Review- Wallace and Gromitt A Grand Day Out EFL version

Wallace and Gromit in “A Grand Day Out”
English language teaching adaptation by Peter Viney and Karen Viney

Video
Student’s book
Teacher’s book- by Lorena Roberts
OUP (Oxford English Video range)

Although an EFL version of Wallace and Gromit is a great idea, this is certainly not the first attempt at using these classic Aardman Animation videos in the classroom. Along with Mr Bean, the three videos featuring Wallace and Gromit (originally designed for native speakers and incredibly popular in the UK) have long been something teachers have tried to use in the classroom, especially at low levels where action is at least as important as dialogue.

If you are unfamiliar with the original Wallace and Gromit videos, all three titles in the series (in chronological order- “A Grand Day Out”, “A Close Shave” and “The Wrong Trousers”) are short animated films that follow the adventures of a man called Wallace, who is fond of making inventions but even more fond of tea and cheese, and his super intelligent and highly literate (but silent) dog Gromit. This story, “A Grand Day Out”, is based around a trip to the moon in a homemade rocket in search of cheese to go with their crackers. All three films are classic examples of a genre that is fast disappearing in these post-Teletubbies days, a ‘children’s programme’ that is just as popular with adults. Part of the appeal is the incredible attention to detail in the plasticine animation, with little things going on in the background which you usually miss the first time you watch. All the characters are also incredibly cute, as are their facial expressions. Typical details in this film are Gromit reading a book called ‘Electronics for Dogs’ and the mice in the basement putting on sunglasses as the rocket takes off.

With its cute characters and continual action, the original video seems made for a ‘watch and describe’ type of video activity. The difficulty I and other teachers have had with this is that, unlike Mr Bean, there is quite a lot of dialogue in the film, which students understandably would like to understand. Unfortunately, the typical dialogues about Wensleydale cheese is somewhat difficult to explain at low levels, and the strong northern English accents of the characters don’t help. At 25 minutes long, it is also too long to use with just one or two techniques such as ‘turn your back to the screen and describe’. Rather than trying to ignore the dialogue, the authors of this EFL version of the film have actually added a voice-over narration. For example, in the scene where Wallace makes a ‘nice hot cup of tea’, the narrator lists the things that he puts on the tray. While the narration adds nothing to the comic effect (and teachers who are Wallace and Gromit purists might find it irritating to start with) it does at least give the teacher a bit more (graded) language to base their class around. Another thing on the EFL version which is useful for the classroom is the fact that it is split into 6 episodes.

As well as the adapted video, a student’s book and a teacher’s book are available. After very briefly introducing the two main characters, the student’s book dedicates 7 or 8 pages to each of the 6 episodes. Episode One is very typical, in that it starts with a lead-in question (What’s your favourite holiday?) and a short task (Who’s doing what?) to do after watching the whole episode once. Students then watch the episode again, doing exercises such as ‘complete the dialogue’, ‘repeat the phrases’ and ‘label the objects’. Students then watch a third time and label all the things they see in the episode. There are then 2 pages of ‘further practice’ of the language presented, to be done with the video off, and a one-page transcript. All in all, it takes between 15 and 30 minutes to work your way through one episode, which means it is impossible to get through the whole film in one lesson. Spending six or more weeks doing one video also seems excessive, so I found that 2 episodes a day generally worked best. The book finishes with a 3 page picture dictionary. What I liked best about the student’s book is the great use of pictures and colour throughout, including many stills from the film.

The book is suitable for (and designed for) False Beginner level students, but can be stretched up to Elementary with a bit of work. There has been an attempt to provide a good variety of grammar points for this level (such as Present Continuous, have, can and can’t, prepositions of direction, and imperatives) but the book is really dominated by vocabulary. The authors have tried to add vocabulary points such as numbers, colours and animals, but most of the vocabulary is decided by the content of the film. As was the problem with the original dialogue, it was obviously not possible for the authors to avoid vocabulary such as ‘drill’, ‘hammer’ and ‘Thermos flask’, along with more useful stuff like ‘clock’ and ‘door’. There was certainly enough practice of the vocabulary for it to stick with my students, however, even things that we didn’t tackle in the rest of the course.

Unlike the original, unadapted, Wallace and Gromit films, this EFL version is not really suitable for adults as the voice over and the use of pictures would seem patronising. I found it worked well with all my children’s classes, although you do have to be selective with how many of the student’s book exercises you use with children under about 7 years old. Amazingly, it also worked well with a class where only one student turned up, and in fact saved the day! It is very easy to teach the material as it comes, but the teacher’s book gives very good general advice for varying the use of video with different levels and ages (introducing techniques such as ‘silent viewing’ that are not exploited in the student’s book activities), as well as a lot of cultural information for people who are missing the references to English stereotypes.

Review originally published in Modern English Teacher magazine. Reprinted with permission.

(C) Alex Case/ Modern English Publishing