Instant lesson plans - The Simpsons in Japan
Internet a tanórán - 2009. július 12.
In this new slot I'm going to share some of the lesson plans I've used - and which have worked for me. For a change, these posts will be in English as, I believe, they might have a wider appeal than the others found on TanárBlog. So, here goes:
Topic: The Simpsons in Japan; Focus: Intercultural awareness, national stereotypes
Stage 1: Ask Ss to work in pairs and list as many adjectives they can in, say, 3 minutes. When they are ready, tell them to match the adjectives with a nationality that comes to mind (e.g. beautiful - Hungarian 
). Tell them to associate freely and not to be afraid to include negative characteristics. Finally, ask them to walk around and discuss what associations they had with other pairs or Ss. Finally collect some of the associations and discuss them as a group. Also, elicit from Ss the concept of 'stereotypes' (Time: 15-20 minutes)
Stage 2: Ask Ss to collect stereotypes concerning their own nation(s) (only tried it with a monolingual class) and possibly even draw such a stereotypical person (th funniest such description I'vve had so far was a shrewd, intelligent Hungarian taxi-driver ripping off foreigners in Budapest, then travelling in his taxi to the pusta, and riding horses barefoot while eating goulash and being utterly depressed. Also, a Nobel prize was hanging in his sad, pessisimistic neck. When the drawings were analysed, I asked Ss to look at the pictures and then themselves. Are there any similarities? The point here is to show how stereotypes can be misleading and be wide off the mark. (10-15 minutes - allow twice as much time if you decide to do the drawing part as well)
Stage 3: Japanese stereotypes. First, refer back to Stage 1 and collect some of the associations Ss had on Japanese people. Ask Ss to come up with some more ideas (e.g. sumo, sushi, anime etc. - usually not a problem at all). Next tell them that they are going to watch an episode from the well-known cartoon The Simpsons, in which there are travelling to Japan. For this part of the lesson, I adapted a great worksheet I found on the ITESLJ journal (CLICK HERE for the worksheet).
As I only had some 40 minutes of classtime, I didn't have to time to play the whole episode - therefore, I edited it (if you decide to use my edited version make sure you edit the worksheet as well - some questions might not have their answer in my version).
Wrap up the lesson with a short discussion on whether stereotypes (national stereotypes in this case) are valid - and if yes, to what extent do they provide a picture of the nation they describe.
Finally, here is the short version of the video followed by the embedded version of the whole episode (it might not work after a while, if so, please drop me an e-mail):
