Sora-mimi

"Sora-mimi" is a funny way of saying "mishearing" in Japanese. I came up with this little exercise for teaching English. Nothing fancy. I would find a short YouTube clip, usually a funny commercial like the one shown (the Budlight series are my favorite), and tell my students to transcribe what is being said word for word. Then on the day of the lesson, I'd get them to write what they heard on the board. Let me tell ya, some of the stuff they hear are h-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s! It's always a blast.

Two things can be expected from this exercice. First, to transcribe, the students will have to listen to the clip over and over and over and over and over.... Of course, this gets their ears accustomed to English words in bite size portions, which is much more effective than listenting to English in long portions, such as in a TV series or movie. Second, often the funniness of the students' answers and the "aha moments" (a.k.a. "eureka effect") created by my corrections really make the answers stick.

But this exercice, as simple as it is, is tough. Just a few minutes of clip can take hours and hours to really transcribe correctly. Even the one shown above, which is the very first one that I used, took my students a long time to transcribe. The dialog consists of only 3-4 lines!

This can be done of course with your favorite videos and DVDs also. It's easier if you have someone to control the clip for you. Play-stop-rewind-play-stop-rewind...(ad infinitum)