Songs from the Soul: Stories from Around the World

Transcription

1 STAGE Songs from the Soul: Stories from Around the World Retold by Jennifer Bassett Introduction This ungraded summary is for the teacher s use only and should not be given to students. The Evening Train is set in a quiet Indian village where an old man called Keshto sells potato cakes to passengers from the evening train. Keshto s wife is dead and his grown-up son, Karthik, now wants to move to the city. Karthik plans to start a food stall with the help of a man that he knows. At the end of the story, Keshto learns that his son is talking to this man. starts to rain. Keshto understands that it is too late to stop his son With Sincere Intent is set in a hospital in New leaving the village and starting a new life. Zealand. Bill is lying in bed and he is chatting to his Complicity is narrated by a young girl called Emma wife who is visiting him. He tells her funny stories who lives in a dirty British mining village with her about another male patient. The man s family had a brother, Jimmy, and her parents. Her father has had an series of problems because they didn t know how to accident at the mine and he now stays at home. One do basic things at home without him. He asks his wife day, Jimmy and Emma go with their mother, Rose, to if she knows how to do things such as turn off the a farm. Rose takes a jug of cider for Dan, the farmer. electricity and water supply. She says yes and he She has been promised that she can exchange it for a seems comforted. He then goes on to explain that he chicken. Emma watches her mother catch a chicken doesn t have long to live and they hug each other. and sees how she behaves with the farmer. Her The Strange Child takes place in Nigeria. Linda mother obviously knows the man well. Does she have has been married to her husband, Emeka, for three a secret? years and they have a two-year-old son. She has often In the Malaysian story The Luck of Four, a large asked to meet Emeka s family but he has always and unhealthy man called Chai comes into a coffee- refused, saying that they have disowned him. In the shop belonging to his good friend Samy. Chai always end, she decides to go to his home village with their buys lottery tickets and Samy asks him for one. Chai son. She arrives at the family home and meets says he can have number four-four-four-four because it Emeka s father. To her extreme surprise, he explains is his own birth date. When Chai says the numbers, that Emeka died exactly three years ago in a car crash Samy remembers that four sounds like death in and he shows her his grave. Emeka s father looks at Chinese, but he doesn t say anything. Chai begins to the two-year-old boy and realizes that he looks exactly feel ill. He goes home and dies of a heart attack. That like Emeka at that age. He wonders what will happen night, Samy watches the lottery on TV and he suddenly to the strange boy. realizes that he has won with the ticket. Treason is the story of an Indian man who takes his Chinna and Muthu is set in an Indian village which pretty young daughter, Kanna, to visit her grandmother. hasn t had rain for a long time. Chinna is the young son The girl has never heard of this grandmother before of the village chief, who is going to sacrifice a goat the and she is reluctant to visit her. However, she trusts next day to ask the Gods for rain. That night, Chinna her father and goes along with him, even if he is hugs and talks to the goat, which he calls Muthu. In behaving rather strangely on that particular day. They the morning, the villagers come to the Chief s house arrive at the grandmother s huge and beautiful house, for the sacrifice but the goat has gone. They start to followed by a yellow butterfly. They go in and meet a shout angrily, but the Chief suddenly suggests that very rich woman, but she doesn t look like a they offer a big pumpkin to the Gods instead and this grandmother at all. It becomes clear that the young girl is accepted. Chinna isn t sure if his father knows that will be the woman s servant and the father is going to he s hidden the goat and he can t work out if he s leave her there. The girl doesn t say anything because angry or not. The story has a happy ending when it 1 Oxford university press

2 Retold by Jennifer Bassett she doesn t want her father to be angry. At the end, both the father and the yellow butterfly have gone. In The Deceivers, Gbenga is on a computer in a busy cyber café in Nigeria. He logs into an Internet chat room where he pretends to be Celia an American girl. He has pretended to be Celia before and has arranged to chat to an American man again called Mervyn. However, Gbenga is not just innocently chatting to Mervyn, he would like to cheat money out of him. During their online conversation, Mervyn suddenly hesitates when Celia (Gbenga) asks for his surname. Suddenly, a man on the opposite computer in the cyber café asks how to spell the surname Prescott. Gbenga tells him and then he is amazed to see Mervyn reply online that his surname is Prescott. The Nigerian man opposite is Mervyn! He is doing exactly the same thing as Gbenga they are both trying to get money by impersonating people in a chat room. Oxford university press

