poem 10 things i hate about you

The Ten Things I Hate About You - This 1999 movie is a twist on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. It could be used for teaching Shakespearean allusions, but the clip mainly focuses on a sonnet written by Kat, the movie’s “shrew.” The sonnet is a re-writing of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 141.” I use it to teach tone shift. Students first read the poem, and then they pick tone words to describe the attitude of the speaker. Students have to read closely to decide when the tone shifts in the poem. After reading the poem, students watch the clip. It is easy to recognize the tone shift in the clip because the students can see the speaker’s facial expressions and hear her voice. This clip useful for starting discussions on the difficulty of deciphering written tone vs spoken tone.