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Friday, January 14, 2000

INTRODUCTION

Telling your friends

How many times have you had a conversation that began something like "Did you hear about that strange…."? It may have come from a story heard on the radio or seen on television. Or, perhaps even more often, it may have come from a newspaper story. What we read in the newspaper often becomes a topic of conversation. This week we are going to use some interesting and unusual newspaper stories from the Bangkok Post to carry on our own conversations — in English!

If you look through a typical issue of the Bangkok Post, you will see that many of the stories are very short — some as short as one paragraph. If you look more closely, you will see that some of them are not really "news". They are not "important" events that we need to know about. Instead, they are in the newspaper because they are unusual or amusing. These are the stories that often become the topic of a conversation. Here is an example:

Death notice doesn’t work

shocked reader An Australian machinist who wanted time off work to look for another job placed a notice in a newspaper announcing his father’s death.

But the bizarre quest for "bereavement leave" backfired when the father of 26-year-old Jason Miller complained to police that news of his death was premature, the Sydney Daily Telegraph said yesterday.

The newspaper said Miller wanted time off from his job at Newcastle Lampworks. So he paid A$16.80 (410 baht) for a death notice in the Newcastle Herald saying his father, Paul, would be a "much missed, father, grandfather and friend".

The next day his father met a friend who had seen the notice, and the ruse was discovered. Miller faces up to three months’ jail for the offence.

"I am alive and well but this thing has left me shaken," Miller’s father was quoted as saying.

bizarre	strange
bereavement leave	time off from a job because of a death in the family
backfired	had the opposite effect of the one intended
premature	happening before the normal time (in this case, the man had not died so there shouldn’t have been news about his death)

I think you will agree that this is an usual story. But how would you tell it to someone else? You wouldn’t use exactly the same words as the newspaper story because that is written English. And you probably wouldn’t use the same style either. The newspaper story puts the main idea right at the top. You would probably want to tell the story a little more slowly — something like this:

"I read a strange story yesterday. It happened in Australia. A 26-year-old man named Jason Miller wanted some time away from work, but since he didn’t have a good excuse – he wasn’t sick or anything like that – he decided to create one.

He paid a local newspaper about 400 baht for an announcement in the newspaper that his father, Paul, had died. The announcement was very sad, saying that Paul Miller would be a "much missed, father, grandfather and friend".

Jason was sure this would get him time off from work because in Australia they give workers what is known as "bereavement leave" when there is a death in the family.

It sounds bizarre – very strange – doesn’t it, but Jason must have thought he was clever. He wasn’t. The day after the announcement appeared in the newspaper, a friend of his father’s saw it and told him about it. The father immediately called the police.

It didn’t take them long to find out Jason was responsible for the announcement. Now he is in big trouble. In fact, he may go to jail for three months for his ruse – his dishonest plan.

Notice that my story is in spoken English although it is not exactly the way I would tell it to my friends. I made it a little easier to understand and I also tried to use a few of the new words from the story. Notice that I explained them, too, so that my listeners would understand.

This week’s stories

I have chosen six short stories for you to read. Your teacher may have you read them all, but it is more likely that you will be assigned to read one story and then tell that story to other members of your class who have read different stories. They, in turn, will tell you their stories. I have explained some of the vocabulary for you, but there are many words and phrases whose meanings you can easily guess by reading the stories.

OUR STORIES FROM THE BANGKOK POST

Dinner Pirate picks up the tab in prison
Amsterdam – For 20 years, he feasted for free. Now the man the Dutch have dubbed the Dinner Pirate will dine on prison food for three months.

A judge in the northern city of Leeuwarden jailed the felon diner, identified only as Albert B, 54, after he confessed on Monday to ordering meals and wine at restaurants, only to plead poverty when the bill came.

Police said the former bus driver with a taste for Chinese and Indian cuisine began his caper in the early 1980s, and that his police file is 33 pages thick. He was arrested after visiting one restaurant twice in two weeks.

The modus operandi never varied. When the bill arrived, he would tell the waiter: "You have a problem." – AP

pick up the tab to pay the bill

felon a person who commits a serious crime

caper an illegal activity

modus operandi (from Latin) a way of doing something

Late withdrawal confounds bandit
confused robber Dresden, Germany – A man who tried to rob a bank in the eastern city of Dresden fled empty-handed after being told the bank moved out of its old premises several days earlier. Police said the would-be bandit entered the offices wearing a mask and carrying a gun.

He appeared befuddled when things were not as he expected to find them, police said.

He was told by several people working there that the bank had moved out.

"He was completely amazed and then fled," a police spokesman said. – Reuters

befuddled very confused; confounded; amazed

Pensioner objects to his post mortem
shocked doctor Lyon, France – On his way to an autopsy, a French pensioner declared dead by police, groaned, woke up and then started screaming "Thieves!" as stunned medical staff pounced to give him a heart massage.

"Help! I’m being robbed. My papers, my money!" the man, in his 70s, screamed at doctors, police said yesterday.

He collapsed on Wednesday while running errands in his neighbourhood in Lyon.

