To create this lovely, nostalgia-inducing perfume, you need only mix these elements:
Several glue-sticks (Elmer's in America)
Various crayons and pencils, with their shavings
Floor cleaner
Chalk dust (or for a more modern aroma, whiteboard markers)
And last but not least, the secret essential ingredient: orange peels.
*****
Yesterday a small boy and I carried on this exchange (again, entirely in French):
Boy: But why can't you speak French?
Me: Well, I can. I'm speaking to you right now in French! Don't you understand me?
Boy: (looks at me with wide eyes, shakes head slowly)
Me: Do you understand the words I'm saying to you, right now?
Boy: (slowly shakes head no)
So I rattle off something in English, and then say to him in his language: "See, that's what it would sound like if I was speaking English. You really wouldn't understand!" He looked even more confused. Bon, laisse tomber. It was getting a little too metaphysical for both of us there.
It's funny to see how many of the children, even the older ones, seem to think that because I'm the English teacher, that I'm speaking to them in English, even though I only do about 8% of the time. I'm also realizing that I am fairly clueless when it comes to English grammar.
Here's an example; can you help me out here?
I ask the students to correct a few sentences, including this one:
I like swim.
One girl figures out the problem, and I explain that it's just like French. We don't say J'aime nage, do we? After a conjugated verb, we use an infinitive.
But later, I'm looking over one of their previous worksheets, where they often use the expression "I can" for learning activities. And lo and behold, we don't say I can to swim, do we? Whyyyy? And this after I've been telling them English is so easy, look, you barely have to do anything to conjugate a verb, blah blah...to the point that several kids asked me, "So if it's so easy, what do English kids study in school?"
Here's another example of the grammar or pronunciation rules I kind of "stumble upon", and then am terrified that I have just made up. This happens to me when I teach French, too, but not as often since not much of French is instinctive for me...
When words end with 'e', it makes the vowel in the middle of the word (usually just before the final consonant) sound long, and I described this as pronounced like we pronounce the letter of the alphabet. Examples: wine, make, complete, more, pure. Now there are tons of weird pronunciation things in English, so have I cursed my students by affirming this to be true?
So much I take for granted...who knows what else I'll discover I already knew, but didn't know I knew.
2 commentaires:
I can to swim... I can too, swim! Hmm. I too, can swim. I don't have an explanation for this, it seems it works with "want" or "need" or "like" or "wish" or basically anything possessive-ish (explain "ish" to them for real confusion) aside from "can" which is really "able"- in which case it makes sense (I am able to swim.) "Can"/"cannot" are shortcuts/irregulars? That's my guess.
p.s. Now, I wasn't talking about cities, just small post-industrial upstate NY towns, even in Itown there are a reasonable amount of crazies...
ahh! grammer and spelling and i do not mix- i was 25 before i realized the reason why vowels were special was because they can be pronounced different ways...why dont we just have different letters for them? i just dont get it.
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