Tired of teaching the same way over and over again? Is it difficult to find and implement new techniques or approaches in teaching English language (or any other subject) in our classroom? Those kids who have been eagerly waiting for us might fall into a pool of disappointment if they can easily guess what sort of activities will be conducted during the lesson. Teaching techniques and approaches should never be considered obsolete or outdated, instead we as teachers should always unlearn and relearn those old techniques and try to inculcate them in our 21st century classroom. ‘Freedom Writers’, ‘To Sir, with love’, and ‘Dead Poet Society’ are some of the best movies for and about teachers. However, we should never forget Mr. Jeremy Brown from Mind Your Language who has impacted the lives of many language instructors and learners out there. 

For those who are already familiar with this British sitcom, kindly hold on to your horses and spill not any tea. However, for those who have never heard of this TV series before, this sitcom was aired back in 1977 and left a huge impact in the hearts of its viewers. After many years, a local TV station bought this sitcom to allow it to be aired in our local scene back in the 90’s. Besides that, the sitcom also influenced Malaysian producers to create a localized version of it called ‘Cakap Melayu Lah’. People of all ages enjoyed watching this 3-season sitcom but as teachers, let’s bring our focus back to Mr. Brown, starring Barry Evans. With a class full of immigrants from India, Pakistan, Japan as well as China – just to name a few, Mr. Brown managed to instill a little bit of English language into the hearts and minds of his students. One of the new words that I managed to add into my vocabulary list is ‘au pair’ which means a young person who stays with a local host family to help with childcare responsibilities. Yes, you got it right! One of the characters in ‘Mind Your Language’ worked as an au pair. 

Enough with the brief introduction of ‘Mind Your Language’, let’s take a glance at some of the teaching techniques and approaches implemented by Mr. Brown in his EFL class. 

Season 1, Episode 4 – Realia 

In this episode, Mr. Brown brought real objects in the classroom to make learning more interesting and memorable. The use of realia can help students not only learn new vocabulary but also understand the physical features of the objects. While trying to teach his students on various items which they will probably purchase, we can witness how different cultures perceive shopping differently. Spoiler alert! If you are going to watch this episode, you’ll be surprised at what Ali Nadim did with the apple he’s supposed to describe. Similar to using props in the classroom, bringing realia into the classroom wll make our class livelier than before! 

Besides bringing our own realia, we can ask students to bring their own realia to be utilized in the classroom. However, realia is not just meant to be described, we can use realia to

encourage students to write. For example, we can ask students to bring a random object and place them in front of the classroom. Next, every student needs to choose 5 objects and write a short story from the objects chosen. This is surely a good way to make our kids enjoy writing. 

Season 1, Episode 5 – Role-play 

Apart from bringing real objects in the classroom, Mr. Brown also encouraged students to use English language by doing role-playing activities in his class. In this episode, we can see how Mr. Brown carefully chose a scenario that his students might be dealing with in the future. By choosing “at the bank counter” as a scenario, we will burst into laughter looking at how students from different cultures dealt with situations at the bank. 

Role-play can be made possible by planning the activities ahead. We should not compare role-play with simulations and games which require structured activities and can last over a period of time. In a language classroom, role-play activities can be conducted as short yet spontaneous presentations. However, we can prepare a few selections of scenarios for students to act out with speaking templates. Just remember that students need to communicate using the language rather than focusing on props or their acting. Students will learn better when they’re involved in real-world scenarios in which they can improve their negotiation skills, bargaining skills as well as sharpening their persuasion skills. 

Even though Mr. Brown is just a fictional character in a British sitcom “Mind Your Language”, we can learn a lot from him as a language teacher. Watching TV series like this one exposes language learners to natural expressions and manner of speaking. Since most of our students are not living in an English-speaking environment, only TV series and English movies can provide learners with real-life language input. The use of real objects or realia as a visual aid can improve students’ participation during the teaching and learning process as well as creating an interesting atmosphere for language learners. Role-play on the other hand requires students to perform realistic scenarios under the supervision of teachers. In addition, this activity allows students to be creative and to put themselves in a real-life situation for a while. Well teachers and educators, what are you waiting for? Mr. Brown is ready to assist us in dealing with enthusiastic language learners like the ones we have in our own classroom. Let’s continue making our class lively and interesting for our students! 

Written by Hazwan Hamdan

*This piece is solely the personal opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect HIVE Educator’s stance.