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Integrating language skills 235
vivor, took its crew and participants to a village in Kenya to film its new Survivor: Africa series. The story line is, of course, the same: the par- ticipants have to live under severe conditions and survive with meager food and other resources while outwitting, outplaying, and outlasting everybody else to win a million dollars. Project the following excerpt from a local newspaper on an OHP:
“A million dollars? Just for surviving? . . . I could win that show. I live for several days without eating, just a little water.”
Mohammed Leeresh, a bemused Kenyan villager, commenting on “Survivor: Africa,” the latest installment of the “reality TV” series that’s taping in his neighborhood. Local people said they remained puzzled even after the show’s concept was explained to them.
(Source: San Jose Mercury News, August 19, 2001, p. C2)
Ask your learners to think about Mohammed Leeresh’s comment. Have them discuss why they think Kenyan villagers are “bemused” and “puzzled.” If your learners themselves are not doing it, lead them to consider the above piece of information from the perspective of those Kenyan villagers. Here they are, presumably living under severe condi- tions, facing starvation as part of their everyday existence. They cannot understand why anyone would create an artificial scarcity of food and other resources, and then pay a million dollars for somebody to survive such conditions, while, for those Kenyans, such conditions are part of their everyday reality. And, nobody pays them even a penny to applaud their survival. Alert your students to these perspectives and lead a crit- ical discussion.
Exploratory Projects
The following exploratory projects are aimed at providing a general plan for designing microstrategies to integrate language skills. You need to decide what to do and how exactly you wish to do it.
Project 10.1: Comic Situations
10.1.0 Apart from the newly introduced reality shows, television every- where has traditionally shown and continues to show sitcoms (situation comedies)—brief episodes that humorously bring out the strengths and weaknesses of human beings. These sitcoms are loaded with cul- tural and subcultural beliefs and value systems. Sitcoms produced in North America, for instance, depict, almost exclusively, the lives and