A tengerpart gyöngyszeme. A humor fővárosa. A legjobb város a világon. Odesszából hoztam ezeket a meséket.
Odesszában néhány éve három hónapot töltöttem. Sok emberrel találkoztam, beszélgettem. Olyat nem találtam, aki ne imádta volna városát.1
Egy nyelviskola megbízott a “Speaking Club” vezetésével. Haladó csoportokat bíztak rám. Ezek a felnőttek (akadtak köztük tizenévesek is, de az ottani kamaszok jóval érettebbek, felelősebbek a hazai átlagnál) angolul már beszélgetni is egész jól tudtak, bár többi tanáruk folyvást csak a nyelvtant magyarázgatta nekik oroszul.
Volt miről beszélgetnünk, de azért gyakran kitaláltunk egy-egy történetet is.2 Vagy egy felet, ha nem értünk a végére az óra végéig. Én csak kérdeztem (de rengeteget!), ők pedig adták a mese hozzávalóit.
Fantáziájukból így keletkeztek az alábbi történetek.
Az óránk vége felé mindig felírtam a táblára az egész szöveget, amivel addig elkészültünk. Azt lefotózva máris hazavihették magukkal.
A szövegek magukért beszélnek. Olvasgass és győződj meg róla, hogy
kacagva angolul tanulni haladó felnőtteknek is gyönyörűség –
nem csak gyerekeknek, kezdőknek.
Négy odesszai történet
Piszkáld meg a számot vagy a + jelet, hogy előugorjon a szöveg!
1. történet
The Talking Flowers
It happened on Dam Square in Amsterdam.
A young man called Sebastian worked in the family shop selling flowers. He was a sociable young man. He liked his work, he liked the customers, and he had a secret: he talked to the flowers in the shop. The flowers loved to be talked to and when he asked them a question they answered. Nobody knew about this.
Nobody but a girl who lived on the second floor of a house opposite the flower shop.
She sat by the window all the time. She never left her apartment. She stayed at home 24/7.
One day Sebastian left some flowers in the street. The girl saw everything. She saw the flowers in the street. She knew Sebastian had forgotten the flowers in the street.
Did she decide to go out?
Hát, a vége nyitott kérdés. Nem mindig jutunk el a befejezésig. Semmi baj! Maradhat így, vagy lehet folytatni máskor, akár másik csoporttal…
A további történetek haladóbb szinten keletkeztek.
2. történet
Fyodor Jack Tony
Fyodor Jack Tony was born in the year 2000. He left home when he was 16. He moved to the USA because he didn’t get on well with his parents. He thought his parents loved his younger sister Effie more than him. This is what his friends can tell you about him.
Last year he was in Rome and it was there that he met Victoria. She was on a history research tour in Rome. When she and her colleagues got tired of doing their scientific work underground, they went to a cafe. Victoria is a coffee addict. She needed more coffee than her colleagues. When they left, she stayed behind. There was this handsome strong guy sipping his coffee looking out of the window. He suddenly turned around and saw Victoria sipping her coffee. He liked her eyes and decided to start a conversation. “What are you doing in Rome?” he asked. “I’m doing work here because I’m training to be a professor of history. What about you?” she asked.
She learned that he had left his parents and little sister behind in Russia and moved to the States when he was 16. She also learned (because he told her) that he wanted all the girls to love him. That’s why he went to the gym three times a week. He is very tall, he has short white hair, green eyes, and an independent lifestyle.
Victoria called him Tony because he looked just like actor Tony Stonem. He didn’t object.
Last summer he went to Odessa because it’s the city of sunshine. He went to the gym there, too. It was there that he met Alexandra. She calls him Jack because when they met he introduced himself as Jack. Why did he do that? Only Ira knows the answer.
Ira met him in the library. She went there to get some documents that she needed in her job. She saw him reading a book about Odessa in English. She wanted to practice her English so she started to talk to him. She didn’t ask his name because she had already decided to call him Jack. He simply looked like a Jack. And he didn’t object.
THE END
Mivel az óra végéhez értünk, eddig tarthatott a mese. Legközelebb már egy másik történettel álltunk elő.
3. történet
Tolik – Part One
When Tolik was born in 1008 everybody thought he was a normal dragon. Like every ordinary dragon, he was able to change his colour like a chameleon. His parents were powerful: they were enormous and every other dragon in China was scared of them.
When Tolik turned three in 1011, they threw a huge birthday party for him. At the party his parents gave him a present. It was a human. His father told him he had to kill the human if he wanted to become an adult. (In those days, a young dragon in China came of age on his or her third birthday. But he or she had to kill a human. That was the ritual of coming of age.)
Tolik’s parents wanted him to kill the human. And they wanted him to eat human meat.
Tolik didn’t want to do what his parents wanted him to do. He said, “I won’t kill this human. I won’t eat the meat of humans. I love humans.”
