ESL Unit of Work

FOOTBALL

Language and Culture of Sport

Overview

The School

Mater Christi College, Belgrave
A Catholic Girls' High School

The Students

Full fee-paying, mostly from Hong Kong, boarding at the school. Solid educational background prior to arrival, with some English. A class of about 14 recently arrived at the school.

The Unit : Football

History, cultural place and language of different codes from around the world, especially Aussie Rules. Attitudes to gender and sport. (NB: Mater Christi do field an Australian Football team.)

Unit Goals

Tiger Spoon
A Bitter Pill

Ben Douglas

THE Tigers clinched their seventh wooden spoon this year, but in a cruel twist will not get first draft pick.

Communicative Aims

The unit aims to help students

converse more fluently in Australian idiom
distinguish between formal and colloquial styles
follow spoken and written narratives involving sports
understand and/or express rules and conventions
discuss comparisons and preferences
understand metaphors based on sport

Linguistic Aims

Heaps of relevant vocabulary, especially vernacular
Grammar forms used in describing rules - such as imperative, passive, 'habitual' past and use of 'you' as impersonal pronoun. (Bridging class: learning about rules, so quite relevant)
The many facets of 'go' - contrasting 'go for', go at, go with, have a go (at), have (your) go, how are you going, etc. etc.

Lesson 1

Props: Take in a variety of playing balls from different sports (borrow some from P.E. perhaps). Include rattan Takraw ball - hopefully someone can talk about that sport.
Discussion: Get the class talking about sports in their country of origin and their own life personally.
- Get everyone to have something to say - allow topic to vary as necessary.
- Get to know students, their level of language (especially verbal) and their existing attitudes to sports.
- Introduce themes of later discussion - esp. girls and football
- Get preferences for homework (below)
Activity: Vocabulary game, such as crossword or word search.
Homework: Each student to take home a simple text outlining rules and/or history of a particular code. Task is to read and prepare summary to present verbally to class.

Lesson 2

Students' Presentations:

Follow up with questions from class
As teacher, ask presenter questions
As teacher, ask audience (comprehension) questions: They can either answer, or relay the question to the presenter (and relay the answer back)

Activity: Categorising

Using information from presentations, students categorise the sports discussed according to various features, e.g. rules:
- whether the ball may be handled
- number of players on a team
- type of goal or other scoring objective
or by historic or cultural features of the sports:
- age of the sport, and whether extinct
- whether the sport is tied to a particular place (and where - place them on a map)
- gender participation
Different visual representations of data may be used such as lists, tables, graphs and maps.

Lesson 3

Theme

Attitudes to girls and women in football
Broader gender attitudes underlying these

Film / documentary excerpts

Bend it Like Beckham: two scenes in which both the parents of the each of the two main two characters express their opinions - four different parental perspectives
She's the Man: I'm yet to check this one out - but it should have something useful
something documentary about a real Australian sports-woman - perhaps two (one old and one recent for contrast)

Discussion

Discuss issues raised in the films: get the students expressing their own opinions, as well as describing their family or community's attitudes (as they understand them).

Persuasive Text

Students write a short persuasive text piece about a relevant issue, e.g. whether girls should be allowed play contact sports, whether they should, whether mixed competition should be allowed, etc.

Lesson 4

Reading: read (and/or have students read out loud in turns) a variety of texts using jargon and/or slang of Australian football.
- use a variety of sources, varying from 'straight' news report, through fiction text (e.g. Speccy McGee), to exaggeratedly colloquial humour piece.
- stop at each football expression; write on board and ask for guesses at meaning before giving explanation.
- similarly highlight each use of the word 'go'- select / modify texts so as to provide a good range.

Language activity: matching up short sentences using "go" with longer sentences that they could provide the same meaning as.

Long sentence	?	Short version
Mary is trying to do her job.		She's having her go.
Bianca is travelling to a concert.		She's having a go at them.
Janice is having her turn using the computer.		She is going to it.
Pauline is saying bad things about Paul and Bob.		She goes for them.
Michelle likes the Geelong footy team.		She's having a go at it.

Same as above, but students have to write (rather than select) the short versions. (How much pronoun replacement to use is up to them: it means less writing but more thinking.)
Creative Writing: students to write their own short piece using lots of gratuitous footy colloquialisms. Could be a short story or journal entry or 'why I go for...'