Brent Warner
The DIESOL podcast

Digital Integration in English as a Second or Other Language

Ixchell Reyes
Episode 60: Using TV shows in the ESL Classroom

Brent Warner
Welcome to DIESOL This is episode 60. We are your hosts. I am Brent Warner.

Ixchell Reyes
And I’m Ixchell Reyes

Brent Warner
Ahoy-hoy

Ixchell Reyes
Ahoy-hoy. Konnichiwa konbanwa. Ohio. Where are you in the world? It’s evening for you.

Brent Warner
Sure. Well, depending it’s morning when this gets released, though, so that’s nice. Yeah. How’s it going?

Ixchell Reyes
It’s good. I’m almost done with my trip here in Japan. I’ll be home in a couple months. I’m sad to be home in a couple months.

Brent Warner
But you know, you’ve got other things going on. So, yeah, you’re gonna be on the Beebs. The BBC

Ixchell Reyes
The Beebs! As and not the Justin Bieber – he used the wrong nickname,

Brent Warner
British Beebs.

Ixchell Reyes
The British Beebs. BBC Learning English, BBC Learning English. So I know that we’ve used we’ve talked about them in many of our episodes, and I use them all the time. So I think it will be available. The little episode will be available. After February 24. You can find it on their Facebook page.

Brent Warner
Cool. We will share out some links to that. That’ll be awesome. Like, I think that’s super cool. So congrats.

Ixchell Reyes
I think it’s cool too, because I use BBC Learning English all the time!

Brent Warner
Yeah, that’s great. So you’re gonna be totally Beebs famous, which will be – I don’t know if that’s a thing, but well, we’ll call it Beebs famous,

Ixchell Reyes
Beebs famous (Laughter)

Brent Warner
And today we we don’t have a guest. It’s just us. And so

Ixchell Reyes
We’re the guests!

Brent Warner
Well, yeah, I mean, everybody who’s listening with us, is our honorable guest of honor. And actually, you know, it’s actually good. This topic is a great one for people to contribute their ideas to for sure, because there’s, we can only cover a little tiny bit of our topic today. But I would love to hear other people’s ideas and suggestions. As we talk about using TV shows in the ESOL classroom. I think there’s a lot to jump into each cell. So let’s not dilly dally, let’s let’s hop right on over right after this brief commercial break. All right, we don’t have commercials, but anyway…

Ixchell Reyes
Surely you’re talking about Friends?

Brent Warner
Oh my god. Okay, so let’s start the conversation here. So

Ixchell Reyes
Full House!

Brent Warner
Do your students still ask about full house at this point, or No?

Ixchell Reyes
No.

Brent Warner
Poor Bob Sagat, rest in peace. Okay, so I think we have to start the conversation with a little bit of like getting real with people, which is, if you’re using Friends, and if you’re using Full House or a Full House, I think we’re out of Full House. But I do know a lot of teachers, not a lot, but I know that teachers still use friends as like, kind of a TV show to go to TV show for like, for their classes and for activities and things like that. And I’m just gonna challenge that Friends ended almost 20 years ago, right? It’s started almost 30 years ago. So it’s,,,

Ixchell Reyes
And just so you know, things start phasing out when forever 21 has a whole vintage section dedicated to friends apparel, because now there’s a Zillennials wear it because it was cool back then. And they haven’t seen Friends. They just know that it’s a thing. Yes. It was a thing.

Brent Warner
Yeah, kind of a kitsch thing. So So I guess I would say like thinking about your students, right. So if you have students who are 18 years old, they were not born when the show ended. Right. And so that, you know, again, I’m not well, I can talk a little bit about – I don’t love Friends, I think there are some, some parts are great. I have some friends who love Friends. And then I also think then we’ve also talked about like, or we’ve seen on on Twitter, and we’ve seen people kind of complain about like, Friends is not very representative, you know, different cultural and ethnic beliefs and all sorts of things like that. And so it’s problem it’s it’s got its own set of problems and and even some of the jokes you go back to now and you’re like, Ooh, I can’t I can’t totally say that.

Ixchell Reyes
You I don’t want to use that English.