3 Pre-reading activity Crossword Read the clues and fill in the crossword Across: a café with a lot of computers where you can go on the Internet, send s, etc. 4 to quickly close and open one eye as a secret message to another person 5 an area of short grass in a park or a garden 6 soft wet earth 9 to move your head down and up again quickly; it means yes or hello 10 to be slow to speak because you are not sure what to say 1 very, very big; for example, an elephant or a mountain 14 an insect with big coloured wings; it flies from flower to flower Down: 1 a piece of jewellery to wear around your neck; sometimes it is gold or silver 3 a small area of water; for example, in a garden 6 a very big hole in the ground where people get coal, diamonds, gold, etc. 7 a substance that you use with water for washing 8 to laugh in a silly way because you are nervous or amused 11 to cry noisily when you feel very sad about something 1 a small, simple building with one room; it is often made of wood or metal 13 an informal word for a man Aim: To introduce key vocabulary and to encourage students to predict the contents of three of the stories. Time: minutes Organization: Give one copy of the worksheet to each group of students. Tell the students they are going to do a crossword to focus on key words that appear in the book. They have ten minutes to write in as many words as possible. After this, they can use the glossary to help them with the rest of the words. Go through the vocabulary as a class and deal with any remaining difficulty over meanings. Finally, ask students to turn to the following pages which have illustrations from three stories: p 9, p 33, p 35, p 38. Can they see any of the words from the crossword in the illustrations? What do they think the stories (Complicity, Treason and The Deceivers) might be about? Which story looks the most interesting? Why? Key: Across: cyber café, 4 wink, 5 lawn, 6 mud, 9 nod, 10 hesitate, 1 huge, 14 butterfly. Down: 1 necklace, 3 pond, 6 mine, 7 soap, 8 giggle, 11 sob, 1 hut, 13 guy. Illustrations: p 9 mud, giggle; p 33 lawn, pond, necklace, huge (house); p 35 butterfly; p 38 cyber café, guy. 3 Oxford university press photocopiable

4 While reading activity What will happen next? The Luck of Four Which of these things do you think will happen in the story? WILL MAY WON T YOUR OWN COMMENTS The kitchen-boy secretly takes the ticket. He thinks four-four-four-four will be very lucky. Chai becomes angry with Samy. He asks for his ticket back, but Samy says no. Chai goes home alone. He dies before he can watch the TV lottery show. Samy follows Chai home. Samy saves Chai s life and gives him back the ticket. Samy keeps the ticket. He learns from the TV that he has won the lottery. Chinna and Muthu Which of these things do you think will happen in the story? WILL MAY WON T YOUR OWN COMMENTS Chinna tries to take Muthu the goat away, but the angry villagers stop him. Chinna hides Muthu in a secret place. Chinna watches the sacrifice of Muthu. He tries to save the goat, but it dies. Chinna s father doesn t kill Muthu. He breaks a pumpkin for the Gods instead. There is no rain and the villagers become very angry with Chinna s father. It starts to rain again in the village. Where: The Luck of Four, page 1, when students have read up to the end of the final paragraph on that page. Chinna and Muthu, page 17, when students have read down to the bottom of the page. Aim: To encourage students to predict the development of the stories. Time: 0 minutes: 10 minutes for each story Organization: Stop the students reading at the points indicated above. Give one copy of the worksheet to each student or group of students. Ask them to fill in the table with their predictions. They can also add their own ideas. Conduct feedback on their ideas as a class to encourage them to justify their opinions. Ask them to discuss and decide what will happen. It is not important whether their predictions are correct or not. They should keep their worksheets to compare at the end with the real story and see whether their predictions were right. 4 Oxford university press photocopiable

5 After reading activity Letters from the characters Read the text below and decide which story each one is from and who wrote it. a It s OK. Please, don t worry about me. I ll be all right really. c And when he showed me the ground, I just looked and looked. I couldn t speak. b Life isn t the same now. I know I have a nice new aircon house, but I miss him a lot. e The guy is often in there. I don t know his real name, but he comes from here that s for sure. g Of course, I needed to think quickly. Everybody was looking at me. But then I suddenly saw something orange in the field and I had an idea. d Everything is going well I m starting to make money, but it s a lot of work. I ll try to come back next month. h I saw him wink at her and he stared a lot, too. I didn t like him at all, and I was happy to come home. f Sometimes I secretly run to the gate and try to look for you. i j Aim: To revise key aspects of the characters and the plots of the stories. Time: minutes Organization: Give one copy of the worksheet to each student or each group of students. Ask them to read each extract and decide which story the extract is from and who wrote them. Then ask them to write similar extracts for one of the other characters they can give these to other students to answer. Other possible characters could include: Keshto from The Evening Train, Mam, Father or Dan from Complicity, Chai or the kitchen-boy from The Luck of Four, Chinna or a villager from Chinna and Muthu, Bill from With Sincere Intent, Emeka or Emeka s father from The Strange Child, Pa or the grandmother from Treason, Mervyn from The Deceivers. Key: The letters are from: a Bill s wife from With Sincere Intent, b Samy from The Luck of Four; c Linda from The Strange Child; d Karthik from The Evening Train; e Gbenga from The Deceivers; f Kanna from Treason; g Nachiappa Gounder from Chinna and Muthu; h Emma (or Jimmy) from Complicity. 5 Oxford university press photocopiable