PYF hilarious, profound, or mystifying ESL student quotes

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Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

As requested in the PYF poo poo kids say thread..

Those of us who teach English as a second language, whether abroad or in our home countries, occasionally hear a really amazing quote. Hey, learning a new language is loving hard, especially if that language is English. Rather than mock our eager students to their faces, let's share these stories here, and giggle at them anonymously.

Here are a few of mine from when I taught in Japan:

(Two 12-year old girl students)
Wako likes to jump on Yuri�s back, and because I am an rear end in a top hat, I taught her to say �giddyup!� when she does it.
WAKO: �Yuri is horse!�
YURI: �You are PIG!!!!!�

�Grass? Grass? Delicious! I eat!� *makes grass-eating motions* �Mmmmm�with ketchup.�

STUDENT #1: �Who do you usually eat breakfast with?�
STUDENT #2: �I usually eat my husband.�

�Hamburg is reasonable. Hamburger is unreasonable�

�I�m HUNGRY for WiFi!�

�I�m afraid of being stolen.�

*giggle* �I love you!� (from a 40-year-old woman)

�I think vegetarians are very peaceful people. My wife used to throw dishes at me every day, but now she is a vegetarian and much more quiet.�
�Men in Japan are very weak and the women are very aggressive. They are becoming more like women from the West now because they have jobs, so they are becoming MORE aggressive.�
�You are from America and you came to Japan, so of course you are too strong for Japanese men.�

Got one? Got fifty? post em.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2013 09:53

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 04:03

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

Outrail posted:

I taught English for six months and can't remember any great screwups.

My favorite lesson to teach was the gently caress lesson.

"Ok, you know gently caress? Today I'm going to teach you all the ways you can use gently caress. Now 'loving fuckers hosed gently caress's gently caress.' Is this a proper sentence, why or why not?"
They'd all get so annoyed when I told them it was more or less a totally legitimate sentence. "Waait, it's just one word, how can it be all the words? gently caress you!"
"Jajaja bienvinido a ingles marico."

One of my advanced adult students in Japan, an English teacher himself, stumbled across the "different uses of gently caress" video on YouTube one day. He was so happy.

Quincyh posted:

Student 2: I don't like foreign food because it all tastes the same. Korean food is much more varied. (Only funny if you're familiar with Korean food.)

Biggest facepalm of my life.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2013 05:39

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

the black husserl posted:

Uh, I don't think US middle/high schools even teach languages like Korean or Japanese. Though I bet my 9th grade spanish essays were absolutely filled with nonsense phrases

Some do, if you're lucky. I'm from a really rural area and we had to choose from French or Spanish. A friend of mine from university grew up in the middle of Ottawa and got to take Japanese all four years of high school, including a year-long exchange program.

Dropbear posted:

On the subject, since I know next to nothing about Asian languages can someone explain the whole "engrish"-thing to me - why do the English translations of Asian movies / advertisements / games etc. seem like complete gibberish so often? You'd think there would be at least one guy in pretty much any company fluent enough in the language to notice all the nonsense before releasing whatever's being translated. Or is speaking English really that rare around there? For reference, I live in Finland and almost everyone here speaks at least basic English, although the Finnish accent is certainly a thing.

It's trendy, basically.

ladron posted:

Yeah, it's always more difficult to go from less to more, like no gender to 2/3 genders, or no articles to 12 choices.

Here's part of it - the teacher's exam is insanely difficult, I mean insanely. It's a mutli-hour test on theories and who had what idea for language acquisition and things like that that have no real bearing in the classroom. Passing it, however, pretty much guarantees you a well-paying job for life with lots of vacation. Actually speaking English well is almost an afterthought. And, to a great extent, most of the teachers don't. The last president tried to institute a TEE (Teaching English in English) test that all English teachers would have to take to keep their jobs. Long-term teachers who had really lovely English were making GBS threads their pants about this because they knew they were about to lose their jobs. This initiative kinda failed, and so everything's back where it started: teachers who don't really speak the language instructing unmotivated students via rote memorization because that's just the way it's done. They've tried to bring in a bunch of native speakers to instruct students a few hours a day (ala bringmyfishback, to whom I mean no offense). Unfortunately, the majority of these native speakers have just graduated from college, have no formal training as teachers and even less as English instructors. They mostly serve as living tape recorders for the students to hear a real live English speaker. Recently, the government has come to the conclusion that the costs vs. benefits of having native speakers just isn't worth it, so many provinces and cities are phasing the native speaker program out.