Brent Warner
Yes. So and again, this is not really just about Friends. This is just about kind of the the bigger conversation of television shows like as teachers I think it’s really important for us to use television shows to connect to culture. For our students, help them understand language, help them understand what’s going on in the world, all of those types of things. But I’d also say that like it is, there are times to modernize and update what you’re showing to your students. And so, in the past, we used to, you know, go buy an entire DVD series just to be able to show one show. Or if you’re going back further, maybe you had recorded VHS episodes, or something like that. But I guess we want to talk about today is kind of saying like, hey, it’s time to recognize where your students are today. And yes, you can go back and we do have access to those old shows. But we kind of just wanted to say like, Hey, let’s look at, let’s look at a little bit more modern conversation, let’s look at like how we can engage students with shows that are more of today’s era. And that doesn’t mean that has to be on air today. And the you know, this conversation will fade in the next five years. And we might have to refresh it, you know, after that, too, but, but I think we should be doing Yeah, we should, we should be going through and looking at different shows and kind of seeing how they, they connect to our students. So Ixchell first part, we decided this kind of came up from you, because you were talking about some of the stuff you’re doing in your class. But I thought the first part we talk about some of the shows that might be worth considering or looking at for your students. And then the second part, we can talk about some different ideas on how to use shows in your classroom. So so we’ll do our best to kind of keep those two parts separated from each other, where we really kind of say like, this is what the show is, and this is what it can be. And then like maybe somewhat uses for them a little bit later. But we might overlap on one side or the other a little bit as well. So Ixchell I’m going to start you off because your idea was was the kickstarter.

Ixchell Reyes
My idea was birthed out of using Saturday Night Live skits in the classroom. And we’ll talk about those in the latter half. But to join me to list the ones I…

Brent Warner
No, I think well, Saturday Night Live like and again, we’ll we’ll jump into that a little bit later. But you know, it’s classic and and I think the nice thing about Saturday Night Live is that if you use more modern skits and Saturday Night Live, then students themselves can go back right and they can go Oh, there’s more like I know this famous comedian. I didn’t know they came from Saturday Night Live. Oh, yeah. Right. And so they can make a lot of cultural connections kind of through their way of like, okay, I’m watching a modern show. But what if I go back five years what if I go back 10 years right?

Ixchell Reyes
Well, did you know that that you know that SNL had BTS on the show?

Brent Warner
No, I didn’t know that.

Ixchell Reyes
Well they did and neither did I just for you know for kicks I typed in SNL BTS to see which celebrities how far they have they had reached and sure enough they were there and we know our our current population la are our Yeah, our generation right now loves BTS. So what a great way to get them interested.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I mean, I guess I would be surprised if they weren’t. BTS is like the biggest band in the world. Right?

Ixchell Reyes
They are, I think right now, and they’ve been for a while.

Brent Warner
Okay, so So my first show that I’m choosing here is Superstore. Superstore for those who haven’t watched it, it ended recently, maybe within the last year or so. But it was a great sitcom about kind of working in a Walmart slash Target type of store. Family friendly for the most part, you know, some little adult ish parts, you know, in some some areas and some real conversations and things, but workplace, lots of variety in terms of like ways of seeing the world and people talking about their different challenges or issues and things like that. So I really think that like if I were looking for a modern show, that was kind of followed some fairly standard sitcom patterns Superstore would be a great choice for a lot of people.

Ixchell Reyes
Yes, I think stand up comedy is great for students. Stuff like Aziz Ansari, Gabriel Iglesias, he is known as fluffy. Now this kind of this kind of comedy presents a lot of challenge language challenges for students, but for your more advanced students, particularly those who a lot of my TOEFL students study from stand up comedy because there’s so much to understand and unpack just in a short like five minute what are they call sets, like joke sets. And of course, again, you would have to it some of it is cultural, some of it is deals with current social issues, but these are great ways to see different to see language and and also understand The humor humor has a different place in every in every country. It’s just I don’t know what to say about it. Yeah. Well, why we think that things that are funny are funny to us, but not to others.

Brent Warner
Yeah. And I think one of the great things about stand up to nowadays is like, there’s always new specials coming out, right? Like in the past, it used to be like, oh, there’s a new special coming out, like this year by one comedian. And now it’s like, every month, there’s like four or five specials coming out. So you can definitely find something that’s like, pretty topical and relevant. It’s like they record something on the weekend. And then like two or three weeks later, it’s out. And so yeah, that’s pretty great. My next one is Bob’s Burgers, do you watch this show?

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, I’ve watched a few episodes. I like Bob’s Burgers.

