Teaching English through History: Henry VIII

        HENRY VIII AND HIS SIX WIVES

We already know that teaching History can be something quite boring. Moreover, teaching History in English to speakers of other languages can be something even worse. 

This week I am working the historical figure of Henry VIII and his six wives, Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare. 

First of all, I think that the teacher's attitude it's something essential. If you want your lesson to be boring, be sure it's gonna be boring but if you want it to be something special and funny you have to live it!

I decided to explain the life of Henry VIII and his six wives, the Tudors and the Reformation from the point of view of gossip magazines.  The intonation, the gestures, the informal language made my class a better place to be!

After this explanation I decided to use a great video I found in the Internet made by the BBC (God save them!). Here you have the link and the lyrics:

HORRIBLE HISTORIES - The Wives of Henry VIII (Terrible Tudors)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fadCAHjN-s

Divorced, beheaded and died
Divorced, beheaded, survived
I'm Henry VIII, I had 6 sorry wives
Some might say I ruined their lives...

Catherine of Aragon was one
She failed to give me a son
I had to ask her for a divorce
That broke her poor heart of course

Young Anne Boleyn, she was two
Had a daughter, the best she could do
I said she flirted with some other man
And off for the chop went dear Anne

Lovely Jane Seymour was three
The love of a lifetime for me
She gave me a son, little prince Ed
Then poor old Jane went and dropped dead

Divorced, beheaded and died
Divorced, beheaded, survived
I'm Henry VIII, I had 6 sorry wives
Some might say I ruined their lives...

Anne of Cleeves came at four
I fell for a portrait I saw
Then laid eyes on her face and cried "She's a horse!
I must have another divorce!"

Catherine Howard was five
A child of 19, so alive
She flirted with others, no way to behave
The axe sent young Cath to her grave

Catherine Parr, she was last
By then all my best days were past
I lay on my deathbed aged just 55
Lucky young Catherine, the last, stayed alive

Divorced, beheaded and died
Divorced, beheaded, survived
I'm Henry VIII, I had 6 sorry wives
You could say I ruined their lives...

After analyzing and commenting the lyrics (and laugh a little) we moved on to the next activity: It's time to be a gossip show!

One group of the students has to defend the wives of Henry VIII and the rest of them to Henry himself. After having taking some notes about what we are going to say, let's start with the show!

Things like: "Catherine of Aragon was very boring because she was all day praying" or "Henry was said to have a secret lover called Anne" can appear during the chatting.

Although this lesson seems to be quite simple we have learnt something about English History, we have practiced past tenses and the passive voice. Also, we learn to respect the turn of our classmates when speaking and how to present our ideas in clear and ordered way. 

Discourse Analysis Approach!

Discourse Analysis Approach 




Why is it important to use this approach? When can we use it?

Well, to begin with, we must say that one of the main aspects that is developed in this approach is the use of language as it appears in its own context, without any special adaptation (authentic material)

Discourse Analysis approach is not only important in order to learn real language in context without adapting but also, thanks to this authentic material “Learners gain so a greater appreciation and understanding of […] the sociolinguistic factor that contribute to linguistic variation across setting and contexts” (Douglas 2001).

In some groups with an advanced level of English this approach can be carried out, but what happens with the little ones? Can we use authentic material without adapting it? The answer is yes. We can facilitate lexical items that appear in our lesson and give them a previous context so that students can understand better what's going on. Also, as teachers, we need to use material that has been very carefully chosen . It implies more work, more hours at home surfing the Internet, but at the end we will see the reward at class.

Bibliography:

• Celce-Murcia, Marianne and Elite Olshtain 2000: Discourse and Context in Language Teaching: A Guide for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Douglas, A. 2001: „Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers‟. ERIC Digest.

The Communicative Approach!

The Communicative Approach 

A communicative methodology should be based on the Communicative Approach or Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

What do we teach? We need to give special importance to language functions rather than grammar and vocabulary.

As Jeremy Harmer says in his book The Practice of English Language Teaching (2008) the activities "typically involve students in real or realistic communication, where the accuracy of the language they use is less important than successful achievement of the communicative task they are performing. [...] What matters in these activities is that students should have a desire to communicate something. [...] They should be focused on the content of what they are saying or writing rather than just one language structure. The teacher will not intervene to stop the activity; and the materials he or she relies on will not dictate what specific language forms the students use either"

"The emphasis of CLT is on functional communication, social interaction, and real-life language use. Addressing fluency and accuracy, this approach considers integrated components of communicative competence, including the grammatical, functional, and sociolinguistic. The major tenet of CLT is that language acquisition is achieved through using language communicatively, rather than from repetitious drills that are common in the grammar-based approach." (Pu, Chang 2008)

Activities you can use at class following this approach include:

• Role Play
• Interviews
• Information Gap
• Games
• Language Exchanges
• Surveys
• Pair Work
• Learning by teaching

• Harmer, Jeremy 2008: The Practice of English Language Teaching (4th Edition). Essex: Pearson Longman
• Pu, Chang 2008: "English as a Second Language (ESL) Approaches". Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education. SAGE Publications.

Useful Bibliography!

Applied linguistics, Psychology and Language Teaching 


Carter, Ronald & David Nunan eds. 2001. The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Celce-Murcia, Marianne and Elite Olshtain. 2000. Discourse and Context in Language Teaching.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Hedge, Tricia. 2000. Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Lightbown, Patsy and Nina Spader. 2006. How Languages Are Learned. 3^rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Williams, Marion and Robert Burden. 1997. Psychology for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Schmitt, Norbert. 2002. An Introduction to Applied Linguistics. London: Arnold. 

:D

"Me gusta denominar siempre en primer lugar a nuestra metodología, es decir, a

nuestros recursos metodológicos personales, como el primer y más importante de

los recursos didácticos que se emplean en un aula. ¿Por qué? porque, sin nuestra

manera de actuar, sin nuestra profesionalidad, sin nuestra voz, nuestros gestos,

sonrisas, enfados, miradas cómplices, explicaciones, nuestras manos, nuestra

entonación…ningún recurso didáctico tendría sentido por sí mismo" 

Guiomar Yagüe Martínez