Tuesday 14 December 2010

Funny answer-phone message

This week’s homework assignment is a video related to education.

This is a real answer-phone message of a school in Australia, but thanks to the video you can read the transcript of what is being said  in the message. 
The first 30 seconds is an explanation of the context in which the message was created and then you can listen to the message itself.

It is thought-provoking and funny from the content point of view, but also it is full of interesting language and collocations from the linguistic point of view. I hope you can benefit from it, next class you can tell me any interesting vocabulary you wrote down. 

Feel free to leave a message below! 

How would you describe this message? Realistic? Exaggerated? Cynical? Ironic? Do parents justify too many things about their children? Do your own parents easily justify your absences or used to do so when you were younger? What do you think?


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Vocabulary work:
  1. a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for...
  2. teacher's are being sued by parents
  3. failing grades / passing grades
  4. automated message
  5. make excuses
  6. to swear at staff members
  7. raise your child
  8. the teacher's fault
  9. your child's lack of effort
  10. move to another country

6 comments:

Mireia said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mireia said...

I loved it! it's great!
I really loved the end part: If you want this in another lenguage. Move to a country that speaks it. Awesome.

I think that they use the irony, but even so, they are right.

Thats never happened to me, because I use to be responsable with my school work since I was really younger, but I know that there are parents to do that.

vladimir said...

It would be very usefull nowadays.
After 1-2 year examination of this programme we will be able to see a big results and the level of attendance will raise up incredible!!!

Unknown said...

It's a funny video. I think the parents and the children have to recognize their responsibilities and know whose fault is.

Lydia Romera said...

It's a funny video and I love it!
Personally, I think that this video use the irony for explain to the parents of children that they shouldn't use excuses to justify of their sons
They must recognize this errors and do it better the next time!

christiangato said...

Oh my god, Is so funny, I would like to do something like this because I think all the things have to be funny, I think this kind of things make us smile.