Brent Warner
I love Bob’s Burgers. And as you go in further, and as you get more into the characters

Ixchell Reyes
And this is animated –

Brent Warner
– it’s animated. Yeah. So totally family friendly. Right? Like it’s a, you know, it’s a, it’s a family story about these like, you know, elementary kids to maybe Junior High ish, I guess I’m Tina, maybe it might be sixth or seventh grade or something like that. And then, and then the two parents and like, everybody just has like these great personalities. They speak fairly clearly for the most part. And so there’s a lot of great, a lot of great polls, and it’s not super hard to understand what’s going on. And then there’s also these musical numbers that can kind of capture attention as well. So I like Bob’s Burgers as a choice.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, the next one is Parks and Recreation. And I have not seen a lot of episodes.

Brent Warner
Really? I’ve seen the whole thing.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, so but I know that a lot of my students talk about this show. And I and you know, I’m always shocked that they are brave enough to venture out into the world of comedy. And sarcasm, because, you know, sarcasm is not the type of humor that other countries may have or appreciate. But Parks and Recreation is one. Do you have anything to say about this show?

Brent Warner
I love it. I mean, you know, it’s a great show, I watched it all the way through. They kept on building these really interesting characters on Parks and Rec. And, you know, I think a lot of teachers right now kind of lean towards the Office. But the Office is also kind of getting older, whereas Parks and Rec sign, they definitely overlapped, of course, but like parks and rec has a little bit more modernity. The Office is… starting, like when you watch like older episodes of The Office, you’re like, Ooh, this is this is kind of old. But yeah, it’s, it’s great. And then the nice thing about parks and rec is that everybody has a character that they kind of can associate with. And so I think when you can, when you can build that type of thing and have some real strong character development, you go, I love that character, then you’re going to want to keep coming back. And yeah, so so that’s good. That’s a good thing for language learners to be able to say like, I love Ron Swanson, right. And like, I want to see like, how he expresses himself and how he’s connected to the world. So really excellent. And speaking of good character development, my next choice has been a favorite for many people over the last two years, which is Ted lasso. Ted Lassa is just outstanding, like, the positive show that we all need. You’ll hear people say it all over the place. And if you haven’t, I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet, Ixchell, have you?

Ixchell Reyes
No, I’ve never heard of it.

Brent Warner
Oh my god, it’s so good.

Ixchell Reyes
It’s just, it’s what is this on? Is this like on a streaming?

Brent Warner
Yeah, it’s on Apple TV. So that’s kind of where the problem is for a lot of people. But it is truly a positive and joyous show. And like, it’s about this, this very friendly and positive American football coach who gets hired to go to England and Coach Soccer. So and that’s kind of about the, you know, like the cultural issues about how wrongly the Brits feel about soccer and all of these things. But also like how he has a totally different approach than what the traditional, like, scream at your players type of thing is. And so it’s, it’s just very well done. And there’s a lot to dissect. And also, it I think a really interesting thing for some of our students would be understanding that like, hey, in England, and in America, we both have different we both speak the same language, but our cultures are very different and a lot of ways right. And so I think that that could be a lot of fun for students to explore.

Ixchell Reyes
That reminds me of something that recently happened in a classroom where one of my students and this is a teacher, there are teachers who are coming for training and getting a lot of English more English instruction from me, but one of the teachers knew what a Hail Mary pass was. And and I was like, What the heck, I had took me forever to figure out what that was. You have to watch football you have to hear on, you know, American football. He learned it from a TV show. And he explained it to the rest of the class I said, explain what a Hail Mary is. And then we talked about religion and why it’s called a Hail Mary and all sorts of stuff. So it’s pretty cool. But again, it’s from TV where who would have thought?

Brent Warner
Yeah, let me just pick up the right. The right information. So that’s awesome.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. So the next show that I have is one that’s it’s a recent show. It’s on Netflix. It’s Cobra Kai. Yes. And I think this Yeah, Cobra Kai, my students are crazy over this show. They talk about it every when they’ve binged, so they talk about it often. It’s the what the new iteration of the Karate Kid?

