When one teaches foreign language, any method that encourages use of the second language is a good one. I pressed Joe's puppets into service, and they traveled to China with me. Above, two teachers in our training dramatize "The Owl and the Pussycat," Edward Lear's classic narrative poem about two mismatched animals who travel the world and find happiness in unlikely places. It's one of my favorites-- maybe I overidentify with the animal protagonists. Nowadays it is impossible to use this poem with American groups because of passages such as the following:
The owl looked up at the stars above
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely pussy, O pussy my love,
What a beautiful pussy you are, you are;
What a beautiful pussy you are."
For Chinese audiences, the term 'pussy' simply denotes 'feline', and we did not add to their fund of idioms in this particular case. The Lear piece featured Robert Cats, Joe's bobcat puppet, the spotted owl, Pearl the pig, and various sock puppets created by the teachers in our workshop.
Joe's best known puppet is the bayou bloodhound, Beauregard. When the Yangtze Late Edition
visited our classroom, the photographer was quite taken with this puppet. Accordingly, Beauregards face appeared on page 2 of the major Chinese newspaper. Congratulations, Beau!
2 comments:
Roz, when I thought this could not get any better it just do. HAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was laughing really hard when you said you did not expand on their knowledge of idioms. Ask Michelle how to say: "Oh, really?!" in Czech. ("Fakt jo?!"--very familiar pronunciation for you) You'll love it and I bet you will dedicate an entire blog entry to it.
It is like when Americans say: Life is peachy." It makes me cringe because in Czech "peachy" sounds almost like that one particular idiom you are describing in your blog--not a "cat"--of course :):)
Roz, when I thought this could not get any better it just do. HAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was laughing really hard when you said you did not expand on their knowledge of idioms. Ask Michelle how to say: "Oh, really?!" in Czech. ("Fakt jo?!"--very familiar pronunciation for you) You'll love it and I bet you will dedicate an entire blog entry to it.
It is like when Americans say: Life is peachy." It makes me cringe because in Czech "peachy" sounds almost like that one particular idiom you are describing in your blog--not a "cat"--of course :):)
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