Earlier this week I was teaching English in the dar chebab (Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, for "youth center"), where I do most of my volunteering as a Youth Development PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) here in Morocco. The small English class consisted mostly of girls, who had asked me to review dialogue which frequently is said when one goes shopping.
I gradually went through a brief conversation with them on the dry erase board between a shopkeeper and a customer, very similar to the one which one of the girls had showed me in her notebook. At one point in the exchange, I wrote that the shopper was indicating that she wanted some chicken. I had the storeowner reply by asking her how many chickens she wanted. At this point, the girls seemed to be visibly tired, bored or losing their motivation or focus. So the next sentence I wrote on the board was the customer saying, "I want eighty chickens." When the girls read this sentence, they smiled a little. Then I asked them if they knew why I had written that the shopper wanted eighty chickens. I explained to them that I had written that to make sure that they had been paying attention. Still, the girls seemed to be lagging a bit, so I next wrote on the board the shopkeeper responding to his patron, "You're crazy." Moroccans usually are amused when someone is accused of being loony, so it was another effective way of rousing them a bit, in an effort to help them to focus on the lesson.
I gradually went through a brief conversation with them on the dry erase board between a shopkeeper and a customer, very similar to the one which one of the girls had showed me in her notebook. At one point in the exchange, I wrote that the shopper was indicating that she wanted some chicken. I had the storeowner reply by asking her how many chickens she wanted. At this point, the girls seemed to be visibly tired, bored or losing their motivation or focus. So the next sentence I wrote on the board was the customer saying, "I want eighty chickens." When the girls read this sentence, they smiled a little. Then I asked them if they knew why I had written that the shopper wanted eighty chickens. I explained to them that I had written that to make sure that they had been paying attention. Still, the girls seemed to be lagging a bit, so I next wrote on the board the shopkeeper responding to his patron, "You're crazy." Moroccans usually are amused when someone is accused of being loony, so it was another effective way of rousing them a bit, in an effort to help them to focus on the lesson.
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