My frustrations with the school system here are many. There is much I want to share before I leave. I just ran into this charming text from the 3eme (sophomore year) English as a Foreign Language Document. I've tried to deal with this text and students many time, and I can't help but laugh. I don't even understand much of the lingo. . .
Text:
If you’re a young person, you’re going to be faced with
something that can change your life. You’ll have to decide whether to do it or
not. And if others are around, it’ll be hard to “just say no.” If you say “yes”
and you’re lucky, the rush will last 20 minutes, so if you’re not so lucky, the
rush won’t stop. Your blood pressure could rise high. Your heart beat out of
control. You may have a heart attack. You could get a seizure, a stroke, or
lapse into a coma.
Or you may just stop breathing altogether. Cocaine is
extremely addictive. Maybe more so than heroin. If you smoke coke-as freebase
or crack – you could get hooked from the first hit.
Why? Every coke high is followed by a low. To bring yourself
back up, you do more coke. The highs don’t get any better, but the lows just
get worse. You become tired. Irritable. If you get hooked, you’ll plunge into
depression, even paranoia. You might even end up committing suicide.
Cocaine can alter brain chemistry until you prefer it over
everything – food – water – even sex. It
could also make you do things you wouldn’t normally do.
One woman sold her baby to buy coke. And a 14-year-old boy
killed his mother when she tried to stop his crack habit. It might sound
exaggerated. Unbelievable. You may even think it could never happen to you.
However, nearly 700 people died of cocaine abuse last year. Two to three (2-3)
million ar addcits. And all these victims have one thin in common. They didn’t
think anything would happen to them, either. With cocaine, you never know
whether you’ll get hooked or not. Or whether you’ll die or not. And no one in the
world can tell you. No doctor. No expert. But when you face that first line,
you may be hearing a lot of other things. Like coke’s a fantastic trip. Or that
everybody who’s somebody does it. You might even hear that it’ll make a man.
But now you know what cocaine can do to you. And if you really want to prove
you’re a man, you’ll make your own decisions.
Adapted from Parnership for a Drug-Free America
Document d’Accompagnement d’Anglais, 3eme, Benin
I'm working on a 6-page translation project right now, French-English, as a favor to a friend from Fréjus who's a professional sports journalist. Don't know the lingo? I feel your pain! His vocabulary is really fine-tuned, just like the bike he rides for a living that's worth six figures. I refer to ATILF for my online French dictionary. Where do you go for help with language research?
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