An Ethical Dilemma

One effective way to spark conversation in a class is to start a debate on ethics.  One lesson I occasionally use for this is based on this article about the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and a lone photographer who took pictures of the soon to be tortured and killed prisoners.

This is a lesson I only use occasionally with high level classes because a strong command of English is needed to get across one’s ideas on such a charged subject.  This particular article has sparked some of the most heated debate I’ve ever had in a class and best of all for Turkey, it circumvents local politics and religion so it’s ultimately a “safe” topic.

Another reason I like it, and the original reason I created the lesson, was it strongly encourages use of 3rd conditionals repeatedly, which is something many Turkish students have a lot of problems with and which isn’t practiced much.

I also really like the posing of an ethical dilemma.  It’s a lesson a class can really dig into.  A lot of standardized EFL material tends to skirt such polemical and serious issues and students often view it as incredibly refreshing to deal with such a serious topic.

If you’re looking for something that will really challenge your students, I recommend giving this lesson a try.

The original article can be found here.

The lesson plan can be found here.

Why the Turkish Flag?

An interesting breaking news story in Turkey came out on Monday and I’ve turned it into a lesson for all you eager teachers in Turkey here

The lesson has to do with the picture on the cover of the DVD from the above documentary – “Sacrificed Survivors” produced by the Christan Action Network.  It’s a film about the Ground Zero Mosque controversy going on in the US right now.  The big question is, “Why is the Turkish flag used on a picture of a film connected to 9/11 & Al-Qaeda?”

Something you learn while living here is that many Turks feel the world is watching them and they assume the world knows what is happening in Turkey.  A big shock for many Turks visiting the US is that, in fact, most Americans couldn’t point to Turkey on a map much less tell you what language is spoken there or what the flag looks like.

At first I thought the Turkish flag used in this picture was merely the result of a google image search for the Islamic star & crescent.  As you will see below though, it turns out that they actually had very thought-out reasoning for this choice.  The fascinating thing is that the rhetoric they use is the same exact rhetoric espoused by more secular-oriented Turks against the AKP, Gulen movement, more religious sections of society, etc.  All around a very intriguing read.  I would assume CAN has actually been reading online secular media sources in Turkey, especially on this idea of the state secretly planning to implement Sharia law and turn Turkey into something resembling post-revolution Iran.

As interesting as the whole event is, the fact remains that the choice to put a Turkish flag on a documentary cover about 9/11 is not only ignorant, but really offensive as well.  With the current rising Islamophobia in America, this only serves to fan the flames of prejudice and misconception.

Despite the negative undercurrents of the story, it makes for a enthralling lesson topic, so here we go.

Note:  The entire lesson plan can be found here with added sections for a grammar focus.

Lesson Plan

Level: Upper-Intermediate

Objective: To analyze and discuss underlying world views based on a text

Alternative:  Write a letter of complaint

Alternative:  Grammar:  Passives or Parallelism

Auxiliary Vocabulary: to single out, to alter, to reinforce, to institute, to depict, to portray, to align,  to serve as a reminder, a premiere, an insignia, a poll, an ally, staunchly

Plan:

1)  Post up the image of the cover of Sacrificed Survivors – a documentary made by the Christian Action Network (CAN).  You should cut out or fold over the title of the film so students can’t see it.  Ask if anyone knows what the image is from.  If so, have the student(s) explain the story and open up the floor for discussion.

2)  If not, hold an open discussion and slowly feed in information.  After adding new information, hold a short discussion on how that changes assumptions about the film and why.

1.  Get some guesses as to where the image is from and what it is portraying

2.  Tell them it’s from a movie.

3.  Tell them it’s a documentary

4.  Tell them it’s an American film

5.  Tell them it was created by the Christian Action Network

6.  Finally, tell them it’s about the Ground Zero Mosque

3)  Hold an open reflection on the discussion.  When and why did ideas change regarding the image.

4)  Looking at the discussion, what assumptions do students make about America and Christians.  (As this will prepare the way for the rest of the lesson, this could also be done as a short writing to really allow students to reflect and think about their own ideas as analyzing your own assumptions is not always easy).

5)  Your students will undoubtedly be quite upset with the use of the Turkish flag being connected to Al-Qaeda & 9/11.  Tell them that CAN received thousands of complaints about the image and so they wrote a public apology/defense on their website.  Students are going to read the letter.  In groups of 3, their task is to find out what assumptions CAN is making about Turkey.  They must highlight the passages that illustrate their point.

6)  Give students in each group a number from 1-3.  Now students form new groups based on their new number and share their ideas about the text.