Medics, unable to find a pulse, had declared him dead and were taking him to the morgue for an autopsy.

He was recovering from the ordeal at the Edouard Herriot hospital in Lyon, southeast France, and his life was not thought to be in danger. – AP

autopsy a medical operation on a dead body to find out the cause of death; post mortem

morgue a cold room where dead bodies are kept

pulse the beating of the heart, usu. felt by pressing on the wrist or side of the neck

Shopkeeper strikes a bargain with robber
London – An armed robber haggled with a liquor store owner over how much he should steal until he was hit on the head with a walking stick.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Joseph Infanti, armed with a knife, demanded £500 (30,400 baht) from Mohammed Shafiq at his shop in Sheffield, northern England.

Mr Shafiq replied: "I can’t afford that. How about £10 and a drink?"

Mr Infanti thought about it and suggested they compromise at £50.

Mr Shafiq was about to hand over some money when his wife appeared. As Mr Infanti turned to confront her, the trader hit him on the head with a brass-handled walking stick.

A dazed Infanti was later arrested and jailed for a year for robbery.

"I almost felt sorry for him," said Mr Shafiq after the trial. "It just wasn’t his day." – Reuters

haggled argued (often over the price of goods)

Y2K ‘cure’ in pills
Hong Kong – A woman forked out HK$120,000 (about 617,000 baht) to buy special stomach pills from conmen after they told her they could cure the millennium bug, police said.

The 43-year-old woman, who apparently did not know the millennium bug was a computer problem, handed over the money after the conmen convinced her she could make handsome profits by reselling them. – Reuters

millennium bug (Y2K bug) the problem some older computers and computer programs have in dealing with the year 2000, e.g., mistaking it for 1900

con to trick or deceive someone usu. to cheat them out of money

Bathtub captain in hot water
Copenhagen, Reuters — A drunken Dane set off a marine search-and rescue mission while playing with toy ships in his bathtub, it was reported yesterday.

The 52-year-old made repeated Maydays to the Maritime Sea Rescue Command as he piloted his toys, claiming he was master of a freighter with 12 crew in distress.

Giving a position west of the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm, he said his vessel was listing 45 degrees and that one of his crewman had been washed overboard in heavy seas.

After a 90-minute search, rescue authorities aboard two vessels found nothing but alerted police, who eventually traced the phone calls to the home of the bathtub mariner, who admitted the false alarm and faces fines and compensation claims of 10,000 krone (51,500 baht).

Mayday a call for help

in distress in trouble; in danger

listing leaning to one side

laughing readers Many short newspaper stories are chosen because they are unusual or amusing. Such stories often become the topics of conversations.

TEACHER'S NOTE

Like many other this term, this lesson is largely recycled. In this case, it comes from a lesson I wrote in September, 1997. Only the stories in the exercises are completely new. Thus, today’s lesson follows the "classic lessons" theme we have been following this term. Hopefully, you can build up your own set of classic lessons that you can use again and again to introduce your students to interesting and effective ways of reading the newspaper.

Introducing "information gap" activities

This week’s lesson is designed to help you to take better advantage of your Bangkok Post. Since our newspaper has at least 150 stories each day, it seems silly to continually design lessons in which the students all focus on a single story. Students appreciate a bit of variety and that is what this lesson will give them.

But there is a also a second benefit from the activity I have designed. It will introduce one of my favourite methods of organising a reading class.

Group work — especially in a large class — has one very well-known weakness. Once an assignment is given to the typical six-person group, two people work energetically, two others daydream as the fifth member sleeps. Since the group must generally turn in a single assignment, there is not much incentive for everyone to participate.

This problem is easy to avoid with this week’s activity because it is based on a phenomenon known as "information gap". Information gap occurs when each member of a group is responsible for different information — in this case, a different story. Since each member has information unknown to the others, he or she must participate for the activity to succeed.

Information gap lessons usually begin with students in groups. In this case there would be a minimum of six groups since there are six stories to cover. In a large class, however, you might want to have ten to keep the group size down. In the course of the lesson, new groups will be created. As you will see, that is how the information gap comes about.

Each group will be responsible for one story. Their job will be to understand the story well enough so that they can tell it to their friends from other groups in English. As I have pointed out in the student’s introduction, the students should definitely not just memorise their story and then tell it word-for-word as it appears on this page. They should put the story into their own words and try to make it sound as interesting as possible. I have illustrated this with an example story and you should go over it thoroughly with your class.

It is important that each group member learns to tell the story because the next step is to regroup your students (see diagram below) into new groups. Each member of the new group will have read a different story. The students then proceed to tell their own stories to the other group members.

Information gap activities start with the class separated into groups. Each group works with different information. Students are then regrouped into new groups with each member coming from a different initial group. They then share information to bridge the information gap.

Next week: Another information gap activity, this time using nature stories.

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•This lesson was prepared by Acharn Terry Fredrickson, BA Stanford, MA (TESL) University of Minnesota, Manager of the Educational Services Department at the Bangkok Post and general editor of this programme.

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