Why should I do it now?: procrastination and never mind!

Transcription

1 Why should I do it now?: procrastination and never mind! Aline Jéssica Antunes Ana Cristina Diersmann Lívia Pretto Mottin This didactic unit was developed as a final product for Língua Inglesa VII, a discipline taught at Centro Universitário UNIVATES, as part of the English teaching course curriculum. It was planned for intermediate high school English students, but may be adapted according to the teaching context. The activities were designed around the theme Procrastination and the TED Talk Inside the mind of a master procrastinator, by Tim Urban. Theme: Procrastination Level: Intermediate Goal: (i) To develop listening and reading skills; (ii) To provide students with an authentic writing task. Age: Teenagers Length: Two fifty-minute classes Warm-up: The teacher will show students the pictures below and ask the following questions: Questions about pictures 1 and 2 - What do you think when you look at these pictures? - What do they remind you of? paginas.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL Porto Alegre v. 6 nº

2 PICTURE 1 Available in: Concept-for-procrastination-an jpg PICTURE 2 Available in: Question about pictures 3 and 4 - How much time do you spend with this? PICTURE 3 Available in: paginas.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL Porto Alegre v. 6 nº

3 PICTURE 4 Available in: Question about pictures 5 and 6 - What do you do first? PICTURE 5 Available in: f PICTURE 6 Available in: paginas.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL Porto Alegre v. 6 nº

4 Pre-teaching: In order to get to acquaint students with some of the vocabulary of the TED Talk students are going to watch, they will play Taboo. Taboo is a riddle game which is played with cards. Each card contains a main word and another two. Discovering the main word is the goal for the team but the players are not allowed to say the other words written in the card: the other words are taboo. The sequence in which the game will take place is described below. 1. The class will be divided into two groups. They will choose with whom they want to sit, but the groups must have the same number of players. 2. Each group will be organized in semicircles and the player, who has the card, should sit in front of the team. 3. Each team will have only one minute to discover the word. The players will give some verbal clues, in English, in order to help the group. The clues can be sentences or words, but they cannot be the taboo words. 4. Groups score a point when they find out what the words is. If someone says a taboo word, the opposite group scores a point. There is no penalty for wrong answers. paginas.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL Porto Alegre v. 6 nº

5 The cards will look like this: VIDEO Movie Scene TALK Speech Person PROCRASTINATE Later Postpone HOMEWORK Study School PAPER Work Writing SLOWLY Lazy Fast YOUTUBE Video(s) Share FACEBOOK Social media Photos HOUR(S) Time Watch BLOG(GER) Share(ing) Video(s) EASY Fun Simple FUN Happy Easy PLAYGROUND Game(s) Recreation MONKEY Animal Brown MONSTER Horror Angel GOOGLE Search Oracle DEADLINE Date Time CALENDAR Month Date MIND Brain Head WIKIPEDIA Search Google Video activity: TED Talk Inside the mind of a master procrastinator. Available in TED Talk website: < procrastinator?language=en>. paginas.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL Porto Alegre v. 6 nº

6 After the game, students will watch the video twice. The first time will be with subtitles in Portuguese and the second time with subtitles in English. While watching, students will complete the following chart. Character What role it plays inside the procrastinator s mind Instant Monkey Gratification Rational Maker We are going to watch a TED Talk by Tim Urban, Inside the mind of a master procrastinator. According to the speaker, there are three characters inside the mind of a procrastinator (the Instant Gratification Monkey; the Rational Decision- Maker, and the Panic Monster) and each one of them plays a role in one s mind. Watch the talk and complete the following chart. Decision- paginas.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL Porto Alegre v. 6 nº

7 Panic Monster Pictures available in: After watching, students will answer the following questions: - The speaker mentioned a personal experience and his own procrastination habits. How was this experience? - According to the speaker, how does a procrastinator brain work? - Do you consider yourself a procrastinator? Why? Post-activity: As a final activity, the students will read and write comments on the TED website about what they procrastinate and what they thought about the video. The comments will be written in the section Discuss, at the bottom of the page where the video is available. First, students will read some comments extracted from the website and answer the following questions: - Where can you find this kind of comment? - What is the objective of the comments? - Who is the intended audience of the comments? - What are the characteristics of the comments? paginas.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL Porto Alegre v. 6 nº

8 Comments: Kenneth Sale: I was expecting more science and psychology to be involved. Seemed too dry and I didn't find it very helpful. Maile Ho: Funny, I'm procrastinating on writing a blog post (for work), so after walking around apartment trying to find something else to do, I sit down and decide to browse through Ted.com. Find this Ted talk on procrastination and instead of watching it now, I save it to "Watch Later", which I'll probably never do. Master procrastinator here. Daniel Basett: I came here to watch a ted talk for school and I ended up watching this video instead... Jorge Correia: I love my instant gratification monkey. He always takes me to places where I learn something useful...do I use it? That s another story! Looking at that life calendar enhances my thought that life really is short!! Sam Billings: Good talk man. That was really really good. I love the panic monster. I could see you making similar style type talks on all sorts of issues... humor is key to keep the audience engaged. I don't think I deviated from a single word you said. I'd say that was a perfect talk. Ferdinando Scala Pro: After I saw your video, I decided to write a long and thoughtful comment about how inspiring was this. But the monkey here tells me I have to check into my Facebook profile and scrolling across all the nonsenses written by my friends. I'll write the comment later...well...much later :-D paginas.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL Porto Alegre v. 6 nº

9 After reading and analysing the comments, students will write their own comments and post them on the TED website. paginas.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL Porto Alegre v. 6 nº

10 Aline Jéssica Antunes Graduanda em Letras - licenciatura - com ênfase em Língua Portuguesa, Língua Inglesa e respectivas literaturas, no Centro Universitário UNIVATES. Recentemente não tem atuado como professora, mas já foi bolsista do Programa Institucional de Bolsas de Iniciação à Docência (PIBID). Ana Cristina Diersmann Graduanda em Letras - licenciatura - com ênfase em Língua Portuguesa, Língua Inglesa e respectivas literaturas, no Centro Universitário UNIVATES. Atua como professora de Língua Inglesa, Língua Portuguesa e Literatura em uma escola privada do município de Teutônia/RS. Lívia Pretto Mottin Possui Mestrado em Letras Linguística (PUCRS), Especialização em Língua Inglesa (PUCRS) e CELTA Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (Cambridge ESOL). Atua como professora de Língua Inglesa no curso de Letras do Centro Universitário UNIVATES. paginas.ufrgs.br/revistabemlegal REVISTA BEM LEGAL Porto Alegre v. 6 nº