Bright Ideas Basketball English

Basketball English

My aim is to probe the extent to which the game of basketball can be used as a vehicle to broaden, and even to improve upon, ELLs’ abilities in the core competences of English. Additionally, I intend to promote cultural awareness through the study of players from around the world; and physical and spatial awareness through the observation and practice of rudimentary basketball drills. It is my belief that the content of the materials I design will appeal to the subjects and have a positive impact on their overall level of motivation. My secondary goal is observe how significant the roles of multimedia devices, such as an Ipad, and the internet are in the modern-day ESL classroom.

The love of sport is something that transcends cultures and borders. In the modern era of sports, basketball has become a juggernaut in terms of its overall popularity and the fame its upper-echelon stars. In most counties that have leagues, games are televised nation-wide. Basketball broadcasts from the world's most popular league, the National Basketball Association (NBA) in America, are televised throughout the entire world and its star athletes are among the most popular and recognizable in all of sports. The game has had an undeniable impact on the fabric of the American culture. Over 26 million Americans play basketball; and this number pales in comparison to the countless millions who feverishly follow the developments in the NBA. What must also not go unmentioned is the game's contribution to the linguistic development of its players and followers in non English-speaking countries. Basketball players and fans are exposed to a vivid mixture of academic standard prose, contemporary American and slang English. There are also a number of hugely popular sayings that have their roots in this sport. Now that the game has become as ubiquitous as the English language itself, I believe the time has come for language teachers to couple ELLs’ passion for "hoops" with the myriad of pertinent media on the web in order to create an environment that fosters English language learning and enthusiasm for the game. Students will also have the advantage of being exposed to authentic input and materials.

I, myself, played the game for a number of years during my youth and am very familiar with rules of the game and its lingo. As an adult, I have remained close to the sport by teaching its fundamentals to students at a secondary school in Bremerhaven, Germany. Furthermore, I have worked as an English teacher at this same school for the past year. My dealings with the students in the previous school year taught me that many of them were avid basketball fans, and that they demonstrated genuine interest in the finer aspects of the game. What also inspired me was the flippant, and often times somewhat accurate, way in which many of them used the game's most common jargon. Most of the students have migrant backgrounds, and at times it seemed that the students were more eager to try to speak English when the conversation centered around basketball. A great deal of basketball vocabulary can be applied in similar contexts outside of the realm of sports.

I plan to implement an ESL curriculum using a few of the most common methods of instruction centered on the central theme of basketball. I will meet with the subjects once a week for twelve weeks. The subjects will consist of ninth and tenth grade students of various migrant backgrounds. The overwhelming majority of the subjects speak English at a B1-B2 level. There are no complete beginners participating in this class. Each session is 90 minutes long; the first 30 minutes of each session will be dedicated to a particular language skill point. The primary mediums of language input will the various videos and clips from the internet and from me. After the lesson is presented, students will have ample opportunity for independent or group work in order to process and internalize what they have learned. At the end of the course, students will be given an assessment test featuring the same vocabulary used in a different context than basketball. My hope is that students will remember how the words in question are applied in terms of basketball and use this knowledge to assist them in ascertaining the meaning of specific word or phrase across another context. Modern, cutting-edge technology will be incorporated