News of the World is a not-so-classic Western starring Tom Hanks as a newsreader travelling across the U.S. during a violent and tumultuous period after the American Civil War. In a neat inversion of Indian abduction narratives like John Ford's classic The Searchers, the Confederate veteran here is trying to return a child to her family, but Johanna just wants to return to the tribe she loves.
The article will help the students grasp the historical context of the movie and will also help them understand the evolution of the Native American figures in Western movies over the past 60 years.
This work will perfectly fit into the LLCE ShineBright 1ere File on Modern Westerns as well as being a companion to work on The Searchers (LLCER, œuvres integrales).
Vocabulary and structures
- Family and life: relative, family, orphan, childhood, raise children, …
- Kidnapping: abduction, abductee, kidnap,
- Personality: kind-hearted, generous, peaceful, quiet, shy…
- Evolution: present perfect
- Past events: preterite, past perfect
- Opinion+ qualifying it: I reckon, to my mind, in my opinion, / to a certain extent, on the one hand, yet…
- Organising ideas: link words (cause, consequence), arguments…
Pronunciation
- names of the characters and Indian tribes
Copyright(s) :
Bruce Talamon/Netflix
Download resources :
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News of the World B1 plus Video-projectable Article
News of the World B1 plus Printable Article
News of the World B1 plus Worksheet
Tag(s) : "American Civil War" "cinema" "film" "German" "John Ford" "Native Americans" "Texas" "the American West" "The Searchers" "Tom Hanks" "U.S. culture" "western"