A Few Funny Moments in ESL

Date: 23 Jun 2011 Comments: 0

It has been a considerable amount of time since I have posted anything here. To be honest, the only reason is that I have simply been too busy to post to many places and I have not really had a lot of changes occurring on the ministry front. I am still available to consider ministry positions but so far I have not been contacted for any. I have applied to a few different churches needing Bi-vocational ministers and I have added myself to the pulpit supply team but nothing has come out of it. I am sad to say that even though there is a shortage of pastors, the Southern Baptist mentality often comes down to ‘who you know.’ And since I don’t really know anyone outside of my church and other areas I have worked, I am not in anyone’s call list.

No problem though, my ESL class has been very fun. So fun, in fact, that I wanted to take a few moments to post a few of these funny moments. I hope you enjoy…

1.) During a dialogue practice over possessive pronouns, one of my students really made me laugh. She is very shy when it comes to speaking English even though she is quite good at it. Often she will speak if she is called on but won’t usually volunteer to do so. Last night, she was quite excited to be doing so well and got quite vocal on one of the dialogue pieces. The dialogue went thusly:

Me: Could you possibly do me a favor?

Student: Sure, What IT IS?

Obviously the actual words were “Sure, what is it?” but she was so vocal that I responded “Wow, sista! You is jive talkin’! What it do? Actually, please don’t talk like that!” *LOL* Everyone had a good laugh, even the student who said it so it was a good time.

2.) When studying the future continuous verb tense, I was giving the students some practice phrases to review. Basically, I will post a question and then provide only the root form of the particular verb to make continuous in the answer and the students are tasked with taking the question and making an answer since they have learned that most of the pieces of your answer are actually in the question. Be that as it may, I wanted to have some fun and so I came up with a strange question that shared a little of American popular culture. Here you are:

Q: Will Darth Vader destroy the Empire in Star Wars?

A: No, he will not. He will be working for the Empire.

I did my best Darth Vader respiration noise and said “Luke! I am your father!” and the students got a good laugh. I went on to explain that even though the question was really strange, they could still use the same exact structure to answer the question.

3.) Finally, in the same practice of possessive pronouns, I was making up some more examples for the students to try in our dialogue and I did not think one of them through and the result was thusly:

A: Could you possibly do me a favor?

B: Sure, what is it?

A: I’ve got a problem. I have to buy a drink but I don’t have any money. Could I possibly borrow some?

B: I’m sorry, I don’t have any.

A: Oh, I see. Do you know anyone who does?

B: Sure, you should call Frank and ask him I am sure he’ll be glad to help you.

The funny part was that after I said this, I paused and said “Wow, I gotta say. If I am telling you to call someone else to give you some money to buy you a drink at the store, I am not a very good friend. Now am I?” Much laughter followed! It’s really nice to see all of us having so much fun and learning at the same time.

If you get bored, you might check out my new Tumblr. I find that I tend to see random interesting or funny things in my life and decided to use Tumblr to post about them. If you would like to see this strange and unusual Tumblr, you can find it here: http://nottoopolitical.tumblr.com.

God bless!

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