Classroom Activity: Yes, And…

Yes, And…

Purpose: to develop listening, discourse skills, and cooperation in conversation; to learn the fundamental principle of improv (improvisational theater).

Students: Low Intermediate or higher.

Time: 5-15 minutes.

Procedure:

Students will pretend to be two people outside the classroom. Give the students a suggestion for a location the students have been to, such as a department store. You can also do this from a student suggestion.

Explain that two students will start talking in the scene as two people from a suggestion for a location. The first person can say anything based on the suggestion. The second person says “Yes, and….”

When you say “Yes,” you agree with the reality of the scene. When you say “And,” you are adding to the reality of the scene. For example, Student A says, pantomiming a fishing rod, “Beautiful day for fishing.” Student B says, “Yes, and there’s a fish biting right now!” Student A says, “Yes, and it’s a shark!” Student B says, “Yes, and…” until the scene ends.

Provide the restrictions. You cannot say “No” and you cannot say “But.” So, discourage students from asking questions, since “What is it?” and “What do you think?” do not add to the scene. Also, discourage more obvious negations. For example, if Student B says, “We’re not fishing, we’re…” or some other line that denies the reality that Student A established, then that hurts the scene. Also discourage “Yes, but,” such as “Yes, and it’s going to rain,” since your scene partner already established that it was a beautiful day.

Remind them that it can be the first idea they think of. It is better to go fast than be right.
Do this for three to five lines of dialogue, then move on to the next partners.

Watching and coaching: Coach them on different matters. Some students will have trouble being specific. Other students may talk about scenery and their characters do not do anything. Some have trouble ending a scene. However, the most important concept is “Yes, and,” so as long as they do that, praise them. If they have trouble there, comment after the scene, and give them a different suggestion to start again.

Caution: Emphasize that this is only three or five lines of dialogue. Make it fun. Avoid over-coaching. Save coaching for after the activity, if any.

Variation: You can review the exercise by going through the same five-line scene again, this time without saying “Yes, and.” This may be important to establish that the exercise applies to all scene work and all conversations.

For more support: If students need more context or practice before the activity, you can ask for three- to five-line scenes first, without “Yes, and,” then add “Yes, and” as a way of making these scenes better.

Advanced learners: If students are already acquainted with the principle of “Yes, and,” and if the phrase is unnecessary for them, they can do the exercise without requiring the phrase.

Warm-Ups: Establish this as a regular aspect of class. Turn this into a warm-up. Your scene ideas could be based on situations described in the textbook of that day. These can be written on the board for a large class, with students choosing which items to do.

Acknowledgment: Thank you to Del Close and Charna Halpern, authors of Truth in Comedy: The Manual for Improvisation, for explaining this principle well and for providing interesting activities.

Review That Awful Movie Here

“This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen. How will I ever survive?”

Make it a humorous experience.

DISCUSSION

What was an awful movie that you saw? What did you think was stupid about it?

Make a list of scenes, dialogue, or actions you thought were bad during the whole film.

ESSAY TOPIC

Choose a particular movie you saw, one that you thought was entertaining but not thoughtful. This could be an action film, a superhero film, or any film meant for light entertainment. Review a film of light entertainment as if it were the smartest, most intellectual film ever made.

POSSIBLE CHOICES

§  Films such as Ant-Man, Jurassic World, Mad Max: Fury Road, Fantastic Four, Pitch Perfect, Minions, Spectre, etc.

§  Any movie directed by Michael Bay

§  Any movie with Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson or Vin Diesel

TECHNIQUES

Treat the thoughtless entertainment as if it were intellectual or intelligent. For example:

§  What was the deeper meaning of that car chase?

§  What was the philosophical message made by the action scenes with guns and so on?

§  What is the symbolism of this scene or that character?

LANGUAGE

1. You can talk or write using big words, as a professor might talk or write. Don’t say “Batman lives in Gotham City.” Say instead “Batman resides in Gotham City.”

