Monday, June 1, 2009

Excuse me and Beach

I don't remember if I posted about the first incident or not, so I will explain it here (possibly again).

My last class on Friday is a group of 22 boys. There are some very strong English students in this class, but also some very very weak ones.

One Friday afternoon, I had already started class when a student opened the door and walked in. He stopped and looked at me and said "exercise" and then proceeded to his desk. I thought that was pretty weird, but started to continue with the lesson when the voices in the back of the room started getting louder and then they started laughing. With a quick explanation in Hungarian, the rest of the class started howling too. What was going on? Well, the student meant to say "excuse me" to me when he came in late, but confused the phrase with "exercise". I joined in the laughter and this has become a standing joke in our class. Whenever anyone comes in late, the whole class now says "exercise" along with the late student!

Well, this past Friday we were playing a vocabulary game at the board. One person from each of the two teams was at the board. I would define a word and the student who figured out the English word, wrote it on the board correctly and put down their marker first would win a point for their team.

The student who had said "exercise" for "excuse me" was at the board. I started, "A place by the water that people like to go to. Sometimes it is sandy and people lay in the sun..." The boys starting writing furiously on the board, whipped around and put their pens down. There on the board on one side was "beach" and on the other was "bitch". The roar of laughter from the class was so loud that I was afraid another teacher would come to the door to tell us to quiet down.

So, I am awaiting next Friday's class; what will it be? Will all the students be saying bitch or exercise?

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