FAIL

Double fail for me this morning, in the same class.

I was working on pronunciation, and in one activity, focused on the incessant and downright irritating 'h'-dropping that is so common among French people speaking English. No matter how many times I tell them, or how clearly I explain it, they always leave out 'h's where they're needed and then, bizarrely, insert them where they're not; "Ow hold hare you?" is pretty common, for example. I'm reliably informed by a linguist (a real one, not a poser like me) that this is because they know there's an 'h' in there somewhere but they just don't know where to put it. I can see this, though personally, I would have thought that the spelling was a pretty damn big clue. And while we're on the subject, Americans, go look up the word 'herb' and tell me what it starts with.

Anyway, in this activity, the students had to read aloud short passages of text, while the rest of the class listened closely to their pronunciation. If they spotted a dropped 'h', they had to yell, "Ha!" and scored a point (and, of course, if they dropped the 'h' of the 'ha', someone else could call them out too!). I should point out that this is a small, cheeky group of about 8 with whom I have a really good rapport, before anyone accuses me of bullying my students.

The game went well, and we moved on to something else. A little later, I read out some instructions that they had on a sheet in front of them. As I said the word 'hour', one of the boys yelled triumphantly, "Ha!" Twenty minutes of, "Look, I know what I said but... yes, I know it doesn't make sense but... no, there isn't any way of telling..." later, I concluded that English is a bloody stupid language.

The second fail (or epic win, depending on which way you look at it) came towards the end of the lesson. I've mentioned here before that my school doesn't have a traditional bell to mark the end of each class; instead, there is a short burst of music (usually classical, but not always), chosen by the headmaster and which changes every half term*. At the moment, it is a Mike Oldfield song, but unfortunately not 'Tubular Bells' - I have a couple of students who are demonic enough to warrant it. No, it's "Talk About Your Life" - the section where the woman sings:

"Talk about your life, I'd like to know
It's not easy going where no one goes"

A bizarre choice, but there we go. Anyway, one of the boys has a gift for mimickry and has managed to get her voice down to a T, as I discovered when I almost dismissed the class ten minutes early; I was saved only by the fact that none of them could keep a straight face.




* My suggestion of the theme tune from The Great Escape has so far been ignored.