Filósofos

The Little piece of paper

Sometime ago, I remember in a small class of an English course that was offered by the city public library. If I close my eyes I can see the room, a small place with the wall made of brick, in the gymnasium. It was hot, obviously, in our city, in the middle of December, it is always like this. But this wouldn’t affect our class.
There were many students in the room, approximately twenty students, from various places and economic situations, from all ages, also shorting with me – the youngest – being sixteen years old until an old lady of ninety years old – the oldest. We had established respect towards each colleague, what had a power to transform a simple class in a unique moment.
The teacher was a very interesting person, because he was very intelligent and he knew all the current events of the world and brought it for us. In terms of methodology, he always tried to bring ludic things, like draws, films, music, texts, materials that would interest the students to practice English. But that time it was none of its things. In that class we would need just a little piece of paper.
Ok, there we go. We took the paper and the teacher asked us to hold it in front of our faces, after we hold more in front of ours mouths. So, he said: “Now we are going to speak the phoneme th, say thing!”, He used to speak everything in English for us get in use to the language. All the students laughed, but we tried to do. “Thing”, we said. He asked us to say “those” but moving the paper with the “wind” that was blown by the middle of our teeth. Many students could do it, but some couldn’t, so the teacher encouraged them, saying “Let’s go! You can do this! Let’s try again…Very good! Keep trying!”, I remember my friend doing the exercise, her teeth are a little bit inclined to the front, so this fact would hinder her pronunciation. However, my colleagues and me encouraged her too and, after trying one more time, she had succeeded.
This fact make me