F20AEC19- Part 1

Hi, everyone.

Welcome Thio.

Week 10.

We're moving along in our semester.

Now we're on article seven, as you know, from looking

at the article and making your best guesses about the

purpose. But in this week's lessons 19 and 20 we're

gonna be focusing on the story of the political situation

going on in the United States.

We're not going to get involved in all of the

back and forth with with the presidential candidates themselves and

all the kind of trouble.

But we will kind of get to that a little

bit. So, um, anything political that we talk about, please

understand that this is a very political time.

And I think in the world, and especially in the

United States, with the election being this week, basically so

it's, you know, it's coming up and it's going through.

We'll see what happens.

But if you don't know too much about the about

the presidential candidate, I should say the presidential race in

the United States, then you can get a little bit

of background about that in today's warm up activity, and

also I recommend that you go and look a TTE

basic information on stories about this that can help you.

But we really don't need to know that much more

deeply about the topic in order to understand what's being

discussed in this week's article, which which relates to the

vice presidential debate that was already that's already been, uh,

it's already completed, but the writer and the story was

writing the article before the vice presidential debate, so it's

interesting. Now, toe, look back on it, too, So you

can do that as well, if you if you want

to. But again, we have a lot of purposes for

using this article, and most of them are related to

building on this skills that we've already been practicing and

especially the first half and now the second half.

Um, okay, so our warm up activity this week just

to get going with the topic involves a video like

it always does.

And, um, you can see that we're going to be

After we talk about the warm up and getting into

this topic, we're gonna have a summarizing focus.

We're gonna be talking about how to make kind of

quick summaries, how to recognize different supporting information, how it's

how it's added to a story and how it adds

credibility to a story.

So, uh, we'll go ahead and get into that in

just a minute.

But we begin, as we always do with considering the

context and the audience and the framing and all the

things we've been practicing so again, we don't want to

forget any of the things that we've been that we've

learned so far.

But we just wanna build on them and kind of

make them routine as routine as we can, so that

we're able to do them over and over again and

without thinking.

Okay, so this week's video, for for our article this

week is called What to expect from High Stakes Vice

Presidential Debate.

Okay, and this is from The Washington Post, which is

a pretty good source.

But this the title of this, I have to say

one thing about titles, especially on the Internet.

And these days, Um, this source of the video on

YouTube comes from a very reputable source.

The Washington Post is a pretty well known and established

newspaper that that has been around in reporting on Washington

and politics, especially for a really long time, and has

a really good reputation.

Um, but online, even a good source like the Washington

Post will sometimes create headlines that will make you a

little bit confused in terms of grammar and and in

in the way that they express things.

I don't know if you're aware of it, but, um,

in English, just like I'm sure in other languages that

headlines that are on the top of a newspaper story

or or Internet, you know, Web page story headlines follow

a kind of different idea about grammar.

It's it's got its own kind of grammatical style that

it would be incorrect to use within the body of

an article or of a story.

So in this case, you can see the title it

says what to expect from high stakes vice presidential debate.

You can see that if this was actually written in

the text and you if you wrote this in your

in your essay, it would be incorrect.

You would need to write, uh, what to expect from

the high stakes vice presidential debate.

You know, you have to include some articles.

Also, just the overall way.

That this is phrased is strange, because what to expect

is what to expect from high stakes vice presidential debate.

This entire thing is really just the subject, right?

There's no real verb, our object in this, and it's

if it's, you know, if you think of like we

do on the on the midterm exam and coming up

the final exam, you need to include a subject of

urban an object in all your sentences.

But this really the entire thing is, is just a

piece. It's a noun phrase, actually, and it could be

the subject, or it could be the object.

But there is no there are not there.

There is not a subject and an object in this

and that and a verb.

Uh, you notice there's no verb at all except expect.

But the problem is, when you have to, and especially

with what on top of it.

When you put the the pronoun what what to expect,

Then it becomes the entire thing is actually a noun

phrase, so it's not actually a verb.

The verb expect is actually incorporated into, I think, in

this case, the subject.

So the long and short of it is don't write

like titles when you read titles in English don't write

like that.

Please understand that the titles headlines in stories are often

have this kind of unusual grammar or prose.

I don't know if you know the word.

Pros. P R O S E pros is often associated

with thinking about literature, things like poetry or fiction, writing

or, you know, other forms of creative or or even

academic writing.

Um, but this the prose is a particular way of

writing for a particular circumstance, and and it's it's maintained

in terms of a style.

So this style of headline is very strange.

So please don't be don't don't think that there's actually

a grammar error in it because it's it's following a

different set of rules because it's a title.

So So even The Washington Post, um, is going to

be using what looks like grammatically incorrect or problematic phrasing

here in their in their title.

But they're not.

It's actually just related to that.

Okay, anyway, getting that out of the way, I hope

that you can go look and watch this video at

least once or twice or three times before you look

at my questions.

It's always good to start out again with your skeptical

approach. Your you're skeptical of what you're watching and you're

careful and seeing how it's framed and how things were

put together and you're guessing what the intended audience is

and what the main purposes of what's being said.

