Attracted by the lecture

I had a math teacher, who liked to talk about his past with funny stories. He said he had been a math teacher in the Air Force, where it was his duty to make sleepy young soldiers stay awake in a large lecture hall. One day, he came into the lecture hall and saw his class even sleepier and less attentive （专心的） than usual. He realised that something exciting would have to be done.

The classroom was very cold, and the blackboard was nailed （钉住） onto the

wall with old black iron nails. As time went by, these black nails stuck out （突出） but couldn’t be seen from the blackboard and he kept hitting them with his hands while erasing the board. He decided to put them to good use.

To draw the students’ attention, he went to the front of the hall, near one edge of

the board. Then, clearing his throat, he drew a coat hook（吊钩） right near one of the nails. He went to hang his coat and hat on the hook that he had drawn in chalk (really on the nail, of course). Then he went on to give that day’s lecture. He told us that the whole class had their eyes to the front of the room throughout the lecture. He didn’t know if they heard a single word he’d said, but at least they looked attentive.

At the end of the class, the lecturer would usually leave by a small door near the

blackboard, while the class would leave through the large doors at the back of the hall. When class was over, he took his coat and hat, erased the coat hook, and left through the small door and was followed by the whole class, lining up to go past the blackboard to see how he’d done it!

Try this: Read the passage carefully and answer the following question. What did the class do when class was over? Key:

They all left through the small door to see how the teacher had hung his coat and hat on the hook.