Customer Reviews

Open Sesame: Understanding American English and Culture Through Folktales and Stories

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I've used Open Sesame for three wonderful trimesters in my ESL immigrant classes in Los Angeles and now in my EFL college classes in Japan. It is a wonderful course text to use to teach core vocabulary, idioms, reading skills, critical thinking, and especially American culture and allusions. My students are stimulated by the cultural questions and we have great discussions comparing and contrasting their folk stories and values with the ones in Open Sesame. The cassette tapes are great for them to study listening at home and in their cars. I must disagree with the reviewer from Germany that it is a supplemental text--it covers everything I need in my advanced EFL curriculum. By the way, the illustrations are charming.

Why use folktales and children's stories to teach American culture to both adults and children? How does knowing the Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears help new immigrants and international students develop practical vocabulary and understand our hectic 21st century lives? Why is the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz" matter today for English language learners and English teachers?

Author and ESL maven Planaria Price provides surprising and persuasive answers in this magical ESL/EFL textbook. By both retelling classic tales and showing how their themes pervade American culture, Price cajoles English students (and teachers) to become detectives to solve the puzzle of English vocabulary and American culture. Viewing each tale as a piece in a complex puzzle, Price systematically shows how folktales transmit language and culture in short reading selections and concise exercises. Each chapter includes reading, vocabulary, writing, and SPEAKING components as students explore folktales and relate the themes to their own contemporary lives.

Although written to fulfill both California curriculum for middle school English language learners,Open Sesame will delight and inform many English language learners. Personally, I would prefer to teach Open Sesame to American culture classes in high school, high intermediate ESL classes for international students, or community college ESL programs. It's worth noting that the author actually teaches folktales in her advanced ESL classes at Evans Adult School in Los Angeles. (Evans is the largest adult school in California, and Open Sesame speaks to and reflects the insights of students from across the globe.)
This fascinating book, however, is NOT for students who only want to "conquer" English to get a high TOEFL score although many vocabulary words do appear on the Academic Word List.

Price wants students to read, reflect, and search newspapers, magazines, TV shows, and movies for references to these classic stories. The goal is far more ambitious than just getting a score on a standardized exam; she wants her English students to UNDERSTAND American culture.

Let me quote from the introduction:
"Be as curious, hardworking, and observant as Ali Baba. Just say the words, "Open Sesame," and you will find not a dark, dangerous world of English, but a beautiful room full of the bright treasures of English and culture. These riches are for you to then bring home to your children and their children. And you will live happily ever after."

I heard the author give an energetic, fun, and illuminating presentation at 2010 TESOL convention last week. Although already a fan of Open Sesame and Eureka!: Discovering American English and Culture through Proverbs, Fables, Myths, and Legends, Price's presentation stunned and amazed me. She shared media clips that her students had compiled on fairy tales - from magazine covers and newspaper headlines to television ads and movie clips. The large audience of English teachers laughed, smiled. How did Price get so many adult students, often working long hours at low-pay jobs, to find so much material? She's a master teacher; Open Sesame and Eureka! clearly work.

Open Sesame captures your attention, awakens your imagination, and demonstrates the power of classic stories and beautiful language. So do yourself - and your students - a favor, and buy this wonderful, surprising book!

This book contains exerpts from famous folktales and stories in American Culture for ESL students. The exerpts are short and manageable for most intermediate to upper-intermediate students. At the end of each story, there are comprehension questions and vocabulary exercises to support the story- This book is a great supplementary tool for the classroom, or for students who are trying to understand the basis (and Background) of many American Metaphors and analogies. I was a bit disappointed by the book, because I was looking for a course book, and not a suplementary book.