Thursday, March 12, 2009

Her first kiss

I had spanish class at the Salon today. I decided it was a good time to try Cat and Rodolphe's new teaching method. The task was to use the imperative (?). We all sat in a circle and I put some things on the floor, then gave an order to one of my students. At the begining they had to give orders using those things, but then someone came out with a funny order and the rest of them started giving strange orders too. It was fun and they were all interested.
Among all the students, there's one girl whose spanish is really good. When I came to Shaoxing, she was given the task to show me the city and school. We've been specially close, I've had dinner at her grandparents house, she met my sister, etc. All the students know we are "friends" and so they gave her a very special order: she had to give me a kiss. Everyone laughed when she got this task, but it was me who laughed a lot when I discovered how difficult it was for her. It took her minutes to approach to my face and at the end she "kissed" the air around my ear. I told her that wasn't a kiss and so she had to do it again. This second kiss was just her mouth on my face, but not a kiss at all. She said I had to understand she has no experience on kissing. After class, she sent me an sms saying she will never forget this "kiss".
At the end of the class, someone had to give me an order, and, you guessed right, they order me to kiss one of the students, a boy. Of course, they all laughed when I did it, and the poor guy must still be very ashamed.
But, from the teacher point of view, I think this was a very effective and interesting way of teaching. I could see how difficult it is for chinese to kiss each other, they could see how not difficult it is for a latina to kiss a "stranger" and I don't think they will forget how to ask their boy and girlfriends: kiss me!

1 comment:

Rodolphe said...

Oooooooo.... What a decadent way of teaching!!!

This is not my method.
Rodolphe