In response to yesterday’s “Teaching I/You/Him/Her” post, David wrote “there are just not that many foreign celebrities that all of the children know!” I too was surprised at this when I first started teaching abroad. In Japan it’s mostly comedians or Japanese singers, in India it’s cricket and Bollywood stars who are all the rage.
So your task for today…. who’s popular right now with your students? (either international or even better, local)
It would be cool to make a list for different countries. One easy way to ask the kids is to use the favourite theme or have a look at the their books, pencil cases, bags etc. I’m sure it would help a lot of new teachers to add a bit of sparkle to their lessons!
Lady Gaga is certainly the most popular in the UK (and US?) at the moment!
Earn More From Your Passion For Teaching English!
Asked my students today (in Turkey) and they all agreed that if they had to choose the number 1 person it definitely had to be Cristiano Ronaldo!
I don’t think it matters where the celebrities are from… what counts is that the kids all know them and can comment about them. Each teacher can tailor the list to suit his or her students. but it would be cool to see who is popular elsewhere!
Since tv here is loaded with American shows, the kids watch all the Disney shows (all dubbed in French) and Hannah Montana is the rage with the tween set amongst others and of course High School Musical! The kids all know the superheroes, Spiderman, Superman etc, and quite a few manga characters. Dragon ball and it’s successors are still aired in France on a music channel(Sangoku, Vegeta in French). Films from Harry Potter to Star Wars (the latest in animation) all have heroes to love and villains to hate.
The popular singers tend to be American or British although the German group Tokyo Hotel is very popular. Plus, I was really amazed when the 6th graders atarting talking about political figures!
Having kids helps too to keep up with the ‘in’ people! That lacking, Richard’s right, look at the schoolbags and why not just ask them to make a list….the possibilities are endless!
🙂
Oh I forgot there are video game characters like Mario!
One surprise I had last year was how popular Tom & Jerry is with kids in developing parts of Asia. It wasn’t till later that I realised it’s one of the few kids shows on Youtube that can be understood whatever your language!
Here in my part of China the kids know
Harry Potter and friends (but they can only say their names in Chinese)
For football they know Beckham
For Basketball they know Yao Ming (i know he’s chinese but he plays in America so chances are children in other countries know him too), Michael Jordan, and I think his name is Cory (i’m not a basketball fan)
In atletics they know Liu Xiang (again he’s Chinese but on the world stage so kids from ther countries probably know of him too)
They don’t know any movie stars or singers or even pop groups other than Chinese one’s.
As for cartoons and TV characters they are likely to know the Teletubbies, Lilo and Stitch, Spongebob no pants, maybe a few others but they rarely know the names in English, just in Chinese
Another couple of names that the primary school grade 5 or 6 kids may know are Heller Keller and Bell (as in Alexander Graham Bell the inventor of the telephone) not because they are interested in them, just because they were in their English Books. Regarding Bell, they don’t know his full name, just Bell.
I use cartoon characters in preference to real people. They are generally well-known and have a longer shelf-life, if you know what I mean. (Not so much Gromit, though…)