Brent Warner
Yeah, so the Karate Kid, I guess, based on it’s the same characters. It’s like, yeah, you know, Johnny and Daniel, like, they’re, they’re adults now. And like, kind of what happened to them over the last, you know, 30 years since the Karate Kid. And I wonder how they talk about that in Japan? Because I remember living in Japan, and and the Karate Kid was called best kid at the time. And I mean, I guess that doesn’t really love it. Yeah, really good. Like, I love that idea of like, being able to see what happened to them. And they, they chose, like, interesting paths for how, how these characters changed over those years, too.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, I love it when students can talk about what a character’s future or past less like because then we can also talk about that, in terms of how it affected the risk response or decision that someone took, and then we can start talking about real life, and how we react and you know, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, and what would you have done? And what did you think etc. So, again, character analysis,

Brent Warner
yeah. Well, speaking of the opposite of real life, I’m going to talk a little bit murder Ville, which is a show I recently found on Netflix, it’s got will our net. And then basically every episode, it’s totally a silly premise. But it’s a it’s a, it’s a impromptu comedy show with a where they bring on a guest to every show. And then the guest doesn’t know what’s going on, they just know that they’re kind of meant to be in this Murder Mystery Show. And then everybody else has kind of a scripted idea of what’s going on. And then the guest has to go in and play along with it with the jokes and all the things but they also have to figure out who the killer is at the end of the 30 minute show. And so it’s good, they have a pretty set formula, they go to three different possible suspects, and they kind of talk to them and figure out what’s going on with them. And then they use that information to guess who the who the killer is. But the guests are all like comedians are famous, like Conan O’Brien and Ken John and Sharon Stone, and like, all of these people. So it’s like, it’s a lot of fun. Like, it’s it’s silliness. It’s weird. And it’s this is a very interesting idea for a show where it’s like, one person doesn’t, like they’re in on the joke, but they just have to be an impromptu, you know, comedian, but at the moment and kind of get into the scene, where everyone else kind of has an idea of what’s going on. So

Ixchell Reyes
Sharon Stone, a comedian also

Brent Warner
was like, oh, Sharon stones in this episode. So I think part of it was just like, I think part of it’s like, they don’t have to be totally comedians. They’re just like, people who maybe were available that

Ixchell Reyes
they chosen. But that’s still cool, because some of those faces are recognizable.

Brent Warner
Oh, yeah, for sure. Some of these people are like, quite famous, or you know, all these different parts. So we’ll talk about how we can use that a little bit later. For more shows Hammerfell

Ixchell Reyes
Speaking of not real life, this show Stranger Things. I’m not a huge fan of the show, I did watch the first two seasons, but it’s got you know, enough. You know, the kids you can follow the kids dialogue easily. It’s got enough of a hook to keep you watching. And of course, you know, when on our writers in it, and those older ESL students who might remember who she was or where, you know, she’s famous in other countries. It’s it’s the storyline is pretty good. And it’s got a lot of vocabulary that you might not use, because it is science fiction. Yeah, for sure. It also exposes them to that,

Brent Warner
that I don’t know if people are gonna need the know the demo Demogorgon and demo. But there but yeah, for sure. It’s a it captures your attention. And then also, you know, if those students are adults, right, if they’re like in their like, you know, roughly our age or if they’re in like their 30s or 40s or they have like kind of memories of the 80s. Then some of that stuff. There’s like a lot of nostalgia, this type of Okay, um, my last one is not exactly a show, but we’ll talk about kind of why. So like in conto, right now is a popular movie, right? A big, big popular Disney movie. And a lot of these Pixar movies that are coming out, can also be great choices. So if you have access to Disney, plus you have tons of different resources for more modern TV shows on Disney plus, and all those Disney resources as well.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, and so again, talking about diversity and shows that reflect issues that we’re facing now and our students may be facing, but just kind of reflects how issues have changed as a show, this is us with Mandy Moore. And then I forgot the name of the guy from heroes. Oh, my gosh, but it’s a family series. But they, you know, they go through a lot of hardships and they put together as a family, but it’s not your fairy tale family, like other TV shows, might have you watched older TV shows there. This is a bicultural family, kids, I mean, the kids in there by biracial, and there’s a lot of issues in there that are difficult to tackle. But the shows the show does a really good job. And there’s a lot of moments where they’re tear jerker moments. And I think that’s where it’s gotten people hooked, because they’re all these not horrible things happening. But you you discover the story of the dad and the mom, and how the kids, you know, the brothers, and it’s, again, character development and understanding what led up to that moment and why they are the way they are.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I know that you and, and Sarah Thomas talked about that a last month when when she was on the show, and I know that that was has been a popular one, too. So I guess kind of the point that we’re getting to some of these, and we want to hear from you listeners as well, all of the DIESOL crew out there, like what are the shows that you also recommend, because there’s so much content these days, right? So much different stuff. But you do have to be a little bit careful, right? Like, because some of that content is like, I love some shows that I would never really recommend or bring into into my class and not even be totally inappropriate, although that might be a thing, but, but sometimes it’s like too, too deep or I’m thinking of like, like Letterkenny, which is a Canadian show. And it’s like so fast. And so like so much pulls on like, like deep language knowledge and deep like cultural references too much. So to the back that like, and it moves at such a fast, breakneck pace that like, I wouldn’t want to use that in my class, but, but I might love it right. And so, so just kind of recognizing there are so many excellent shows out there. And what can you pull from your, from your watching that you can bring into your class now, instead of just like, you know, kind of relying on stuff from

Ixchell Reyes
friends. Wow.

