Vampires are everywhere. They’ve been present in novels, art, movies, and theater for hundreds of years. Toward the end of the 1800s, the story of Dracula made them even more popular and intriguing. And suddenly, in the 21st century, teenagers, and even children, are becoming fans of the countless representations of vampires in pop culture.
So, because they’re often referred to in conversation among the age group that I teach, I decided to make today’s English club about the fascinating creature that is the vampire. To be quite honest, other than my past fascination with Dracula, I have completely ignored and resisted the vampire hype until a couple months ago, when my friend Yana showed me some episodes of The Vampire Diaries. Now I am more than okay with taking (at least) an hour to talk about vampires. 🙂
First, I had Dasha (who is a huge fan of vampire novels and TV shows) list (with the help of the group) vampires popular in the media today. Together, they listed characters from:
Twilight
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Vampire Diaries
True Blood
Underworld
(Plus, there’s even a music group called Vampire Weekend!)
Then we listed common legends about vampires, such as:
They drink blood.
They cry blood.
They cannot be in direct sunlight.
They dislike garlic.
Silver cuts them.
They can read minds.
The kids added these:
They’re cold.
They live forever.
Wooden stakes can kill them.
They sleep underground.
They can hypnotize people.
Do you like vampires? Here are the English club’s answers.
Because I don’t have a clip of a vampire TV show appropriate for their age group in English (“True Blood” is a definitely too intense), we watched half of an episode of “The Vampire Diaries,” which I have in Russian. I turned it into a translation exercise. A huge part of the curriculum in Ukraine is to (daily) translate things from English to Russian, but students don’t usually translate from Russian to English. So this was good practice for them – they had to translate at least 5 sentences from the episode we watched into English. It’s more difficult than the other way around!
And thus concludes the hour of vampires.
Next week’s topic: Dream interpretations
Aliasenglishclub's Blog 
Posted by Margaret on September 14, 2011 at 5:19 pm
It is really great for you to tailor English club activities to students’ interests, so they are motivated to communicate in English without thinking they’re working too hard. Very creative stuff!
Posted by Margaret Sch on September 14, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Very creative and motivating! Nice work, both students and Alia!
Posted by Alia Scheirman on October 7, 2011 at 10:41 am
Thank you! I agree that it’s more fun if they get to pick the topics; as long as they’re practicing speaking/listening, I’m happy!