Hollywood is dead or is it?

This is my contribution to the 33rd ELT Blog Carnival titled Songs in ELT Classroom.

I made this worksheet quite a while ago and had forgotten about it until I read the theme of the current blog carnival. I thought it would be a good opportunity for my worksheet to have a second life.

This is one of my favourite Michael Bublé's songs Hollywood. The great Canadian singer himself has described the song as "being about his "tongue-in-cheek statement on the culture of celebrity". Notice his impersonation of Justin Bieber, it is amazing!




You may download the worksheet below with the traditional task - while listening, students have to write the missing words which they hear or insert the given verbs or nouns. The pictures serve as prompts.
The song lyrics are included in the worksheet, as well as the link to the video on YouTube. The second page need not be given to the students.

After listening, you may discuss with your students the idea of the song and ask the students if / how they understood the phrases "Hollywood is dead", "you sold yourself for this...", "love what is true...". Discuss the notion of celebrity culture, its illusions and false values. Ask why Hollywood represents a magic place where all dreams come true and if they always become reality.

Creating presentations on emaze

Recently I came into possession of a bunch of great pictures which were taken during my trip to Italy (arranged by my daughter who lives there), and I decided to kill two birds with one stone - share the images with you and try the emaze tool for making my presentation.

emaze is a great free online tool for creating presentations as well as digital stories. It lets you upload pictures, videos, add text and shapes to your canvas to get a nice linear slide presentation. It is best viewed on full screen which allows you to hide the navigation buttons at the bottom of the page and use the computer keys instead.

It took me a couple of days to complete my first emaze presentation, not because it was hard work but because I did a lot of other stuff in between.

emaze is easy to use, it does not have tons of complicated formatting tools to employ, but there are some really helpful features that make the creative process pleasant. While working on your slides, pay attention to the tiny pale markings on your canvas which indicate the borders of your presentation window. Also it is very helpful to preview your slides on the left-hand panel as you work on your presentation.
The author can also invite other people to collaborate on the presentation which is especially great for student projects.

Enjoy the show!