4.1 Introduction
4.2 Guidelines literature
4.3 Tasks for literature
4.4 Three poems
4.5 The Little Prince
4.6 Malamud's Black
4.7 Guidelines for films
4.8 Tasks for films
4.9 Guidelines songs
4.10 Stranger than you
4.11 Bibliography
4.5 Activities to explore Saint-Exupéry's
The Little Prince
Gerlind Vief-Schmidt
INTERCULTURAL LEARNING IN PLURICULTURAL CONTEXTS
Preliminary thoughts
The Little Prince, Le Petit Prince, Der Kleine
Prinz is a conte that may be dealt with at upper secondary
level. It turns out to be particularly suited for teaching in intercultural
teaching contexts because common cultural concepts can be discovered,
discussed and compared.
Teaching objectives
- Developing openness towards different ways of thinking, living and
looking at the world around us;
- Encouraging the capacity to tolerate different interpretations;
- Promoting reflection on different ways of perceiving the world;
- Reaching consensus on issues of common interest;
- Understanding one's own cultural heritage;
- Going beyond established patterns of interpreting and perceiving;
- Using the linguistic and cultural potential in the classroom.
Pre-reading activities
In order to raise awareness of learners from different backgrounds, attention
may be drawn to different representations of the Little Prince
in the different media: on book covers, in songs (Gilbert Bécaud
and others), on pre-euro French currency (the 50 Franc banknote, with
the Little Prince, the author, the globe, and the elephant in
the snake on it).
Questions to be discussed
- What meanings are attributed to princes (in real life, in music, in
folk tales, in sayings, etc.) in your culture?
- Describe the way the prince is dressed, his look, gestures, the colour
of his hair, etc., as he is represented on the various covers.
- Make a drawing or cartoon on the basis of your associations with the
word "prince" and present it to the class.
- Compare your associations with other prince-like figures. Find out
if they differ depending on their cultural background (the pop star
Prince, Die Prinzen, etc.).
While-reading activities
Phase 1: Awareness
raising. Different languages = different
cultures = different perceptions
Compare at least two versions of the Little Prince in two different
languages. Keep a personal reading diary of your thoughts, and note down
any differences in language use, representation of characters, animals
in the printed copies and in the version you find on the internet.
Phase 2: Travelling
the world
- Write down what you associate with "travel", "journey",
and "voyage" on individual cards. These are to be collected
and compared. (Travel as tourism-related, évasion, escape, Aufbruch,
taking off, versus encounter, return to a home country, and friendship,
relevant associations for foreign-born children.)
- The cards can then be redistributed (or simply exchanged with a partner)
to find out more about what these terms mean to different people in
the class.
Phase 3: Exploring
the universe
Discuss your answers to the questions below.
- The Little Prince takes off: Where does he travel?
- Why does he travel?
- Is he going to be confronted with difficulties /tests, etc.? Explain.
- Who does he encounter? Who are his interlocutors?
- Is there a kind of initiation?
- What's the basic message to the reader? Who transmits the message?
- Is there a kind of moral lesson being taught? What is it?
- How can you apply it to your "lebensweltliches Fremdverstehen"?
- How can you apply it to your gender role?
Phase 4: Encounters with
the rose in Saint Exupéry and
beyond
- Brainstorming about the rose to collect cross-cultural associations.
(Love and suffering, seduction and beauty, warmth, faithfulness, pride,
vanity, exquisiteness, thorns, dolcezza, la vita)
- Collect popular names from different cultures containing an element
related to the rose.
Turkish: Gülden (of the rose), composite names like Özgül,
Gülcan, Aishe, Aishegül,
English: Rose
French: Marie-Rose
German: Rosemarie, Annerose, Rosamunde, etc.
Other languages:
- Relate cross-cultural associations to scenes in the Little Prince.
Role play (For example, imagine how the Little Prince would tame the
fox in your culture and act it out.)
- Gender discourse in The Little Prince. Critical reflections
through research into adjectives,
verbs, speech patterns, and a comparison of translations. This is a
useful / linguistic, social, cognitive and emotional exercise when it
comes to awakening even conservative, angst-ridden girls and boys to
reflection on gender issues.
- Search on the internet. Try to find more literary pieces on the rose.
See if you can find similar patterns in: Edith Stein, Rainer Maria Rilke,
Umberto Eco, Pierre de Ronsard (Amours de Cassandre), Guillaume de Lorris
(Le Roman de la Rose).
- Find examples of the symbol of the rose in Antiquity, the Middle Ages,
the 20th century, both in religious and cultural representations.
- Write your own poem/short story, etc. on the rose.
Phase 5: Critical awareness
exercises/gender discourse and
cultural differences against the background of the
love story contained in The Little Prince.
Extracts from chapters 8 and 9, suited for discussion of communication
patterns, perception, gender roles and stereotypes.
