Wednesday, October 10, 2007

teaching gaffes

It's often unwise to teach slang or more stilted forms of English because the students have a tendency to (1) overuse what they learn and (2) use it in the wrong context. I appear to have made this basic pedagogical mistake in my CNN English class: the first lesson I taught this semester came not from CNN, but from a Marmot's Hole article about a certain Jason Lee, a Korean-American who defended his Philadelphia diner from two robbers by shooting them: one was killed, the other injured. The blog post used the locution "popped a cap in his ass," which I explained was a slang term for "shot him." What I should have done, however, was impress upon my students the fact that they shouldn't be using such an expression when writing practice sentences. Here's the howler I got yesterday from a student practicing the verb "to gore," which came from a chapter in the CNN textbook about the yearly Running of the Bulls in Pamplona:

The bull wants to gore the hunter, but the hunter pops a cap in the bull's ass.

I'm at the office and trying like hell not to cackle like a mad scientist.


_

3 comments:

  1. Yeah, whenever I teach idioms or slang (which is rare) I always preface it with a don't use this. It's only for comprehension followed by an exlanation of why.

    But invariably someone will at a later time prove my point by pulling something like your example out of their ass.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This could make you a few hundred bucks if you send it in to Reader Digest.

    Reminds me of a Japanese exchange student I knew as an undergrad who was always trying to perfect cursing in English. He’d be in the check-out line in Wal-Mart saying, “ho-oly f*cking sh*t!” (drawn out “holy”), trying to get it just right. Took me awhile to set him right.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That is hysterical.

    Although when I first read the post title, I thought it said "teaching giraffes." And I was thinking, "Yeah, I can see how that might present some challenges."

    ReplyDelete

READ THIS BEFORE COMMENTING!

All comments are subject to approval before they are published, so they will not appear immediately. Comments should be civil, relevant, and substantive. Anonymous comments are not allowed and will be unceremoniously deleted. For more on my comments policy, please see this entry on my other blog.

AND A NEW RULE (per this post): comments critical of Trump's lying must include criticism of Biden's lying on a one-for-one basis! Failure to be balanced means your comment will not be published.