"Jenny" is the character depicted in the flash card with the phrase "put away your book"(sic). I taught at the Yamagata school last week and was quite surprised at the reaction to her I got from a class of four boys aged 8-10. I had them open their text books to a dialogue page which introduced the phrases "How old are you?" and "I'm seven years-old". The artwork depicted a birthday party for Jenny. The boys all reacted with protests like "I hate Jenny!", "I don't like Jenny", etc. I've never had any of the kids I teach at the Yonezawa school react like that so I was a bit befuddled.
Later on I came up with a possible explanation: boys that age don't always get along with girls. I'm guessing that the boys in question look at the "Jenny" character as being just like the girls they see at their regular schools. Thus the dislike for her. There could be other reasons but I can't seem to think of any right now.
There are a couple of positive things I can spin out of that situation: One, the boys obviously know the phrases "I don't like..." and "I hate...". So they certainly are learning English. Two, the people who worked on the "Let's Go" children's text books seem to have succeeded in creating a realistic multi-ethnic cast of characters...I just don't think they ever would have foreseen what I experienced....
Enjoy your pop rocks, sir.
15 years ago
2 comments:
Why don't you ask the boys after class in Japanese? You've got me curious now. I wonder whether they see a prissy girl doing what she is told (it is an imperative) and perhaps they are too macho-cool for that. Or might it be that girls and books and language aren't their natural metier; therefore, they resist Jenny, books & language per se? It would be interesting to listen to their reasons why.
Well... First, I wasn't about to let those kids know how much Japanese I speak. The problem is that if they know you can speak or understand the language then their use of English will drop. Second, since I was there as a substitute teacher, it's not something I'd be too worried about. I'll let their regular teacher deal with it. Who knows? Maybe he has the same opinion of Jenny. ;-)
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