Here is one of Anne’s from Jim:
Perezoso
Jeremy trabaja en McDonald’s y prepara las hamburguesas. El jefe le grita porque Jeremy es muy perezoso. Le dice, “¡Trabaja, Jeremy! ¡Qué perezoso eres!” Jeremy no trabaja. Come papas fritas. El jefe le grita, “¡Vete!”
La próxima semana Jeremy trabaja en DollWorld. Jeremy lava las muñecas. El jefe le grita, “¡Trabaja Jeremy, eres tan perezoso!” Jeremy no trabaja. Baila con las muñecas. El jefe lo despide a Jeremy.
Ahora Jeremy trabaja en La Casa Blanca. Limpia los zapatos del Presidente Obama. Pero Jeremy no trabaja. Mira su foto de John McCain y llora. Obama le dice casualmente, “Jeremy, tú eres muy perezoso.” Jeremy llora aún más por eso.
20 thoughts on “Lazy (Matava) – Spanish – Jim Tripp”
The “Bad Smells” part should not be in this… that’s a different story.
Sorry about the bad smells. I did that and then went to work. I’ll fix it tonight when I get home.
I did this story last year and all my classes loved it. They love and use “jefe” often! One of my heritage speakers hadn’t used the word “perezoso” for lazy before, so it was a new word for him (I can’t remember what word he uses for lazy, but I remember teaching the class his word for it-now I can’t even remember it!)
flojo?
I have a Salvadorian student who has never heard the word “perezoso” he says “huevon” …….big egg? Would this kind of be an equivalent to “couch potato”?
I remember hearing this word, I thought it was kind of like “dumbass”. Perhaps it’s not a bad word though.
En colombia dicen Hue’on
Huevón comes from the vulgar reference to a man’s testicles. If one owns big ones, it is hard to move very quickly. Huevón is not a term used in polite company ever (certainly not at school).
A kid who uses the word, huevón, may have never thought about where it comes from and may not mean anything vulgar by it. Depending on the family of the student, he/she may or may not know it is inappropriate for school. Providing another term like “perezozo/a”, “ocioso/a”, “no tiene ganas de” will expand her/his vocabulary nicely. 🙂
My Latino kids got me believing that Pollita was a fine name for a kid until Jody suggested in a private email that I not use it. This stuff can get real tricky. Thank you Jody or that kid would still be named that.
I’m lost…….it sucks not being a native speaker. They don’t teach you this stuff in college. I couldn’t even find “pollita” on Urban Dictionary.
Everybody should send in your two fave Matava stories. Mine are Afraid of the Package and Lazy. They are so easy to PQA! Whenever I present I use one of them. They are guaranteed to fly!
I’m going to be doing the package script this week. I’ve going to be observed by the principal on Monday and it seems like those structures can make for some powerful PQA.
Chris this link may prove helpful in your preparation:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/02/choosing-structures-is-important/
Thanks!
I have a question as I get ready for my observation. I think “receives a package” and “is afraid of” will be pretty easy to PQA, but…I need some suggestions on PQAing “wants to open it”.
What questions should I ask to begin PQA with this structure? I want to make sure I”m able to make the PQA as compelling as possible and even through lying and making things up “wants to open it” seems like it could be kind of tough. One idea I had was to have a box handy and ask students “do you want to open it?” and then circle that but I could see myself hitting a dead end without some advice from the PQA Master.
Chris you can just let go and rely on the flow of the other structures to get reps on wants to open it. And if the structure doesn’t get repeated for whatever reason THAT IS JUST FINE. We PQA what we can in our desire to get reps on the target structures.
My own students are way too wise to go for a prop during PQA. They are tough kids and the minute they see ME with a prop (it’s o.k. if THEY bring it), you can see them wanting to see if they can get me hanging out there with the prop, begging them to play. Yeah, rough school. I just play to my kids who want to play without a prop, and let the PQA on that come in the form of Extended PQA.
For example, as I remember when I did this story, the PQA would typically start out with something like:
Class, who received a package? (Theresa says she did)
Was it big or small? (small)
What color was it? (yellow)
Now look what happened. There is an imaginary package there. Everybody can see it because you just spent ten minutes talking about it, comparing its size and color to other packages that other kids who know how to play the game had in front of them. Theresa has a small yellow package in front of her. If you believe it, they believe it.
Now this is the time to go to wants to open it. Remember, you are in charge of which structure gets worked with when. Just because the structures are listed in a certain order in the story script doesn’t mean that you have to do them in that order. You do them in the sequence that generates the most natural order of PQA unfoldment. The logical sequence has shown itself to you here. You have so far:
1. asked if anyone received a package and used that in every question and statement for ten minutes or more.
2. asked Theresa if she wanted to open the one in front of her and used that open it structure in every question and statement for ten minutes or more.
Then just keep her and the others with packages in front of them from saying yes to your repeated questions of whether they wanted to open it. It would wreck your line of questioning and keep you from getting reps if she said yes. The others could say yes, but Theresa can’t. You do that by coaching her with your eyes to say “no” every time you ask if she wanted to open it, which sets up the big announcement 20 to 30 min. later that she didn’t open it bc she was afraid of it (you PQA’d each structure for at least 10 min.):
Class! Theresa didn’t want to open it! And then that has enough power in it for at least 10 more min. of PQA on that or with combinations of words.
Note also in this example that since we are making believe about something that happened in the past, the PQA is in the past, where often it is in the present tense.
You know that you are rockin’ it when you say stuff, toward the end of the PQA session, that includes two or even all of the three structures, like:
Class, Theresa received a small yellow package but she didn’t want to open it because she was afraid of it!
This is easily done in even a French 1 class. It’s not their level of study that determines if they can understand it or not, it’s how many times they have heard that particular structure, and, in fact, if you do 45 min. of reps on them, they will be so fresh in their minds that they can get those longer sentences, as long as you didn’t go out of bounds during the class and as long as you went slowly enough.
This is all predicated on repetitions and, in the case of these structures (they are all different), require, perhaps, the sequence suggested above.
It is also predicated on trust. If you think for one second that you can plan this stuff, you are wrong. I just made all of that stuff up there by just feeling as if I was with a class. It would be different another time. It’s different every time. That is the nature of PQA. Kind of reminds me about life, where each day is different. How wonderful that is!
I really like these suggestions. My mind starts to race to all of the possibilities. Really great–so helpful!
Very helpful! I understand that you can’t plan this stuff, but it’s always nice to see how you would do this, it kind of gives me a “standard” to go off of.
I did this same thing with the “surprise” script. Had some silly things in my bag and brought a cloth to wrap up these silly things. I’d wrap one up and then hand it to student and ask, “Do you want to open it?” Student replies, yes! And you can circle “who wanted to open it” etc. (The things I have in my bag are silly puddy, a pez reindeer, silly glasses and big nose, the infamous stuffed mono, etc.)
I’m having a heck of a time getting my head around using the matava scripts only because there are so many other words in them that students don’t know!