Mona Lisa Smile

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

• impact
• controversial
• reputation
• encourages

• enlightened
• inspire
• rigidly
• defined

• free-spirited
• novice
• trailer
• prestigious

• convinced
• check it out
• portrayed
• That's cool

• Academy Award

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

The new movie Mona Lisa Smile takes place in 1953, a time when women’s roles were rigidly defined. In the film, Julia Roberts plays Katherine Watson, a free-spirited, novice art history professor who begins teaching at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College. Despite having a very good reputation as a place to learn, Wellesley is actually a place where a student’s success is measured by whether or not she marries a good man.
Because she wants to change things, Watson encourages these women to strive for a more enlightened future. She inspires her students to look beyond the image of what is, and consider the possibilities of what could be.
Beth recently saw Mona Lisa Smile. Listen in to her conversation with Zach to hear what she has to say about it.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Zach

Beth

Zach:  Hey Beth, did you do anything fun this weekend?

Beth:  I did. I actually went and saw a really good film – Mona Lisa Smile. Have you heard about it?

Zach:  Yeah. I think so. I think I saw a trailer for it when I saw Elf, or something like that.

Beth:  That’s cool. This film was really interesting. It takes place at a New England college and it’s a women’s school, and what was really interesting is that there were all these art history themes and it’s all about, uh, young women becoming inspired by art.

Zach:  Oh, that sounds awesome. Yeah, I, I studied a little bit of art history when I was in college too. It sounds like a pretty cool, uh, topic.

Beth:  It was. The film takes place in the 50’s, so it was really interesting to see how they portrayed the, uh, modern, modern art and its impact on women in college.

Zach:  But I guess for modern art, that would have been modern art from the 50’s?

Beth:  Exactly. And it was totally cutting edge at the time, so it was a little controversial, and the women were, um, sort of inspired by it.

Zach:  Oh cool. I’ll check it out.

 

Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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