16/06/11

Today’s lesson topic was question formation, so for the “motivation” activity at the beginning of the lesson, I told my students that they had 3 minutes to ask me any questions they wanted, without using the “wh-“ question words: who, what, where, when, why, or which. The first boy stood up and asked “are you married?” Everyone laughed and suddenly the ice was broken, you could see all of them thinking hard to formulate a question—they weren’t going to let this opportunity pass. I was asked if I had a boyfriend in America and like I always say here, I said yes. So another boy asked if I wanted a boyfriend here in Mozambique. I explained that I had one in America, and for me one was more than enough. Completely earnestly and seriously he insisted, “yes but what about here in Mozambique?” I was asked how old I am (I know “how” should have been included in the question words, but I didn’t want to complicate things) and so I finally admitted that I am about 2-4 years older than most of them. One student asked if I had been a teacher before coming here, and then he wanted to know if I thought teachers in America or Mozambique were better. One student asked when I would have kids and when I told them I didn’t want to, I think the collective response from the class was “eih?!” I explained that, should I decide to start a family, I would adopt children who were orphans. A couple students nodded at this, but I think most of them just thought it was a pretty weird idea.