Day: September 23, 2012

Tiktok is the clockwork man of Oz. I read all the Oz stories when I was younger – actually mostly as an adolescent rather than as a child – and they influenced me profoundly.

Recently, having finished Wind in the Willows in my story-reading section too quickly (relative to the assigned syllabus), I was forced to find some short text to function as filler for the class. I settled on something from Oz. Most of the Oz books are available online, even with original illustrations: there’s a collection of shorter Oz stories at the Project Gutenberg website.

So we’re reading “Tiktok and the Nome King,” a story of about 10 pages when you print out the HTML. The language in these original, un-bowdlerized versions is pretty challenging for a group of 5th and 6th grade Korean ESL kids, but they seem to find the story compelling enough, especially given the pictures, to plow through it. Tiktok was always one of my favorite Oz characters, and there’s something especially fascinating by this thoroughly futuristic clockwork man having been conceptualized 100 years ago (I believe this particular story is exactly 100 years old this year).

I have been trying to teach the kids how to write a coherent summary. Sort of approaching it as a paraphrasing exercise with subsequent condensing and shrinking. I think that paraphrasing is, in some ways, the single most important writing skill a teacher can impart, and goes to the core of what competency in a foreign language represents, too. Well, actually, not just in a foreign language – in fact, I’ve reached the conclusion that it’s actually easier to teach paraphrasing in ESL than in native-language language-arts classes – because the students have the ability to sort of do a “round trip translation” in their heads – they can translate from English to their native language and back again, retaining the sense or meaning of it. This is a mental processing tool not available to monolinguals. I’ll have more to say about this, later, sometime. It’s been on my mind a lot, lately.

What I’m listening to right now.

[Update 2017-06-02: Link rot repaired.]

America, “Tin Man.” It matches the above theme, and also fits in with the nostalgia kick that this weekend has been – old music and reading history books all weekend, as I battle this really annoying flu-like-thing that attacked me last week.

Lyrics:

Sometimes late when things are real and people share the gift of gab between themselves
Some are quick to take the bait and catch the perfect prize that waits among the shelves

But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
That he didn’t, didn’t already have
And Cause never was the reason for the evening
Or the tropic of Sir Galahad
So please believe in me

When I say I’m spinning round, round, round, round
Smoke glass stain bright color
Image going down, down, down, down
Soapsuds green like bubbles

Oh, Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
That he didn’t, didn’t already have
And Cause never was the reason for the evening
Or the tropic of Sir Galahad

So please believe in me
When I say I’m spinning round, round, round, round
Smoke glass stain bright color
Image going down, down, down, down
Soapsuds green like bubbles

No, Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
That he didn’t, didn’t already have
And Cause never was the reason for the evening
Or the tropic of Sir Galahad

So please believe in me