On Valentine's Day in my ESL class, we made valentines. One of my classes got busy writing their cards (in English), and while they were writing, I read them a sappy romantic story out of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. During the story, I would slow down during the really cheesy lines, making sure they understood me. My class was enthralled! They are all 8th grade girls (4 of them... it's a small class), and there were times where they actually squealed at the romance in this cheesy story.
Then after the story, one of them told me all about how she and her friend and her friend's mom like to watch this one certain Spanish soap opera. There is a woman with amnesia whose husband married a beautiful-but-evil woman, and then the first woman came back, and it was so sad. She and her friend and her friend's mom were all sitting on the couch crying.
Then it finally hit me. If my students are so into these chick stories, so much even that Livier--who never speaks English if she doesn't have to--will tell me a whole story in English, I have to do something about it.
I came home and started writing ideas down for a cheesy high school love drama. And since I cannot for the life of me come up with interesting plots of my own, I am adapting the plot of Pride and Prejudice. It has been done many times before, and I really like some of them. So I will add to the genre of "wannabe Austen" authors.
My story right now is only a few pages long, and it's crap. Seriously, when I read stuff like this, I wonder how the world can go forward with crap like this being published as literature. Thankfully, it is my first draft, and I will revise it. :)
Thursday, February 21, 2008
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4 comments:
Hey, who cares if it's crap, as long as they read it in English!
I am all excited for you, finding something that gets them to speak English. Yay!
And way to go on writing! Whenever I try to write fiction it turns out crummy, so I stop -- way to persevere. :-)
Way to go! It's cool that you're taking on this writing project for them instead of just finding something else to read. And i really doubt most published writers' first efforts are much better than crap, anyway (um, especially romance writers....so many romance books are truly..yikes).
I'm so impressed by the extra effort you are making. I wouldn't make a very good teacher, I'm too lazy. Thanks for inspiring me to put more effort into life!
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