My last class on a Friday is a group of really bright 16-year-old high school students, who have a very high level of English. They are really into learning the language so teaching them is a breeze, because they will do anything I put on the table for them. Because they only come once a week, I try to encourage as much conversation as possible, to give them the opportunity to practice speaking.
Tonight we played a speaking game called '2 Truths & 1 Lie' where you tell the class three things about yourself, two of them are true, one is a lie, and everyone else has to guess which one is the lie. It works quite well because young people generally love talking about themselves!
Anyway, tonight one of my students was ten minutes late, and she came to class red-faced from running from the station. She sat down, and I quickly explained the activity, and we continued. When it was her turn to say 3 things, this is what she had to say:
'I am late tonight because I lost my wallet and had no money for a train ticket and had to go to my father's office.
'I am late tonight because I lost my house keys and it took me ten minutes to find them.
'I am late tonight because I was in the train, and when the train was coming to Kokubunji station, a man jumped in front of the train, and the train rode over him and he died, and we had to stop, and they could not open the doors, and everyone inside had to wait for ten minutes.'
I looked at her in shock and sort of laughed, thinking that maybe she was joking, or that she had a really wild and twisted imagination. I then looked around the room at the expression on the other students' faces, hoping to God that she was joking.
'Well,' I said to her with a nervous laugh, 'I hope that the lie is the 3rd one!'
'No,' she said, very matter of factly, shaking her pretty head... 'the lie is the story about the keys.'
'Oh my god...' I said, shocked, not quite sure what to say to her. 'The man really did jump into the train?'
'Yes! He did.'
'My god!' I said again, thinking that maybe she was a little upset or disturbed or traumatized by what she had just seen. 'Are you okay?'
'Oh no no, I am okay!' she says with a smile. 'I just don't like being late for class!'
1 comment:
oh my God! Culture shock! Thats right up there with this country in Africa where a bunch of girls were suffocated to death in their
boarding school when a bunch boys broke in to rape them. They ran into a corridor and locked themselves in and squished and suffocated themselves to death with all the screaming and lack of air. In a press release from the school,one of the teachers was quoted as saying how unfortunate it was that so many young girls had to die when "all the boys wanted to do was rape them!"
Sickening! Too bad that girl has become so hardened to the tragedy that is suicide. You sure are having an interesting time Yam! Now write some stuff about the boy!!!
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