ESL WORKSHEET - Music and American Culture

LESSON PLAN FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS

ELVIS PRESLEY

LinguaHouse
Jul. 2, 2022

Level: Intermediate (B1-B2)
Type of English: General English
Tags: American Culture; Celebrities and Historical Figures; Sound and Music; 18+ Years Old; 16-18 Years Old; 13-15 Years Old; Speaking; Video Talk
Publication date: 07/02/2022

This audio-aided lesson tells the life story of the legendary performer Elvis Presley (1935-1977). The lesson focuses on vocabulary, listening comprehension, and speaking and includes a short look at some useful phrasal verbs with more than one meaning. There is also an optional extension activity - a jigsaw reading about three of Elvis’ films (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

Elvis Presley was born to a very poor family in Mississippi in the south of the United States in 1935. His twin brother died at birth, and he was an only child. The family moved to Memphis, Tennessee thirteen years later. As a teenager, Elvis was interested in all kinds of music and wore colorful clothes with a distinctive hairstyle that he kept for much of his life.
In 1954, Sam Phillips, a music producer at Sun Records in Memphis, asked Elvis to come in for an audition. When he played a song that he had composed himself, Phillips recognized the young man’s talent. He offered Elvis a contract and put together a three-piece band for him. They played blues and country music that they knew from the radio, night clubs and churches with both black and white members. The band had a big hit later that year with a cover of a song by Arthur Crudup called, “That’s All Right,” using a style called rockabilly. Their popularity took off in the southern states as people saw them perform in local venues and even heard them on national radio programs.
In 1956, Elvis met Colonel Tom Parker, who became his manager and organized a contract with RCA Records in New York. As the hits kept on coming, he changed over to a more rock and roll sound and performed in numerous TV shows and in films.
However, in 1958, Elvis was drafted into the army and gave up performing for a couple of years. When he finished his military service, he returned to his music career and during the 1960s he made more than thirty movies and recorded lots of songs. He also married and had a daughter.
In 1968, Elvis performed in a Christmas TV special, which boosted his popularity for a while. Between 1969 and 1976, he also put on hundreds of shows in Las Vegas, with tickets regularly selling out. However, in the 1970s, his career started to go downhill, partly because of his lifestyle. He was living in Graceland, a mansion in Memphis that he had bought in 1957.
His diet was poor, and he put on weight. Even worse, he was addicted to prescription medicine. He passed away from a heart attack at home in 1977. Many people all over the world were very sad and found it difficult to take in the news of his death. Stories that he hadn’t really died carried on in the media for years.
In his early years, before he became a mainstream celebrity, Elvis was a controversial figure. In the racially segregated 1950s in the US, he made black music popular with white Americans. He was also careful to treat black musicians with respect and credited them as performers and songwriters, which many white performers did not usually do. Today, even forty years after his death, Graceland remains one of the most popular tourist destinations in the US.

Adapted from: https://www.linguahouse.com/esl-lesson-plans/general-english/elvis-presley. Accessed on July 2, 2022. © 2008–2022 LinguaHouse.com. All rights reserved.