Judging from the title, I guessed she must have used Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech as the teaching material. I used to give this speech to my senior students at NHSH. What did I do with it in class? Well, I asked questions to check students' comprehension and if they had read it. Besides, I invited students to watch the video and had them jot down three to five sentences from the speech that touched them. Two years ago, I even asked students to write a letter to Steve Jobs. I went over all the letters and corrected some mistakes in them; regrettably, we didn't send the letters to him.
Now let's see how Ms. Lowe used Jobs' landmark speech in class.
http://blog.tesol.org/learning-english-with-steve-jobs/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=learning-english-with-steve-jobs&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews
Learning English With Steve Jobs
Posted on 11 October 2013 by Alexandra Lowe
The commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005 has been watched more than 11 million times on the TED Talks website, and it is a perennial favorite in my classroom. Students from all over the world are invariably powerfully moved by the life lessons he draws from his adoption, his decision to drop out of college, his experience of being fired at age 30 from the legendary company he founded, and his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. This semester, one of my students told me that he often watched the 15-minute speech in the morning to give himself the courage to set aside his fears of making mistakes in English when he speaks.
My comments: I still remember a female student of mine told everyone in class how moved she was by the speech, her eyes glistening with tears.
The speech, entitled “How to Live Before You Die,” lends itself to wide-ranging class discussions. Some of the topics we have considered this semester include:
- Do you think that the first set of prospective adoptive parents who declined to adopt Steve Jobs because they wanted a girl ever came to regret their decision? Why or why not?
- Jobs tells his audience to “live each day as if it were your last.” What do you think of that advice? Is it realistic for most people? If today were the last day of your life, how would you want to live it?
- Which of the three stories that Jobs tells in his speech resonates with you the most? Why?
My comments: Very good questions! I also asked the last two questions Ms. Lowe posed.
But aside from these discussion opportunities, this speech lends itself to two communicative grammar exercises that I like to do with my students. The first helps them practice accurate question form.
I ask my students to imagine that Steve Jobs has been resurrected from the dead and that they are journalists to whom Jobs is going to give an exclusive interview. I ask them to work with a partner to come up with three questions they would like to pose to the reincarnated Steve Jobs at a press conference. Then I ask the students to write their questions on the board so that we can determine whether they have used correct question form in their questions. Before launching into the press conference, we review the questions together and students help each other correct the form of the questions.
Then the press conference begins. I invite three volunteers to sit at the front of the room and pretend that they are each Steve Jobs. A fourth student serves as a moderator of the press conference and calls on the different “journalists.” My students had a field day with this activity, asking Jobs what his next product is going to be (“That’s a commercial secret,” one student impersonating Jobs answered coyly) and whether he considered himself to be a genius.
The other grammar activity I like to do with this speech is a “Verb Tense Hunt.” Like so many of their peers, my students find the usage of the present perfect tense to be particularly challenging. So, using a transcript of the speech, we go hunting for instances of Jobs’ use of the present perfect. Some of my students’ favorite examples of the present perfect come from this passage that occurs around minute 9:20 in the speech posted on TED:
[F]or the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. (Steve Jobs, 2005)
In a single paragraph, my students can observe a key use of the present perfect—to describe experiences that started in the past and continue into the present—and its frequent co-occurence with the words “for” and “ever,” and can practice formulating their own sentences using Steve Jobs’ memorable language as a model and as an inspiration.
Do you have any favorite speeches or videos for classroom grammar activities?
My comments: To practice grammar, I prefer to use songs. They are short and very often the target pattern repeats. For example, "The Rose" can be used to practice the cleft sentence and the relative clause.
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Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech_transcript
You've got to find what you love-A4
YouTube Video:
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