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Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
Pre-viewing tasks
1. What do you think the expression man against the system means?
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2. BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) was in trouble. Serious trouble. Four decades after the world's largest utility started dumping 370 million gallons of
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
cancer-causing chemicals into unlined ponds in Hinkley, California, the company's actions had finally been uncovered. Uncovered by Erin Brockovich (a formerly unemployed, single mother of three working in a California law firm) who wanted to know what medical records had to do with a real estate file. What she found out led to the biggest settlement on record for a civil class action lawsuit.
Many people and domestic animals in the high desert town of Hinkley, California were getting sick. Some had died. Since residents depended on the local groundwater supply for all
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
their needs, were the illnesses somehow related to PG&E's Gas Compressor Station located nearby?
On December 7, 1987 officials from the company advised the State of California they had detected levels of hexavalent chromium (chrome 6) in a groundwater monitoring well north of the compressor station's waste water ponds. The levels were ten times greater than the maximum amount allowed by law.
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
Known as a cancer-causing chemical since the 1920s, chrome 6 is especially dangerous to lungs. Since many of the Hinkley residents were reporting respiratory problems, a link to chrome 6 contamination seemed possible.
After PG&E reported the pollution to the government, company officials started a program to buy every piece of property in the community thought to be affected by the pollution. (That's what medical records had to do with real estate transactions.) It wasn't long before PG&E had 75% of those houses and buildings destroyed. The company reported it was merely responding to vandalism.
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
While-viewing task
1. Put the events in the right order.
Ο Erin gets a cheque for $ 2,000,000
Ο Erin meets a new boyfriend
Ο Erin gets a job as a legal assistant
Ο Erin starts looking into the medical records
Ο Erin starts investigations
Ο Erin looks for a job
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
Ο Erin and Ed seek help from outside Ο they win the trial in court
Ο Erin and Ed sue PG&E Ο interviews with peopleΟ town meeting
Ο meeting with a strange man
Post-viewing tasks
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
1. Match each character with the right photo and description.
George Erin Ed
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
a kind and smart lawyer; single-mom, smart woman; a nice biker
2. Who said what and to whom?
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
For the first time in my life, I got people respecting me. Please, don't ask me to give it up.
Ya know why everyone thinks that all lawyers are back stabbing, blood sucking scum bags? cause they are!
Like I was saying, I thought that the number you proposed was inappropriate, so I increased it.
What makes you think you can just walk in there and take whatever you want?
Wha... how did you do this?
Well, um, seeing as how I have no brains or legal expertise, and Ed here was losing all faith in the system, am I right?
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
Oh, yeah, completely. No faith, no faith...
In a law firm you may want to re-think your wardrobe a little.
NOT PERSONAL! That is my WORK, my SWEAT, and MY TIME AWAY FROM MY KIDS! IF THAT IS NOT PERSONAL, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS!
Let's be honest here. $20 million dollars is more money than these people have ever dreamed of.
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
By the way, we had that water brought in specially for you folks. Came from a well in Hinkley.
I think this meeting is over.
Damn right it is.
How many numbers you got?
You're a lawyer? NO, no... I hate lawyers. I only work for them.
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
This girl's about my age. Is she one of the people you're helping?
2. Fill in each gap with only one suitable word to make the story of ‘Erin Brockovich’.
Desperate for work, unskilled __________Brockovich (Julia Roberts), _______head of a single parent household, takes a relatively inconsequential job as a __________ assistant in a California law firm for low wages. While organizing some paperwork pertaining to real estate cases, she is puzzled when she notices ____________ records in one of the files. On a whim, she does a little ___________of her own, and comes to suspect that land purchased
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) is the same _____________ on which chromium contamination had resulted from PG&E's environmentally irresponsible actions.
Examination of local ____________records and __________with people ill from exposure to poisonous chromium confirm Erin's _______________, but pursuit of legal proceedings against PG&E would seem beyond the capabilities of the small law __________ of which she is a part. Still, Erin succeeds in making her boss, Ed Masry (Albert Finney), as passionate about the case___________ she is, and he takes it on. Both Ed and Erin must
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
make great sacrifices in their lives, as the _________costs spread Ed very thin, and the round-the-clock work makes Erin out of touch with both her __________and her kids.
Erin's kids resent the lack of __________they are receiving, and her attempts to explain the merits of what she is doing to her eldest son are futile..... But, one day her eldest son opts to read one of the many ____________ pertaining to the PG&E case. He reads of a child his own age who is very ill, and knowing that Erin's work will help this child, asks her why the child's mother cannot provide the needed help. When Erin explains that it is because the
Learning English Through Films
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000) Oscar Winner
Name: _____________________________ Date: _______
child's mother is very ___________, too, her son, for the first time, appreciates the nature and importance of Erin's work.
In the end, Erin's special ability to bond with the victims of chromium contamination and their _________and Ed's legal and administrative expertise are the key ingredients to making the case against PG&E. As a team, they manage to successfully lay the groundwork for the ___________of legal damages by PG&E to those harmed.
