Topic 1

Fisherman Story

John is a fisherman. He did not catch many fish last week. He wants to catch more fish tomorrow, but he doesn’t think he can. He is not a very successful fisherman. It is the only job John has. He needs to catch two nets full of fish to pay his debt. He tried to do this last year and for 3 years before that, but he was not successful. John wanted to be a farmer, but he did not have the money to buy land...

His brother bought land last winter, but sold it to the neighbor when the economy crashed. John loves fishing, but longs to be more successful. When he felt down, he painted his boat, “Troubled Waters,” blue and shined it up. John asked his brother what he thought of the new look, but his brother just laughed and said, “You always fish for compliments.”

John did not have much energy, so he did not argue with his brother, but instead, he made more nets. He hoped to increase his catch the next day.

Other than the different tenses running throughout this story, I think the usage of idioms would be really confusing to ELLs.  For example, John was “feeling down” and his brother accused him of “fishing for compliments.”  An ELL would probably take such idioms very literally and be very confused as to why John felt below him or was trying to find compliments in the water.  It’s really important for language teachers to address idioms because they do appear frequently in written text and speech.  I do an idioms lesson with my third grade students each year because there are many idioms that they hear all the time, but have no idea what they mean.