Hassan Illustrations

These are the original scans of the Hasson illustraions that I am working on for for EFL use. The difference between EFL and ESL is that if you are teaching English in an English Speaking country you are teaching ESL. If you are in a foreign country where they do not speek English then you are teaching EFL. Since we are teaching in the UAE, we are working with Emirati and so we are using pictures of Arabs. These scans are then colored and used to illlustrate texts for learning English.

I should add that the Hassan character and concept is the brainchld of Mimi, one of my co-workers.

The long gown that the men wear is called a candora or kandora (spellings vary and that is because they are just an attempt at phonetically reproducing the word in English) They wear a scarf called a getra or a saphra. The Emirati men tell me that when it is wrapped around the head this is a casual way to wear it. They sometimes wear the getra loose and it is held to the head by a black cord crown called an agale (ah gollee). The black gowns that the women wear are called abayahs and the head scarf is called a hajib. Some women, usually from an older generation, wear a gold mask on their face called the burgha which you can see in the picture of the middle woman of the three standing toghether. In other countries, the burgha is a long head scarf, but here it is the mask, usually golden in color, covering the nose, cheeks and the eyebrows. There is a television program broadcast out of Dubai called Freej or the old women that is a wonderful computer animated series that I wish I could get with English subtitles, but if you saw it you would notice that the old women are wearing these masks.

Anyway. These are some of the illustrations that I thought I would share with my friends and family who like to keep track of me and what I'm up to.