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Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 1; January 03
told by Ms Chau Thi Kim Laon
The little boy promises to get good marks at school and his father says he will punish him if he does not achieve this.
A month later the father asks to look at the boy's work: extremely bad marks!
With tears in his eyes the little boy says:
" Dad…. I didn't……I didn't keep my promise to you, so you… you don't have to . keep yours to me!"
told by Nguyen Kim Thanh
" How much is a coffin?" the man asked, " my father passed away last night."
" One million Dong," the undertaker told him.
After a pause for thought the man said:
" I am a very poor man, can you knock the price down?"
" Fine, yes, I'll give you a 100,000 Dong discount, but only if you buy two!"
told by Phue Cao Nguyen
The first boy says:
" My brother is better than yours at school".
" No he ain't!" retorts the second child.
" Anyway, my father's better than yours!"
" No, he ain't!"
" Ok, then, my mother's better than yours!"
" Yeah…. you're right," the second boy, " that's just what I heard my Dad say to your Mum!"
told by Nguyen Nam Dinh
One day he saw one or two white hairs as he looked in the mirror. A month later there seemed to be a lot more. From then on he got his young son to pull the white ones out.
One day he noticed the boy pulling black hairs out, as well as white ones.
" What the hell d'you think you're doing," he yelled.
" Prevention is better than cure, Dad!"
This man went on holiday to a Pacific island. He wanted to find out what the women here were like so he made friends with a particularly beautiful one.
" How much would you charge me to see you naked?"
" Twenty dollars."
" And if we make love?"
" Ten."
" How come?"
" Well, if you just look at me, all the pleasure is yours. If we make love we both enjoy it, so we share the cost!"
" Can you think of two words, which, between them, have way more than one hundred letters?"
" No idea."
" How about Post Office?"
The Michaels family owned a small farm just yards inside Canada. The other side of the border was the USA,…. North Dakota, to be precise. The Michaels' lands was the subject of a minor dispute between Ottawa and Washington.
It was Mrs Michael's 90th birthday and her son came into her room with a letter:
" I've finally got some news, Mom, the Canadian Government have come to an agreement with those people in Washington. They've decided that our land is really part of the United States. We have a right to approve or disapprove of the agreement. What do you think, Mom? "
"Jump at it! Call 'em right now! At my age, I don't think I can stand another of those Canadian winters!"
told by Jean Marie Aubert, Hainault, Belgium
Three women went for a job interview in UK. To check their knowledge of the language they were told to make up sentences in English using these colour words: GREEN, PINK, YELLOW.
The first to be tested was the Italian:
" I wake up and see the yellow sun and the green grass. I say to myself: ' I hope it will be a pink day' ".
The Spaniard was next:
" For breakfast I eat a yellow banana and a green pepper. In the evening I watch a Pink Panther film"
Last came the Frenchman:
" I wake up in ze morning, I 'ear ze telephone ' green… green ' I pink up ze receiver and I say 'yellow'? "