Activities
Prince and Rose,
Oh yes, she was quite vain!
.. but she was so dazzling! |
Activités
Le Prince et la rose
Eh oui, Elle était très coquette!
.. mais elle était si émouvante! |
Communication
Humiliated at having let
herself be caught
She coughed two or three
times in order to put the
little prince in the wrong.
Then she made herself
cough again
in order to inflict a twinge
of remorse on the little prince. |
Façons de communiquer
Humiliée de s'être laissée
surprendre à préparer un
mensonge aussi naïf
.. elle avait toussé deux ou
trois fois, pour mettre le petit
prince dans son tort. Alors elle
avait forcé sa toux pour lui
infliger quand même des remords. |
A prince's perceptions
So the little prince, despite the goodwill of his love, had soon
come to mistrust her.
He had taken seriously certain inconsequential remarks and had grown
very unhappy.
I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions.
You must never listen to flowers. You must look at them and smell
them.
Flowers are so contradictory
|
La rose telle qu'elle est perçue
par le Petit prince
Ainsi le petit prince… avait vite douté d’elle.
.. avait pris au sérieux des mots sans importance.
J’aurais dû deviner sa tendresse derrère ses
pauvres ruses.
J’aurais dû ne pas l’écouter.. il ne faut
jamais écouter les fleurs.. il faut les regarder..
Les fleurs sont si contradictoires! |
Phase 6:
A Change in Perspective
Activities: writing, rewriting, role-plays, ping pong
Materials: the above extracts and further original texts
TASKS
Task 1 Write a portrait of an
idol of the opposite sex.
Task 2 Reverse roles: Have a
boy write/play the female/male
part.
Or: Have a girl write /play the female /male part.
In order to make your point, write dialogues in pair
work.
Task 3 Compare your texts.
Task 4 After reading the texts
in Phase 6, write your own
personal ending of the story.
Phase 7: Making
(cross-)cultural talk part of your teaching
Activities: Research, discussion, presentation
Rewriting, de-stereotyping, presentation
Task 1 Find and exchange information
about the various
ways of representing animals in drawings, paintings,
fables, fairy tales, songs, proverbs and sayings in
different cultures.
Task 2 Concentrate on animals
and their respective roles
- as described in Task 1.
- as represented in The Little Prince: the fox, the mutton,
the elephant, the snake.
- Find recurrent similar interpretations in different cultures.
- Find differences in interpretations.
- Find out whether and where animal life is represented at all /
is not represented or banned from visual art and why.
- Compare tales from different cultural backgrounds.
Task 3 and related tasks
Brainstorming with the help of role cards:
What do you associate with "cultural" animals such as
the wolf, the cat?
Find differences and similarities in perceptions of these animals;
Work on their usefulness in an environmental context; on their veneration
in various cultures in previous times and nowadays.
Reflect on why Saint Exupéry makes animals talk. Why are a
child and an animal the main interlocutors of the story? Find instances
from the cultural heritage of your country. Research into instances
of the author's dealing with non-respect of values during Saint Exupéry's
lifetime (Second World War, Fascism).
Start afresh writing de-stereotyping tales, poems, etc. about animals,
or extra terrestrial beings with or without a moral intention or message.
Post-reading activities
- Take off for a journey back or forward in time and change the structure
and/or message of the tale.
- Imagine you are a gender-wise enlightened prince or princess or just
a normal human being.
- Think of the 21st century. Make the love story come true.
- You may also imagine you return to your beloved after having attained
human experience and wisdom and understood the tale's message.
- You may sketch an encounter with a person from a different ethnic
background. Accept advice from fellow pupils/students.
- Write and act out your own story.
- Compare the ways you have gone about changes /what your messages are/
what you have changed and why your story might look more "natural".
- Read modern ethnic literature: What is to be gained from reading it?
(See the recommended titles in section 4.11.)
- Read and reflect on how you can reinterpret classics from an intercultural
perspective.
Bibliography :
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry : The Little Prince,
Translation : Richard Howard, Harcourt, Inc.,
San Diego, New York, London: 2000
Antoine de Saint /Exupéry : Le Petit Prince,
Ferdinand Schöningh : Paderborn 1991
Stefanie Bermanseder/Gerlind Vief-Schmidt : Sprachen
und Konnotationen, in : Sprachen in der Klasse, Praxis Deutsch,
Friedrich/Klett : Velber, 1999
Ansgar Nünnich: Fremdverstehen durch literarische
Texte: von der Theorie zur Praxis, in:
Der fremdsprachliche Unterricht Englisch, September: 2001
Raymond Rogé: Récits fantastiques,
Textes pour aujourd'hui, Librairie Larousse: Paris 1977
next chapter: 4.6 Malamud's
Black
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