ESL WORKSHEET - Walt Disney Biography

LESSON PLAN FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS

WALT DISNEY

LinguaHouse
May 31, 2022

Level: Intermediate (B1-B2)
Type of English: General English
Tags: Celebrities and Historical Figures; Historical Events; People and Places; 16-18 Years Old; 18+ Years Old; Speaking
Publication date: 05/31/2022

This audio-aided lesson tells the life story of animator, film producer, and businessman Walt Disney (1901-1966). The lesson focuses on vocabulary, listening comprehension, and speaking and includes a short look at using present participles to add information to sentences. There is also an optional extension activity related to theme park rides (by Stephanie Hirschman).

• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet in American English.
• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet in British English.
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan in American English.
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan in British English.
• CLICK HERE to download/listen to the audio in American English.
• CLICK HERE to download/listen to the audio in British English.

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Narrator: Walt Disney was born in Chicago in the United States in 1901. As a child, he loved drawing and painting and sometimes sold his artwork to friends and neighbors. In high school, Disney studied drawing and photography and drew cartoons for the school newspaper. He also attended extra art classes at night. His education was delayed for a time when he drove an ambulance during the First World War.
Narrator: At the age of nineteen, Disney moved to Kansas City. His brother Roy got him a job at an art studio and introduced him to a talented artist known as Ub Iwerks. They started producing short, animated films called Laugh-o-Grams, which were shown in a local theatre. The pair went on to make Alice in Cartoonland, mixing animation and live-action. However, in 1923, they went out of business after a New York partner stole their ideas.
Narrator: Disney, his brother, and Iwerks moved to Hollywood and opened another cartoon studio. They continued the Alice series and started developing other characters. In 1928, they created Steamboat Willie, a short cartoon featuring one of their new characters called Mickey Mouse. This animation made use of new technology by including voices and music and it was an instant hit. Disney himself was the voice of Mickey Mouse until 1947. Characters like Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck soon joined Mickey in a series called Silly Symphonies, appearing in color after 1932. A feature-length animated version of the fairy tale Snow White reached the cinemas in 1937 and made one point five million dollars, an amazing result considering the terrible economic problems of the 1930s.
Narrator: After moving to a new location in Burbank, California, in 1939, the business suffered a setback when its animators went on strike. The Second World War also affected production, and in the mid-1940s, the studio mostly produced short films that were joined together to make feature-length programs. Altogether, Disney made one hundred feature films during his lifetime, including classics like Fantasia, Bambi, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Twenty-two of his films won Academy Awards.
Narrator: Disney was one of the first people to recognize the possibilities of the new mass media, television, in the 1950s. His company produced live-action documentaries, dramas, and variety shows for children and families. Disney also pioneered the development of theme parks, starting with Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in 1955. The original park cost seventeen million dollars to create and has grown into a business empire worth well over a billion dollars, with parks in Florida, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.
Narrator: These achievements make Disney one of the most important cultural influencers of the twentieth and twenty-first century, although some of his films have been criticized as racist and politically insensitive. Even so, many people wish to remember him as a hard-working businessman who experienced failures and overcame these to enjoy huge success. Disney died in 1966 of lung cancer; he is buried in Glendale, California.

Adapted from: https://www.linguahouse.com/esl-lesson-plans/general-english/walt-disney. Accessed on June 4, 2022. LinguaHouse.com © 2008 - 2022. All rights reserved.