In the early voyages of discovery crews would feature a degenerado. The degenerado would be put ashore to greet potentially hostile tribes in unexplored countries. The degenerado was expendable. A degenerado would typically be a convicted criminal or converted Jew.

Sir Michael Hobbs’ journey to China on the “The Gracious” in 1610 featured a degenerado by the name of Jack Snow. Jack Snow had been an able law student at St John’s College, and an able contemporary of John Donne, although he had always been a better lawyer than satirist. Jack had roystered with the young Lord Rochester, oblivious to the collapse of his family’s estates in Northamptonshire. Languishing in debtor’s gaol, he had welcomed the call to join the expedition. Looking back in shame at his family’s now partitioned holdings he also secretly welcomed the name as an expression of his own feelings about himself, the degenerado.

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This week I was left with the conundrum of bringing the would rather to show preference structure to life. What joy. Naturally, I wanted to avoid production of sentences such as ‘I’d rather not be here’ or ‘I’d rather I weren’t here.’ After literally seconds of searching I found this post on a website: Movies the US government would prefer people not watch. Mmmm… interest piqued. Would my students like to discuss such an issue? Now this instantly appeared to me to be a topic that would generate discussion, so what the hell, I went for it. The link basically lists 10 films that, er, the American government probably would rather their citizens didn’t see, and a jolly fine list it is, too. Along with the title of the film is a very brief synopsis and a link to IMDB.

What I did (after presentation of the structure):

• Ask students to go to the site and read through the list.
• Get them to discuss in groups why these films could cause controversy.
• Feed back to rest of class, ‘the US government would rather people didn’t watch this film because…’

Reasons to be careful:

• How comfortable are your group of students with such a topic?
• Do they have the background knowledge to be able to discuss this issue?

Visit the Skeleton Project blog to view the list of films.

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From the website:

The idea was developed by a political journalist with a university counselling background, assisted by a professor of social history. They’re indebted to people like Wilhelm Reich and Theodor Adorno for their ground-breaking work in this field. We believe that, in an age of diminishing ideology, a new generation in particular will get a better idea of where they stand politically – and the sort of political company they keep.

While the questions also use a lot of (potentially) relevant vocabulary and make students think about modality, the issues raised might make for risky conversation topics, so if you’re thinking of exploiting this in that way, be careful!

Take the test.

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Covering old favourites such as hangman, battleships and blockbusters, as well as variations on common adaptable classroom fun activities, Not Hangman Again is a comprehensive guide to playing games in the ELT class.

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If you have any experiences, good or bad, of the TOEFL, I’d love to hear about them and put your thoughts onto the blog!

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