Folktales: 'The Son of the Turtle Spirit'

Folktales are popular everywhere. They have lived for ages despite any culture around the world, passed from generation to generation to create bondage with traditional values. In the past, folktales were told orally but today, they are transmitted in a printed version and also shown electronically on screen. Many of us today grow up listening to folktales sometime during our childhood. I remember the most the folktale cartoon entitled ‘The Seven Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor’ played on the TV when I was still young. The adventures story about the young sailor Sinbad amused me the most!

‘The son of the turtle spirit’ is an interesting tales of the Chinese culture. It is about the human- spirit relationship likewise to the folktale screened in cinema last year ‘the Sorcerer and the White Snake’. ‘The son of the turtle spirit’ is a story with supernatural element where it is about a turtle that lives in a pond; manifest himself a human at night to yield the girl that it is fond of which at the end, killed when its identity was revealed. As usual, folktales always have moralistic values in the story line. One of the moral values found in the story is to be a filial person. The son of the turtle spirit seeks permission from his mother when he decided to help the rich man to succeed his plan and he followed all the instructions given by his mother.

Folktales teaching in a classroom will be of so much fun. Teacher can ask the student to share with their classmates the folktales that they have heard before. Besides that, teacher can discuss about the moral values found in the story or to ask about the students’ reflections on the story. Such a happening and interactive learning process will strengthen the students’ ability to do impromptu speech and at the same time cultivating the spirit of sharing among the students. Apart from listening to the sharing by the students, the teacher can also expose the students to a wider variety of folktales around the world by giving some examples of folktales such as ‘Tokoyo and the Sea Monster’ (Japanese folktale) and ‘How water lilies began’ (England folktale) or ‘The Rain God’s Daughter’ (African folktale).