Sheriff
01-11-2007, 01:26 AM
Some girls can be a little weird about foreign guys - it's stupid, but it's also reality. A great way I found to diffuse it with my students is to get them to make some joke about it.
I first came up with the following when I had a student from Dubai, when we were discussing giving girls stupid names. Give the girl a name that's pretty unique to your country/language/culture, along with a bogus (or true, why not) explanation of what it means... You can do this in a couple of ways:
"You look like a Raghad to me. No no, don't worry, it means 'comfortable' in Arabic"
"I'm going to take you back to France with me, and you're going to be my wife. We're going to get married, have 1,000 children, change your name to 'Frommage' - that's French for cheese"
It's funny, it spikes attraction, and it makes a joke out of something that some girls see as a negative point, reframing it nicely.
-sheriff
I first came up with the following when I had a student from Dubai, when we were discussing giving girls stupid names. Give the girl a name that's pretty unique to your country/language/culture, along with a bogus (or true, why not) explanation of what it means... You can do this in a couple of ways:
"You look like a Raghad to me. No no, don't worry, it means 'comfortable' in Arabic"
"I'm going to take you back to France with me, and you're going to be my wife. We're going to get married, have 1,000 children, change your name to 'Frommage' - that's French for cheese"
It's funny, it spikes attraction, and it makes a joke out of something that some girls see as a negative point, reframing it nicely.
-sheriff