Need fancy words for regular words? Use this website.

2. Some key words or expressions:

§  But of course

§  Indeed,…

§  deconstruction

§  I believe Chomsky would have said…

§  I think you have to define “X” (a particular word – your choice)

3. Any French words about film used in English. Here are some good ones:

§  mise en scene – the arrangement of scenery and stage properties in a play or in a film

§  auteur – a filmmaker whose personal influence and artistic control over a movie are so great that the filmmaker is regarded as the author of the movie

§  oeuvre – the works of a painter, composer, or author regarded collectively, e.g., "the complete oeuvre of Mozart"

Thank you, Google results, for the definitions.

Now, it’s your turn. Write it down, and post it to this website. This is going to be fun!

Roger

Drafting: The Birds, the Bees, the Schools

My calendar for essay topics was made years ago, and so it's sometimes a surprise when I look at what I am supposed to write today. Today, I will educate myself by accident.

Today's topic for discussion is this: Should sex education be taught in public schools? Why or why not?

Essay topic, you're asking the wrong guy. I presume you would want someone who thinks he is educated on the topic to discuss it. But I guess that's the point.

Do we really want teachers giving us ideas we bring into the bedroom? Mind you, I know wonderful teachers, but I'm inclined to think they wouldn't be so helpful here.

I know that sounds racist against teachers, but 1) teachers are not a race, and 2) I'm a teacher by profession, as well. It's not as if I'm criticizing people I don't know well.

How would you even grade the understanding of sex? Short answer? Multiple choice? What if you make a mistake? Does the teacher correct you with a red pen? I don't know about you, but I think it would be embarrassing to walk into the locker room with red marks for my mistakes. I couldn't look at the other guys.

In high school, we had a health teacher who probably did some sex education. Her name was Mrs. Looker. She wasn't a looker. I mean, she was nice, but she was in her fifties, I think. But she wasn't hot twenty-something -- no low-cut dress, no leather mini-skirt, no ruby-red lipstick. I mean, I would want a sex-ed teacher in high school to be, well, inspirational. We want our teachers to inspire, right?

OK, so one day Mrs. Looker had up nap in class. Actually nap. We all laid down on mats on the floor and she described mind tricks to get ourselves to fall asleep. That probably would have been the perfect time to tell us about the birds and the bees (an American phrase for the sexual basics every young adolescent needs to know).

But no, nothing happened. She stayed away from controversy. So I had to learn about the birds and the bees from the mean streets of a Kansas City suburb.

The girls didn't. One day, they had the boys go to one class and the girls go to another. We boys saw a film about a football game. The girls saw something secret, some women-only thing. If they too saw a football film, I'll be totally shocked.

I suppose a little in health class would be enough, provided we can Google the mysterious questions in our free time. Just the bare minimum: How to prevent disease and how to prevent politicians from being born. I'm open to more possibilities, though.

But back then, I wish I had a different source to go to. I couldn't go to my parents because I didn't think they knew that much about sex. This is partly because my parents' sex led to me having three brothers and one sister. To a horny 16-year-old, that seems to miss the point.

So, what about the teacher? No. What about a counselor? No -- not me. I don't want someone stroking his chin as he listens to my incoherent awkwardness. What about the principal? Dear Lord, no. Under no circumstances. And friends? They were in the same boat, or the same shower, or the same -- never mind.

There's only one source I would have trusted: comic book superheroes. When I was in high school, there could have been a Batman comic where the Dark Knight came to the rescue of another sixteen year old. He could have taken a condom out of his utility belt, handed it to that awkward boy, and disappeared into the darkness before our school principal showed up. I would have learned about condoms and disease and things from a voice I trusted. It's too bad Batman never had a normal romantic relationship, but the concept of normal sex for 16-year-olds may be a bit difficult for even geniuses to understand.

And this would privatize sex education, using superheroes. It would certainly change merchandising.

