Cultural exchange like whoa

Earlier this week, I taught my students how to FLOSS.

We were doing a lesson on daily routines. I talked about how it is quite common for Americans to brush their teeth in the middle of the day, after lunch. And that some Americans even floss after lunch. I asked the class if anyone brushed their teeth or flossed after lunch, knowing full well the answer would be No.

Then I asked the class if they ever flossed. They all shook their heads and said No. One student, Lisa, said, "Chinese people don't floss!" I asked her why that is. She said, "Nobody has ever taught us! So we don't know how to. I want to floss! But I can't because I don't know how."

So during the break, I got some floss and some mirrors, and I taught them how to floss. I don't think they enjoyed it. One of my students, Allan, started bleeding (I warned them that might happen the first time!) One of my students even explained that she didn't floss because she thought flossing created gaps between your teeth. I argued flossing doesn't create the gaps, flossing just removes the tartar so that you can actually see the gaps clearly.

esl learners say the darndest things

Correcting student homework is a giant pain in the ass, but what makes it less painful is when I come across a hilarious sentence that a student writes. Sometimes the hilarity happens accidentally (since the students don't fully grasp the connotations of certain words). Sometimes it's just outrageous since Chinese culture is definitely different than American culture, and what's considered "appropriate" is just completely different.

For example, one of my students Joe, wrote in his homework... (the assignment was to practice using "because" correctly)..."I want to find a wife because I'm very lazy." HAH! Well, at least he's upfront about it? WOW is all I can say.

And on a less slap-in-the-face patriarchal note, another student for a similar assignment, practicing using "because" (The students were supposed to pretend they were teachers and write a letter to the government requesting more money) randomly signed his letter "Jack Sparrow." I laughed outloud at this one.

There are a bunch more, but I didn't take the time to write them down (since I'm usually scrambling at the last minute to finish it all in time).

Too lazy to update

But I wanted to tell you that I got a new student in one of my classes named T-Mac. Yes, T-Mac, after Tracy McGrady of the Houston Rockets. I had to have him write his name down on a sheet of paper, just to confirm what I actually heard. He wrote his name down, and told me that the hyphen was for "decoration."

Just a short post on the English names my Chinese students have picked for themselves. Some are straight-up bizarre. The ones that are the worst, are the ones that are perfectly common American English names, but that the student can barely pronounce. And as I've noticed with native Chinese speakers, those are the names with a bunch of R's and L's and TH's. I once met a student named Carl, and it took about 3 and a half minutes for me to figure out what his name was, even after he spelled it out for me.

But as for the really bizarre ones, I have a student named Winy, pronounced just like the name Winnie, but spelled Winy. Oh yes, intentionally. Here's the story. Her Chinese name is Ying, which is translated as the verb "to win." So she used that word, win, and added a Y at the end because her name Ying begins with a Y. Uhhh....Yep, makes perfect sense to me too.

Other favorites: Stone, Penn, Rainy, Maizie, Rocky, and Condy. I've been meaning to ask Condy if he knows about Condoleezza, but I keep forgetting.