Czech with Humour

The main goal of the illustrated conversation guide, 'Czech with Humour', subtitled 'Czech Idioms, Proverbs and Weather Lore in Illustrations', is primarily to support the visual teaching of Czech as a foreign language. Thematically and formally, it follows on from the 'Czech with Pictures' guide and the collection of cartoons 'He Who Laughs, Understands', both by the same author. The publication contains 25 illustrated sheets that offer selected examples of common Czech idioms, proverbs, and weather lore through artistic shorthand. These are supplemented by adequate textual support in the form of 25 worksheets, all titled 'Questions and Tasks'. Here, one can purposefully choose from a wide range of exercises, questions, communicative tasks, discussion and game blocks, theatrical sketches, and so on. The worksheets are supplemented with lexical notes and often also short thematic poems that can be used for pronunciation practice, content analysis, or as inspiration for students' own similar attempts. It is possible to work with the guide selectively across a spectrum of language levels from A1 to B2. This collection of illustrations and textual appendices represents a linguo-didactic material that, through artistic and linguistic humour drawing from the rich treasury of Czech folk wisdom, can serve as a supplement to commonly used Czech textbooks for foreigners. It offers a natural, entertaining way to practise conversation while simultaneously reinforcing lexical and grammatical competence among various groups of foreign language speakers.