Autoria: Profa. Mariana Zeferino
Nível: B1/B2
- Exiba o trailer do filme 127 Hours e faça uma discussão sobre ele com a classe. Peça aos alunos para que respondam às seguintes perguntas:
- What is it about?
- What do you think the outcome was?
(fica a critério do(a) professor(a) realizar a atividade a seguir antes da apresentação do tópico gramatical ou depois dela.)
- Peça para os alunos formarem duplas, se possível, para a realização das atividades contida no handout disponibilizado no fim desta sequência didática
- Corrija os exercícios de interpretação e, no exercício de letra B do handout, pergunte aos alunos se eles conseguem identificar o nome dos tempos verbais em negrito no texto.
- Por fim, faça a discussão proposta sobre uma questão interpretativa do texto.
Handout
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Aron Ralston is the real-life mountaineer behind Danny Boyle’s film 127 Hours (2010), which tells how the climber found himself trapped alone in a canyon for six days. Before his notorious 2003 canyoneering accident and his true story was depicted in the Hollywood film, Aron Ralston was just an anonymous mechanical engineer from Denver with a passion for rock climbing. The year before his accident, Ralston quit his job as an engineer with Intel to climb all Colorado’s “fourteeners” – or mountains at least 14,000 feet tall, of which there are 59. He wanted to do them solo and in the winter – a deed that had never been recorded before. On April 25, 2003, Aron traveled to southeastern Utah to explore Canyonlands National Park. He slept in his truck that night, and in the next morning he rode his bicycle 15 miles to Bluejohn Canyon. He locked his bike and walked toward the canyon’s opening. Ralston was climbing the narrow canyons of Utah alone when a (1) dislodged (2) boulder fell on his right arm, trapping him against a rock. He was entombed in the wilderness of Bluejohn Canyon, carrying a small (3) rucksack with just one litre of water, two burritos and a few (4) chunks of chocolate. He had headphones and a video camera but no mobile phone – and there was no reception anyway. Most foolishly of all, he had not told anyone where he was going, and he didn’t have any way to signal for help. For six days Aron Ralston kept himself alive with fierce self-control. He (5) eked out his water, futilely chipping away at the 800lb rock and slowly entering a state of delirium. By the fifth day, Ralston had found “peace” in “the knowledge that I am going to die here, this is my grave”, he says. In the middle of his final night, hallucinating, he dreamt of himself, with only half his right arm, playing with a little boy. Finally, in the next morning, he flung himself against the boulder to break his own bones and then cut off his trapped arm, with the small, (6) blunt knife from his cheap multitool kit. In the canyon, Ralston calculated it would take him at least 10 hours to find medical help and he would bleed to death but, using pieces of climbing kit as a tourniquet, he strapped himself up and managed to scale a 65ft cliff to escape the canyon. He was found by three Dutch tourists, who had been hiking there. They gave him water and quickly alerted the authorities. Canyonlands officials had been alerted that Ralston was missing, and had been searching the area by helicopter, but it didn’t work, as he was trapped below the surface. Ralston is radically different today in his recognition that he depends on other people. The vision that he had during his final night in the canyon has come true: his wife gave birth to a baby boy. The tool that connected him to other people’s love was his camera. Ralston documented his experience in an autobiographical book entitled Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and in 2005 he became the first person to climb all 59 of Colorado’s “fourteeners” alone and in the snow.
Adapted from: https://allthatsinteresting.com/aron-ralston-127-hours-true-story; https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/dec/15/story-danny-boyles-127-hours
| 1- (Adj) Something that was removed from a fixed position 2- (Noun) A very large rock 3- (Noun) A bag that you can carry on your back 4- (Noun) Chunks of something are thick solid pieces of it 5- (Phrasal Verb) To use something slowly or carefully because you only have a small amount of it 6- (Adj) Something that is not sharp and therefore it is not able to cut |
- Read the article Between a Rock and a Hard Place and answer the questions:
- Why was Aron stuck in the canyon for so long?
- What did he have to do to get out of the canyon?
- What happened to him after the accident? Did he stop to climb mountains after the accident?
- Look at the verbs in bold in the article and match them with the uses i-iv
- A completed action that takes place before the main events in the story
- A background action in progress at the same time as the main events in the story happened
- A continuous activity that happens before the main events in the story and explains why the main events happen
- A completed action that tells you what happens at a specific time in the story; a main event
- Discuss:
- What do you think most helped Aron to survive?
- Have you ever been through a dangerous situation?