Kids say the darndest things. As an English instructor / educator person, I’ve always been discouraged to laugh at students or wrong answers presented in class, but sometimes students come up with the most ridiculous responses, you just can’t help but laugh.
Two weeks ago was the new Japanese school year. With this new school year came a trainload of new faces and names, and teaching at four different high schools, that’s a lot of new names. Last week, I was giving my routine self-introduction of who I am and where I come from. Just for kicks, I decided to quiz the students on their geography, (hey, got to put that degree to some use) asking them if they knew where Canada ranked on the top five largest countries according to landmass. They all knew Russia was first, Canada was second, and China third. When it came to the fourth, one student answered Africa, and before I could stop myself, a very audible but short lived laugh squired out of my mouth, and into the ears of the eager to please students, including the one brave enough to answer my question. Perhaps not a huge deal, but I do want to be careful, especially teaching in what must be one of the world’s shyest countries.
Last week a similar, shall we say incident, occurred. Tominaga Sensei, one of the English teachers, and I just began our new oral communication class with a grand total of eight students. Last year was about 27. Eight is actually a great number for doing a conversation class, so I have no complaints so far. One of the students is a bit slower in his English capabilities than the rest of the students, so some of the answers that he has come up with have been quite, shall we say unique, but have helped add a nice easy going element to the class. Tominaga Sensei and I were going over some basic English expressions and phrases, and Tominaga had asked this student how you might respond to “goodbye”. Rather than saying, “See you again” he replied, “See you forever.” This had all the students in an uproar of laughter.
Another student this morning was trying to describe himself to me for whatever reason. Rather than calling himself hansom, he chose the words, “hyper nice face.” I had to leave the class.
These kinds of mistakes don’t only occur with students, but also with teachers. Several months ago, one of the English teachers at my main high school wanted to ask me a personal question in front of the class. Rather than asking, “Can I touch on (or ask) a question about your private life?” He asked, “Can I touch your private area?” I had to find the nearest wall to support myself from falling over with laughter. All the students were looking at me like I was crazy! Sometimes I wonder.
I really feel the misuse of English words in Japan has become a subculture in itself. This is characteristic of the many signs, labels and warnings written in broken English placed throughout Japan. Part of me feels a tinge of frustration, “Why can’t they just get some native speakers and have them correct all this misused English?” But then I remember that basically all language is, is a way to communicate with one another. Even in Japans most broken English, it’s not too difficult to figure out what those signs and labels are telling you. I really try to convey this idea to my students. When it comes to conversation, the main thing is to communicate, even if tenses are used incorrectly, or a couple of words are misused. When students realize this, I think they begin to see how enjoyable it is to communicate in other languages. One student in the 11th grade and I had a pretty good broken conversation last week about hobbies and the like. The next day, Tominaga sensei came up to my desk and told me that this student was really excited to have been able to speak to me in English. So that’s encouraging.
