Episode 4

Excuses

The podcast can be downloaded from podomatic or you can listen to it here:

In episode 4 we discussed excuses:

My computer ate my homework.

Yes, it’s troublesome, but true.

Though it didn’t gnaw or nibble

and it didn’t chomp or chew.

It digested it completely.

It consumed my homework whole,

when I pressed the Shift and Enter keys

instead of Shift-Control.

It devoured my hours of typing,

every picture, chart and graph,

and it left me most unsettled

when I thought I heard it laugh.

I would guess it was a virus,

or it could have been a worm,

that deleted every bit

but didn’t prompt me to confirm.

I suppose I might have pressed Escape

instead of pressing Save,

but, regardless, my computer

now will never misbehave.

For I found a good solution

and I smiled to hear the crash,

when I chucked it out the window

and it landed in the trash.

http://www.poetry4kids.com/poem-104.html#.VVEaQM78xtE

 

 

In their discussion Shaun and Lindsay talked about:

The dog being replaced by technology:

https://www.surdoc.com/homeworkexcuses/

The proliferation of dying relatives at exam time:

http://www.neatorama.com/2011/04/05/the-dead-grandmotherexam-syndrome/

Laying the groundwork for an excuse:

http://www.brighthubeducation.com/study-and-learning-tips/51072-10-best-homework-excuses/

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101680356

 

Deep or cheese:

You could adapt this for use in class – rather than just saying deep or cheese, students can be encouraged to develop reasons for why. You could also adapt the activity so that it used true or false.

Lindsay was using quotes from here:

http://www.tentmaker.org/Quotes/excuses_failure_quotes.html

Timeline:

This can be prepared by students for each other. They need 5 things that have a chronology to them.

Student Voxopops:

Use in class by asking, which is the most creative of the excuses that the students give. This will lead nicely into the end of pod activity.

End of pod activity

As your commute is coming to an end, here’s an idea you can take into class. Brainstorm with the students some excuses for not being able to hand in homework. Then tell them that their homework for the next class is to write you an email giving a crazy excuse why they couldn’t do their homework. They need to be elaborate with the excuse and write more than three sentences. Give points for correct language and originality of excuse. The next class, share the excuses with everyone. Which excuse was the most original?

 

TEFL commute would like to thank Luke Meddings and Nikki Fortova for their vocal contributions to this episode.

Timeline and Facebook meme used sound effects from http://www.freesfx.co.uk/sfx/