Hi all,

I'm thinking of teaching a lesson surrounding internet 'overnight sensations,' with a touch of bubblegum pop.

My (clearly unorganized thus far) idea is to teach the kids (high level high school) some words surrounding viral videos.
Next, we can briefly talk about YouTube - intended purpose and history of famous clips (like Charlie Bit My Finger?)
Then, we can talk about Justin Bieber's rise to fame (it started on YouTube, if you didn't know. I didn't because I generally try to avoid him at all costs), and carry on into a listening exercise about Rebecca Black's Friday.

I've started working on the Powerpoint, but do you guys have any ideas as to how to make this lesson work? My students are really interested in current affairs, so I thought that learning about the current worst song in the world would be relevant, as well as learning about how quickly one can become famous (perhaps for all the wrong reasons). My worry is that they won't understand just how bad the song is, even though they'll surely raise their eyebrows to, 'we so excited.'

Actually, I had a friend that considered using the "Yesterday was Thursday.  Today it is Friday," portion of the song for her kindergarten lesson about the days of the week. 

I did a lesson on viral videos a while back and found this extremely helpful:

http://blog.naver.com/lovelove_pyo?Redirect=Log&logNo=40105511850

The top videos are an episode of Sotuh Park that has a bunch of viral sensations trying to collect their "Internet cash" (the fourth video down). There are a bunch of admittedly dated viral videos lower down, but it covers the spectrum from "Chocolate Rain" to Star Wars kid.

Just a couple quick things about the videos:

- I've found that using the South Park clip after showing the viral vids really helps the kids internalize the idea of "Internet stardom." There's a quick scene regarding the major plot of the episode from between 1:33 to 2:28 that I usually skip, and if you're squeamish about showing cartoon violence then you might want to avoid the clip altogether.

- The "What What" video is REALLY inappropriate so I usually skip it. Also, the freakin' Tron Guy video is just him talking about how he got the idea for making a Tron outfit (if you guessed "He watched 'Tron' and then made a costume" then you can skip the video). I've never seen a person act so self-satisfied while wearing spandex.

- The Chocolate Rain, Leave Britney Alone and Laughing Baby clips lose their novelty in about 40 seconds each.
 Numa Numa guy is funny for about a minute.

- I found it really easy to get carried away in this lesson and kind of turned it into a conversation class. The kids loved talking about Sneezing Panda and Star Wars Kid.

Hope this helps!

Last year I was really close to showing some students the Hide yo kids, hide yo wife thing, but didn't. As a black person living here I'd rather not contribute to the already horrible image of black people they have in this country.  ::)
But Rebecca Black could work. You could have them get into groups and write one verse about their trip to school or weekend plans matching the beat if you find an instrumental version. Then put it together so we have your own class song. Possibly create their own internet buzz video!

http://www.youtube.com/v/qwvdxV26q8I?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0

A friend of mine playfully suggested taking this video and making a fill in the blank worksheet for it. :P

Hi,
I plan to teach a teacher conversation lesson about sound reduction, g dropping of the -ing suffix, and some common/uncommon idioms with this song in addition to teaching about "viral videos" in America.

Attached is what I'll give the teachers to introduce the topic.  Practice saying parts 1, 2, 3 with them.  Then I'll give them the "Friday" lyric sheet, listen to the song, ask them to underline words they are unfamiliar with, discuss those, and listen to the song again.  I think this whole section will take 30 minutes.  Take another 10 minutes to talk about viral videos and show them some clips and you have yourself a 40 minute lesson plan.  :)

sorry, i don't find the viral video subculture of talentless hacks important. the viral video subculture is important, as the tunisian example typifies, but it would probably make an incomprehensibly boring EFL lesson for high school students.

1)  Is the video in question being talked about a lot in English speaking cultures now?
Yes:
Evidence:   Video in question has more than 110 million hits.   (110,949,891 to be more exact).  It has more hits than Michael Jackson Billie Jean (which has 54,122,446 hits)

2) Is the English in the song terrible?
Yes, however it's not uncommonly used English.  As I said earlier, if all that's important to students is to only know grammatically correct English they could save themselves a lot of money and just buy some grammar books.

3)  Is the singer a talentless hack?
Yes, however so are many pop singers.   I consider the singer of Bright Eyes "When the president talks to God." to be even worse than Rebecca Black.   I remember when it came out thinking that there were some Japanese playing on the street in Kobe for street change that sounded a lot better than that.

4)  Despite 2 and 3, is the video relevant for class?   
Yes, not because it's a good video or song, but because it's a part of current western culture.   For proof of that, refer to 1 where I mention the number of hits it's getting.

In fact, I am all for telling students why you hate it.   At least it would be a real conversation as opposed to the canned conversations they typically get in their textbooks.

Best of all Friday Parodies! And if you're teaching the words, this one is much clearer 

I really don't think Friday is the worst song ever, and you might have trouble conveying the humour to foreigners when bubble gum pop is still so popular in K-Pop here.

I think an old school rap version of the song would be funny.