Essay 3

Module Two
Section-A, Question #2
Question: Take the following story and rewrite it in as simple English as possible
Kevin Speck

Word Count: 1,209
Date: March 11, 2015.

Rewritten Story: The Plate of Mangoes

One evening the emperor and his wife, the empress, sat on a balcony. They looked at a river and ate mangoes.
The emperor sucked the juice out of each mango but he didn’t eat the skin. He took the big seed out of each mango. Then he wrapped the skin around the seed. He put all the skins and seeds on a plate that was in front of the empress.
After a while the emperor had sucked the juice out of many mangoes. A big pile of skins and seeds was on the plate that the emperor put in front of the empress.
The emperor’s advisor came onto the balcony. The advisor was a wise man who helped the emperor make decisions.
The emperor smiled, he wanted to play a joke on his advisor. “Look,” the emperor said to his advisor. “Do you see the big plate of mango skin and seeds in front of the empress? She must have eaten many mangoes. She is very greedy.”
The empress looked angry. She had not eaten the mangoes and she was not the greedy person. She looked at the emperor, but the advisor spoke first.
“It is because the empress saw how you eat. That is why she ate like that. You are a bad example,” the advisor said.
“I don’t understand?” the emperor said. “Do you mean that I’m greedy? Do you think that is why she was greedy too? But there is no food in front of me. There are no skins or seeds in front of me. However, there is a lot of skin and stones in front of the empress.”
“That's what I mean,” the advisor said. “The empress has eaten the mangoes in a polite way. She has not eaten the skin, or the seeds. But you have eaten everything. So, you are the greedy one.”
The advisor stopped talking and started laughing. He laughed with a loud and clear voice. The advisor had understood the joke the emperor tried to play on him.
The emperor smiled and slapped his leg. The emperor’s advisor had been smarter than the emperor again.

Notes about simplifying the above story

I chose to rewrite this story in a way that makes it suitable for students of English at an elementary level. There are usually two or less clauses in each sentence. Some issues I had when simplifying the story were context, filtering out unnecessary information, and changing indirect speech into direct speech.
Context:
The original story implies that the reader is aware of the context of the story. When people who are proficient in a language read a story that uses unnatural phrases or expressions, or which uses words from another language, they are usually aware of the context. If the story is from an earlier age or from another culture then the reader takes this into account when they choose to read the story. If the context is too unfamiliar to them, they will usually delve into additional background information that can quickly explain the context to them. For example, when native English speakers are introduced to Shakespeare’s plays in high school English classes, they are reading a story that uses unfamiliar English, expressions, and context. Shakespeare’s plays were produced in a time when what we call old English was the common language of the day, and they were produced as plays; they were meant to be seen and not read. However, when native English speakers today first encounter Shakespeare’s stories in English class they usually are instructed to read it, instead of seeing it as a play. They are often confused by the old English language and expressions used. Therefore the school English teacher’s job is to provide an adequate explanation of these additional points so the student understands the context. If I, a native English speaker, choose to read Aesop’s fables then I can quickly fill myself in with the necessary background information I need to understand the context of these stories through an additional source; Wikipedia for example. Likewise, when I read the original story for this essay question, I was unaware of what a begum, or a Birbal is. However, because I am a native English speaker it was easy for me to quickly find and understand this additional information and make myself aware of the context. By checking the meaning of these words I could quickly understand that a Birbal was a Brahmin advisor in the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar, and that a begum is a female royal. It is unreasonable to expect an ESL student to be able to find all the additional information they need to understand the context of the original story by themselves. Therefore when rewriting the story for ESL students the teacher needs to include the entire background context into the story itself. To keep the story easy to understand, the rewritten story needs to keep the terms for each person the same. The original story referred to the emperor as both the emperor and the Akbar. In my rewritten story the Birbal is only ever referred to as the advisor, the emperor is only ever referred to as the emperor and not both the emperor and Akbar. The empress is only referred to as the empress and not both the empress and the begum, as she is referred to in the story. This removes any need for the ESL student to understand the contextualized terms of Birbal and begum. It also makes it easy for them to understand that there are only three characters in the story.
Unnecessary Information: I decided other context specific terms, such as the name of the river, can be omitted because it doesn’t add anything to help an ESL student learn English or understand the story. ESL students lack the familiarity with a language that allows them to screen out what information is important and what is not. It is the job of the story rewriter to omit irrelevant information so the story only tells the core outline. Extra details can be left in if the story is intended to be read by more advanced ESL learners.
Identifying who is speaking. Indirect Vs direct speech: By clearly placing each speaker’s actions and words on a new line it helps the elementary ESL student to be clear in their mind who is doing what. This layout helps the reader subconsciously filter information to understand the story’s content more clearly. For the elementary ESL learner indirect speech is harder to understand. Therefore it was necessary for me to change some of the indirect speech into direct speech. By turning passive text into active text it helps make the story more readable.

Level suitability of this simplified story I tried to make this simplified story suitable for elementary learners of English. Certain words such as emperor, empress, and seeds would not normally be part of an elementary ESL student’s English vocabulary. However, the students understanding of this simplified story does not hinge on their comprehension of the unusual vocabulary words in the story. In this way the student can be introduced to new vocabulary words without becoming discouraged at their inability to understand the story outline.