The Daily Roger

When Richard Wagner composed Das Reingold , he began his composition with a prelude that was four minutes of E flat major moreso than as a melody. For something that premiered in 1869, it may have come off to audiences as chaotic, the relentless playing off of the chord structure, seeming almost last-minute and improvisational. Eventually, the E flat opening moves into the Rheinmaidens singing up their own storm. A page from Wagner's autograph score of  Das Rheingold I've heard that the E flat opening was meant to be chaotic, the universe before laws of nature had become firm. For cosmology, that is very poor judgment on Wagner's part. The fact that something exists and possesses identity means that laws of nature and order will also occur. However, the order-from-chaos description can apply to the creative process. I thought of that E flat major beginning with regard to me doing a daily blog, something I never thought I would do. Taken as a whole so far, my entries lurch ...

Ladies and gentlemen, the handout itself:  As I said before, I don't believe I ever used this in the classroom, and I believe part of my reason to expound on this handout was to consider the functionality and potential of the ideas. See the other articles in this series,  the first one ,  the second one , the third one , and the fourth one , for breakdowns on these activities. They are described, nine at a time for all 36 of these activities.  My own evaluation is that many of these activities could be done separately away from the handout, and that the handout could be done as a review handout. The handout itself could be in color and designed to look even more like a soccer field, with the instruction to go faster than when these activities were encountered earlier. It's a bit of a kitchen-sink approach, having 36 prompts in one place, and it may be better to sprinkle these throughout a semester than to have them all in one place. In other words, this is at best an...

That's right, it's time for part four of my handout, given a bit of explanation for each. That's what happens when you make a handout denser than a white dwarf star.  See the other articles in this series, the first one , the second one , and the third one , for context. Or jump in with no context. You possess volition! Here are the last nine activities on that handout, each one sentence long, with a bit of explanation afterwards: Fast Boredom: Talk as quickly as possible about a very boring topic. Ideally, if you can discuss the benefits of aluminum at twice the speed of Ben Shapiro, then you have more than done your job. However, in the capacity of a warm-up, speaking faster than one might usually speak is probably good enough. Complete Weirdness: “You know what is weird about …?” Discuss. Ideally, this could be a topic that is not inherently weird. Puppies aren't normally thought of as weird, though chameleons might be. It's more interesting to pursue the weird i...

And now continues this five-part series on a single handout I have yet to use in class. It was conceived first for a PDF on learning comedy, then turned into a form to do comedy-activity questions and prompts as activities in a nonnative-English-speaking conversation class for adults. You can see the earlier installments in  the first post   and the second post  on this handout, which is dense and weird. And now continues this five-part series on a single handout I have yet to use in class. It was conceived first for a PDF on learning comedy, then turned into a form to do comedy-activity questions and prompts as activities in a nonnative-English-speaking conversation class for adults. You can see the earlier installments in the first post and the second post on this handout, which is dense and weird. Welcome to our third set of nine questions and prompts! Ahem: Role Change: Someone famous trades places with a family member or friend. What happens?  This would be more...

So now it’s time to do nine more activities for the classroom, meant to be warm-ups for native speakers trying to develop comedy skills, in a theoretical class on the subject. Yes, teachers do that – construct activities almost for the sake of constructing them. It may pay off later. So background here: I found a handout I made in the latter days of my time as a professor-like person at Sookmyung Women’s University. See https://thedailyroger.blogspot.com/2021/04/comedy-warm-up-tasks-part-1-of-5.html , a.k.a. Comedy Warm-Up Tasks: Part 1 of 5 , for the first installment of this what-if sort of series.  Never got used, but likely should get some use somewhere, somehow. This is especially true with students for whom the skill of producing humor and in being creative in general are important. I’d say some of these activities for nonnative speakers might need on-the-spot explanation for some classes and could be germs for larger activities. Others may need the context of the bits to...

Many years ago, I made a handout entitled Comedy Warm-Up Soccer. I never used this, but made it anyway, as a tool for making people funnier. Essentially, these were tasks I had come up with long ago, and I just found it in a long-neglected folder. Perhaps I should de-neglect these folders because this looks interesting. These tasks could be used in a classroom that is meant to promote creativity in some way, such as a course of adult English learners that are intermediate or higher. I think for many students you might have to build a lesson around each task, depending on its complexity and linguistic or structural requirements. Let me explain each of these briefly. The entire list is 36 items, so perhaps these should be introduced slowly. There will be a fifth entry showing the handout itself with any bookending remarks I would need. Five Mismatched Guests for dinner are coming over. Who are they? Just list the guests. The idea here is that none of these would normally be toge...