Ordering Lunch in Puli in English

 On Monday, Aug. 3, I was told the gig was on. Wednesday, at the McDonald's with elementary school students (up in the air since last week when the school wanted to change the day to Tuesday) and asked if he had any suggestions on what I should do. It gave me a chance to think out loud about this unique three-hour meeting at a fast food restaurant with other customers moving about. The school thinks it's cute, like I'm some Bozo the clown doing tricks at a birthday party. I cannot let the kids leave their seats. I will arrange teams of 4 randomly. When they are eating I won't talk with them. When I talk with them, they cannot eat. I will bring mini-white boards and markers. I'll start by introducing shapes and colors and have them point to things they see with those shapes and then make a list as I tell them the words for each item in English. After that we will have contests: First, I will introduce "word shapes" and give points to the team that identifies the word. Second, I say a shape and the contestant looks at his list and copies the item that is in that shape. Third, they made a sentence with the word I suggest. Fourth, I introduce prepositions of place and show relationships between two or more items and locations ("The hamburger is on the counter next to the soda.") and have another contest on the white boards. I will tell them to draw items (or shapes with a hamburger "ball" marker) with placement instructions. Finally, if they are up to it and there is time, I will do a time-order ingredients-recipe instruction for a Big Mac and other McD's items. I'll teach them the Big Mac song from the 70's and have they sing it, if it is appropriate and the manager doesn't mind. 

          On August 5, The agent is coming at 9:30 am to bring us on a magical mystery tour to an elementary school south of Taichung for three hours, maybe to a McDonald's, maybe to a school and McD's. The request for me to teach the kids to order in English is ridiculous; the counter-person won't understand them, even if they repeat what I tell them correctly. I will go prepared with a plan and mini-white boards and play it by ear. It’s a paid day trip for us. 

          The class at Puli Elementary School went very well yesterday. It began outside their classroom in a wide area where the sixteen children were sat, by their teacher, on the floor. The teacher had provided large color illustrations of items they could purchase at a fast food restaurant, though not necessarily at McDonalds. She had placed them on chairs to display and so I felt compelled to address the preparation and not proceed with my lesson plan beyond categorizing the food items into lists of large, medium, or small drinks, snacks, side orders, and main orders. I engaged the students in conversation about what they would like to order, and even some reported speech.  I played the Big Mac theme song from the '70's (two all-beef patties, special sauce, pickles, cheese, lettuce, onions, on a sesame seed bun) and had them sing along a few times before going into the ingredients of a McChicken and double cheeseburger. Each student was provided with a white board and a piece of paper to write notes on in addition to a four page script and Q&A bilingual dialog they had been prepping with. We went over the details, some of which was not relevant to McD's in Taiwan (for example, they could not 'pick up' napkins or sauce and ketchup from a condiment station)   and vocabulary. Before the end of the ninety minute briefing, the children could give an order to me in a role play I did at the desk as a counter.

           When it was time to go, the children were divided into four car pools and driven to the restaurant on the other side of Puli. It was a special event as many of them had not eaten in a western fast food restaurant in a while, if ever. The teacher had contacted the restaurant in advance and they had one counter-person who could understand English especially for their line. The children lined up and each ordered their meal. The teacher and I stood by to listen and help if there was a misunderstanding. The children did amazingly well.