Funny Things in China


We are working on descriptions in class.

I put the list of words (rough, hard, pointy, round etc.) on the board...the students copy the list and then we go through and make a list of things that can be described by that adjective.

One of the kids was on a roll...he had all the answers, until we got to pointy. After saying pen ('yes, Jerry a pen can be point'--that's me and my teacher voice), he said 'shit'.

Now the students often have problems pronouncing things, so if I'm struggling to understand I get them to spell it out. After a few seconds of getting more and more confused, Jerry spelled it out. "S--H--I---T). yeppers, that's shit alright.

What I don't understand is how shit is pointy.
I guess when you squat it into a trough with no water it might pile up...but that's a little too much for me.

Another shit related moment came when one of the students was presenting his poster. The poster had to have their English name and 5 things about them. Many of the students selected names on the first day and as I discovered later, spelled them completely different than they should.

Dorry became Dolly.
Jenny became Janny, while another became Jummy.

You really never know what you're going to get here. This really hit home when Tyler brought his poster to my nesk. In nice, neat printing this sweet little Chinese boy had called himself 'Turdy'. Why????????
Where do they hear these things.
I blame pinyin for it, since some of the letters used to create words for Chinese characters, do not match the pronounciation we have in English. These kids have got it hard!

Eventhough I fear for their language acquisition, I'm enjoying the funny moments along the way.