“I was prepared to dislike Max Kelada even before I knew him”.
W. Somerset Maugham’s opening sentence of the story “Mr. Know All’ is clear.
However, in the early years, when I still didn’t have a good pre-reading slideshow, my students would run into trouble understanding the story by the second sentence:
“The war had just finished and the passenger traffic in the ocean-going liners was heavy”.
The war in question is World War 1.
You may think that it doesn’t really matter that my Deaf and hard-of-hearing high school students haven’t a clue as to when that war ended (some are a bit surprised that there was a WW1 even though the numbering should have been a clue…) but it actually matters a great deal.
For starters, if I don’t emphasize the time frame my students cannot fathom why the characters are spending two weeks on a ship instead of hopping on a plane, spending their time ignoring the other passengers.
There would be no drama without the journey on the ship.
Then my students get confused by the whole issue of nationalities.
“… I should have looked upon it with less dismay if my fellow passenger’s name had been Smith or Brown.”
Those surnames do not indicate any nationality at all to my students…
There is so much background knowledge that comes up in the first paragraph of the story!
The narrator was traveling from San Francisco to Yokohama
My students assume the narrator was American (once we ensure everyone knows where these cities are located…) because who else travels from San Francisco?
After my students have already jumped to conclusions it’s much harder for them to internalize the information about the British Empire and who is or isn’t a real “British Gentleman”.
In short, a pre-reading task to set the stage was crucial. The old slideshow was helpful, but the new video version is much more attractive to teenagers.
In this Visual Lesson (Visual Lesson = See, Read & Listen), the students get to “chat” with the narrator of the story “Mr. Know All”. As in every Visual Lesson, you will find the use of visuals, alongside texts to read and listen to.
I’m so grateful to the amazing Dorit Renov, who brought the video to life by narrating the dialogue while using different voices for the various characters that appear in the video.
Here is the link to the Visual Lesson: