MAD ESL YouTube videos
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MAD ESL: The 50 Worst Things about America
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MAD ESL: Back to School
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MAD ESL: Game of Thrones
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MAD ESL: An Introduction to Alfred E Neuman
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MAD ESL: Trumpty Dumpty
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MAD ESL: Burger King
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MAD ESL: Bucket List for Underachievers
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MAD ESL: Head of the Class
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MAD ESL: Norman Rockwell
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MAD ESL: Miley Cyrus Robin Thicke
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MAD ESL: Kim & Kanye Monster Marriage
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MAD ESL: Mad Spoofs Politics
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MAD ESL: Mad Goes Green
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To be redirected to Debrah's YouTube MAD-ESL channel,
please click on the link below:
Presenting at the 2016 International TESOL Convention
To be redirected to the 2016 International TESOL Convention Program,
please click on the link below:
https://www.tesol.org/docs/default-source/tesol-convention/2016-tesol-convention-full-program-(pdf).pdf?sfvrsn=0&sfvrsn=0
please click on the link below:
https://www.tesol.org/docs/default-source/tesol-convention/2016-tesol-convention-full-program-(pdf).pdf?sfvrsn=0&sfvrsn=0
Dr. Stark and Debrah presenting at the 2016 International TESOL Convention in Baltimore, MD on the topic Teaching Cultural and Media Literacy Through Satire.
Why Mad Magazine?
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Why is this topic important? Why Mad?
Some professors at the college level express that the international students that are in their classes, including the ones who have attended and graduated from IESL programs, often do not have a good grasp of American cultural and media literacy. Even students that have been in IESL programs for a year or more have this difficulty. Why? What are we IESL teachers missing? One idea is that we teachers often concentrate on teaching cross-cultural understanding in our classrooms, as there usually are so many cultures represented. We focus on the room being tolerant of differences. So, we give many assignments where the students tell the class specifically about their own culture. Because of this, we forget that the students are here to learn about OUR culture. And we forget how incredibly important it is that we teach them to understand cultural and media references...maybe just as important as teaching them the language. A great disservice is done when students aren't sent into academics with some kind of knowledge base in these areas. Obviously, we cannot teach them everything about our cultural and media history, but we can focus on the today and now. This is where Mad Magazine comes in. Mad deals with current news stories, and, better yet, doesn't focus on just one topic but, instead, covers many areas. |
If one Googles the phrase “teaching American cultural literacy/media literacy to ESL students” or something to that effect, one will almost always get results on teaching holidays and early government, lessons about the individual states, reviewing life skills, an overview of basic social studies lessons, etc. And, many reading teachers do “News of the Day” with their students, picking and choosing a top news story to discuss with them. These exercises are fantastic, but they’re just more informative and, frankly, a bit boring. These are not interactive lessons where the students can react and comment about a joke or parody of a popular or current news story and come up with their own conclusions and opinions.
Mad Magazine encourages critical thinking skills. Very young ESL learners often love books from the Bad Kitty series by Nick Bruel because you know exactly what Bad Kitty is thinking and feeling….there is no guess work. Mad Magazine is the same but for the teenage/young adult IESL population. The students don’t have to worry about how they are supposed to react to a story...the reaction is usually presented right to the reader in Mad. Instead, the reader can concentrate on why the reaction is as such and why this is important. This is where the critical thinking comes in….not what reaction by WHY that reaction.
Finally, using the satire in Mad is perfect for our students, as we will not be presenting them with trivial news stories. According to Stark (2003), satire must contain the elements of being relevant, being humorous, and poking fun at a person or position of authority. Basically, if a story or topic makes it into Mad, it is relevant. As I mentioned before with the "News of the Day" activity that so many ESL instructors do on a regular basis, many of those stories are local issues or topics that may be of interest to that teacher or student but not necessarily what most Americans are thinking about. Mad concentrates solely on what is now and what the majority knows about and talks about.
Mad Magazine encourages critical thinking skills. Very young ESL learners often love books from the Bad Kitty series by Nick Bruel because you know exactly what Bad Kitty is thinking and feeling….there is no guess work. Mad Magazine is the same but for the teenage/young adult IESL population. The students don’t have to worry about how they are supposed to react to a story...the reaction is usually presented right to the reader in Mad. Instead, the reader can concentrate on why the reaction is as such and why this is important. This is where the critical thinking comes in….not what reaction by WHY that reaction.
Finally, using the satire in Mad is perfect for our students, as we will not be presenting them with trivial news stories. According to Stark (2003), satire must contain the elements of being relevant, being humorous, and poking fun at a person or position of authority. Basically, if a story or topic makes it into Mad, it is relevant. As I mentioned before with the "News of the Day" activity that so many ESL instructors do on a regular basis, many of those stories are local issues or topics that may be of interest to that teacher or student but not necessarily what most Americans are thinking about. Mad concentrates solely on what is now and what the majority knows about and talks about.
