Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Advanced ESL class questions for J.K. Rowling: The Fringe Benefits of Failure

J.K. Rowling: The Fringe Benefits of Failure
http://harvardmagazine.com/commencement/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination

commencement speech
stripping away the inessential
set free
failure inevitable
failure by default
value of imagination
Amnesty International
empathy vs. apath

Graduation

1. Can you remember your graduation day? Who spoke?
2. What were some things on your mind then? Do you remember?
3. How were some of these things realized or unrealized?
4. Do you still keep in contact with some of those friends?
5. Have you experienced anything you would classify as a failure?
6. How did that failure change your life?
7. Is failure inevitable?
8. What is the value of imagination? (morally neutral)


2 comments:

KALINAGO ENGLISH said...

Great activity! I enjoyed this speech so much but hadn't really thought about using it with students - and I will now that I can just print something off :-)

Thanks for sharing it.

Karenne

5330 said...

Thanks for the comment. I meant to comment on this activity myself.

I used this with an advanced class, for whom college or high school graduation was a distant memory. They had a tough time relating to it for themselves.

Next time I use this with this kind of crowd, I will ask them to make some generalizations about how grads these days are different from in their day.

One person was obviously not taken with the topic, and tried to shift the discussion away from this, and on to more current events. I would have to try harder to make the topic more relevant to them.