Today I had my first years do a pretend interview. They had to form pairs and both partners had to be the interviewer and the interviewee. For the interviewee I asked them to think of a famous person and pretend they were him/her while answering the questions.
One of my less able students had the guts to do his interview in front of the class. After mixing a lot of Dutch into his English as the interviewer, he sat down in a chair to be the interviewee. He pretended to be Elvis. Even in his answers he kept mixing a lot of Dutch into his English, but he could not be deterred from the task at hand.
“What’s your favorite food?” his partner asked him then.
The pupil looked down at his feet, and lifted his right foot.
“My right one,” he said in clear English.
Everybody in the class was dead silent.
“Huh?” his partner the interviewer said.
“My right one,” Elvis repeated, a bit indignantly.
Then it started to dawn on everyone; Elvis apparently thought that the interviewer had asked him about his favorite foot.
I said, “your favorite food,” and gestured putting food into my mouth.
Then everyone got the joke and laughed. Elvis, by this time, was lying under the table clutching his chair while his body shook with laughter.
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