Bullying is seen across all cultures;
Bullying is omnipresent;
Bullying is prevalent in all walks of life and is not limited to school settings.
While some are targets of physical violence or threatening words, others are face the possibility of being ex-communicated from social groups.
Bullying is a topic that is familiar to people of all nationalities and can be a springboard to many a meaningful discussion in the language classroom.
The American country band Dixie Chicks made a comment at a concert in London in 2003, and quickly became the target of bullies in their home country. The bullies started acting as a mob, as they often do, and soon, Dixie Chicks were receiving death threats in the mail and were banned from country music radio stations.
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In response to the bullying, the band started to write an album. However, when it was suggested to Natalie Maines, the lead singer, that perhaps the songs should be about how everyone ought to just get along, she found herself unwilling to back down and instead produced the hit single Not Ready to Make Nice
The song went on to win 3 Grammy Awards, and the album Taking the Long Way ended up winning 5 Grammys, perhaps all a sign of support for the girls who have been the target of bullying.
Being a song very close to my heart, I have felt it appropriate to create a lesson around it. However, unlike most receptive skills procedures seen in more recent approaches, this lesson takes a more bottom-up approach to listening, allowing students to use their linguistic knowledge to piece together the lyrics of the song.
In what way do you think a bottom-up approach to this lesson could make a difference to the usual top-down approaches?
(Notes for teachers are in brackets.)
Lead-in:
Click on picture to read more about bullying.
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(Elicit lexis: Bullying, a bully.)
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Discussion questions:
- Why do people bully others?
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(Possible Answers: insecurity, jealousy, prejudice, etc.)
. - Where can bullying occur?
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(Possible Answers: at school, at the office, online, etc.)
. - What kind of things might a bully do?
. - What can we do if we are being bullied?
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Pre-listening
(Hand-out)
Fill in the gaps with the appropriate word. Use your knowledge of language and rhyming words to help you.
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Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I c_____
They say time heals e_______
But I’m still waiting
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I’m through with doubt
There’s nothing left for me to figure o___
I’ve paid a price
And I’ll keep paying
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Chorus:
I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back d____
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it r_____
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I s_____
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I know you said
Can’t you just get o____ it
It turned my whole world a______
And I kind of like it
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Bridge:
I made my bed and I sleep like a b____
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
daughter that she ought to hate a perfect st________
And how in the w______ can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the e_____
That they’d write me a l______
Sayin’ that I’d better shut u__ and sing
Or my life will be o____
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Chorus (x2):
I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back d____
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it r____
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I s_____
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Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I c_____
They say time heals e_______
But I’m still waiting
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Listening for specific information
Listen to the song and check your answers.
(Note: the teacher might use the feedback stage to clarify some of the more useful or crucial lexical items)
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Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting
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I’m through with doubt
There’s nothing left for me to figure out
I’ve paid a price
And I’ll keep paying
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Chorus:
I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should
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I know you said
Can’t you just get over it
It turned my whole world around
And I kind of like it
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Bridge:
I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over
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Chorus (2x):
I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should
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Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting
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Reading for Detailed Understanding
Read the lyrics again, and answer the following questions
(Note: There are no right and wrong answers here. Every question offers a chance for the student’s own interpretation to come through.)
- How does the singer feel about being bullied?
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(Possible Answers with song lyrics in quotations: Angry, ‘mad as hell’, and not ready to forget. But she feels that her conscience is clear and she knows she has not done anything wrong because she says ‘she sleeps like a baby’.)
. - What kind of things do you think the bullies did?
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(Possible Answers with song lyrics in quotations: They wrote her a letter to tell her to ‘shut up and sing’ or they’d kill her.)
. - Why do you think the bullies did that?
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(Possible Answers with song lyrics in quotations: She said something the bullies didn’t like. ‘And how in the world can the words that I said send somebody so over the edge’)
. - Does she blame the bullies?
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(Possible Answers with song lyrics in quotations: No, she blames society. ‘It’s a sad sad world when a mother would teach her daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger’)
. - What is she going to do?
