Tales from the Classroom, Vol. 18

Wow, time really does fly as one gets older.  I can't believe that it has been over five months since I last did a blog entry, and even longer since I wrote TFTC.  Well, to make up for lost time, I have a few great quotes from the past little while.  Just as a little warning, some of these stories are rated a bit PG, but they are great examples of life in the classroom.

A couple weeks ago, I went out for coffee with one of my former students.  I'll call her "Tami."  I taught her back in November 2006, and after two months at the school, she struck out on her own on her working holiday visa and got a job at a cafe.  She was there up until a few weeks ago, as she prepared to return to Japan.  In the sixteen months since she had left our school, her use of English had grown exponentially, and there was no lack of fluency in her.  Most stunning was her knowledge of vocabulary, in particular, idioms.

Well, on this day, she met up with me at the school, and as we stepped out the front door, I noticed several of our current students watching us as we left.  I gave Tami an apologetic look.  "They probably think that you're my wife."

"Nah," she replied.  "You're my sugar daddy."

I bought her a Tim Horton's ice cap to fulfil that statement!

On another day, some of the students in my Fluency class were congratulating one student on his recent steady relationship.  While the students were giving their best wishes, I playfully threw in a sarcastic remark:  "My condolences."

Of course, all the students wanted to know what it meant, so I explained the use of sarcasm, and that the comment was used in a humourous way to say, "I feel sorry for you" when someone enters a difficult situation.  Now, the student whom he was dating was in another of my classes, so I knew her well, and I quickly emphasized that in truth, she was a very nice girl and I wished them well.  But I wanted to use the opportunity to introduce a point in English.

Another student understood it too well.  Taking a cue from Disney Pixar's Ratatouille, he added, "Welcome to hell!"

Uh, yeah.

Sometimes great quotes don't just come from the students, but teachers.  We know all too well about mangling the English language and using the wrong words.  Our director had to step out one day to an appointment with a physiotherapist, and when someone asked where she was, another teacher replied, "She went to see her philanthropist."

Yes, she went to check on her charities...

On another occasion, one of my students showed me why her English has been steadily improving...she has a good memory.  One day, she revealed to me that she was anemic, and I suggested that maybe she didn't have enough iron in her blood, and that was probably why she was so tired.

Fast forward one week, and I was in class, but had a bit of a headache.  The student looked up at me, and in a perfect monotone, said, "Maybe you don't have enough iron in your blood."

But the winner of this post comes from one of my favourite Korean students.  "JJ" and I were talking over lunch one day about her internship at a bank, and how one day there was a party for the workers in a location quite far from the bank, so she went to one of her co-workers, a young man (this is important!), to ask for a lift to the party.  However, JJ still hasn't got her sentence subjects, verbs, and objects in the right pattern.  Instead of asking, "Could you give me a ride?", this was how it came out:

"Could you ride me?"

Class dismissed.