Poetry in the EFL classroom can be an awkward thing.
Since poetry usually is a very intimate, personal matter, it is not always easy to find texts that appeal to the complete class or course. This one might be helpful: Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology”. The idea is interesting: all the poems are epitaphs on tombstones in a fictional midwestern town - Spoon River. In more than 300 pages a whole panorama of life stories and social connections is unfolded. This provides not only for good reading but also for interesting ideas for the classroom: you can ask the students to reconstruct biographies, invent dialogues between the characters, write letters and so forth. A lot o things can come to your mind…
The book’s language sometimes is a bit dated, but it is not too demanding. Intermediate students should be able to deal with it.
Enjoy!
The background music - as always taken from podsafeaudio.com - is from an artist named Tyler Riggs.The song appropriately is called “Purgatory” .
Spoon River Anthology
Once again I’ve been experimenting with software, this time I used a trial version of Podcast Station
Looks like a great piece of software. the only drawback: it costs 60$… Let#s see.
Long time no see - sorry. Nonetheless, here we are again with another book recommendation. Roald Dahl certainly is no new author in the EFL classroom. I’m not quite sure, however, whether my personal favourite is standard here 
Dahl wrote some autobiographical texts, notably “Boy - Tales of Childhood” and “Going solo”. “Boy” deals with his childhood in Wales, England and Norway in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Dahl went through a number of public schools in that time. His memories really are bittersweet, poignant, funny. They are good reading - certainly suitable for students at intermediate levels. You can link those texts to a number of topics: childhood, education, school, corporal punishment etc. Since most of the chapters are stories within themselves, you can use single chapters in the classroom, there’s no need to deal with the complete book - although it’s certainly worthwile.
I chose a chapter from a whole sequence of stories - it deals with “The great Mouse Plot”:
Bookblog #6 - Roald Dahl “Boy”
Enjoy!
The music you hear is from a band “Deadpan”, the song’s title quite obviously is “Boy“. The link will lead you to the song and its lyrics.
A short technical remark: The recording might not be quite perfect (actually - it is far from being perfect 
). I’m experimenting with new equipment: a USB-microfone (Samson C01U) and new software: Castblaster. It’ll still take some time to get adjusted to all this…
Yeah - once again, it is Bill Bryson. Why not? Especially since his 1994 book “Made in America” should be of quite some
interest to EFL learners and teachers alike. Just have a look at the subtitle: An informal history of the English language in the United States. Well, it really sounds like an academic approach, but notice the “informal”
Informal it is - and written in Bryson’s usual funny and witty style. Apart from that, it is absolutely informative, highly knowledgeable and eye opening. Bryson’s strategy to take allegedly well-known concepts (the Pilgrims, famous sayings by presidents, etc) and to look at them from a slightly different point of view works out well, you begin to see those things with new eyes: the stories themselves, but also the etymology and shifts of meanings in words, phrases, idioms.
As always, here’s a sample to listen to: Bookblog #4: Bill Bryson - Made in America
The music for this episode once again comes frome podsafeaudio.com. I thought some bluegrass piece would go well with Made in America - it is Tall Fiddler by Deyo.
I just couldn’t resist. No way. The BubbleShare idea was just too tempting, so I decided to forget about all the other things piled up on my desk. It’s like being a boy again who got a brand new toy Thanks to the wonderful people at blog06 and podcast_elt that spread the word!
What is BubbleShare? You go to bubbleshare.com and - following the easy instructions there - upload your images, put audio comments on them (online!) and either share the slideshow via E-mail, insert the code into your blog or website or photoblog it (the show gets its own rss-feed). Great. One could think of a dozen good uses for the EFL classroom: photo novels, cartoon stories, reports on field trips, introduction of places or people - you name it.
So, here’s a first and very rough attempt on using BubbleShare plus cartoons to make students talk… I could imagine to establish a collaborative blog, give students access to cartoons like that (split into panels with some erased speech bubbles) and make them fill the blanks with speech. Or - make them comment on the cartoon. Or whatever…
Here we go…
This is a review that I’ve been looking forward to for some time. 
The book is just hilarious - I hope you’ll agree. Which book? It’s Nr. 3 in Philp Ardagh’s Eddie Dickens Trilogy (Nr 1 was Awful End, Nr 2 Dreadful Acts), titled Terrible Times. The hero of the trilogy obviously is one Eddie Dickens (Ardagh chose this name, because he always wanted to write a book in Dickens’ tradition).
Eddie is a boy in Victorian England, living together with his ever sick Mom and his - well - somewhat strange father. But that’s nothing compared to his Mad Uncle Jack and Even Madder Aunt Maud. You get it - the book is full of eccentric characters, unlikely events etc. It’s thoroughly enjoyable, the somewhat characteristic illustrations enhance the reader’s pleasure even more. In this book, Eddie is made to travel to America. But - things of course won’t turn out as originally intended…
What makes it especially interesting for ESL reading is Ardagh’s approach: the narrator is always present, commenting and explaining, but he does it in an ever so twisted, humorous, ironical way. He especially indulges in explanations of words and puns - I’ve never enjoyed word explanations that much! The books would be suitable for younger intermediate readers, but older or advanced students will certainly savour it as well.
