Somewhere in Jakarta, there's a man--because it's usually a man--who works for Graha Pustaka, a prominent publisher of high school textbooks. One evening, our guy brought home a bulging folder from the office. Inside the folder was a draft of a new text for Class XI English students, meticulously organized and ready to be dropped at the press first thing in the morning.
Our executive set the folder down by the door, and didn't think twice about its security. But that was a fatal mistake because later that evening, while our man slipped off to the masjid for prayers, his three-year-old gleefully tottered upon the papers, made it rain like Fat Joe , and had just enough sense to stuff the mess back into the folder before his bapak returned home. Later, our publisher was so fatigued from work that he didn't consider examining the stack before heading to the press.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I believe my Class XIs' questionable English text came into being. How else could we find advice, warnings, grants and requests, storytelling, past continuous tense, gerunds, and advertisements all crammed into the same six week unit? The level of discontinuity alone is staggering.
Nevertheless, I think my counterpart and I struck gold amidst the panic these past few weeks. Remember those "choose your own adventure" books you loved when you were a kid? Well, we looked at this mess of a unit, and realized we could cover both storytelling (past tense) and giving advice through a storybook project.
The kids rocked the assignment, and turned in some pretty impressive projects. Spongebob, Shaun the Sheep, fairytale myths, polygamous relationships, a trip to the zoo... the topics ranged widely. If your game, I've digitized one for your reading pleasure. "Broken Heart" probably isn't the best project students turned in, but it is colorful and offers some insight into Indonesian values.
love it! what a good read :) those books used to really stress me out- too many decisions!
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