22 August, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Today I told two of my fellow instructors at the university that I am quite irritated with one of the classes I’m teaching. The students chat the whole time and ignore my requests that they be quiet and pay attention. My two fellow instructors — both raised in Eastern Europe — said they didn’t have that problem, that their students were too scared to ever misbehave. One of them said to me, “Your problem is that you’re too nice.”
The other teacher said, “No, her problem is that she wasn’t raised under a totalitarian regime.”
True enough. One of them offered to switch classes with me for the day. He said after he was done with my class, they’d never act up again. Besides just being generally scary, he engages in other kinds of psychological warfare too. For example, since we’re teaching English to foreigners, he said most of his example sentences involve violence.
Past tense: “Last week I murdered my parents.”
Future tense: “Tomorrow I’ll bring a chainsaw to class.”
Apparently, his hints of violence scares them. But now I’m scared of him too, which is too bad, since we share an office.
Meanwhile, my own ability to speak English is rapidly deteriorating. The other day I told my students that, “It snew a lot where I grew up.” Snew?!
Also, recently when I’ve been teaching I notice that I start talking in different regional American accents. I don’t even realize I’m doing it until the words flow out of my mouth. Twice this week I’ve said, “Hey, did y’all do your homework?” I’ve said howdy and okey-dokey and hello dahling! using various accents, totally by accident.
What is happening to me?
It’s either,
a) A total psychotic breakdown
or
b) Such an intense focus on the language is screwing with my head and ruining my ability to speak English normally. When we speak our native language, we do so without thinking, basically on an instinctual level. But right now I have to measure every word that comes out of my mouth. I also spend a great deal of time thinking about accents and I frequently have to pronounce words in a British accent — ad-ver-tiss-ment, shhhhhh-edule. I’m asked to define things constantly, when in our daily lives, we just speak without ever giving it much thought: “Teacher, what does nevertheless mean?” “Teacher, what does take mean?” “Teacher, what does e.g. stand for?” “Teacher, what does A.D. stand for?” “Teacher, what does p.m. stand for?”
“Teacher, why you cry?”
Anglofille said @ 8:31 pm | academia |
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Lillie Says:
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:52 amI warned you before, Ms. Anglo — the moment you started to pronounce it “shhhhh-edule”, I would go over there and slap you silly!
(H)erb is permitted, however.
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Rebecca Says:
August 23rd, 2007 at 3:21 amoh! I know this one! B!
….does I got a cookie?
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Robert L. Kitchen Says:
August 23rd, 2007 at 5:14 amEngish is such a hash of other languages that it is hard to believe that anyone can understand it. And we don’t speak English, we speak “American” which is more hashed up. You have my best wishes.
Bob -
gadfleye Says:
August 23rd, 2007 at 3:33 pmI thought that The Great Red State of “The Place That Cannot Be Named” where you were raised was a totalitarian regime?
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Lillie: I don’t want to say it! But many of my students learned British English in their home countries and they honestly do not understand when I say sked-ule. Grrrrr. Please forgive me!
Rebecca: No prize yet…I think the jury is still out. Option A is a real possibility!
Bob: It’s true, English is a mess. Thank goodness I started learning it as a baby. Whew.
Gadfleye: Hmmm, I always thought of that as a theocratic state, but you just might be right. In hindsight, I probably could have sought refugee status in a more civilized place.