OK, that's my spontaneous answer. I don't believe I have come up with any solid answers, but I have enough to trigger other thoughts.

I felt embarrassed writing it. I even felt guilty, talking about a teacher who has since passed away. But hey, I have this blog, and I gave myself this assignment, and that was the topic for today, and I need to face the fearful topics most of all. I hope her family would not be insulted to read this entry. 

I held back, actually. There are multiple ideas for each of these points, largely by asking "What if?" But with this topic, and with an international audience of people I don't know, I didn't want to treat this topic in a dirty way. At least I wasn't comfortable doing so just yet. So I found myself focusing on the general insecurity of youth, at least my youth, to make this meaningful for me.

In the future, I will revisit this topic, but I will start over, using some of the ideas here, and consider it with less censorship. Then I'll post my response again, probably under a different title.

Do you have comments? For example, how would you answer the question? Please continue the conversation below.

Thank you for reading yet another installment of Let's Humor!

Lesson: So Adjective That

Finish the joke:

Our teacher is so dumb that

1. she doesn’t know a lot.

2. she isn’t smart.

3. she forgot her name.

I’ll give you a clue: It’s a joke using exaggeration. To exaggerate is to say something as better or worse, or more intense or less intense in some way, than it really is.

Exaggeration helps you add extra strength to your communication. Men do not know personally the pain women go through when they give birth. The comedian Carol Burnett described labor pains this way:

“Grab your bottom lip, and pull it over your head.”

Of course, we can’t do that. That’s what makes it an exaggeration.

So the correct answer is C.

Let’s exaggerate using so adjective that, and we will make at least one paragraph.

Part 1: Match the numbers with the letters to make good jokes.

1.       Mom’s hearing is so powerful that ___ 2.       Curtis is so fat that ___ 3.       Your apartment is so dirty that ___ 4.       I am so hungry that ___	A.    everybody gets sick when they visit you. B.    he can’t fit inside a stadium. C.     I can eat a horse. D.    he can hear butterflies flying.
1.       Medusa was so ugly that ___ 2.       The restaurant is so expensive that ___ 3.       Roger’s head is so shiny that ___ 4.       My teacher’s voice is so loud that ___	A.    Bill Gates can’t buy food there. B.    his friends always wear sunglasses. C.     people turned to stone when they see her. D.    she wakes up dead people.

Do you know the answers? Write them in the replies!

Part 2: Study the sentences above and the grammar below.

Noun phrase	am is are was were	so adjective that	subject	verb	(etc.)
Clause about the noun phrase			Clause about how adjective the noun phrase is
To make a joke that exaggerates, follow this advice:
The first part should not be funny. It’s just normal. Don’t make this funny.			The second part is surprising. It exaggerates the first part. It is funny.

Part 3: Make three funny sentences using the so adjective that grammar.

Ideas

old big small long late hard strong

hot cold popular traditional difficult intelligent dangerous

unusual famous careful boring strict angry exciting

friendly curious embarrassed mad nervous suspicious tall

Part 4: Choose the funniest sentence. Use it to make a short story. Try to make it funny.

Example:

I was walking down the street when I met my smart friend Roger. His brain is so busy that he can’t grow any hair on his head.  So when I saw him, I put on sunglasses. I was going to a job interview, so he gave me advice for the interview. My smart friend left and I waited for the bus, but I still was wearing sunglasses. It was so dark that I didn’t see the bus. I missed the job interview! Oh no!

What do you think? Please reply to this message. Let’s talk!

I'm Scratching You Out of My Head

Today's topic for discussion: What would cause you to end a friendship? Write about it on this blog.

How? Think of friends you have had in the past. Think of the things some of them have done to you. Think of times you were angry with your friends. Think of times your friend was angry or unfair with you. Think of times you may have done something to end a friendship.

Open up. Write about it.

