Writing Obituaries

One of the fun parts of being an English teacher is making up tests and worksheets. At first it was stressful trying to figure out whether a question was good enough and how many points to ascribe to each, but now it's no probo, yo.

It's 1st term finals now, so I had to make an exam for my Active Communication class. In class we read random articles, answer questions for understanding, and discuss the ideas in them. One of the more recent ones was a series of obituaries and birth announcements. Students had to read them and guess what it was about. But what kind of test question can you make about obituaries? I wanted to get them to try writing one, but also didn't want to depress anyone by asking to write about the death of loved ones. So here's what I came up with:

"Kochi's [prefectural] character, Katsuo-ningen (fish human) is jealous of [Tokushima's prefectural character,] Sudachi-kun's (Mr. Small green lime fruit) popularity. Last weekend he kidnapped and drowned Sudachi-kun in the ocean. Write a short obiturary for Tokushima's favorite character, Sudachi-kun." (pictures included in question)

These are some of my favorite responses.

"We have a sad news. Our lovely character, Sudachi-kun, passed away. We'll have a funeral for him. Please come and share your sadness with us."

"Sudachi-kun is kindness itself, so he listened to Katsuo-ningen's complaints."

"Sudachi-kun had been worked in Tokushima for many years, but from today, he move to heaven. I wish he will be a good character in heaven."

"Sudachi-kun was flooded to Tokyo, and he happened to become popular around there. As a result he became much more popular than Katsuo-ningen because of his cutie looks."