Aufgabe NT 1 - Task 3.2 · Abitur NRW Englisch GK · Nachtermin · Weiterbildungskolleg 2023

Klausurteil A: Leseverstehen und Schreiben integriert

Klausurteil A

Glenn Dixon

Juliet’s Answer: One Man’s Search for Love and the Elusive Cure for Heartbreak

The following passage is taken from the memoirs of a teacher from Canada.

I taught Shakespeare to (mostly) compliant teenagers for more than twenty years. They had

a let’s-just-get-this-over-with attitude when we started, but almost always, within just a few

lines, they were hooked – especially with the play Romeo and Juliet – and that’s because I

told them right at the beginning, even before the first fight scene, there were some very

5 dirty jokes.

I wouldn’t tell them what they were, though I would slow my voice at line 26, raise my

eyebrows a little, and one or two of the students would catch on. I’d hear strangely chaste

giggles – caught before they could get too loud – and watch the other grade tens students

swivel, trying to understand what they had missed. After that, they were all sitting up

10 straight, listening intently.

I used to tell my students that Shakespeare planted these hooks on purpose – just as I was

now doing. In London in the late sixteenth century, everything south of the River Thames

was questionable territory. The taverns were there, and the bearbaiting pits, and – don’t

make me say this, kids – women of the night. Prostitutes. Many of the students would look

15 at me in horror. Funny, you’d expect teenagers to be more rebellious or at least coolly

nonchalant, but my experience was never that. They were strict moralists, almost all of

them.

The boys were the hardest to engage. But I had my ways. At the beginning of Romeo and

Juliet, there’s a street brawl between the Montagues and the Capulets. “Devin,” I called out.

20 Devin was a loud kid who sat midway back in the row nearest the door. In class discussions

he often took over, debating like a politician, though he looked like Woody the cowboy

from Toy Story.

“Devin,” I said again, “come on up here.”

Devin looked at me as if it were some sort of trick. His face was a sea of freckles, but he

25 was at that stage of adolescence when he thought he was much more grown-up than he

really was. He eyed me like a gunslinger. In a traditional classroom, as he well knew, the

front of the class was the teacher’s stage. The students were the audience, sitting passively

at their desks. I grabbed a wooden yardstick from the chalk gutter under the blackboard. I

hoisted it up and gave it a few swooshes through the air like a sword. “C’mon,” I said

30 again.

Devin approached warily. “Let’s do the fight scene,” I said, leveling the yardstick at him.

His eyes brightened. “Really?”

“Yeah, c’mon.”

I handed him my yardstick while a few sedate cheers rose from the other boys in class.

35 Then I hurled the insult that provokes the fight. “Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?”

“What?” Devin asked.

I picked up a ruler from my desk, considerably shorter than Devin’s yardstick. “I said, do

you bite your thumb at me, sir?”

Devin stood there, the yardstick hanging at his side.

40 “Say yes,” I stage-whispered.

“Yes?”

“Then have at ‘er.” I rushed forward with a thrust and the students broke into cheers and

laughter. We parried back and forth a few times, the wood of the rulers clicking and

clacking. Then I called out to Sadia.

45 Sadia sat in the front row. She wore a hijab, a headscarf. Her family had immigrated to

Canada when she was only a little girl. She was one of the brightest – and most unorthodox –

students in the class.

“Sadia, you’re the prince,” I said. “Prince Escalus.”

“The prince is a boy,” someone called out.

50 “Says who?” I barked back, holding up my ruler to deflect a blow from Devin. “Prince

Sadia, get up here and stop this fight. Quick!”

Sadia stood. She held her copy of Romeo and Juliet book in front of her with both hands

and in a faltering voice said, “Halt.”

Devin and I stopped.

55 “Um,” said Sadia, searching for the right lines. “Rebellious subjects,” she said, “Enemies to

peace … throw your mistempered weapons to the ground.”

“Mistempered,” someone snickered.

Devin dropped the yardstick. It clattered to the floor.

“Good,” I said. “Good,” I glanced up at the clock. “That’s about all the time we have

60 today,” I said.

“But what happens next?” asked Devin.

“Well, the bell’s about to go,” I said.

“Aw, c’mon, Mr. Dixon. Just give us a hint. What happens next?”

And that’s when I knew that I had them.

Annotations:

13 · bearbaiting pits – an area historically used to show bears fight with other animals

19 · the Montagues and the Capulets – the two rival families in Romeo and Juliet

22 · Toy Story – a computer-animated children’s film

26 · gunslinger – a person who is paid to kill people

28 · gutter – here: tray beneath the blackboard in a classroom

35 · to bite your thumb at sb. – here: symbolic gesture that could be interpreted as an invitation to violence

42 · have at ‘er (informal) – here: go for it

48 · Prince Escalus – character in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet

56 · mistempered – made with evil intent

3.2

While walking home, Devin reflects on his first English class about Shakespeare and on how Mr Dixon teaches. Write Devin's interior monologue. (Evaluation: re-creation of text) [14 Punkte]