Why talk about this? Well, it connects with you honestly. It connects with the pain you had. 

Pain. Yes, pain. Part of humor is to discover painful topics and find ways to heal the pain through laughter.

I'll go first.

When I was young, I have a friend named Dave. The two of us collected comics together in elementary school. He was a very strange kid. Our friendship lasted only a month, because he was a strange guy.

Don't get me wrong. I was a strange kid, too. And yes, still a strange adult in some ways. But he was much stranger than me, which sounds scientifically impossible, but it is true. I was amateur strange; he was professionally strange. I couldn't compete with that.

Sometimes my statements made him threaten to end the friendship. He would take his finger, scratch him forehead, and say, "I'm scratching you out of my head." For the record, memory doesn't work that day. Imagine if he had continued this habit into adulthood, how long a scar he would have on his forehead. Either he would be an outcast from society or popular with women turned on by scars. I could not say which.

So, anyway, back to Dave. I don't remember what exactly happened, but I decided to take my comic books home from his room. He threw into an angry fit. He took a belt and hit me on the top of my head. I was in tears. I couldn't do anything.

His parents eventually came into the room, apologized, and seemed to look at me with the face that said, "He's our fault. Sorry, kid." So I took my comic books and left.

Ouch.

I think what would cause me to end a friendship is if that friend somehow betrayed me, like Dave did. He was difficult to deal with, perhaps on purpose, so he could control the friendship in a weird way. He also got me into Marvel Comics, which meant I would lose even more money in my life. I think he also hurt my sense of friendship for a long time. Or maybe I let him do that. Or something.

I just wrote that without any knowledge of where it would go. I should do this more often. Thank you, blog. Thank you, readers.

Now back to comedy. My goal was to find something humorous somewhere. I had only one or two ideas that were funny. Worried? Not me. Perhaps I can find more connections, more comparisons, more ideas that take a little bit of the pain away.

It was once said that comedy is pain plus time. You identify something that is painful to you, you deal with it, and you find something to laugh about. Maybe you won't get on stage and talk about Dave, the weird kid who made you cry in fifth grade. But you can get more in touch with the humorous side that needs humor to continue in life.

So yes, back to your homework. What would cause you to end a friendship? Write about it on this blog.

Your One Good Joke is Probably Three or More Jokes

On November 7th, I went to the Division 93 Toastmasters humorous speech contest, here in Seoul, where I live. Most of the contestants were non-native speakers. I was taking a lot of notes during this contest, and I learned a few things.

One thing I learned is that a lot of people get a clever idea that gets them one laugh, then they drop it. The thinking is "I have a good joke there, so let me move on to the next good joke."

Wait. You don't just have a good joke. You have a good premise, too, and maybe that is worth three or more jokes.

A premise is an idea that can yield laughs. A joke is a specifically phrased set of words or sentences that elicits laughter. This difference is important because one premise can lead to many jokes. The world record in English for number of laughs in a comedy routine is 12. It was achieved by Phyllis Diller, an American comedienne (1917-2012) famous for routines about her appearance. All the jokes in that one minute were jokes about people being fat. Basically, that's one premise with twelve jokes.

"And that's just 12 jokes out of a career total of 50,000."

If you know the difference between a premise and a joke, you can go further with your ideas.

For example, the first contestant got a good laugh just from saying "I sounded like Donald Trump." The premise is the situation or her weaknesses are similar to something related to Donald Trump. Great, but is there more you can say on this premise? If sounding like Donald Trump is so funny, then explore the whole Trump range of expressions. For example, she could have said, "I was so angry with myself, I looked in the mirror and I said, 'You're fired.'" Since she was a US expatriate living in Korea, she could have made a reference to herself through the lens of Donald Trump's views on immigration. There was so much possible with a cultural reference everyone knew, and she could have had two more jokes about it.

