STEP 1: The rise of self-help culture
A) Let's find out what you know about self-help
Look at the two words in self-help and discuss with the class what self-help is. Give examples. Take the quiz to find out if you are a self-help addict.
1) Would you buy one of the books below? YES □ NO □
2) Have you ever read a self-help book? YES □ NO □
3) Do you watch tutorial videos? YES □ NO □
4) Do you often make promises to yourself that you can't keep? YES □ NO □
5) Do you tend to ask for advice from your friends or family all the time? YES □ NO □
6) Do you write down key action steps in your organizer? YES □ NO □
7) When you surf the Web for advice, do you just surf away to another page, forgetting what you just read? YES □ NO □
Conclusion: If you answered "yes" more than 4 times, you're probably a self-help junkie.
B) A protestant heritage of self-improvement
Charles Lucy, The Departure of the Pilgrim Fathers, 1847
Say where the protestants came from and when they arrived in America.
Say what the most important value they believed in was.
Say in what fieldswas this value was shown.
Explain what material success was for them.
Say if self-improvement was just about personal success.
C) An American Booming Industry
The increasing popularity of self-help books is an indicator of the modern American quest to maximize personal happiness through a process of self-discovery. Self-help books-nonfiction books that offer advice for behaviour modification and make promises for positive change-
have doubled as a percentage of all book titles since the 1970s.
At the start of the 21st-century, the self-improvement industry, inclusive of books, seminars,
audio and video products, and personal coaching, was said to constitute a $2.48 billion a year industry in the United States alone. By 2006, research for market data estimated the self-improvement market in the US as worth for more than $9 billion. This includes infomercials, mail order catalogues, self-fulfilment institutes, books, podcasts and tutorials, seminars, the personal coaching market, and weight loss and stress management programs. In 2013 it was examined as an 11 billion dollar industry.
Pick out the figures and explain what they correspond to. Use them to draw a graph.
Explain what the aim of self-help books is.
Pick out three facts that show how successful this self-help industry is.
Find the equivalents for these words in the text: croissant, conseil, comportement, d'une valeur de, publireportage, vente par correspondance, développement personnel, perte de poids.
D) Inspirational Quotes
Read the following quotes and discuss their meanings in pairs.
Say which one your motto is.
Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. William Faulkner
- You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them. Michael Jordan
- Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. Charles Swindall
- The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100%. Arnold Schwarzenegger
- You can't put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get. Michael Phelps
- I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. Stephen Covey
WRITE A LETTER TO SELF
Each student will get an envelope and write a letter to himself/herself reflecting their current motivation and what they would like to achieve, by ending the letter with a motivational quote. All letters will be anonymous and mixed. the class will read the messages and try to guess who wrote them.