At the beginning of the semester my students described themselves- 'I am quiet and smart', 'I am funny, smart, and talkative', 'I am friendly and kind'. What there families were like- 'My mother is funny', My brother is rude and mean', 'My father is strict'. I also had them describe what they wanted their boy or girl friend to be like- 'I want my boyfriend to be tall, smart, funny, sexy, etc'. I had 3 boys use my example description of myself- one even flat out said 'teacher'. When I told one he was too young of a boy for me , he said 'I no boy! I man!'
A couple of weeks ago we had student presentations 'About yourself' and one student, (who's presentation was late, messy, unpracticed, and did not follow directions) ended his presentation with 'One more thing teacher- here is my phone number, call me, I lonely!'. Lucky for him it cracked me up and I gave him an extra .5 points. Which brought his score up to 1.5/5
Today I'm grading mid-terms (spring semester is March thru mid-June). The student ended his description of an action movie with- 'This movie is very good. You should see it. I take you. Romance! Please?'
Korean students are shy my ass!
More funniness- when the student wrote his cell number on the board, and after I stopped laughing, I turned to the 15/20 girls in the class and said, Hey ladies, there's his number- you should copy it down!' and they all said 'Ewwwwww, nooooooo, he's no no no!' and he looked at me and said, 'They have my number'- which brought on another chorus of 'no no no!'.
In another class, engineering, 23 male students/2 female, I have 2 male students who are obviously the 'football team' types. Good looking, good clothes, great hair. They sit on the side and sorta lounge. If they weren't so polite and didn't always do their work they might get on nerves. But they are and they do. And they're funny. In group activities they don't move- the other students come to them. They're always partners. So I turn to them and say,'Gentlemen- it's your turn' and the class ERUPTS with 'Nonononono NO- NOT gentlemen! No teacher- they not gentlemen!'. 'Why?', I ask them, 'Why do they say you're not gentlemen?' 'We are gentlemen!', they say.
'Why?' I ask the rest of the class. 'Because they so lovely', shouts one boy (I've tried to explain to them we don't usually use lovely' when describing men but they still use it, I did get them to stop using 'wide' and 'long' when describing people- I said 'wide means fat, long, um, just don't ask men how long they are!'. They got THAT), 'Handsome!', shouts another, 'Tall!' and choruses of 'RUDE BOYS'(Jamaican description!) The 2 'gentlemen' in question shrug and one holds up his hands in a 'What can I do' gesture. As the students left at the end of class one of the 2 girls whispered to me, 'Too cute, much trouble!' and shook her head sadly.
Just tell the little boys with a crush that you only like guys who have a full understanding of the english language. Might make your job easier, or at least you won't have to listen to "I ____." BTW, if a boy shouts, "Because they so lovely" maybe they don't need to know what we think of it. Though using wide and/or long in the same sentence might be a bit much.
ReplyDeleteedited to correct 'your' to 'you're'
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