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Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 6; November 02
Creating a Joke
Work on nationality and gender stereotypes.
( Suitable for multinational classes)
by Claudette De Ville, English teacher, I.E.P.S.C.F.- Uccle, Belgium E-mail: clodeville@hotmail.com
Last year, as I was telling that joke to my students, I had the idea of a very simple follow-up and it happened to be even funnier than the joke itself.
Level: upper-intermediate to advanced
Materials: copy or copies of the joke
Time: 45-60 minutes
Focus: - listening
- writing
- speaking
- fun
Preparation: make copies of the joke so you can give one to each student.
Procedure
- Tell your students the joke below, or read it to them..
- Give a copy to each student.
- Ask the students in groups to create one paragraph. You may want to group the students by nationality. They invent what happens in the same context, to two men and one woman, or to two women and one man from their native countries.
(If it's not OK to ask them to work in groups of the same nationality, it's up to you to ask them to make groups according to another criteria, but be aware of everyone's possible touchiness.) - Each group reads out their own creation.
- Discussion about clichés.
Men and Women on their desert Islands….
On a group of beautiful deserted islands in the middle of nowhere, the following people are stranded...
Two Italian men and one Italian woman
Two French men and one French woman
Two German men and one German woman
Two Greek men and one Greek woman
Two English men and one English woman
Two Bulgarian men and one Bulgarian woman
Two American men and one American woman
Two Irish men and one Irish woman
One month later, on these absolutely stunning deserted islands in the middle of nowhere, the following changes have occurred:
The first Italian man killed the second one for the Italian woman.
The two French men and the French woman are living happily together in a "ménage a trois".
The two German men have a strict weekly schedule for alternating with the German woman.
The two Greek men are sleeping with each other and the Greek woman is cleaning and cooking for them.
The two English men are waiting for someone to introduce them to the English woman.
The two Bulgarian men took one look at the endless ocean and another look at the Bulgarian woman and started swimming.
The two American men are contemplating the virtues of suicide, as the American woman keeps on complaining about her body, the true nature of feminism, how she can do everything they can do, the necessity of fulfilment, the equal division of household chores, how sand and palm trees make her look fat, how her last boyfriend respected her opinion and treated her better than they do, how her relationship with her mother is improving, and how at least it's not raining and the taxes are low...
The two Irish men divided the island into North and South and set up a distillery. They do not remember if sex is in the picture because it gets sort of foggy after the first few litres of coconut whiskey. But they are satisfied because at least the English are not having any fun.