7)  Finally open the class up for an all class discussion.  The questions for discussion below can be used to prompt further discussion if needed.

8)  For homework split the class into two groups.  One group should research CAN.  The other group should research the Ground Zero Mosque controversy in America.  The following class they will share and discuss what they found.  Alternative homework:  have them write their own letter of complaint and email it to CAN.

Alternative:

1a)  After part 2) above open up the class to discussion on their feelings and opinions regarding the image (if possible, play the trailer to the film found here ).

2a)  As most students will be upset, ask them to write a letter of complaint to the makers of the film following traditional complaint formats (i.e. state purpose of letter, reason for complaint – include feelings and counter-arguments, future action wished taken).

3a)  Continue from part 5) above.

Open Letter from CAN

The Christian Action Network has received thousands of emails about the cover of our new documentary, Sacrificed Survivors: The Untold Story of the Ground Zero Mosque. This controversy could result in protests at the premiere of the film in New York City on October 28. We regret any hurt feelings caused by the use of only the Turkish flag on the cover of the film. We did not mean to single out Turkey and therefore, the cover will be altered to include the flags of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan and Syria.

The decision to include these flags is being made in order to reinforce one of the themes of the film: Radical Islam seeks to bring the world under Sharia law and the U.S. is no exception. The flags that will be depicted are of countries that have instituted Sharia law in their country and/or sponsor the spread of radical Islam.

Turkey was chosen because the country serves as a reminder of what can happen if “stealth jihad” is successful. Turkey was once a staunchly pro-American ally with a secular identity. Unfortunately, it is today governed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, which has brought Turkey in the opposite direction.

Erdogan and his party’s initial 2002 election victory encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood, with its political chief saying the victory came as a result of the “exposing of the failure of the secular trend.” Turkey has become a leading provocateur of Israel and bastion of anti-Americanism. Erdogan has moved the country much closer to Iran, Syria and Sudan, going so far as to oppose U.N. sanctions on Iran for their nuclear program. He has even said, “I do not think that Hamas is a terrorist organization.

The Turkish flag was originally chosen because of the presence of the Islamic star and crescent on the flag. As the CIA World Factbook explains, “the crescent moon and star serve as insignia for the Turks, as well as being traditional symbols of Islam.” Those symbols were chosen to signify Turkey’s status as a country with a Muslim identity—and will be used in the same fashion on the American flag should the country be overtaken by radical Islamic forces.

We do not mention this to try to portray a negative image of the Turkish people. Although their votes put Erdogan’s party (and therefore, him) in power, we know not all Turks can be characterized as Islamists. Polls show the vast majority of Turks oppose Osama Bin Laden, Hamas and Hezbollah, and we hope the election next July will reflect this opposition to radical Islam and the aligning of Turkey with enemies of the West. But the fact remains—the “stealth jihad” of political Islam has been successful in Turkey. And this is something the West must learn from.

The flags of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and Sudan were chosen because their governments are using Sharia law as a basis for government and because of their support for the spread of radical Islam. The Syrian flag was chosen because, although the government is secular, it undoubtedly contributes to the spread of radical Islam by sponsoring terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

The cover of Sacrificed Survivors: The Untold Story of the Ground Zero Mosque will not single out Turkey, but the editing omission should not take away from the film’s premise and the stories of the survivors of 9/11 and the families of the victims as the Ground Zero Islamic center and mosque controversy continues.

Article found on CAN website here

Questions for discussion

1.  How much does CAN know about Turkey?

2.  How do they perceive Turkey?

3.  What similarities are there between CAN’s perception of Turkey and many Turks perception of the current government?

4.  Ultimately, why did CAN choose Turkey’s flag to put on the cover of their documentary?

5.  The letter is meant to be partly an apology and mostly a defense of their cover choice.  Do you accept the apology?  Do you agree with their reasoning?

6.  The organization decided to change the cover to include other countries’ flags. How do you feel about this decision?

7.  What do you think about the choice of the other countries’ flags to be included in the photo?

Related Articles:

Soldier Dance Lesson

Letter of Complaint from angry Turkish-American

Original Letter from the Christian Action Network

Sacrificed Survivors:  Recreated Xenophobia

South Park puts Turkish Flag on Al-Qaeda Planes

Abortion & Extremisim – A Lesson Plan

Continuing with my religious theme this week, I’ve got a lesson for you

Preface:  There are a number of reasons I like to use lessons including religious subjects.

1)  I personally find religion to be a fascinating topic, so I often try to bring it into the classroom.  We talk a lot about keeping the students interested, but we also have to keep ourselves interested.

