The Wit of Language Teachers

When confronted with the common question, “Teacher, how I can improve my vocabularies?” most of us language teachers would patiently explain the distinction between “knowing” a word and “using” a word. What we ask of our students is that, when they learn a new word, either intentionally or incidentally, they don’t stop at merely learning the meaning of the word but try to make a sentence with it. This is professionally known as “vocabulary learning strategies” – strategies for knowing as well as using a word.

And we're not only saying it either; we actually practice what we preach in our daily lives. I'm not sure if it's because language teachers are a unique group of people who just love playing with words; or if it's because we’ve been trained so well to use different ways to explain something that it has become a habit for most of us. What I do know is that, even if something doesn’t make sense, we language teachers elaborate to make something useful out of it anyhow -- just for a laugh.

A student in LS’s writing class produced this sentence: “Be on time. Everyone likes a punctuated person.” LS penciled the sentence in the Fox Paws – a collection of funny mistakes students made in the office. Later that day, the sentence generated some discussion.

BK: “A punctuated person….. that’s priceless.”
BC: “One must punctuate oneself to be liked.”
BK: “No, one must BE punctuated to be liked.”
BC: “….. ‘He was punctuated.’…… ‘Watch out! Don’t get punctuated!’…. It sounds painful somehow.”
BK: “How could one be punctuated?......... What can you punctuate on a person?....... Ha! a colon.”
BC: “Wouldn’t that make it a semicolon?”

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LS: “Would you say the word ‘Internet’ should always be capitalized?”
BK: “Yeah. I just corrected my students a couple of days ago.”
KC: “It’s capitalized ‘cause it’s treated as a proper noun, right?!”
BC: “Yeah, but nowadays I think it’s not so strict anymore, especially as the word becomes more of a every day word.”
BK: “Tell me about it. Those computer words are changing so quickly nowadays. It’s difficult to know what the rules are anymore.”
TW: “Like the word ‘email’ used to be hyphenated. Now I think it’s acceptable to use it as one word.”
KC: “Words like ‘google’ and ‘blog’ are used as verbs now, too.”
LS: “Yeah….. like ‘I googled myself.’”
BK: “Can one google oneself?”
At this point, TW was shaking uncontrollably with his head down to his chest. After a short moment of silence, we all burst out laughing. It sounded dirty somehow.

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Language teachers also have to practice extreme self-discipline similar to those guards outside of Buckingham Palace or at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Try as you may, they’re not gonna crack and start laughing. Though our students don’t deliberately try to crack us up (we wish they would), we have to try not to laugh at the mistakes they make in the classroom. The following are some examples of moments that leave teachers speechless.

T: What kind of job would you be good at doing?
S1: I think I’d be good at doing a soldier.
S2: Really? I think doing a soldier might be dangerous.

T: What are you going to do after this English course is finished?
S: I’m going to keep touching my classmates.

T: How is your best friend similar to you?
S: We’re both tempermental. Because we can’t control our temperature.

T: Did you have a good Moon Festival?
S: No.
T: Why not?
S: I hate the moon.

T: What have you been doing recently?
S: I’ve been doing teacher.
T: Really?
S: Yes.

T: Do you work out?
S: No. I work in.

T: Tell me about your house.
S: There’s only one thing I don’t like about my house. However I think my house is good and I also like to live.