THE UNITED KINGDOM: Recent British History
A Task Based Oral History Project

Task 1:LISTENING AND SPEAKING: Scotland and Glasgow

You’re going to listen to a video by Billy Connolly, a comedian from Glasgow in Scotland. With your partner, discuss what you know about Scotland or Glasgow?

Listen to the video.

  • What are the Clyde and the Kelvin?
  • What is his favourite thing about Glasgow?
  • What changes does he mention?
  • Does he think every change is good?

Now read the transcript and check your answers.

Glasgow’s ____ the middle of a huge transformation. My favourite is the peaceful Glasgow. If you walk from, from Kelvin way, it runs ____ the middle of Kelvingrove park, to the east of the art galleries it starts, walk up there, over the river Kelvin and just have a lovely peaceful wee (Scottish for small) walk to yourself, Glasgow University’s ____ your left, the tennis courts are ____ your right. If you want more just turn left and walk ____ the park, there’s a lovely wee walk along the Kelvin, feed the ducks, happy as a clam (a type of shellfish!), what else would you need in your life?

I think the river Clyde is unbelievably special. The river Clyde is the reason for Glasgow being here, when Glasgow was called Glaschu (Gaelic for Glasgow) and the Clyde was called Clutha. That’s why people settled here. The Clyde was the sole reason for people to settle here, just along the road there, by the Molendinar burn and then it grew from there, just along ____ the east. And I’ve played ____ there, ____ the Armadillo (A concert hall) and there’s cranes everywhere. There’s an atmosphere of moving forward. Glasgow isn’t the shipbuilding, steel, coal town that it used to me. It’s a shame because I kind of miss it. Guys my age, because I’m nearly 70, I miss the wet Glasgow, the dark evenings where the cobbles (the stones used as a road surface) were wet and you could see the neon (lights) reflected ____ the cobbles on Hope Street. That’s the Glasgow I lived ____. The Glasgow you live ____ is this one here, with squinty (Scottish for “not straight”) bridges, and festivals and concert halls. There was no concert hall when I was a kid, so it’s brilliant!

What words are missing from the transcript? Put in the missing prepositions. Now listen again and check.

What do these words mean?

  • Transformation______
  • Peaceful______
  • Settle______
  • Sole______
  • Crane______
  • Reflected ______
  • Concert Hall______

What word does he use for something in the past that he liked but which isn’t here now?

Student A Pair A - Describe your photo to your partner

Glasgow 1907, Photographer unknown.

Student B Pair B - Describe your photo to your partner

Matthew Jackson 2017

Student A Pair A - Describe your photo to your partner

Hugh Hood, 1974

Student B Pair B - Describe your photo to your partner

From Flickr.com, creative commons license

Task 2: LISTENING, VOCABULARY, GRAMMAR Changes in Glasgow

Exercise 1: You’re going to listen to someone talking about how Glasgow has changed since the 1980s. He was asked these four questions. You will listen to the recording twice. Make notes about what he says about these four topics.

What’s the biggest change been since you were a child?

What are some of the most positive changes?

Is there anything you miss from your childhood?

How has technology affected life where you live?

Changes in Glasgow

The biggest change is that there’s less heavy industry than there was. When I was really young, the buildings were all covered in pollution but in the 80s they cleaned everything and suddenly Glasgow discovered colour and the buildings were reds and yellows instead of blacks and greys like they used to be. That’s a huge change for the better. When you drove into Glasgow from the south you’d pass lots of factories and chimneys but now there’s nothing. In some ways, it’s good but a lot of people lost their jobs then, so it’s complicated. One thing’s for certain, the atmosphere of the city is now really different.

It’s a much better place to go out at night. We’ve got restaurants from all over the world now. My favourite’s a Malaysian one near my old university. Back when I was a kid, it was mostly just fish and chips but now everything is more sophisticated. The city’s also much safer. People used to say Glasgow was dangerous and you’d worry more about being attacked or robbed at night, but now, not so much.

I miss the snow. In my childhood, it used to snow every year and we’d play in the park and throw snowballs or we’d make snowmen in the garden. I can’t remember the last time there was any real snow. In winter, it just rains all the time, much more than before. It’s really dark in Glasgow, in December it’s dark for about 17 hours a day so when it’s cloudy as well, it’s like living in a cave. At least the snow made winter pretty.

