This column is for self-study or classroom use and gives guided help with reading the wide variety of writing styles and topics that appear as feature articles in the Bangkok Post. The lessons include background information, skill-building practice and vocabulary explanations.
Crime doesn't pay
INTRODUCTION
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Today we're going to look at three short stories
taken from the new Mainly for Fun section of www.readbangkokpost.com
. Each of the stories is about people committing a crime that didn't
go the way they planned.
Stories like these often appear in the newspapers and can make for amusing
lesson fillers - maybe to use while you're waiting for late students,
or if you finish your planned class a few minutes early.
There are lots of things you can do with stories like these. Here are
some ideas.
1. Give students one minute to read article, then try and retell
the story to a classmate as accurately as possible.
2. Cut up the stories into paragraphs and separate them from their
headlines. Students then try and put the articles back together like
a jigsaw. The fastest team wins.
An alternative way to do this jigsaw activity is to give students
a paragraph or headline and have them find other students with excerpts
from the same story.
3. Divide the class into groups of three and give each group member
a different story. The students then draw a picture to depict what
happened in their article and show the other students. They then try
and guess what the story is about.
Activity
The three stories each have some words missing. Choose the right words
from the list to fill in the blanks.
Lens, cheque, pick-up, advice, reporters, steal, cocaine, burglary,
cash, ridiculous
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OUR STORY FROM THE BANGKOK POST
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Thieves withdraw after deposit fiasco
Kuala Lumpur - Steve Irwin, the quirky Malaysian thieves used a net and rope to haul a cash dispenser through a glass wall and down a flight of stairs, only to discover they had grabbed a (1) deposit machine by mistake.
The three robbers fled after realising the failure of their plan, in which they used a (2) truck and a lorry to yank the machine from its moorings, The Star newspaper said on Thursday.
Automated teller machines (ATMs) have recently been the focus of a spate of robberies or robbery attempts in Malaysia.
In one case, thieves loaded an ATM onto a truck but abandoned it about 5km away when they discovered it had no (3). REUTERS
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Boy George starts first day of sweeping
New York - Singer Boy George tried out a new look - a street sweeper's orange vest - as he reported for his first day of community service yesterday with the city's Department of Sanitation. It did not take long before he got into a confrontation with the media.
The one-time Culture Club singer, told by a judge that he must decide whether his court-ordered community service would be an "exercise in humiliation or in humility", was ordered to spend five days as a garbage worker after pleading guilty in March to false reporting of an incident.
As he went about his duties, the singer was swarmed by (4) and photographers while he stood on the median of a Lower East Side Street. He used his broom to sweep dust and leaves into the (5) of a video camera.
"You think you're better than me?" he yelled. "Go home. Let me do my community service. This is supposed to be making me humble. Let me do this," he said. "I just want to do my job."
The singer, born George O'Dowd, has struggled with drug problems for years. He called police with a bogus report of a (6) at his lower Manhattan apartment last October, and the responding officers found (7) inside. AP
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Mother's bad fortune
Hong Kong - The mother of a 10-year-old boy was fined HK$1,500 (7,200 baht) for stealing from a supermarket after taking a fortune teller's (8), a media report said yesterday. Unemployed Chan Chuifa, 38, claimed the fortune teller said her son would have health problems if she did not (9). But a magistrate said the claim was "(10)". He added: "Don't take any more groundless advice from the fortune tellers." Chan was caught with a bag of cherries, a bag of chicken wings and frozen pork, with a total value of HK$136.50. dpa
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Answers
1. cheque 2. pick-up 3. cash 4. reporters 5. lens
6. burglary 7. cocaine 8. advice 9. steal 10. ridiculous
Read our other instant lesson here.
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Last modified: September 8, 2006
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