to dry in the sun
• Splurg is produced at uniform length

4. Show the next paragraphs and continue in the same way. Use could be, can’t be, probably isn’t, etc, to either consolidate or dismiss possibilities (”It can’t be potato because potatoes aren’t dried in the sun“, etc).

5. Give students the answer by showing them the YouTube clip:

6. Tell students the full story of the famous April Fool that the BBC played on the British public 52 years ago. This can be obtained here and here.

7. Go back to the text: Tell students that you are going to leave the room for 5 minutes and while you are gone, you want everyone to come to a consensus decision - they have to choose the 15 most useful pieces of language that are new to them in the text. This can be either a word (e.g. ‘picking‘) a collocation (e.g. ‘top prices‘) or a structure/sentence (e.g. ‘the splurg is laid out to dry‘). Larger classes can be split up for this.

8. Take a note of the chosen language and before the next class, use the text in the Power Point file to make a gap fill exercise in which you remove the pieces of language that your students selected. It might look something like this:

9. The next day, show your students the slides again with the gaps and ask them to recall the missing language.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Another good BBC April fool to use in class is last year’s spoof trailer for a documentary about flying penguins which could be turned into a similar activity “This recently discovered colony of splurgs is unlike any other …“.

Click here to see the clip.

Posted by admin on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 10:36 pm.