Task’s description | |
Every student chooses a German / target language speaking stand up comedian (searching information about current comedians in the internet, for example here, other sources also possible), researches information about this person, watches her/his performance for approx. 30-60 minutes and analyses the humor (topics, kind of jokes, gestures and pauses etc.) and the language (stylistic devices, word plays, dialect use etc.) in it. In the class every student holds a short presentation (3-5 min.) in a small group about the chosen stand-up comedian, the topics, the humor and the language she/he uses in her/his performances. At the end of this activity students create a common group forum about the German speaking comedians. This forum should inspire students to discover new comedians they can enjoy in their spare time (and be exposed to more target language input). | |
Specific LOs (Learning Outcomes) and/or goals of the task. | |
– Students have knowledge of (some representatives of) German / target language speaking stand up comedians – Students are able to analyze (the relation between) humor and language in a stand up comedy performance and relate it to the sociocultural context of the performance – Students can present their analysis in a short presentation and motivate their judgment | |
Sequencing the task | |
Before the task | |
– Students search the names of German / target language speaking stand up comedians and every student chooses one of them – Every student searches information about the chosen person – Every student watches the videos with the performance of the chosen stand up comedian for appr. 30-60 minutes – Every student analyzes the humor (topics, kind of jokes, gestures and pauses etc.) and the language (stylistic devices, word plays, dialect use etc.) in this videos and chose a very short fragment (1-3 min.) that can illustrate their analyses well – Every student prepares a short presentation (3-5 min.) about the chosen comedian and her/his performances (topics, humor, language etc.) – Every student posts the name, a picture and the link to a short video example of the performance in the class forum created for this task | |
During the task | |
– The group is divided into small groups of 3 – Every student holds his/her presentation and answers questions – The listeners make notes of the presentations of others (Option: listeners can get different tasks: 1) take notes and 2) give feedback to content and / or language). – New round(s) in new groups – Short evaluation and 1 or 2 presentations in front of the whole group with a brief discussion after it (going deeper into the analyses of humor and language) | |
After the task | |
– Every student posts a comment in the forum under the names of all the comedians she/he has heard about in the presentations of others, writes down and summarizes the information from the presentations and adds a short impression (Is this comedian worth to discover in her/his opinion?) – At the end every student takes a look at all the comments about “her/his” comedian and edds missing information and her/his own impression and advice – Every student has to choose / is assigned to a forum discussion about one comedian (preferably about a comedian she/he still has not hear about), reads the posts and gives feedback to the language used in it – Optional: Instructor picks up some feedback on language and brings it up during the next class | |
Additional comments | |
Resources: Internet for searching information, forum in the online learning environment for results. |