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(Possible Answers with song lyrics in quotations: She is not going to blame herself but she is not going to give up fighting against the bullies. ‘I’m through with doubt. There’s nothing left for me to figure out’; ‘I’m not ready to back down’)
. - What do you think the mood of this song is?
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(Possible Answers: Angry? Sad?)
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Follow-up Productive Task
(This follow-up task requires students to have access to the internet. They could either make use of their mobile devices, i.e. smartphones or tablets, or this could be conducted in the Self-Access Centre, where students have at least one computer per group)
In groups of 3, use of the internet to find out more about this song and the band, Dixie Chicks.
Answer the following questions.
Report your findings back to the rest of the class.
(Note: the answers can be found on Wikipedia pages on ‘Not Ready to Make Nice’ and the lead singer ‘Natalie Maines’)
- Is this song based on a true story?
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(Answer: Yes)
. - Why were the band targeted by bullies in the 2003?
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(Answer: The vocalist made a comment at a concert in London, UK, on the eve of the Iraq invasion that they were ashamed that their President George Bush was from Texas, where they are from. This angered a lot of Americans.)
. - Why did the band write the song?
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(Answer: They wanted to write their reaction to the bullying mob.)
. - What kind of things did the American public do to the band?
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(Answer: They were banned from many country music radio stations and received death threats in the mail.)
. - How did the lead singer Natalie feel after writing this song and the album?
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(Answer: She felt that the album was like therapy and helped her to find peace with everything and move on.)
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When presented with a reading or listening text, students can either utilize a bottom-up processing approach and use their knowledge of words and grammar to build up an understanding of the text, or attempt a top-down approach where they make use of their knowledge of the genre, the situational and cultural context, and the background knowledge about the topic as clues to comprehension (Thornbury, 2006).
Many argue that the tendency for students when reading in a foreign language is to cling on to the individual words of the text and try to decipher its meaning, and therefore it is the responsibility of the teacher to encourage top-down processes through the use of activities that activate content schema, such as prediction and gist reading tasks.
Upon examining the current approaches to teaching reading and listening in ELT, from CELTAs to the design of activities in coursebooks, there is perhaps enough evidence to show that the focus is largely on using top-down approaches, before integrating bottom-up approaches for detailed understanding.
Have a look at the following ‘receptive skills procedure’ that is often seen on CELTA courses and in coursebooks.
- Lead-in and/or Prediction Activity (Activating the Schema)
- Skimming (Gist) and/or Scanning Tasks (Extensive Reading)
- Reading for Detailed Understanding (Intensive Reading)
- Follow-up Productive Task
It becomes apparent that the Extensive-to-Intensive, Big-Picture-to-Detailed-Information, Top-Down-to-Bottom-Up approach to reading and listening has not only gained a strong foothold in ELT, but has also been taken for granted by some in our field as the best way of integrating the top-down ‘higher level’ skills with the bottom-up ‘lower level’ skills to form an integrated approach.
But is this necessarily always the best way of integrating the two?
While the use of top-down processing approaches is certainly a valid and useful way of integrating the two, it is also perhaps important to occasionally offer practice of bottom-up processes where learners are able to practise making use of their existing linguistic knowledge to try and make sense of a text.
In this sample lesson, I took the song, Not Ready to Make Nice, and get students to use their linguistic knowledge (bottom-up data-driven text-based processing) to fill in the gaps in the lyrics, after a short lead-in to contextualize the general topic.
Through piecing together the lyrics (and learning some new collocations and phrases along the way), they start to gain a detailed understanding. This understanding would hopefully generate interest in getting more information about the interesting background story to the song.
In a song like this one, the focus on bottom-up processing could create suspense and perhaps be more interesting for students when the story reveals itself as they re-construct the text.
Are there any other times you would choose to use such a bottom-up approach to reading or listening?
References
Thornbury, S. An A-Z of ELT. Oxford: Macmillan.
Further Reading:
Nuttall, C. (2005) Teaching Reading Skills in a foreign language. Oxford: Macmillan.
Silbersteing, S. (1994) Techniques and Resources in Teaching Reading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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