Authentic comedies at the lesson

[Т А Кузнецова]

The British Comedy Guide

It may seem strange but you can use authentic comedies in the classroom for different purposes:

• To introduce culture

• To introduce modern language

• To give the students the opportunity to understand humour

If you visit www.comedy.co.uk/guide/top you can find reviews of top British comedies.

Here is an example:

Programme: The Office Broadcast: 2001 - 2003 (BBC2) Episodes: 12 (2 series) and 2 specials Starring: Ricky Gervais, Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook Written by: Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant Directed by: Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant Production: British Broadcasting Corporation Synopsis: "The Office", filmed in the style of a 'fly-on-the-wall documentary' records the working day of manager David Brent and his staff. Brent is the manager from hell, he is tactless, talentless, egotistical, prejudiced, cowardly and conniving yet somehow thinks everyone loves him. At the end of series two he is turfed out of his job and becomes a travelling salesman; he returns to the paper merchants for the Christmas party however. BCG Review:

We are in no doubt that "The Office", winner of three BAFTAs in three years will be considered a classic British sitcom in a few years from now (in fact it already is being talked about in such a way). It's certainly memorable and funny, something quite rare for a modern sitcom.

Now the final ever episode has been shown and Gervais has wisely announced there are to be no more (thus cleverly avoiding damaging its reputation) attention has turned to the American re-make and Gervais' new sitcom, "Extras".

And here some ideas for using authentic comedies:

Choosing a scene

Once you have selected a sitcom the next step is to choose an appropriate scene. If you are using a DVD or video you can watch a whole episode and take note of an interesting bit that you think your students would enjoy. This depends on what the focus of the lesson is going to be. You might like to select a clip with some interesting vocabulary, colloquial expressions or a simple dialogue that students can follow. Or you might be more interested in showing your students some aspect of British life; an office, a school canteen, a corner shop ... It's easy to spend a lot of time looking for the perfect clip. If you've got time to spare then that's fine. But for most teachers time is the last thing they've got. As long as the section you choose has interesting language, is appropriate for the level of your students and meets the other criteria you have set, then look no further.

Extracting useful language

What makes language useful? Again, this depends very much on your students and their learning context. A group of workers from a particular sector might be keen to learn specialist vocabulary related to their area of work. Students with a high level of English (and not so high) are usually interested in colloquial language that real people use in everyday situations. Sometimes you can reinforce a grammatical structure through the video clip of a sitcom. Scripts are useful for finding specific language easily.