Well, it has come to this... my and my housemates spent an evening looking up rude words in the student dictionary. Yes, Yemen is that boring.
It all started when I found that I couldn't write a Story Quiz for the book assigned to my level 5A class. The reason that I couldn't make a story quiz was that the administration didn't bother making me a copy of the book. The book was "The Body" by Steven King, which the movie "Stand By Me" was based on.
We weren't actually reading the Steven King book, of course. We have these "Pengiun Readers" which are based off of more popular works. They are pretty terrible, as you might imagine. Think of the awful books that always come out after a popular movie which is a retelling by some hack who can't come up with their own plotline. These are like that but about ten times worse. Occasionally there is even a "book" that is based on a movie, and those are the most painful (especially when the movie was originally based on a book and pretty much everything good about the story is lost.)
I am not sure why they do this. There are plenty of great books that are written at my students level that don't need to be patronizingly rewritten. One of the reasons, I think, is that because these books are designed for adult learners they want to introduce more adult themes. Unfortunately, in a society where women aren't even allowed to use Tampons these "mature" themes are a inappropriate. Miriam had to teach the Penguin Reader version of "Seven" (that movie with Brad Pitt and whats-his-name) and the deadly sin of "lust" was a bit much for the class (and had been edited out pretty much to the point where no one knew what the hell was going on.) Currently, I am teaching a version of "the Breathing Method" by Steven King where the protagonist at one point pulls up a woman's skirt while laughing manically in front of a bunch of horrified onlookers as he goes to deliver the baby from a recently decapitated woman. Not exactly culturally sensitive stuff, here. And I am also teaching "The Body" where four boys... well, read on.
So anyway, since I was supposed to give a quiz on Saturday and still didn't have the book on Wednesday, the last day of class I was in a bit of a pickle. Since giving a quiz with just two questions reading "what is the title of the book?" and "how many kids are in the book?" was not an option, I grabbed a copy of the book while the students were on break and flipped through to figure out what I was going to do. At the back of the book was a bunch of "discussion questions" that included having the students look up different definitions as well as writing about why the characters made the choices that they did. Without reading through the questions fully, I assigned those questions in lieu of a quiz.
So, imagine my surprise when, the next Saturday as I sat down to mark the papers (still without a book) I realized with horror that one of the words that they were asked to look up was "pussy". My housemates found this really amusing and Becky decided to look up the word in the comprehensive Longman's dictionary that was handed out to all the students. The first definition that came up was "a cat", which was harmless enough. The second definition read something along the lines of "a cowardly person" which was word for word what the student whose paper I was holding had written. I thought I was in the clear but Becky went on to the third definition which read "a rude slang for a women's genitalia" and added helpfully in small caps "Do NOT use this word."
I groaned and wondered how I was going to explain in my next interview how it came to pass that I was fired from my last job for having my students look up rude words as a homework assignment. Meanwhile, Becky was intrigued by the "Do NOT use this word" and immediately started to see what other words in the dictionary held the same helpful advice. Only this word had this particular warning, plus another offensive word for a homosexual man. We were pretty impressed by the listings for f*ck, however. They not only spent a half page defining the word but they included many of the idioms associated with it and even provided examples ("These speakers are really f*cked up" and "After three years with John I was totally f*cked up.")
Sadly, this was the most entertainment that we've had in a week. It's pretty quiet around here during Ramadan.
It all started when I found that I couldn't write a Story Quiz for the book assigned to my level 5A class. The reason that I couldn't make a story quiz was that the administration didn't bother making me a copy of the book. The book was "The Body" by Steven King, which the movie "Stand By Me" was based on.
We weren't actually reading the Steven King book, of course. We have these "Pengiun Readers" which are based off of more popular works. They are pretty terrible, as you might imagine. Think of the awful books that always come out after a popular movie which is a retelling by some hack who can't come up with their own plotline. These are like that but about ten times worse. Occasionally there is even a "book" that is based on a movie, and those are the most painful (especially when the movie was originally based on a book and pretty much everything good about the story is lost.)
I am not sure why they do this. There are plenty of great books that are written at my students level that don't need to be patronizingly rewritten. One of the reasons, I think, is that because these books are designed for adult learners they want to introduce more adult themes. Unfortunately, in a society where women aren't even allowed to use Tampons these "mature" themes are a inappropriate. Miriam had to teach the Penguin Reader version of "Seven" (that movie with Brad Pitt and whats-his-name) and the deadly sin of "lust" was a bit much for the class (and had been edited out pretty much to the point where no one knew what the hell was going on.) Currently, I am teaching a version of "the Breathing Method" by Steven King where the protagonist at one point pulls up a woman's skirt while laughing manically in front of a bunch of horrified onlookers as he goes to deliver the baby from a recently decapitated woman. Not exactly culturally sensitive stuff, here. And I am also teaching "The Body" where four boys... well, read on.
So anyway, since I was supposed to give a quiz on Saturday and still didn't have the book on Wednesday, the last day of class I was in a bit of a pickle. Since giving a quiz with just two questions reading "what is the title of the book?" and "how many kids are in the book?" was not an option, I grabbed a copy of the book while the students were on break and flipped through to figure out what I was going to do. At the back of the book was a bunch of "discussion questions" that included having the students look up different definitions as well as writing about why the characters made the choices that they did. Without reading through the questions fully, I assigned those questions in lieu of a quiz.
So, imagine my surprise when, the next Saturday as I sat down to mark the papers (still without a book) I realized with horror that one of the words that they were asked to look up was "pussy". My housemates found this really amusing and Becky decided to look up the word in the comprehensive Longman's dictionary that was handed out to all the students. The first definition that came up was "a cat", which was harmless enough. The second definition read something along the lines of "a cowardly person" which was word for word what the student whose paper I was holding had written. I thought I was in the clear but Becky went on to the third definition which read "a rude slang for a women's genitalia" and added helpfully in small caps "Do NOT use this word."
I groaned and wondered how I was going to explain in my next interview how it came to pass that I was fired from my last job for having my students look up rude words as a homework assignment. Meanwhile, Becky was intrigued by the "Do NOT use this word" and immediately started to see what other words in the dictionary held the same helpful advice. Only this word had this particular warning, plus another offensive word for a homosexual man. We were pretty impressed by the listings for f*ck, however. They not only spent a half page defining the word but they included many of the idioms associated with it and even provided examples ("These speakers are really f*cked up" and "After three years with John I was totally f*cked up.")
Sadly, this was the most entertainment that we've had in a week. It's pretty quiet around here during Ramadan.
a very funny post!
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