Pretty Bugs and Bank Robberies

Thursday was my fourth private lesson with Mrs. M and the Health Center group. You may recall that during the first lesson, Mrs. M frowned at me evily and refused to speak English. Well, since her act of defiance, the class has been absolute chaos. There are six people in the class, two of whom speak almost no English, so once Mrs. M gets them started, they chatter on in Japanese forever and go off on some pretty weird tangents. I try to get them back on track, but unfortunately they don't seem too interested in listening to me. The kids I teach are better behaved, I think. :(

Anyway, last week, the Health Center class wanted to know the difference between a pedicure and a manicure, so I explained that ped(i)- is a prefix which means foot. I then proceeded to give fascinating examples of this phenomenon, including the words pedestrian, biped, millipede, and centipede. At this point, Dr. S started talking about centipedes and the group broke out into a huge discussion which went something like this (except in Japanese.)

Dr. S: So centipedes are the poisonous ones, right?

Ryu: No, no, no. Millipedes are definitely poisonous.

Dr. S: But wait, centipedes are the ones with a thousand legs, right?

Mrs. M: Yes, yes, of course. Centipedes have a thousand legs.

Ryu: Wait, are you sure abou---

Dr. S: Hey, guess what? My dictionary says that mukade are a type of centipede.

Dr. O: Mukade?! How fascinating!!

Dr. S: Yes, you know, when I was in the mountains last weekend, I saw a bunch of them. And they can be red and yellow and green and....

Dr. O: Ah, mukade...I used to catch those when I was a boy and....

Ryu: Hey guys, I think that centipedes have a hundre --

Dr. S: ...beautiful creatures, mukade. Did I tell you that they can be red and yellow and....

Me: Ahem, uh, guys?? Guys? (waving my hands weakly as they ignore me) So as I was saying, ped- means foot and....

At the end of this particular lesson, I was beginning to wonder why they even pay me, since I spent the majority of the lesson listening to them speak Japanese. So this week, I decided to make some changes.

I figured that to keep all six of them on the same page, I would need a lesson plan with a more rigid structure -- something where they would be forced to zip it and listen to each other. So I made a little game for them. I told them that there had been a bank robbery and that they were suspects. Then I gave each of them a script and interrogated them about their whereabouts on the night of the crime. Although I wrote their scripts in very simple English, I wasn't sure if they would understand well enough to actually solve the mystery, so I was a little nervous that I would get a bunch of blank stares and end up having to explain the whole thing in Japanese.

Fortunately, they all seemed to get a big kick of the whole mystery scenario, and actually sat quietly and listened to each other. Then after the interrogations, I asked them questions in English about each person's alibi. I had intended the criminal to be pretty obvious, but they talked about the suspects for quite a long time and even came up with a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories. (Of course Dr. S and Dr. O were both seen in the Denny's at 7 PM, but what if the waiters at Denny's were in on the crime too??)

All in all, they appeared to enjoy themselves and actually spoke English for the most of the lesson, so I guess my little experiment worked. Sweet. :D

The score after four lessons: Health Center Class 3, Me 1, with 48 lessons remaining. Geez, if I can think up enough scenarios to last until the end of the year, I can make my own Hardy Boys series or something.