You may ask why I start with vol. 3. The reason is simple: I came across the trilogy some time ago when I looked for nice books for my daughter (who is a real bookworm) and bought the first two volumes in the German translation. Volume three wasn’t translated, so after father and daughter had got hooked to the books I got myself vol. 3 in English. But I’ll certainly talk about some other of Ardagh’s books here soon, I hope.
Ardagh himself seems to be an eccentric as well - just visit his website and have a look yourself! He’s even got his own blog
As always - here’s a sample reading an d a few remarks about the book. Enjoy!
Bookblog #3 - Philip Ardagh: Terrible Times
This episode’s background music - as always - comes from podsafeaudio.com. It is a piece called Touching Mountains by Deyo.
I’ve been looking forward to this one for quite some time 
Bill Bryson is one of my absolute favourites when it comes to EFL related reading, and “Notes from a small island” was the very first book by Bryson that I ever got hold of. Bill Bryson was born in Iowa (of all places) in 1951 but lived in England (North Yorkshire) for many years. Shortly before returning home to the US, he took a farewell trip around Britain. His impressions of that trip found their way into this booklet in which he tries to explain to his fellow Americans what living in the small island of Britain is all about.
Now, of course a book like that should be great because of the “intercultural approach” alone, but that wouldn’t necessarily lure us into the book. What makes this book simply irrestistible is Bryson’s hilarious sense of humour combined with a gift for ironical, yet very fond observation of the oddities and pecularities of his fellow Brits.
Great stuff, that! This book made me grab any book that gives Bryson as its author - and I haven’t ever regretted reading each of them. Which means that I’ll introduce more of his books here, of course.
Languagewise, his writing is witty and colourful, and should be sppropriate for intermediate to advanced EFL learners. Teachers too will find his books a great source not just of personal reading pleasures but of grand classroom material as well.
Here we go:Bookblog #3 Bill Bryson: Notes from a small sland
This episode’s music once again comes from podsafeaudio.com. It is Flopsy “Cocaine Binge”. Weird name…
Well - after Nye’s version of Shakespeare’s life, here comes Michael Gerber’s version of Harry Potter. Gerber’s protagonist
Barry Trotter, a real good-for-nothing, is now 22, still student at Alpo Bumblemore’s Hogwash School for Wizards - and the school’s greatest asset (because attracting large numbers of paying students) - and the greatest disgrace as well.
In this first book of the Barry Trotter series the film studio Wagner Bros is set to release “Barry Trotter and the inevitable Attempt to Cash-In” . This would spell disaster for Hogwash: crazed Muddle fans would put Hogwash into pieces and sell it on eBuy. This must be stopped! Because: It would also mean the end of Barry’s oh-so-comfortable life style…
“Barry Trotter” certainly is a shameless parody, so I wouldn’t use it for students who are the right age to be Potter fans. But more advanced students might savour the parody- after all, it also makes fun of all the marketing around H.P.
It is fun to read, sometimes slightly explicit. For the EFL learner, the puns and allusions are a great stimulus.
Here we go: Bookblog #2 - Barry Trotter
BTW - the music once again comes from podsafeaudio.com: Devin Anderson “Paranormal Impromptu”. I thought the title alone should be appropriate for this book
Well, probably a bit demanding to start the book recommendations with - but hey… 
My advanced students are just starting to make their way through “Macbeth” - which is thrilling, but also tedious at times, I know. It’s getting so much livelier if you get the chance of some very vivid insight into Shakespeare’s times and what his life might have been like.
Robert Nye, who is a renowned Shakespeare expert, ventures into such a narration. Pickleherring, one of his actors, remembers his aquaintance with W.S. - several years after Shakespeare’s death, 70 years after they first met. Pickleherring sits in his little rented room in a London brothel (yes, the book gets “deliciously obscene” at times, as the San Francisco Chronicle puts it) and remembers W.S.’s and his own life. The narration is absolutely vivid, Nye’s imagination sometimes is running wild, although nothing he writes is utterly improbable. Witty: Nye takes some of the many myths and mysteries about Shakespeare (Who’s the notorious Black Lady? What about the curse on his grave?) and gives different, alternative versions of his story.
Plus - Nye makes Pickleherring a word lover who quite often reflects on words, phrases, word origins a lot. This never becomes a lecture, it always stays within the logic of his protagonist.
Very good reading indeed!
Here’s a little appetizer
Bookblog #1 Robert Nye The late Mr Shakespeare
Please be forgiving about the quality of the reading - I’m not a native speaker…
BTW, the music is from podsafeaudio.com. Mark Heimonen: “Innovation”.
from a severe depression. Well, being Draculas’s younger brother ain’t easy…