This is a funny story that has been going the rounds on Internet. I used it with a few students and they found it easy to understand and very funny. Humor can be difficult to translate, but everyone seems to like this story. “Get out of” and “get into” are high frequency phrasal verbs and there is a lot of built-in repetition in the story. I also found that it could be acted out for more fun and more repetitions. When I gave it to the students, I cut the text into three parts. First I gave the first column of the newspaper to a student and asked him to read it silently for comprehension. If he had any questions, I answered them. I had to explain to everyone what drawing a gun meant. I also explained that elderly was a polite way to say “old”. When the reader understood the text, he explained it to the others, using his own words. I then asked the students to act out the scene. I then gave the first column to everyone to read, while one student read the second part of the story, which I cut off after “five spaces farther down.” Once she understood “ignition”, she explained the text to the others. We mimed trying to start the car. Then I gave a third student the last bit to read and explain. My adult students didn’t know “pointed”, which my younger students learned long ago with TPRS. I also had to explain “senior moment”. We had a lot of fun with it. Breaking it up into three parts gave us more repetitions and made it work like three gags, one after another. They all went home with the complete text, once we had worked our way through the story.