2)  Religion is often controversial and always thought-provoking.  It’s great for debates, critical thinking skills, cross-cultural thinking skills, empathy and much more.

3)  You can easily do lesson connected to the students’ culture as their is a wealth of material both in ancient texts and modern newspapers.

4)  Religion often has a huge impact on culture and helping students to understand religion in the locations they expect to use English in can help a lot.

So on to the lesson.

I like this lesson a lot, but only use it with classes rarely as it has some very strong themes and class where trust has been built up over a long time.   There are a lot of skills practiced, but the main thing for me is that it provokes a need to understand the Other.  Both in the context of the material in the lesson and in the context of the subject matter, in this case abortion.  Abortion is not a contentious issue in Turkey, especially not to the degree it is in the US, so a debate lesson on abortion simply falls flat.  Throwing in some really controversial material spices things up and gets students interested in a topic they might not otherwise care about.

Lesson Part 1:

Level: Upper-Intermediate

Objective:
Inferring meaning
Looking at the world through another’s eyes
Drawing conclusions from spoken and written texts
Analytical skills
Examining rhetoric through vocabulary

Materials: Internet Access or downloaded copy of The Execution of Paul Hill (also found here http://www.mercyseat.net/sermons.html, then search for the title).

Procedure:

Note:  You should familiarize yourself with Paul Hill & the Army of God before the lesson.

Show the picture of Paul Hill to the class.  Ask the class to take a minute and guess information about the man.  They should probably be able to identify that he is associated with a church, went to jail, and is a hero to some people.  Now ask the class in small groups to brainstorm how all this information is connected.

After you get some ideas, tell them Paul Hill was a former minister who was given the death penalty for killing an abortion doctor (you’ll probably have to pre-teach “minister” “death penalty” and “abortion.”)

Now tell them that he believed his actions were justified.  In the same groups, have the class try to come up with ideas as to how he could feel murder was justified.  Write their ideas up on the board.

Pre-teach vocabulary for the sermon:  a deed, a verse, the Bible, evil, oppression, Scripture, a pew, and offering plate, Sunday school, lethal, righteousness, legitimate, sane, to execute, to condemn, to intervene, to slaughter, to obliterate, to repudiate, “To Kill a Mockingbird” & Boo Radley.
The verse – “See that no one renders evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good, both for yourselves and for all.”

Hand out the question sheet for the sermon.

Now play the designated parts of the sermon (Minutes 4:19 – 8:08, 10:07 – 11:18, 13:09 – 15:30, 41:20 – 42:30).   [Note:  This sermon is given by Pastor Matt Trewhella of Mercy Seat Church in Milwaukee, WI.  He is the founder of Missionaries to the Preborn.  He is a very intense and opinionated man both in his sermons and in everyday life.]

The listening always gets strong and interested reactions from the students.  You should just be able to open the class up to debate and see where it goes.  There are a number of themes that can be discussed following the listening such as:

The use of violence (in law, in religion, by small groups, when it’s justified, etc.)

Abortion

The death penalty

The right to free speech

Alternative:  Ask the class to come up with some questions they have about the people involved, the movement, etc.  For homework or in the computer lab (if you have access to one) students can then do further research.  Here are some useful sites:

Mercy Seat Christian Church

The Army of God Manual

One Soldier’s Story – Shelly Shannon

The Brutal Truth: Part 1 & 2 (Movement’s documentary on police brutality against protests)

Walk for Life March & Counter-Protest

Lesson Part 2:

Level: Upper-Intermediate

Objective: Inferring meaning
Looking at the world through another’s eyes
Drawing conclusions from spoken and written texts
Analytical skills
Examining rhetoric through vocabulary

Materials: The Fetus Focus Fallacy

http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/fetus-focus-fallacy.shtml

Procedure:

By now the class has taken a look at part of the pro-life debate.  Tell them they’ll now be looking at the other side of the equation.

Split the class into two groups.  Group 1 will state any reasons against abortion they can remember and add any more they can think of.  Group 2 will try to come up with reasons for supporting Pro-Choice.

From the article mentioned in materials, I cut out this portion and hand it out.

Write 2 questions on the board:

1)  How is the language used in this article different from that used in the sermon from the first lesson?

2)  What are some key reasons used to defend the pro-choice argument?

Follow-Up:

Students choose sides and debate abortion.

Dogme in the Mind of a Teacher – Banking

From time to time I’ve decided to throw up a dogme lesson plan.  Like most of what I consider to be dogme lessons, this plan was written after the lesson was completed.  It is, in fact, a post-plan.  As a teacher, I always come to class with something prepared to do, but quite often I chuck it out the window as something else comes up.

