It all started last night. Wednesday nights are usually Headway nights with my intermediate group of learners and we had just started Unit 12. This unit is entitled “Life’s Great Events” and begins
by looking at reported speech through a dialogue in which a woman gets
chatting to a rather smooth talking man at a wedding. It turns out later on that the
man has been economical with the truth on a few counts, and that’s where the
reported speech comes in: “But he said he was thirty! He told me he’d never been married!” etc.
Anyway, as is usually the case, this rather inconsequential scenario is illustrated by a large photograph of a wedding scene. However, the photograph does not appear to have anything to do with the three characters in the dialogue I have
just described. On first glance, it
looks like a typical course book photo peopled by smiling white teethed models
with inoffensive facial features. My learners and I looked at the picture and I elicited the usual vocabulary: bride, groom,
confetti etc. Then someone pointed out the eerie figures standing in the
cemetery, looking on. A youth with a
camera. A middle aged man so pale he is
almost transparent, standing among the
tomb stones and far removed from the rest of the party. And finally, a white clad woman in her
fifties, watching the wedding party with a most curious look of rage and bitterness.
If you have access to this book, please do look at it
closely so you will know I do not exaggerate. And then ask yourself: why? Is
this the work of an ambitious course book photographer with secret ambitions to
be the next Cartier Bresson? Or a disillusioned course book photographer who
has failed to get into film school and amuses himself by injecting subversive
elements into his photographs?
We may never know. I would, however, like to thank whoever
took this photograph for providing such excellent inspiration for tonight’s
lesson. My learners chose the five most
interesting people from it (the five people above, actually) and as a class we
wrote detailed character profiles for each one, and created a story around the
central relationships. Each learner
chose a character to write a dramatic monologue about, and we will continue
these monologues next week.
