American Tall Tales

Objective & content

Two friends talk about American tall tales, funny stories about impossible things that the storyteller always says are true. One tells the stories and the other asks questions: the lumberjacks who first told them around a fire in the evening; Paul Bunyan, a giant lumberjack, and Babe, the blue ox, whose deep footprints became lakes, says the story; the two giant statues of Paul and Babe, from 1937, that stand today in Bemidji, in Minnesota, a state with more than 10,000 lakes; and Pecos Bill from Texas, who grew up with a family of coyotes and rode a tornado like a horse. At the end, the friend who asks the questions tries a tall tale too, and it gets bigger and bigger. The stories are told in the past simple (carried, found, caught, rode), for learners to recognise rather than produce; what is true today is in the present simple (Babe is blue, an ox can pull very heavy things), with there are, can, was, questions (How many lakes are there in Minnesota?) and imperatives (tell me). Learners listen for the two heroes, the numbers and the difference between a story and a real fact.

Materials & prerequisites

• The episode in the app, with its quiz.
• Prerequisites: present simple, there is / there are, can, was and saying years and big numbers in English.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c3-child-and-imagination and imagination-tales-and-legends, so it fits cycle 3 (6e) and the 6e axis Imagination, tales and legends ("Imaginaire, contes et légendes"). It also fits the stories and legends topics of German Klasse 6 and 7. The episode targets CEFR A1+.