Brent Warner
Any of the F shows? So anyways, yeah, so those are a few when we come. When we jump back on the other side, we’ll we’ll talk about some ways to use them.

Ixchell Reyes
Oh, right, in 2022, we hope we get a bigger audience spread, spread the word, Please share the show with a friend, especially if you’re overseas, we get a lot of listeners from overseas. So sharing is caring.

Brent Warner
And so as always, share it out if you can, if you think the show is useful, if you think someone in your department might use it, and you say, Hey, check this out. This is where some good ideas come from. Hopefully, we are here for you. Alright, so Ixchell we talk about some of the shows that people might use. And now we’ll talk about some activities or types of things that you might actually use the shows in your classes. So I’m going to start off with a classic one, I think I think, you know, I don’t think this is a new idea by any means. But it is a lot of fun. Which is bad dubbing. Have you ever done this? I think we did it before. Or we talked about this before I think right? So where it’s uh so you’ll play, you’ll play a section of a clip with no audio, right? And then you’ll you’ll loop it. So you play it, you know, several times. And then you get the students to make up dialogue that would happen inside of like what they think is happening between these two these different characters or however many characters you have. And so they can kind of make up their own dialogue they can then you play the loop and then the students try and shout out the dialogue at the same time as what’s happening on the screen. And then finally, at the end, you can actually play the real thing for them to kind of see like how close or how different it was. And that can be just a lot of fun and Have you seen some of those bad dubbing videos that are kind of jokes on the on the internet, and they’re, they’re always a lot of fun.

Ixchell Reyes
Cool. So I’d like to do character profiles where like, I have the students go into it, we watch something, and then they go into a character, stepping in the shoes of that character, and then talk, talking about having a conversation about it. So this particularly is I do with the Saturday Night Live skits. And again, with Saturday Night Live, there’s so much and it’s free, it’s on YouTube. Students don’t have to be subscribed to any kind of streaming service. But it also requires screening. So if you’re going to be bringing it into the classroom, yeah, screen screen them, but they’re short. So it doesn’t take up a lot of time, create a playlist, curate a class blue. So that’s like, the easiest thing to do. And then, you know, students can actually add their own. But anyway, for example, we did, there’s a, there was a skit on Beauty and the Beast where, you know, they’re singing, that tell us all this time song, and then the beast actually thinks that it’s Belle, who’s going to go undergo the transformation. So it brings up a whole conversation on beauty standards. And of course, we know that that’s one. That’s something very relevant to today’s youth. But now, what

Brent Warner
are definitely the most beautiful, so

Ixchell Reyes
so so yeah, so you know, step into the shoes of the beast, why do you think he feels that way? And let’s have a conversation about it. And as we’re talking about it, throw in phrases that you know, are? What is it? What isn’t? What is, you know, we use the word filter all the time, I know, that’s increasing plastic surgery, and we talk about self image, and we talk about, you know, all of the all of these vocabulary sets that are, you know, relevant. And then of course, you can have students write about it, you doesn’t have to be about a skit itself. But you could throw out a question like, Should children be allowed to bla bla bla, bla, bla? Or should? Should there be more restrictions around plastic surgery? Or what are the effects of, you know, having media all around you, and now they can actually talk about it, because they’ve seen something, and they’ve got a point of reference. So you can definitely take it elsewhere.

Brent Warner
Yeah, so that’s a great prompt. And you can go in all sorts of different directions, but you’re starting a little bit light, right, with the, you know, jokes, and all the, you know, the Saturday Night Live comedy there. So I love that. Okay, I’m going to show I’m going to kind of combine two different versions of the same thing. So. So we talked about murder Ville, as a show. And then at the very end, they kind of, you know, they make the guests on who the killer is. Or if you watch a television show, it’s a kind of like a very, it’s another murder mystery show called death in paradise. It’s kind of a weird one. But it’s very formulaic, but very easy to watch. And so, you know, the, they go through the show, you meet the different potential people. And then at the very end, they kind of do the reveal on who who did the crime. But you could do something like this with your students, where you say, like, Hey, we’re going to watch this. And you can do all sorts of activities during the watching. But then at the end, the students responsibility is also to make a guess, on who the killer is, right? What are the clues that you’re getting? What did you see inside of the show, like what types of things that they maybe say that would be hints for you to help you make predictions, and then I’m going to do also the flip side of that. So there’s kind of two different sides of predictions. So one is like a murder mystery type of show. And you can go all the way through guess at the end. But the other one is where, you know, in any sitcom, or any show, you kind of get to the climactic scene where like, all the crazy stuff is happening. And a lot of times that builds up right from like, oh, this character is doing this. And this other character is, you know, at the laundromat, and this character is doing this. And then finally, they all come together. And something explosive and weird and crazy happens on the show, right? And so you can flip this and you could just show that final scene, the explosive scene where all the craziness is happening. And then you can have students predict how they got into that situation, right? So so you could predict on the front end, or you could predict on the back end with your students as you’re kind of looking through and making guesses about what might be happening inside of the show.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, I think, you know, another point to make here is that many of these shows now show have diversity within the cast. There may be a different take on stereotypes, they may reflect social issues of the time like I would hate to show something that doesn’t reflect what’s been happening with Black Lives Matter the me to movement. You know, all sorts of things. So, one, especially with comedy, it reflects what’s what’s going on and you can have a conversation about it. You mentioned that picks Are films and you know, we’ll talk a little bit more about it. But I like to show students that this is this reflects a slice of, I guess, you know, again, it’s the media’s representation, but it’s a little bit more inclusive of what it was 10 years ago or whenever friends. I never watched friends I couldn’t relate.

Brent Warner
That’s an interesting thing. Right? Like, Yeah,

Ixchell Reyes
can I relate? Yeah,

Brent Warner
I get it like, so. So yeah, for sure. Like, I we can talk about that. Now. I think part of the thing that’s interesting about like, modern Pixar is they’re trying to do better representation, right? They’re trying to show we were talking about in the pre show show, like the show the movie, again, there’s a movie but in Konto a lot of you I’ve seen a lot of people tweeting about in condo and being like, you know, this girl looks like me, or, you know, she, she like has realistic body standards, or, you know, like, she’s kind of nerdy and not like this beautiful person that everybody is chasing after but also a really, you know, a relatable character, you know, like, so all these all these different parts to it that I think are just really great. And they’ve been doing this for a while with Disney. You know, I mean, we’ve seen it with Lilo and Stitch and we’ve seen it with, you know, many different shows over the last 1015 years. I don’t even know how old Lila stitches. But, you know, they’ve been doing a better job of trying Mulana. Yeah, like trying to represent different, different cultural backgrounds, different ways of seeing the world. And so I think that there are a lot of conversations inside of there. And then also, like you said, with things like, black lives matter. So a show like Brooklyn, nine, nine, which I really enjoyed, but also like, some people call it some people call it propaganda. You know, like, it’s like, oh, it’s just kind of, like making light of what the police do and making it seem like it’s all for the good, but they actually kind of dealt with it in the last season. That was not not totally smooth, but they were trying to like at least talk about some of these things. And so it’s really,

Ixchell Reyes
and I think, I think it’s important to mention that they’re not always going to get companies aren’t always going to get this right, especially with Disney. I mean, I’ve I’ve heard lots of criticism with Coco and the way that certain things are portrayed. But if you’re trying to bring a group into the eye, a little bit more presentation, I don’t think that it’s a wrong thing. I mean, we’re all doing this for the first time, where I think in 20 years, we might see better representation of the people writing the shows that we are seeing, because then we’ll be you know, a little bit better than we are now. But I mean, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and I was a kid, I just you know, Beverly Hills. I know too. I know. I don’t relate to hills. I don’t really Orange County, the OSI? I mean,

Brent Warner
I relate to the Oh okay. Yes, but I do understand the problems. Yeah.

Ixchell Reyes
So yeah, so it’s a step forward. Seeing someone represented and also being acknowledged like the fact that again, talking about cocoa I was trying to they talked about a pinata and on CNN 10 So I thought up here I go, I’m gonna have to explain what a pinata is. My students knew a pinata was because they had seen Coco. Oh, yeah. So again, a little more knowledge or a little bit more exposure to something and yes, you probably should know the word pinata if you’re going to be in America because we have a lot of large population of Hispanics living there Latinos and a pinata is like art about our culture.

