Obvious to you. Amazing to others.

This EFL lesson is designed around a short video by Derek Sivers and the theme of creativity. Students working on extreme adjectives, watch a short video, read a transcript and speak about creativity.

 

 

I would ask all teachers who use Film English to consider buying my book Film in Action as the royalties which I receive from sales help to keep the website completely free.

 

 

Language level: Intermediate (B1) – Upper Intermediate (B2)

Learner type: Teens and adults

Time: 60 minutes

Activity: Working on extreme adjectives, watching a short video, reading a transcript and speaking

Topic: Creativity

Language: Extreme adjectives

Materials: Short video and transcript

Downloadable materials: obvious to you lesson instructions     obvious to you transcript

Support Film English

Film English remains ad-free and takes many hours a month to research and write, and hundreds of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy or value in it, please consider supporting Film English with a monthly subscription, or by contributing a one-off payment.

Monthly subscription

€7,00 EUR – monthly €3,00 EUR – monthly €10,00 EUR – monthly €25,00 EUR – monthly

One-off payment

€10,00 EUR €20,00 EUR €30,00 EUR €40,00 EUR €50,00 EUR €100,00 EUR

 

Step 1

Write the following words in a column on the board:

good, bad, surprising, clever, interesting, sad, happy, scared, angry,funny

 

At the top of the column write “Standard adjective”. Add another column and write “Extreme adjective”

 

Step 2

Elicit extreme adjectives for the first standard adjective “good”.  Students should come up with adjectives such as “great”, “wonderful”, “fantastic” etc.

 

Step 3

Pair your students and tell them to come up with examples of strong adjectives for all the normal adjectives.

 

 Step 4

Get the students to give their examples of strong adjectives and write them in the Strong adjective column. They should come up with something like this:

Normal adjective         Strong adjective

good                     great, brilliant etc.

bad                      terrible, awful etc.

surprising               amazing, stunning

clever                   brilliant, genius

interesting              fascinating

sad                      miserable, devastated

happy                    delighted, ecstatic

scared                   terrified, petrified

angry                    furious

funny                     hilarious

 

Step 5

Tell your students they are going to watch a short video titled Obvious to you. Amazing to others. in which they will hear some of these strong adjectives. Ask them what they think the video will be about.

 

Step 6

Tell your students that as they watch and listen to the video they should try to understand what the video is about and what the narrator’s message is. Show the film.

 

Obvious to you. Amazing to others. from Derek Sivers on Vimeo.

 

Step 7

Pair your students and ask them to compare what they understood. Play the film again.

 

Step 8

Get feedback from the whole class on what they understood.

 

Step 9

Give your students the transcript of the video. Ask them to read it and check what they understood when they watched the video.

 

Step 10

Ask them to read the text again and underline any words and expressions they don’t understand. Put them into small groups and ask them to try to work out together the words and expressions they don’t understand.

 

Step 11

Elicit or explain the meaning of the words and expressions they found difficult. You may need to explain that John Coltrane was a famous  jazz saxophonist and composer, and Richard Feynman was a world-renowned theoretical physicist.

 

Step 12

Tell your students they are going to watch the video again; as they watch they should concentrate on the narrator’s pronunciation.

 

Step 13

Ask your students to summarise the narrator’s message in one sentence.

 

Step 14

Put your students into small groups and ask them to discuss the following questions:

• Do you agree with the narrator when he says we are bad judges of our own creations?
• Have you ever thought “my ideas are so obvious. I’ll never be as inventive as that.”?
• Do you think you have be a genius to be creative?
• Do you think we are smarter than we believe we are?

 

Step 15

Hold a plenary session based on the discussion questions.

 

I hope you enjoy this ESL lesson.

Support Film English

Film English remains ad-free and takes many hours a month to research and write, and hundreds of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy or value in it, please consider supporting Film English with a monthly subscription, or by contributing a one-off payment.

Monthly subscription

€7,00 EUR – monthly €3,00 EUR – monthly €10,00 EUR – monthly €25,00 EUR – monthly

One-off payment

€10,00 EUR €20,00 EUR €30,00 EUR €40,00 EUR €50,00 EUR €100,00 EUR

from Film Lessons – Film English http://film-english.com/2016/02/15/obvious-to-you-amazing-to-others/