Have you ever heard of the Quasi? This tribe follows a peculiar ritual when their chief moves to the eternal hunting grounds. 



It is only the shaman who is privy to the chief's dying words. The shaman then is obliged to communicate the chief's advice to the tribe. However, none of the actual words having spoken by the dying chief can be uttered until the mourning is over. (None, except for "grammar" words like "I," "the," "and," "for," "should," etc., without which it would be impossible to say anything.)



Should any tribesmember utter any of the chief's last "content" words the evil spirits from the other world will steal the soul of the passing leader, and terrible suffering will be brought upon the tribe.



Students' task: split into groups, and paraphrase  (=rewrite) the last words for the shaman so that he can communicate the message to the tribe safely. Students only get points for sentences/phrases that no one else thought of. (I heard this idea from a teacher of mine, Ildiko Lazar, who had also heard it from someone else. :)

the-chiefs-last-words-sentence-transformation-sentence-transformation-rephrasing-exercises_1304.doc

The Chief's Last Words (Sentence transformation)

the-chiefs-last-words-sentence-transformation

Have you ever heard of the Quasi? This tribe follows a peculiar ritual when their chief moves to the eternal hunting grounds. 



It is only the shaman who is…