This, in my opinion, will only make the language academies (of which there are a metric shitload) even richer, because even if little Wonho isn't learning anything, by god at least he's in school 18 hours a day, so he has to pick up something through osmosis. Everyone is so gung-ho about learning English because it's seen as the key to being successful.

It's pretty hosed up all around.

Take that girl who wrote the essay I showed earlier - that's the product of 11 loving years of English instruction, and her spoken English isn't much better.

No offense taken, this is exactly right.

Quincyh posted:

Sweet garlic bread. Why would you glaze almost all of your bread with sugar? Why would you serve garlic bread covered in syrup?! Why?! I just... I just really want some good garlic bread that doesn't taste like candy.

Because Korea has four seasons.

And to add some actual content, I have English camp starting today. Select English names:

Bruno
Eye
The Monkey Face
I Don't Care Girl (from a boy)
Dr. Princess

# ¿ Dec 26, 2013 05:42

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

Pollyanna posted:

Yeah, but Ottawa isn't the US, is it?

Wow, I am terribly sorry. I told the wrong story about the wrong university friend.

A different guy, who grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts, took Japanese for all four years of high school, too.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2013 07:42

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

Post your favorite quotes, please.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2013 05:59

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

Some compositions from my 5th graders. I have reproduced them as faithfully as I could. They had to use ten target vocabulary words to write a story:

"Stinky Trash love swim in supermarket. He never wear clothes, never brush teeth and never shampoo hair. He always wear rain coat. It 10 meters tall and
It like eat people.
please you see This stinky trash. call me [redacted]

re turn to me

I want you trash"

"My Day

I wore a raincoat and went to super
market. And bought shampoo and tooth
paste. 11'o clock, ate a mango for lun
ch. 1'o clock I went to swimming and
then swim in the water. Finally, washed my
hair to shampoo and brushed my teeth.
I thought I love swimming. Before
go outside trash a shampoo and tooth
paste, At 6'o clock, I ate stinky
duck with my friends and drank al
chol too lot so I need to give fine
police officer. Today was so
crazy and interesting."

"Mr. Duck was so stupid. He thought people use shampoo to brush their teeth. His teeth were stinky, so he went to supermarket and bought a bottle of shampoo. He also bought two mangos, because he loved mangos. He came home and ate a mango but their was a worm. He trash it. He went swimming and he tried to go to his home. It was rainy but he didn't bring his raincoat. He was wet, so he was stinky."

"King Kong's life

Along time ago, when the tiger smoke, King Kong was born. His family love him. His family eat trash.
One day, King Kong see hyoung woo.
King Kong have to wear rain coat and gas mask. because hyoung woo is very stinky. So King Kong say to him 'stinky duck.' hyoung woo eat mango two days ago.
King Kong say, "You have to wash your hair!"
"I will go supermarket. to buy shampoo for you." hyoung woo wash his hair with Shampoo. Oh my god! It doesn't work. So King Kong and hyoung woo go their way."

Hyoung Woo is a kid in class. He was very amused.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2013 07:27

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

"When I grow up, I will marry a chair. That way when my legs get tired, I can sit on my husband's face."

Never gets old.

Also "Welcome to Stadium! Tonight Show is Hitler 1,2,3!"

I still don't entirely understand what that means. I just really want to know what Hitler 1,2,3 sound like. Is it J-Pop? I bet it's J-Pop and their moustaches are sugoi.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's this horrible song CD for the little kids we have. It's pretty obvious somebody in upper management has a friend who's "totally a musician and will work for free, dude!" who they hired to make it. There's one particular song that's supposed to be sung by a friendly dog, but the dude singing sounds like an alcoholic Brooklyn cab driver. The lyrics are:

BALLS BALLS BALLS
I LOVE BALLS
IN MY MOUTH
I LOVE BALLS
BALLS BALLS BALLS
AND BONES! I LOVE BONES!
BIG JUICY BONES!
IN MY MOUTH!
BONES AND BALLS! YAY!

