Culture Swap: What Would You Do?

Write a letter of 300-400 words to your Chinese pen pals commenting on some aspect of the Wife Swap clips we watch in class, and you can add comments about the What Would You Do episodes as well if you have not already done so.  Share connections you can make to your own life, how you think these clips accurately portray us, what they might leave out, your own experiences in situations like these, etc.  Think about what you'd like the Chinese to know about us as Americans and/or you as an individual.  What are we proud of when it comes to our way of life?  What would we like to do better or see in our future?  

Ask some good questions about what the Chinese students thought of the clips, what those shows might look like if they were filmed in China, something else you'd like to know...

Share your letter in a New Post on your blog, please, and send your letter to your pen pals.  You can send the same letter to both of your pen pals if you have more than one.

Kevin sent me a copy of his lesson he used with the Wife Swap episode.  Here's some of what he said about how he introduced the show and some of the issues/concepts they're working on...

Hey! I've attached my lesson for Wife Swap for what it's worth. Maybe your students would be interested to look at what (I make) the students do in class. We covered fifteen phrasal verbs for this show because phrasal verbs are insanely difficult for non-native speakers, and we use them all the time. Take is used, for example, in dozens of phrasal verbs in the show, and even the single phrasal verb "take off" has several meanings. So these are really important for them. 

I used the second slide to elicit the name of the show and introduce a game. They then look at the last fifteen slides and have to look at the two pictures and come up with the phrasal verbs that correspond to the pictures and write the verb phrase on the blanks on the worksheet. After the phrasal verbs are all elicited, we work on meaning and pronunciation. This is tricky, too, because for a phrase like "count on," most Americans drop the /t/ in count, so it winds up sounding like cow-non; using the /t/ sounds unnatural and throws off sentence rhythm. 

When we watched the show, we focused on phrasal verbs in the first ten minutes of the show and then sentence stress in questions in the last ten minutes. I also paused quite a bit to talk about gender roles/politics. One of the husbands is a self-proclaimed redneck and he says things to his "new" wife like "I'm thirsty." My students don't understand the implicit meaning (go get me a beer).

Finally we watch the show and they answer the discussion questions. The circle with four lines at the bottom is for a freer speaking activity. I asked them to put their name in the circle, and write four facts about themselves or interests using only one or two words like "Chinese" or "pizza" or "dog." Then they mingle and ask each other questions, ideally mimicking the stress patterns we just covered.

This is long-winded.. Sorry! Your students are awesome, and my students are loving this. Thank you and be in touch soon!