Working with a classical text and dictionaries
In Muhokamat ul-lug‘atayn (“Debate of the Two Languages”, 1499) Alisher Navoiy compares Turkic and Persian and shows the richness of Turkic. In the extract the author discusses the Persian equivalents of the Turkic words “yasanmoq” and “bezanmoq”, and says that “qabog‘”, the word for the area between eye and brow, has no Persian name. Navoiy supports his point with a couplet quoted from a “Masnaviy”. The second text is Aesop’s fable “The Fox and the Woodcutter”: the woodcutter hides the fox and tells the hunters “I did not see”, but points with his hand to the hiding place; the fox, because word and deed did not match, shows no gratitude. The moral: let your word agree with your deed.
Staging the fable: three pupils (fox, woodcutter, hunter) act it out briefly; the class draws the moral.