These posts will be an attempt to show how I come up with the lesson as it happens.

Banking

Level:  Intermediate
Materials Used:  None
Time:  About 3 hours

In Turkey, students tend to slowly filter in to class during the first hour as being on time is not much of a concern here.  Many of my classes, therefore, start out with general conversations or light activities that people can slip into as they arrive.

About a half hour into class a reasonable number of students had arrived and one of the students was telling a story about a problem they had at the bank the other day.  Everyone was pretty interested in the story.

Decision: Do a lesson on banking.  I decided on this because 1) a number of the students worked or studied banking & finance, 2) it was clear from the conversation that banking vocabulary was weak or unknown, and 3) the students had brought up the subject and were expressing interest.

I thought a good way to do the lesson would be a role-play as I like drama and real life situations.

First (after the student finished telling their story and questions died out), we brainstormed a number of terms that the students should be using like deposit, withdraw, interest rate, signature, etc.

One student started adding words like stock and share-holder and…

Decision: Stop it there as that would be getting off track of the direction the lesson was taking and complicate things too much, especially since many students wouldn’t know those terms and situations even in Turkish.  Also, I wasn’t at all confident with that language or those situations in English either and so I doubted my ability to help create an effective lesson in that direction.

After the brainstorm session, I left all the words and phrases on the board.  Students then became bank tellers and customers.  The bank tellers pulled their chairs to the front of the class and stood behind them as customers formed lines in front of the tellers.

The activity ran for about 8 minutes.  I noticed that the students were using a lot of the language we had come up with, but that their general language was very informal.  I wound down the activity and everyone went back to their seats.

Decision: Focus on formal language, particularly things like indirect questions, modals, and if clauses.  The students obviously had less experience with this and needed the practice.

We now did a bit of feedback on the first part of the lesson.  Students asked questions and we added some more language that they needed to the board.  We then discussed the formality of the situation and talked about the language used.  The students decided that they needed to use more formal language.  We brainstormed again and put up example phrases like “Could you tell me your customer number, please?” “Do you mind waiting a minute while I…“ “I was wondering if you could tell me…“ and “If you could just sign right here…”

Switching tellers and customers, the activity ran again.  This time students were using much more appropriate language.  Again, I helped out students when they got stuck, pointed out minor errors, or commented when students became a bit too informal.

The activity ran for almost 15 minutes this time.  Students that weren’t involved in a transaction chatted in line with their fellow customers.

After this activity, I initiated a feedback session and students discussed what they liked about the activity or didn’t, who did a good job, what was easy or difficult, questions they had, etc. While this was happening, I boarded a lot of language, both good and bad, that had come from the students.  We talked about the nature of the language, why certain language was good or bad and we discussed corrections in grammar, vocabulary, and register.

After a break, I thought we could work on complaints at the bank as that is basically what started off the lesson.  I started by giving an example of a lot of problems I’d been having with Internet banking lately.  My plan was to have some students come up with complaints, others be tellers who would decide on a particular emotion to react with, and others to be managers to be called in to help out.

After I told my story though, a number of other students started complaining about Internet banking as well.  Still others didn’t trust it and were very curious about those who used it and whether it was safe or not.

Decision: Scrap the original plan and allow an open class discussion.  The students were obviously highly interested in the topic and to stop it and move on to something else would perhaps be de-motivating.  The students were still recycling much of the language we had been practicing and they were all actively involved in the discussion.

My job was simply to support students in the language they were using if they got stuck, especially regarding vocabulary, and to get them to self-correct some areas of language that we had been working on lately or that particular students were having problems with.

The discussion ran for a good 30 minutes.  This time I dictated a number of sentences back to them where they used vocabulary that was too general or structures that were a bit too simple.  They copied the sentences down and then had to work in pairs to find ways of improving the sentences using more specific vocabulary we’d covered that day or by making the language more structurally complex.  Changes were then discussed as a class.

Including the rather open ended chat in the beginning and breaks, the entire lesson took a little over 3 hours.

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So what do you think of the lesson outcome, decisions made, etc?  Is this similar to how you run a dogme lesson or different?  What would you change or have done differently?  If you’re not familiar with dogme, does this lesson help you understand the approach better?

Related Articles:

Dogme in the Mind of a Teacher:  Memory Techniques

Unplugged Lesson Plans

D is for Dogme

The Dogme of Dogme

Sources for Teaching Unplugged

Further Dogme Links