And you've got your red flag ready.

So you know you've got all those those things coming

into this, Um, don't don't.

I really hope that every time you've been watching these

warm up videos in lessons that you don't go and

look at my questions thoroughly and look at the entire

thing and then go watch the video because when I

give you questions that's really meant to help you to

focus on specific parts of the story of the video,

uh, later.

It's It's meant to be kind of again, Uh, we're

going through lessons here, so it's meant to be a

kind of object lesson to get you to focus on

different parts of it.

But but But overall, what I focus on in my

questions can be quite different from what the overall video

is doing.

Okay, so again, all of this means that you should

go watch the video first before you look at the

questions I'd like you thio to discuss about this video.

Okay, this video is about three minutes and 29 seconds

long, which is kind of a long video for us.

We I typically give you quite short videos to make

it, you know, to really get the warm up effectively

done in a very short time.

I don't wanna have you looked through too much information,

Thio just to get the warm up.

But this one is three minutes and 29 seconds long.

But you do not need to watch the whole thing,

the questions and the focus that I have for this

video. Really?

You can watch about a minute and a half to

two minutes.

That's all you need to watch this video thio in

order to discuss the questions that I'm interested in.

Okay. But again, I recommend you're going to see in

my last question that I recommend you to go through

the whole video and to consider you know what's going

on in there and discuss anything with your group.

That seems confusing, because again, you you are not the

intended audience for the article this week.

It's obviously meant for the CNN audience.

And it's also which, which is specifically focused on on

American audience, who understands Thea American political system and situation

right now generally.

Okay, so what I'm saying is, if you go through

and watch some of the rest of the video, I

think you could get mawr background about the current situation,

Uh, in terms of the the presidential debates and the

presidential, the vice presidential debate and the campaign to become

president and vice president.

And I think it also give you some basic information

that you may not know about how the debates and

the race are are supposed to go.

Okay. Excuse me.

So again, go ahead and watch the video.

Uh, you know yourself a few times and then come

back to these questions that you're going to discuss.

And in the Article seven warmup plus five discussion page.

Okay, So here are the questions I'd like you to

think about after you watch the video number one.

Why are vice presidential debates always interesting in the video?

They say that at the beginning, one of the reporters

says, Oh, they're always interesting because you're gonna I wanna

listen and figure out why they say they're always interesting.

Number two.

Why do the reporters say that the events of the

past couple of days raise the stakes of the VP

debate and your noticed that that raise the stakes?

Phrasing is also there in the title right.

What to expect from high stakes.

So raising the stakes and high stakes stakes.

You can look up and you can look up the

expression of high stakes or raising the stakes or to

raise the stakes and see what that means.

You can quickly look on, you know, a search engine

on online.

Or go to dictionary dot com and type that in

and figure out, you know, get a good idea about

what raised the stakes means or what high stakes means.

But anyway, the reporters talk about this expression.

Why Why do they?

Why do they say that those events raised the stakes

of this v VP vice presidential debate Number three.

What is the number one issue that Republicans and Trump

and Trump's campaign don't want to be talking about again

in the video, they use that expression, They say the

number one issue that Republicans in Trump's campaign don't wanna

be talking about what?

What? What is that issue and why is that true?

Why is that the number one issue?

That they don't want to talk about number four?

What is Kamala Harris known for among Democrats on Dhe?

Why is why was she known for this?

You know what is her kind of reputation?

What is she known for?

What do they you know?

What kind of person do you think she is, or

what does she usually do?

That kind of thing?

And why?

Why? Why is she known for this?

Number five.

How are the vice presidential candidates?

Excuse me.

How are the vice presidential candidate candidates different in terms

of their personality and style you're going to see in

the video they talk a lot about the differences between

Mike Pence and Camilla Harris, especially in terms of they're

kind of what we would call demeanor their overall way

of acting and talking.

How are they different and finally again, Number six, you

don't need to watch in order to answer questions one

through five.

You really just need to watch about the first minute

and a half to two minutes to answer those questions.

But I'd like you to go ahead and watch the

rest of the video and discuss with your group any

confusing parts again.

This is optional.

You don't have to.

That's why I put it in parentheses, because it's kind

of recommend it.

But again, if you're if you don't want to do

that, it would.

It won't hurt your warm up for our topic this

week, so it's not necessary for you to do that.

But But again, it gives you a little bit fuller

picture a little bit, mawr context and, um, or of

ah ah, holistic.

Look at this topic.

So especially if you don't know a lot about politics

in the United States and the presidential race and vice

presidential race, then I think that it's it's a It's

a good It gives you a few things that are

quite helpful to understand how this how this is all

playing out, Okay, so again, go ahead and discuss these

questions with your group.

After watching the video, you might need to go back

and watch it again.

Maybe you watch the first minute and a half to

two minutes.

You watch that you know, three or four times and

then you go back and maybe watch the fool the

full video.

If you have time for a few more, you know,

maybe 11 or two more times and discuss anything that's

confusing. Okay?

And then after you come back, we're go ahead and

continue with our first skills summarizing.

F20AEC19- Part 1

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