The father was angry. He whispered (he had been singing too much and he had lost his voice), “If you don’t want to kill and eat humans, you’ll never be a strong dragon.”
“I’m sorry, father, but I can’t. I can’t do what you want me to do.”
“But you must,” his father tried to yell but he could only whisper (he had been singing too much at the party). “It is easy. I’ll show you.”
“I’m afraid,” Tolik wanted to say. And he wanted to add, “I’ve never killed a human,” but he had no time to speak. His father was cruel and ate the human alive right in front of his son Tolik.
Tolik was shocked. He turned pink. All his family were shocked. They had never seen Tolik wearing this colour. He had been changing his colour all the time but he had never turned pink before.
His father said, “I’ll count to three. At the count of three, you’ll turn a normal colour. Do you get it?”
Tolik understood but he couldn’t do it. He got stuck being pink. His father counted but nothing happened.
His father and mother showed him the door and whispered angrily in unison,
“Go away!”
He ran away. He still couldn’t fly because he was too young.
He ran and ran and got so tired that he couldn’t run any longer. He fell to the ground and fell asleep. He slept for a long time. He slept for 1,007 years. He woke up in 2018 when the ice melted.
He saw the world had changed. He didn’t see any dragons in the sky. He tried to fly but he couldn’t. His wings were untrained. He looked up to the sky and he saw only little birds in the sky. He was shocked. It was a terrible disappointment.
He didn’t know what to do.
He said to himself, “What shall I do?”
Az órának itt lett vége, de a történetet folytattuk a következőn:
4. történet
Tolik – Part Two
Do you remember Tolik the dragon? Here is what happened when he woke up after a long sleep of over one thousand years…
He woke up on January 1st, 2018. He was in the Carpathian Mountains. Of course, he didn’t know that. He looked down into the valley and saw a town. He saw a lot of houses and cars. The cars were moving. Tolik didn’t know what they were. He was astonished. He asked again, “Where am I?”
The animals and birds near him heard this and they were scared. All the animals hid in the forest. All the birds flew away, except one little sparrow. She wasn’t scared. She was not scared of Tolik. She answered his question, “You are in Ukraine.”
Tolik looked around. “Who is it?” The voice answered, “Look down. I’m at your feet, you silly pink lizard.”
He looked down slowly and saw a very little bird on the ground right in front of him. He asked, “What are you? What is your name?”
“I’m a sparrow, silly pink lizard. My name is Alehandra. You are so huge,” she went on. “I have never seen such a huge lizard with wings. What is your name?”
“I’m not a lizard. I’m a dragon. My name is Tolik. Please stop calling me silly pink lizard.”
“Okay, silly pink Tolik,” she said smiling.
Tolik snarled. He didn’t like the way she called him but he let it go.
“Can you introduce me to people?” he asked.
In the meantime, two people were walking on the top of the mountain and came to the place where Tolik was speaking to the bird. They were surprised to see Tolik because they had never seen a pink dragon before. Actually, they had never seen any dragons but they had heard stories about them. The stories were scary stories about dragons who killed humans and ate them. They panicked. “What shall we do?” they screamed.
Tolik wanted to reassure them there was nothing to be afraid of. He said, “Don’t be afraid. I will not hurt you.”
The two humans stopped. They hid behind some trees. They listened to him attentively. They understood what he said.
Tolik was surprised to realise that he could communicate with humans. He was excited – he had always wanted to communicate with humans.
The sparrow Alehandra was astonished to find that the huge pink lizard understood the language of the humans and that they understood him.
To Be Continued…
With credits to Roman, Anya, Evgenia, Olya, Victor, and Nataly
Az a mese itt befejezetlen maradt, de miután a fb-ra feltettem, egy kollégának annyira tetszett, hogy angoltanuló gyerkőcei egész sorozat különböző befejezést költöttek hozzá. De az már egy (azaz több!) más történet. 🙂
Mit gondolsz?
Ha angolórán ennyire fel lehet szabadítani az emberek fantáziáját, ha angol társalgás közepette ilyen különös történeteket képes alkotni a csoport, akkor vajon a mesébe ágyazott új szavakat, kifejezéseket, régi és új nyelvtant nem könnyebben képes-e a tanulók agya befogadni, megőrizni, majd aktívan is használni, mint ha drillezéssel, “gyakorlatokkal”, “feladatokkal” próbáljuk az angolt “beleverni”?
Azt talán mindezek után mondanom sem kell, hogy az ilyen kacagós, mesés, játékos, felszabadító tanulás mennyivel élvezetesebb a szokványos módszernél.
Csak arra kérlek, azon gondolkozz el:
Vajon mennyivel hatékonyabb így a tanulás? Mennyivel maradandóbb az így nyert tudás?
- Sopronban valamelyest hasonló a helyzet. Többek között ezért jó itt élni. ↩︎
- A TPRS / Storyasking módszerével, amellyel megismerkedhetsz ingyenes bemutató óráimon. ↩︎