Imagine that being spat out by Tony Soprano with a throat infection and you've got some idea of how horrible that song is.

There's also a song done by a guy doing a really convincing Hank Hill impersonation, that includes the line "no! that's just not right!"

We have some weird materials at my school.

My younger kids are really into this song where the guy sings, "I have two green balls" repeatedly. I made them change up the adjectives:

I have two blue balls
I have two nice balls
I have three big balls

I'm a bad person.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2013 12:12

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

Nuts and Gum posted:

I grew up Mormon (didn't go on a mission) and the church has always been prideful of it's Missionary Training Center's ability to teach new missionaries a foreign language in like a month and a half. Does anyone know what method they use? I'm sure part of the success is that the 18 year olds they ship off to foreign countries have no option but to learn since they start knocking on doors right away.

As a side note: growing up rumor was the military was so impressed with LDS missionary language skills that they asked them to share their teaching methods, but it turned out to not work for them. Naturally the church said it was because the Spirit of the Lord wasn't accompanying the solders. Or something.

I've come across a number of Mormon kids on mission here in Korea and not one of them has anything but rudimentary skills.

The ones in Japan had a much better command of the language. Your Mormon mileage may vary.

ME: �Okay, who knows what �to dispose of� means?�
STUDENT 1: �I know. It�s when you throw someone out.�
ME: �SomeONE?�
STUDENT 1: �Oh! Oh, no!� *laughs* �SomeTHING!�
STUDENT 2: �But if it is a dead body, then you are still correct.�

STUDENT: �We had an exchange student once. He wasn�t a normal American�.he was kind of darker!�

STUDENT ONE: �What do you think about working mothers?�
STUDENT TWO: �I�m very attracted to them.�

STUDENT: �My friend was so happy when she got tan. I guess she wants to be a black person, because she like R&B music.�

# ¿ Dec 28, 2013 12:34

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

RillAkBea posted:

This somehow reminded me of a great instance from my old eikaiwa days. The only people in Japan with enough time AND money to regularly attend are invariably retirees and some of them have quite the sense of humor.

Me: "What did you do last weekend?"
Student: "I bought something!"
Me: "Oh, what did you buy?"
Student: "Let's guess! It's expensive... It is made of stone... It's my home in the future.. Can you guess?"
Me: "I give up!" (Because stone house seemed like a stupid guess.)
Student(with the biggest rear end grin on his face): "It's a grave!"
Me:

I generally do not miss eikaiwa at all, but quotes like this were definite highlights.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2013 13:14

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

greazeball posted:

A student from C�te d'Ivoire was writing an essay about what they do on their national holiday and she had something like "all of the soldiers defile with flags in front of the president." (d�filer in French means "to march")

That reminds me of the old story about the girl who goes to France and, wanting jam at breakfast, asks her mega-hottie French host brother to pass the "preservatif." birth control (I'm not hunting for the accent marks on my Korean keyboard.)

# ¿ Dec 28, 2013 16:30

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

Kid 1: "Draw some girl! DRAW SOME GIRL RIGHT NOW!"
Kid 2: "What the fox say?!"

After a kid farted: "Teacher, he is pollution!"

# ¿ Dec 30, 2013 06:40

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

Here are my students performing an original play, "Peter Pan's Adventure." http://youtu.be/Jro79Vxf4RE (totally safe for work, just a handful of Korean preteens who totally kick rear end at English class.)

# ¿ Jan 6, 2014 16:39

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

Quincyh posted:

I don't actually have a quote, but I *did* just walk in on a couple of my students goose-stepping, doing the Nazi salute and all. When they saw my expression they hastened to assure me that they were performing and would never really do that. Now, they are supposed to be making a mockumentary for this camp and may have been rehearsing a scene, so... I look forward to seeing how that turns out.

Similarly, some woman whose students in South Korea dressed up like Bin Laden for Halloween of 2001: http://classic-web.archive.org/web/20050215172157/http://prisonerofwonderland.com/october2.html (scroll to the last entry)

# ¿ Jan 15, 2014 09:37

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

"My favorite food is meat and my favorite color is yellow because meat is delicious and yellow is the same as gold."

