The Mississippi: Steamboats and Mark Twain

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Mississippi mini-series, episode 12) is a short documentary about the steamboats of the 1800s and the man who became Mark Twain. A single narrator explains how a steamboat works (a steam engine turns a paddle wheel, and the wheel pushes the water back), why a boat can get stuck on the sand, and why the pilot must know the river very well. The script then says that Samuel Clemens became a steamboat pilot in 1859: on the boat, a sailor threw a rope with a heavy weight into the water to see how deep it was, and the call "Mark twain!" meant two fathoms, about three and a half metres, safe water for the boat. Later, Clemens became a writer and chose the name Mark Twain. The language is the past simple (carried, became, threw, chose), the present simple to explain how the boat works, and must for the pilot's job, with vocabulary for transport and jobs. Learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 7 on facts and 3 on vocabulary (paddle wheel, twain, steamboat). The study topic is the Mississippi River in the USA.

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 (on a steamboat, what did "mark twain!" mean?) to check that learners can explain the name. Learners should know boat, water and wheel, and be able to read the year 1859.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged countries-and-landscapes (6e, "Pays et paysages", Cycle 3). The episode targets CEFR level A1+.