First survey ended: Chandler's the best!

Not that this is surprising in the least, but Chandler has just been voted the best friend ever. There were 44 votes, of which he got 17.

Any suggestions for the next survey?

Help?

The ideas which abounded when I first started on my project have sort of... gone? I've just finished watching episode 19 - 5 to go in the first season - and much as I still love watching (obviously!), it hasn't been easy to find great ideas worth sharing.

Doesn't anybody out there have something for season 1?

I'm now going to watch episode 20. Wish me luck!

Half of the 1st season - Gone!

I have just finished watching episode 12, which means I'm halfway through season 1, and it's amazing how many cool things I vaguely remembered that have already happened: Phoebe's songs in her pocket shows at Central Perk are hilarious; Ross's 'friendship' with his monkey Marcel; Chandler's sex-obsessed mother; Rachel's struggles to stay afloat without her dad's help; Monica's compulsion about cleanliness and her talent for cooking; Joey's thickness (like for example when he thought he was being asked what he would do if he was impotent, when it was actually OMnipotent!) To die for...

I've always loved Friends, but I don't think I'd ever had as much fun watching it as I've been having now, and I highly recommend you all watch it like I'm doing, in order. It's amazing!

PS: By the way, over 170 visits. Thanks! More activities coming!

Downloading the episodes

In the preparation of my activities, I obviously use only original DVDs. I'm a number-one fan of Friends, and it feels like stealing to use bootleg versions; not to mention Friends is one of those shows you just HAVE to have all the seasons on DVD for posterity.

However, since I know having all the seasons demands a heavy investment on our part, and thanks to my incredible friend Layne, you can find below a link to download one by one all of the 236 episodes of Friends, from all of the 10 seasons.

http://serieshunter.com/tag/friends

May God take pity on your pirating soul.

Second Conditional

What would you do if you were omnipotent for a day? Would you make your boobs bigger? Or would you think about killing yourself?

How about if US$ 500 popped up in your account unannounced? Would that make you happy to the point of skipping, or would it entail major karmic debt if you went on a shopping spree?

These and more are discussed by our favorite friends on Earth in episodes 3 and 4, and have now been turned into this activity to be used as presentation and/or practice of the second conditional.

Looking forward to your feedback!

PS: I'd be remiss not to share this week's Grammar Girl podcast. It's on whether it's OK or not to use talk with and talk to in any circumstance. Well worth a peek.

100 visits in less than a week

I want to take a minute here to thank everybody who has visited the blog in this less than a week it's been on the air. I know, of course, that half these visits were paid by my mother (thanks, mom! LOL), but still it means a lot to know that a few awfully nice people took their time to drop by, and some even to make a small comment.

Thank you all and more activities are on the way!

H

Disc 1, Season 1 - history!

I've just finished watching the first six episodes of Friends, and in all honesty I can't say whether I had seen these before or not. I did recognize some of the parts - like Rachel fleeing her own wedding, or Joey's play in which he's Freud - but it all looks fresh, hilarious and interesting (apart, of course, for their appalling jeans. Did we look that awful in the early '90s?).

I've been keeping a list on which I write down ideas for future activities, but I couldn't come up with anything for episodes 5 and 6. Apparently it's not going to be possible to come up with one activity at least for each of the episodes, but for chapters 1-4 I could think of two with each.

That's it. Off to bed 'cause the day is loooooong tomorrow.

Friends rules.

Historical Present

You'll never believe what's just happened to me! So I create this new blog, right? I write the first post and everything, and my intention is to share activities based on Friends episodes with my fellow teachers, but the truth is I don't have any activities to share, and even if I did, I have no idea how to share them! Then I speak to a friend (Daniel), and he tells me sharing activities on the Internet is easy peasy, and suggests I try this site called Media Fire. I do, find it really pathetically easy, create my first activity and... presto!... here it is published for you!

The million-dollar question then is why, if I'm telling a story which happened in the past (even if very recently!), I decided to use all the verbs in the present. Why? Well, the explanation is really easy: If Chandler can, so can I!

You can download the Friends in the Classroom's very first activity clicking here. This activity, fittingly using the very first episode of Friends ever, shows students how common it is to tell stories in English (and jokes as well) using all the verbs in the present, what is called historical present. Enjoy!

PS: I also take the opportunity to share with you this link to Grammar Girl's podcast explaining the difference between historical and historic. It's brilliant!

See you soon!


PS: Marcelo, thank you for the correction, mate! Cheers.

Friends with benefits

I’ve been an English teacher for 11 years, since 2000 (anniversary coming up next January). When I started my career, the universally acclaimed series Friends had been around for about six years or so, and teachers the world over had been using their weekly adventures for years in their classes, which pretty much means I don’t know what it feels like to be an English teacher without constantly thinking about how to use a Friends episode to fit a class, or how to enrich a class using an episode. In other words, it is fair to say that Monica, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Joey and Phoebe have been teaching with me, sort of illustrating the points I made in class, for… ever. Isn’t that what friends are for anyway?

The idea for this blog came from an old dream: I’ve always wanted to watch all the Friends episodes in order, and though I’ve had the seasons for years, I’d never actually gotten round to doing that due to a pervasive lack of time, laziness, House, my addiction to books and PS3, piles of homework collecting dust on my desk, students, workshops, Tricolor on TV, and other humdrum events of the daily grind. Yesterday, however, October 20^th, 2010 (an already historic date!), I actually got off my butt and put disc 1, season 1 in my laptop’s DVD player and embarked upon a journey which will in all likelihood take several months to be concluded (at the present rate of 4 episodes a day – which is how many I watched yesterday – it would take me a bit under two months; but that, of course, only if I didn’t have the habit of mixing up pleasure and work so often).

Along with the decision of watching all of the 236 Friends episodes, seasons 1 to 10, in the order they were created, came the idea of watching them all with a teacher’s eye, and for every episode watched, try and create at least one TESOL video activity to use with my students. I must confess I found (and still find) that a pretty neat idea, and how I went from that to deciding to blog about it isn’t really rocket science.

That all being decided and regardless of how excited I am and eager to jump right in it with two feet, the question which now poses itself is: How to share the activities? I’m no stranger to blogging, but I have never actually shared files online, and I’m still looking for the best way to do that (I am, by the way, open to suggestions from potential readers-to-be), but I believe activities will start popping up in the next week or so. Creating the activities is going to take careful analysis of the episodes, watching a few of them more than once – at least parts of them twice or three times – and actually putting pen to paper. Nevertheless, the way I visualize what is going to be made available here in the next several months is something like:

-          activities for skills practice (Listening and Speaking, especially, but also Reading and Writing);

-          activities for grammar presentation and practice;

-          activities on culturally relevant aspects portrayed in the episodes;

-          activities for pronunciation practice;

-          Warm-up, Lead-in (to various topics) and filler activities;

-          …

I take the opportunity here, by the way, right from the word go, to ask for your participation. If you have any Friends activities you’ve created and tested lying around, please send them to me. You will obviously be fully credited for them, even if I (at my discretion) end up making alterations to them. Also, since all the activities shared here on the blog will be in editable format, you can also feel free to change and adapt my (or any of my contributors’) activities as you see fit.

That’s it! Thank you for visiting, make a habit of it, and please leave your valuable and encouraging comments and critiques when you drop by. They’ll all be taken into careful consideration.