"Then, I like yellow. So, I like chicks and forsythias."

"When I saw my friend stole something, I will say like this.
"I saw you stole something. Go to the proprietor and say sorry and forgiveness is sought. Covet stuff not good."
It is important to have an honest heart. As fast as you can, you will say truth.
I'm not gonna steal something, but when I steal something, I will say truth as fast as I can."

# ¿ Jan 16, 2014 06:17

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

"in my country we make lightsabers. Other countries start war, but we start peace."

A true Jedi Master has no need for his or her lightsaber. They are one with the Force.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2014 12:20

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

Playing a homemade version of Cards Against Humanity with my fifth graders yesterday. God bless Korean kids, I've never seen the word "toilet" inspire so much joy and hilarity.

The black card was "What's that smell?" and one kid excitedly picked the white card "my dad." He then shoved it in my face while screaming, "HEY, TEACHER! SMELL MY DAD!"

Later, one of my sixth grade boys told me that Hello Kitty is his girlfriend.

ME: "Really?"
KID: "Yes. She is very beautiful girl."
ME: "But she has no mouth." *gestures* "No mouth, so how do you kiss her?"
KID: *very serious* "I will kiss her in Heaven when we die."

Good enough for me.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2014 02:33

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

The same kid whose girlfriend is Hello Kitty from my previous post:

ME: "I need a volunteer."
*crickets*
ME: "Okay, you're getting voluntold..."
HELLO KITTY KID: *sigh* "poo poo."
ME: "Oh, then, you. Stand up, please."
HELLO KITTY KID: "It's because I'm handsome."

One of my first graders:
(The lesson was using "I can/I can't" in a full sentence.)

THOMAS: *raises hand, biggest poo poo-eating grin on earth* "Teacher, I can gently caress YOU!"
ME: *death stare* (Note: this kid is teacher's pet like whoa, although I would not admit it to anyone except on the internet. His mom lets him text me from her phone and we talk about Mozart. His English is amazing)" Thomas, don't you EVER say that again."
THOMAS: "Why?"
ME: "Because it's really mean. You hurt me feelings."
THOMAS: "Oh." *thinks* "I can't anymore gently caress you."

# ¿ Feb 17, 2014 12:17

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

joedevola posted:

Was that from the set I uploaded to Waygook.org?

If so... awesome.

edit for content:

The best combinations I got were:

In Iron Man 4, Iron Man will fight [a baby]

Yesterday I sat on [my girlfriend / Jesus]

My favorite animal is [Kim Jong Eun]

Looks like it was! Thanks so much, by the way. My kids loved it!

# ¿ Feb 18, 2014 14:23

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

From student compositions today:

"Jack sparrow went to England is tight"

"Elsa is the queen of mice power"

# ¿ Feb 20, 2014 07:06

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

"Bringmyfishback-teacher, you are so beautiful. Your hair is the same color as my hamster."

# ¿ Sep 4, 2014 05:06

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

SIXTH GRADE GIRL: "Teacher, are you from Canada?"

ME: "No, I'm from America."

SGG: "Really? Uhhh...my homeroom teacher thinks same. You from Canada."

ME: "I went to university in Canada, but I'm FROM America."

SGG: "Oh! Okay. Uhhhh...before teacher?"

ME: "Do you mean Tanya-teacher?" (the chick before me)

SGG: "Yes! She is from America?"

ME: "No, Tanya-teacher is from Canada."

SGG: "But...Tanya-teacher is black."

..........well, she is black, but......?

# ¿ Nov 19, 2014 11:34

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 04:03

Fleta Mcgurn: Oct 5, 2003; Porpoise noise continues.

The fourth graders are learning how to use "don't" as part of an imperative sentence. Here are the school rules they suggested, corrected slightly for grammar:

Don't dragon.
Don't touch bums.
Don't stand up OR sit down.
Don't pants.
Don't punch.
Don't kick.
Don't uppercut.
Don't MMA.
Don't do taekwondo.
Don't die.
Don't kill people.
Don't kill people except Kim Ju Ho. (Ju Ho doesn't like this rule, by the way.)
Don't bring a pig to school.
Don't Kim Jong Eun.
Don't make fire.
Don't go to hell.
Don't change into the devil.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 10:55

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