Brent Warner
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I, I have very same standard white boy, American, but like Penny autos are part of how I grew up in a

Ixchell Reyes
skateboard. Skateboard in high school.

Brent Warner
I skateboard it into a pinata. So listen to Green Day. Oh, yeah, of course, green is the best, you know, you know,

Ixchell Reyes
you have an apple power tattoo behind your ear. You know, all these things. stereotypical white boy

Brent Warner
for a white guy. Next up,

Ixchell Reyes
are we gonna get in trouble for a troll for calling you i

Brent Warner
think it’s okay to say no, I’m not gonna get in trouble. ourselves. We’re just gonna continue to challenge ourselves. So a couple other ones that I had here. One is back channels. So like, you know, we’ve talked about this idea of back channel. So if you have like a chat if you’re online, right, you’re and you’re used to kind of the Zoom chat going on. One thing that I really found was great was when I was showing videos, then I encourage my students to ask questions using the chat so that they’re not necessarily interrupting the class. But they’re, they’re still kind of asking questions, or they’re like, I don’t understand what’s going on here, what are they talking about? And then I’ve been able to kind of follow up with the chat, like, as the show is going and type in responses and say, Oh, this is what they’re trying to talk about without trying to slow down the show every single time. But to kind of let them kind of have whatever if it’s a cultural reference, or if it’s a language point, or what was this word. So I can kind of monitor it through the chat. And you can even do that in person if you have a back channel. So if you have, you know, some sort of chat mechanism. So if you use discord in your class, or, in our case, we have pronto installed inside of our Canvas LMS. And so people can chat with that. But you can encourage your students say, hey, jump on the chat. If you want to ask questions. Let’s not interrupt the class while we’re watching this, but you can totally ask questions, and I will respond to them without stopping the show, pausing to talk about every single question that you have. Right. And so I think that’s a really cool use of how to use technology in combination with watching some shows. I think there’s some interesting potentials there as well.

Ixchell Reyes
Yes. What I like to do as well is pre teach target phrases, idioms, any grammar structures, any anything interesting, because sometimes our advanced students are already going to know like, for example of students who’ve already taken the TOEFL, but now they need to refine their English a little more. So they’re going to, or particularly right now, teachers that I have, they’re English teachers in japan, Japanese English teachers. So they’ve got to be well versed, and they’ve got to practice the English, but using using pre selected lists that you come up with, or pre selected vocabulary, grammar, grammar, idioms, etc. And using you glish as a companion, right now, that’s been great. Because if I give homework to Hey, watch this and highlight two, two phrases that you found interesting. Now let’s, let’s plug them into you. glish, which I know we’ve covered. We’ve, we always mentioned nucleus when it comes to one of the other. Yeah. So you glish but then you get to hear clips of something that’s not scripted, of real people seeing it in context and in different contexts, or in only one context. And then that tells you, hey, I better not write this in my, you know, email to my boss, or my Yeah, for sure, my professor. So I like to pre teach. And then sometimes, again, you just start curating those lists, and then you start developing a bank of stuff that goes with it. I do this for CNN, 10. And then I don’t know if I think in the pre show, we were talking about how in CNN 10. Because it’s a you know, if you’re watching this in class, our students are watching it on their own. But then you bring in something like Saturday Night Live, where they’re gonna make fun of something that happened that week. Now, the students have now gained the background knowledge in an academic context to not be able to understand, you know, on Saturday, what they might be poking fun at. And I think that, that, that’s another way to hook them.

Brent Warner
I love that. Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of great things to tie in there. So. So my last one here, and again, the same type of thing, if you’re pre teaching some language, or if you’re, if you’re saying, Hey, this is the grammar point, or this is the vocabulary that we want to look out for one thing that you could do if you have something like Padlet, or if you have a jam board or something like that, you could make different categories. So in Padlet, you can make different columns are in JAM boards, you can make different boards. And then when students are kind of white, when students are watching the shows, they can go into the Padlet, or the jam board or whatever. And you can kind of have like them do a little race when they hear or find the language points that you’re talking about. Come up pray. And so you say, hey, you know, type in the time the timestamp that you’re seeing it, and what are you seeing them talking about here? So I think there’s a lot of kind of cool ways for them to chase down the language, I wouldn’t want to overwhelm it, right? Like, Hey, you don’t need to do 20 different things. While we’re watching it, you know, a 20 minute show like, that would be way too much. But like you say, hey, you know, here are three or four things that I want you to pay attention to and look out for. And then they can kind of race each other to try and find examples of those things as you’re going. And of course, if you have it scripted, there’s a lot of scripts available online, or the the transcription is available, so you can download it and you can actually search for things specifically that you want them to pull out. And so I think there’s a lot of interesting ways to do some language scavenger hunts that way and a little bit more fun and less, maybe, maybe in some ways, less distracting ways that we might have done it traditionally in the past. So I think those are a lot a shell I think there’s plenty for people to get started with if they’re trying to kind of update their TV shows. But if you have new shows or other shows that you think are worth sharing, please let us know. And yeah, you can go right now that

