2. Here is an extract from the book The Cat That Ate My Gym Suit by Paula Danziger.
1) Look through the story and guess which line introduces the story.
• English class was not good. We worked hard and it was not fun at all.
• English class was really good. We worked hard, but it was fun.
• English class was good as usual. We didn't work hard and it was fun.
Certain things were always the same. Every Monday we had to hand in compositions. Wednesday we took our spelling tests, and then there were The Finney Friday Flicks'.
We could bring in popcorn while we watched the movies. After seeing the films, we discussed them.
Book-report times were great. Once we had to come to school as a character in the book that we had read - we were the characters not ourselves. Getting into small groups, we talked about who we were and what happened in our lives. Then we joined with the other groups and introduced one another. It seemed as if the characters from the books were real people.
Another time, after studying what propaganda is all about, we made up one-minute television commercials to 'sell' our books. We videotaped each one with the school's equipment, and after watching all of them we talked about what kinds of things were important, like plot, theme, time, place, and stuff like that. Then we each wrote a story and gave it to Ms Finney to be typed up. After that we illustrated them. She taught us how to bind them into books. When we finished, she tried to get school time off to use our books in a special project. But Stone wouldn't give it to us, so we met on a Saturday at our town hospital. We visited little kids who were sick, read our stories to them, and then left the books there so that the hospital would always have books for the kids to read. Some of the class even asked for and got permission to visit every Saturday.
Another time, we talked about humor, satire, and parody. We decided to write our own television show and called it Dr Sickbee at Your Service. It was the story of an orthodontist who moonlights in a rock band, lives next door to a weird family, has a younger sister who ran away to join the roller derby, and solves mysteries in his spare time. We put it on videotape and picked out the best of the book commercials to use with it, and some of the English teachers let their classes see it.
2) What is 'The Finney Friday Flicks'? Why is it called this way?
3) What school's equipment used in class is mentioned in the story?
4) Which appliances are not mentioned but meant by the author?
5) What were all the appliances used for?
6) What activities did the students use to do at the English classes? Which of them would you like to do? Why?
7) What other appliances do you know? Which of them do you think are most useful in learning English?
8) Where does the action take place - in Britain or in the USA? Explain which words helped you to make your choice. Write them in two columns.
1) Look through the story and guess which line introduces the story.
• English class was not good. We worked hard and it was not fun at all.
• English class was really good. We worked hard, but it was fun.
• English class was good as usual. We didn't work hard and it was fun.
Certain things were always the same. Every Monday we had to hand in compositions. Wednesday we took our spelling tests, and then there were The Finney Friday Flicks'.
We could bring in popcorn while we watched the movies. After seeing the films, we discussed them.
Book-report times were great. Once we had to come to school as a character in the book that we had read - we were the characters not ourselves. Getting into small groups, we talked about who we were and what happened in our lives. Then we joined with the other groups and introduced one another. It seemed as if the characters from the books were real people.
Another time, after studying what propaganda is all about, we made up one-minute television commercials to 'sell' our books. We videotaped each one with the school's equipment, and after watching all of them we talked about what kinds of things were important, like plot, theme, time, place, and stuff like that. Then we each wrote a story and gave it to Ms Finney to be typed up. After that we illustrated them. She taught us how to bind them into books. When we finished, she tried to get school time off to use our books in a special project. But Stone wouldn't give it to us, so we met on a Saturday at our town hospital. We visited little kids who were sick, read our stories to them, and then left the books there so that the hospital would always have books for the kids to read. Some of the class even asked for and got permission to visit every Saturday.
Another time, we talked about humor, satire, and parody. We decided to write our own television show and called it Dr Sickbee at Your Service. It was the story of an orthodontist who moonlights in a rock band, lives next door to a weird family, has a younger sister who ran away to join the roller derby, and solves mysteries in his spare time. We put it on videotape and picked out the best of the book commercials to use with it, and some of the English teachers let their classes see it.
2) What is 'The Finney Friday Flicks'? Why is it called this way?
3) What school's equipment used in class is mentioned in the story?
4) Which appliances are not mentioned but meant by the author?
5) What were all the appliances used for?
6) What activities did the students use to do at the English classes? Which of them would you like to do? Why?
7) What other appliances do you know? Which of them do you think are most useful in learning English?
8) Where does the action take place - in Britain or in the USA? Explain which words helped you to make your choice. Write them in two columns.