Humanising Language Teaching
Year 1; Issue 7; November 1999

A new teacher was trying to make use of her psychology courses. She started her class by saying : “Everyone who thinks you're stupid, stand up!”

After a few seconds little Johnny stood up.

“D'you think you're stupid, Johnny ?” the teacher asked.

“No, Miss, but I hate to see you standing there all by yourself “

Little Johnny watched, fascinated, as his mother smoothed cold cream all over her face.

“Why do you do that, Mummy? he asked.

“To make myself beautiful “, his mother replied as she began removing the cream with a tissue.

“Giving up? “ he asked her.

The teacher could see that little Johnny was day-dreaming.

“Johnny, what are 2 and 4 and 28 and 44?”

Johnny snapped out of his day-dream:

“NBC, CBS, HBO and the Cartoon Network! “

At Sunday School they were doing the Creation story and Johnny heard how Eve was created from Adam's side.

Later that week Johnny's mother noticed him lying down as though he was ill and she asked:

“What's the matter with you?”

“I have a pain in the side., I think I'm going to have a wife “.

The Italian Carabinieri are renowned for their stupidity...

I was pruning my vines on a slope. Suddenly I saw a carabiniere jeep reversing up the hill.

“Hey, why are you going up the hill backwards?”

“Because we don't know if there is room to turn around at the top”

Half an hour later I saw them reversing down the hill .

I asked them why.

“Well, obviously, because there was plenty of room to turn at the top!”

“Have you heard the latest Hungarian joke?”

“Careful, I come from Hungary “

“That's all right. I'll tell it slowly!”

"Will you still love me when I'm old and feeble?"

"Of course I do, Darling!"

An old couple who had been married for more than 60 years decided to get divorced.

When asked why they had left it so late, the wife replied:

"Had to wait till all the children died!"

Brazilians love cracking jokes about Portugal; here's a nice one...

A Brazilian, on a visit to Lisbon, wants to buy an expensive book on Friday evening but does not have enough money on him. He asks the guy at the desk in his hotel:

“Will the shops close tomorrow?”

“No.”

Next day he found the bookshop shut. He went right back to the hotel:

“You told me the shops would not shut on Saturday”.

“Quite right. They shut on Friday night!”

“D'you know why God never did manage to get a job teaching at a University?”

“No.”

“Well, you see, he only ever wrote one book and he has always refused to submit anything to a refereed journal.

When his first two students did some autonomous learning, he simply threw them out of the class.

And really, after a lot of work early on, his recent production has been pretty thin.”