Ixchell Reyes
YouTube playlist, I’ll throw my SNL YouTube playlist in there of stuff that I’ve already sort of screen. And of course, you teachers should be screening and not just trusting me.

Brent Warner
It also leave comments on the show notes. So right DIESOL.org/60, the number 60, then you can go right in there and say, Hey, this is another show that people should consider sharing with their students. It’s useful, it’s valuable, we would love to I mean, there’s definitely many, many more than what we’ve talked about. And so we I’d love to hear other ideas as well.

Ixchell Reyes
Okay, it is time for our fun fines. And I think we need to re label mine too expensive, fun fines, because I’ve been having a lot of those recently, but this time around, I selected the Refat carrot massage rollers. Have you heard of them? They’re like the Bougie Japanese version of massage rollers, but they’re, they’re expensive. They’re very well made. They’re highly coveted. Everywhere else. They’re pretty much sold out in America, and they’re more expensive in America. But they have a solar panel window.

Brent Warner
Solar powered almost saucer.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. And then it creates an EMS current for slug mussels. And it’s just awesome. And I just thought women are crazy. Or people are crazy for buying these and paying that much money until I tried one at the store. And then yeah, that was awesome. And then I used the excuse of buying one for my mom so I could try one. So if my mom doesn’t like it, I’ll take it.

Brent Warner
Nice. Okay. So Refik caret R E. r, e fa, R e fa car at massage roller. All right. That’s mine is a hat. So I finally broke in. I’m giving into being like a middle aged man. You know, and here’s the hat. I’ll show it to you Ixchell but it’s a it’s for it for taking walks in the sun. And I gave him

Ixchell Reyes
It’s an Indiana Jones hat!

Brent Warner
It’s not cheap. It’s it’s like kind of stylish like it’s made out of hemp and it’s like a it’s a Indiana Jones ish style hat but it’s like the wide brim for like blocking the sun and like this is totally like the hat you’ll see people hiking around in. Yeah, it’s like definitely like middle aged dude taking a hike hat.

Ixchell Reyes
Going on an adventure!

Brent Warner
But hey, I’ve been looking for because I have a huge head I have a huge head. And it is hard for me to find half that fit. And so I was at REI and this one was on sale because they’re discontinuing it but they did have one that almost fits my head which is seven and seven eight. So I should have properly an eight. But it’s comfortable and I can I don’t have to worry about it flying off necessarily so So I got myself a nice lovely adventure walking hat that I think will last for many many years. And so

Ixchell Reyes
are our fun fines are reflecting our age. Yeah, we’re

Brent Warner
getting older. Son from my from burning my neck. All right. So, welcome to your 40s

Ixchell Reyes
All right, thank you so much for listening to this show. We don’t have any reviews for 2022. And you could win a one of a kind DIESOL pin by leaving one on Apple podcasts. If you’re giving us a shout out any other way tag us on social media. And we’ll we’ll make sure to check

Brent Warner
Yeah, we’re on Patreon and buy us a coffee if you want to go give us any things for appreciation that way. But again, we’re really looking just for just share it with a colleague share the show with a colleague of mine that’s that would be really nice for us. But of course you can find the show notes and if you have contributions, TV shows or activities that you think are worth looking at. You can go leave that for us at DIESOL.org/60. And of course you can listen to us at voiceEd Canada as well. We are on the tweets and the Twitter’s at DIESOLpod The show is at @DIESOLpod I am at @BrentGWarner and

Ixchell Reyes
and I am at @Ixy_Pixy that’s I x y underscore p i x y

Brent Warner
In Haitian Creole thank you is Mesi. So Mesi for tuning into the DIESOL podcast. Thank you. Thanks everybody.