Come closer to understand what is there

Since getting here we’ve been doing some English conversation practice with a group of Central Asian teenagers who are aiming to nail the TOEFL like a scholarship piñata.

When we started with them last year, OBF and I would prepare a mini-presentation on an edifying topic each week and write on the board in different colored markers and ask them drool-provoking questions on things like early American political philosophy versus absolute monarchism. We kept whining to each other that they didn’t seem interested in what we were talking about, so we stopped trying so hard. By the end of the school year we were just looking for a reaction, so we’d do things like bring in pictures of Duchamp’s “The Fountain” and harvest the guffaws that someone could call a urinal ART. (You westerners so crazy!!!) The intellectual rigor rolled to a stop when one of our final sessions was devoted to discussing UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle while eating chocolate chip cookies.

In short, there will never be a major motion picture about two teachers who finally Reach Their Students by discussing iambic pentameter in rap lyrics, all set in Central Asia.

What’s been surprising to me is how awesome these kids are, and at such an awesome age, because I seem to recall the teenage years as being a real wincefest.  But watching these guys grow and change has totally awakened the cheek-pinching auntie inside me. And the urge to dip inside their wiggling, spring green minds and nudge them this way or that so they think more like me is irresistible.

One of my more slacker classes last year was having them fill in the dialogue for the peerless Qwantz dinosaur comic (premise: same panels, different day).  Tyrannosaurus sized thanks to Ryan North for allowing me to post some of my favorites:

Panel 1:  Hello guys! My name is Dingo I have a good mood!

2: Please talk to me!?!

3: I’m hate people! Dinasours have to be the leaders in the world!    Dino 2:  Bad boy you will pay for it!

4: OK!  Let’s be friends.  Dino 2: Please don’t bit me!  I will not do it anymore.  Please!  Oh I’m very happy.   Yes it’s a good idea!

5:  What a nice day?  Let’s go to the park to play something.   Dino 2: Yes!  OK let’s go!  I think it is a good idea

6:  Good bye my love see you tomorrow!   Your sincirely dinasour bye!

1: Oh, what is it? I need to come closer to understand what is there.

2: O-o-o-o! I found them.  Some people who I am going to eat.

3:  First of all, I will destroy their houses and then I will make “shashlyk” for me and my beautiful hungry wife.  Suisy, I got it.  Let’s have breakfast.

4:  It’s not enough for me.  It was just one family.  I want more John!!!    Little person:  HELP

5:  Don’t desturb me.  Close your mouth.  Why you always hungry?  Dino 2:  Because I am pregnant.  We’ll have a baby, darling!

6:  Ah!  You shoked me.  What the Hell you were waiting for?… Why didn’t you tell me before?

to be continued…

1:  Pizza Pizza who wants pizza?

2:  You!

3: I know you, you are the “monster pizza” company here is my territory get out of here or you’ll die like a trump.  Dino 2: Ha, You don’t know who my brother!  Sam, I’ve got a problem here!

4:  Oh, I didn’t expect that he has a real crazy brother.   Dino 2:  Stop!

5: Yo, you won the battle, but I’ll be back.  And I won’t be alone.  Dino 2:  Always yours

6:  You can’t see me but I can see you

1:  Ha! Ha! Ha! I am a cangsta.  My name is Snoop Dog.

2:  I want to eat somebody.

3: Hi baby I like you.  Dino 2:  Oh no you have broken my house

4:  AAA! Help me S.O.S.   Dino 2:  Stop, Stop.  I will kill you.  I am boy.

5:  Give me back my thinks… I am gangsta, I am gona tell my mam.   Dino 2: Get out until you are alive.

6:  mother help me he hurt me he took my thinks

This last one took a pathbreaking approach to the exercise:

Long time ago there lived two huge dinosaurs, big and small, mother and her son.

One day they were very hungry. They decided to catch some people and eat them.  Big mama moved to the village trying to find a delicious dinner.  Her bady didn’t want to make somebody die, he said “Mom please don’t do it they are alife.”

Mom didn’t want to hear those words, because she was really hungry.  Her son runed, trying to stop her.  “No mom stop, we should eat leaves or insects.”

She stoped and ate her baby.  She was happy and full.

Conclusion:  Don’t say needless word to hungry creature even mother.

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