New York: Chinatown's street signs

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Arriving in New York mini-series, episode 40) is a short documentary about Chinatown, in the south of Manhattan, where many families have Chinese roots and the first ones spoke Cantonese, a language from the south of China. A single narrator looks closely at the Mott Street sign, with the English name and Chinese characters, and explains that some characters give the sound of the English name and others give its meaning. The first street signs in two languages arrived in 1969, to help people who could not read English find their way, and a local artist, Tan Bingzhong, wrote the characters by hand. Today some old signs are disappearing and the new signs are often in English only, and many people in Chinatown want to keep their signs in two languages. It is a comprehension episode: the narration uses the present simple and the past simple, with can and want to, and no grammar point is taught. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 9 on facts and 1 on vocabulary (Cantonese). The study topic is one city, many languages: writing in the city.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script. Each pack is a one-page PDF with the text, three photos, the key words and the 10 questions: a pupil pack, and a teacher pack with the answers highlighted. It also has a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key. It has no lesson plan. Play the episode twice, hand out the pupil pack, then use the closing question (Which languages can you see on signs in your town?) for a short class discussion or a photo hunt in the neighbourhood. Learners should know the words street, sign, language and name. The pack's key words explain the new words (Cantonese, character, meaning, local, disappear).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged languages-places-stories (5e, "Des langues, des lieux, des histoires", Cycle 4). The episode targets CEFR level A2-.