People always complain about mobiles. I don’t mind them. People say everyone spends too much time paying with their phone nowadays and nobody has a real conversation. But I think that’s rubbish. The internet is the real big change, not smartphones. It’s made life easier in many ways but it’s a shame a lot of bookshops and record shops went out of business. Although Glasgow’s a nicer place than it was in the 80s, a lot of small shops have gone and been replaced by big companies. The place has lost some of its character. It’s the same with the way people speak too. A lot of young people say a lot of things from American TV now. So we’ve lost a little of our individuality but I guess it makes it easier for other people to understand us, which was always a problem.

Changes in Glasgow
Lexis from the transcript

Exercise 2: These are useful “chunks” from the transcript that you can use to compare the past with the present. Put them in the correct space to complete these sentences.

When I was young/a kida change for the betternowadaysanymore

not so much nowback thenIn some ways it’s good butback when

One thing’s for certainI missI can’t remember the last time

At leastit’s the same withit’s made life easier

  1. I don’t know if the internet is a good thing or a bad thing, but ______, it’s made shopping easier.
  2. I ______the 1990s. ______the music was better. ______I heard something that I thought was really original.
  3. ______, I used to hate going to school. Still, ______, they taught me to read and write!
  4. ______, people don’t have time to talk to each ______. Everyone’s in too much of a hurry.
  5. ______I went to university, I didn’t have a mobile phone. Now I do, and ______, ______my laptop. That’s really useful too.
  6. You used to see a lot of people doing trick-or-treat for Halloween, but ______
  7. I don’t know how I feel about my new timetable. ______because I don’t work late but I have to get up really early.
  8. They demolished that horrible building. It’s definitely ______, The place looks nicer now.

Exercise 3: Find words and expressions in the transcript (in order) which mean:

Warsaw ELT Forum 1st – 3rd September 2017, The United Kingdom, with Matthew Jackson
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  1. Poisonous gas and waste from industry
  2. A place where you make things
  3. Where smoke goes out of a building
  4. The feeling of a place
  5. Elegant, appealing to educated people
  6. To take something from someone
  7. A natural, underground place
  8. To say something is bad
  9. When something doesn’t annoy you
  10. When you think something is a bit sad
  11. When a company or shop stops because they don’t make money
  12. What makes you unique

Warsaw ELT Forum 1st – 3rd September 2017, The United Kingdom, with Matthew Jackson
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Changes in Glasgow
Grammar: Used to and Would

I miss the snow. In my childhood, it used to snow every year and we’d play in the park and throw snowballs or we’d make snowmen in the garden.

Does it snow now?

Did it snow one time in the past or lots of times?

What word is represented by ‘d?

Exercise 4: Correct the following sentences. Two are already correct.

  1. I would have a hamster called Dave.
  2. I used to play with my football every day.
  3. I used go shopping in that supermarket over there.
  4. Did you used to eat a lot of sweets?
  5. I didn’t used to like olives but now I love them.
  6. She’d to study French every weekend.
  7. Lsat night I visited my mum and she used to make me dinner especially for the occasion.
  8. We wouldn’t go the park at night because it was too dark to play there.

Exercise 5: Rewrite the following paragraph replacing verbs with “used to” and “would” when you can.

My grandparents lived in Wales. We went down there every year to see them. MY grandad wasn’t a very talkative man and he hardly ever said anything to me. I liked going there anyway because the valley around the house was beautiful. I still love being in the mountains. The last time I visited them, I climbed Snowden, the highest mountain in Wales.

Task 3:WRITING Oral History

To do this task, you need the help of an adult in your family who is old enough to have seen some changes in the place you live. To start with, you need to ask them two questions and write down the answers, all in your own language.

What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in this town during your lifetime?

What do you miss most from your childhood?

Write the English translations here:

1)

2)

Write down any vocabulary you don’t know how to say in English and either use a dictionary or ask your teacher. In the next class show your partner what you have written. Then they will give you three more questions to ask the same adult. Then rewrite all your questions and answers on a new piece of paper.

THE UNITED KINGDOM: Recent British History
A Task Based Oral History Project
Teachers’ Notes

LevelB1/B2

Aim

The idea behind this class is that it is a task based exercise in recording a little oral history of students’ local area by asking them to “interview” an older family member and translate their oral recollections into English to share with the rest of the class. The initial (optional) task is to watch a brief video of a Glaswegian comedian talking about some of the changes in the city – this is partly a brief exercise in trying to understand a difficult accent with the support of visual cues, but also sets the scene for the subsequent tasks which are comparing photos of the old and the new Glasgow then listening to a recording of someone recollecting various changes they have seen. In a task based lesson much of the focus is on emergent language, but exercises looking at the use of used to and various lexical chunks in the recording transcript have been included as these will be useful when students rewrite the answers the family members have given them. The language used can be tailored to the level of the students as the task itself can be done by almost any level with appropriate support.

Procedure

Task 1: LISTENING AND SPEAKING: Scotland and Glasgow

  • Start by asking students what they know about Scotland or Glasgow and elicit a few ideas, even if it’s just “wet and cold” and “Nessie”. Watch the video with drone footage of Glasgow to give them an idea. This stage could be skipped if there was time pressure, going straight to the photos, but it gives students a little practice understanding a difficult speaker (difficult accent although he has a slow, clear delivery) using visual context to help.
  • Students answer questions on worksheet and check against the transcript provided. Students then do the vocabulary questions and fill in the prepositions before listening again to check.

Photos

  • Divide students into pairs and then give half the pairs one set of photos and the other half, the other set. Teacher tells students that they are photos of old and new Glasgow. Each student describes their photo to their partner before letting them see. Students then discuss the main differences between the photos. This allows students to generate ideas before the discussion later to reduce cognitive load.
  • Teacher puts up some expressions that could be useful to describe the photos e.g. “industrial” “quiet”, “(un)sophisticated”, “busy”, “crowds”, before eliciting others and eliciting suggestions from the previous transcript, e.g. “over there”, “on the left”, “peaceful”, “shipbuilding” etc.
  • In pairs students make notes about what they are going to tell the other students, describing their photos and what differences they show between old and new Glasgow
  • Then each pair works with another pair from the other group and together as a group they decide what are the most important changes in Glasgow in recent times.
  • Class feedback – teacher elicits any ideas for positive and negative changes that have happened in Glasgow in recent history and puts them on the board. This will prepare students for the following listening

Task 2: LISTENING, VOCABULARY, GRAMMAR Changes in Glasgow

  • Having now predicted what changes there are in Glasgow between the recent past and now, students listen twice to the audio recording of a speaker describing how the city has changed since his childhood in the 1970s/80s. Students make notes to answer four questions on their worksheet. When they have listened twice they work in pairs to try and orally reconstruct what the speaker said answering each question then they check with the transcript.
  • B1 – B1 level students can then do some vocabulary work on the transcript. B2 level students can do a more ambitious exercise involving common discourse markers and lexical chunks used to make comparisons between the present and past.
  • Used to – students look at the transcript again finding all the times the speaker has used used to or would. Concept check – are these single actions or repeated actions/states that last over a long time? Does the speaker still do these things? Has the situation changed? Make sure that students understand that “used to” is for distancing speaker from past by saying that something has changed. Draw attention to relation between used to and would, with contracted form of would often following “used to” (used to establish “mood”), as ‘d is easier and quicker to say, once the context has been stablished with “used to”.
  • Students do Used to worksheet.

Task 3: WRITING Oral History Project

  • Teacher explains the concept of “Oral History”. Going to record what people think about the changes that have happened in Poland over the last few decades for the future, and we’re going to do it in English.
  • Students go home and ask their parents or another adult who is older than them (sau over 40) 2 questions. “What is the biggest change you’ve seen in this town in your lifetime?” and “What do you miss most from your childhood?”. They will ask this person the questions in their L1 and then write down what they say, or record it on their mobiles in their L1 before translating it into English.
  • In the next class, they will come in with their questions and answers in English and translate any words that they didn’t know how to say in English with the aid of either the teacher or a dictionary. They then work in pairs telling their partner (in English) what their adult has said and then their partner will think of three more questions to ask them, again recording and translating the answers into English.
  • The class will look again at used to and the vocabulary from the previous class and students will think of ways to incorporate it into the final version which they will write up with the questions and answers on a separate piece of paper that can be displayed on the wall as a class oral history project.

Answer Key

Task 1: LISTENING AND SPEAKING: Scotland and Glasgow

  • What are the Clyde and the Kelvin?Rivers
  • What is his favourite thing about Glasgow?The quiet, peaceful part, walking along the Kelvin
  • What changes does he mention?Less industry, more culture
  • Does he think every change is good?He misses the atmosphere of the cobbled streets on wet nights (this is a difficult one for students to get as they may not quite understand what he means talking about the cobbles and the reflections etc)

Glasgow’s in the middle of a huge transformation. My favourite is the peaceful Glasgow. If you walk from, from Kelvin way, it runs through the middle of Kelvingrove park, to the east of the art galleries it starts, walk up there, over the river Kelvin and just have a lovely peaceful wee (Scottish for small) walk to yourself, Glasgow University’s on/to your left, the tennis courts are on.to your right. If you want more just turn left and walk into the park, there’s a lovely wee walk along the Kelvin, feed the ducks, happy as a clam (a type of shellfish!), what else would you need in your life?