Another speaker talked about her interest in Toastmasters, an international public-speaking group, as her cheating on her husband. "I'm seeing someone" and "My husband believes he is my first love" got some great laughs. Good metaphor, but she could have gone further with it. She could have explored more of the range of this topic. For example, she could have explored her embarrassment, sneaking out of the house, saying she could not come home early "because of work." She could have broken down and cried, saying, "I'm seeing other audiences!" Instead, she went on to other topics, other jokes, even political references, but the audience could have related to the metaphor more.

One common way this happened was people would come up with a new word, which got a laugh, but they would not explore the word.

I'll give you an example of my own. One time I combined the Korean word for an older woman, ajjumma, with the word mafia, creating ajjumafia.

Great, and it gets a laugh in some stand-up I have done, but don't finish just yet. Explore the implications of the new word you have coined. How are these elder women like Italian organized crime? You can definitely find comparisons, particularly if you have had to deal with the demands of this group in your workplace.

"Hey, Rico! You no eata kimchi. You no wear a visor."

By the way, the winner of this contest, Rodel Cuaton, did this. His speech was a huge number of jokes using a particular metaphor. He extended the metaphor rather than get merely one joke on it. He clearly had the biggest streak of laughs among the eight contestants.

"You want a shiny trophy? Read two books by Judy Carter and work your butt off."

So, you have a good joke? Great. What's the premise of your joke? How can you take it further than the first good laugh you got? Push yourself to come up with three or more.

-- Roger

Inflate the Balloon and Pop It

Hi, everyone!

My name is Roger. I am an English teacher in Korea who does comedy of one kind or another. My goal in this blog is to make non-native speakers of English funny or funnier. I thought of doing a book, but the blog idea was from a friend. It's my first blog, so expect errors, glitches, and just plain inexperience.

OK, what is humor? It's a tool we use to generate laughter, to find the world funny. It is quite beneficial for us humans. We can relieve stress and tragedy and sadness, or at least feelings thereof, though humor.

So it shouldn't be a total surprise that humor often derives from tension, of building up tension, then releasing it somehow. The founder of Mad Magazine, Harvey Kurtzman, once described comedy as inflating a balloon and popping it. The inflation of the balloon is called by stand-ups the set-up. The popping of the balloon is called the punch line.

The set-up establishes some kind of expectation. It creates a context of information. It's very tricky. Basically, you have to give enough information to produce humor, but avoid taking too long.

The punch line is the funny part of the joke. Somehow it departs from the set-up. For example, the set-up could establish one expectation and the punch line contradicts it, while still staying close to the world the set-up established.

Consider this simple riddle: "Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine."

The question is the set-up. It establishes the formula: question and answer. The punch line needs to be the answer. It must somehow agree with the formula. However, the punch line gives an answer that surprises people. The answer is a pun based on the number eight.

A great joke? No, but you see the structure. Let's look at another example.

Emo Philips did a stand-up routine where he started talking about romance. He was not particularly handsome or classy as a man. He doesn't look like an actor playing James Bond.

One time, he said, "I'm a good lover... I bet."

The audience laughs because of the structure. The set-up makes us think, "Hey, maybe he is a ladies' man." But just two words at the end -- "I bet" -- and we get the sense that he's never had a lover, ever. It contradicts the set-up in a surprising way.

Notice a difference in emotion. When Emo performed this, his voice changes from set-up to punch line. The set-up sounds confident -- "I'm a good lover" -- but the punch line contradicts it by sounding uncertain. That means that your humor is stronger with changing the emotional feeling from set-up to punch line.

If you watch comedy in English, look for the set-ups and punch lines. Can you see differences in emotion? Can you see how the punch line releases the tension? You can learn a lot about humor from watching stand-up that you like, looking for interesting details.

So, to sum up: Inflate the balloon and pop it! Have jokes with two parts to them: set-ups and punch lines.

What do you think? Do you have questions or comments? Do you have your own jokes using set-ups and punch lines? Let me know.

-- Roger