Brexit and the End of the British Empire

Pre-listening research questions:

What is Brexit?

How is it connected to the British Empire?

 

 

 

 

• The media makes people from the UK feel different than other countries in Europe about their place in the world. 

• The British education system does not inform British subjects of the true history of empire. 

•  Xenophobia has been used historically.

•  Social progress has been attained through the aftermath of disastrous events like war.

•  The history of empire is linked with the reasons why the UK voted to leave the European Union,
  

•  The conservative government used Brexit as a means to get support, relying on exploiting people's fear of foreigners and gaining votes from extremist, far-right parties.

• Demographic statistics show some ome surprising results, such as the relationship between obesity and voting for Brexit.

Further research questions:

Have people's attitudes to Brexit changed since the UK has lost all its low-paid workers?

 

Is this form of isolationism peculiar to the UK, or are all countries susceptible to it in the age of identity politics?

 

Teaching English witout Teaching English

Pre-listening research questions:

Why is it necessary to try to teach English in a non-traditional way?

How does the speaker teach English without explicitly teaching it?

 

Summary

• The speaker, Guzman, outlines how he encourages his students to adopt critical thinking skills in filtering out which information is valuable. 
• He points out typical signs that tell us when a person lacks authority. or doesn't know what they are talking about. These include obfuscation, never answering a direct question or providing detail or clarification and 'ad hominem', which means resorting to personal attacks which may not be related to the argument.

Further research questions:

Does this style of learning suit all learners? 

How can it be exported to different contexts?