Humiliation: Stories

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I teach in a french speaking country. One evening 40 minutes after the class had ended, a mother rushed in to collect her daughter. She apologised saying "Sorry mais I am sage femme" I understood enough 'sage' means good and 'femme' means woman. I replied haughtily "I too am a 'sage femme', but I at least remember to collect my kids on time" It was only after some explanation and miming that I understood that sagefemme is a midwife. A good example of not doing a literal translation. One day, about eight years ago, I was teaching an advanced group and had them doing some conversation exercise, which I eventually wanted to bring to a close. I stood at the front, clapped my hands and waited as the group slowly got the message, except for two young women, who were deep in conversation. I then whistled and one of them looked at me and said, "We are not dogs!" Not being one to miss a vocab opportunity, I said, "No, you are bitches!" Fortunately, they still speak to me when we meet in the street. The other student, trying hard to control his laughter, proceeded to ask again if I worked out, and now, getting a bit annoyed, I again replied that I did not work out. I worked IN. I worked at an "indoor" restaurant, not outdoors. Finally the student explained to me that working out meant exercising. I had only been in the United States approximately three months, so this was a very embarassing experience particularly for someone like me who was always a perfectionist and had minimal tolerance for mistakes when I communicated with others. I teach at a private English school in Hermosillo, Mexico. It was Saturday, the five hour intensive class day, and I was trying to pull sentences out of my students to further explain the lesson on future simple. It was the weekend during Mexican Independence and I was asking the students what they had planned for the long weekend. One student told me a place they were going that I couldn't decipher the name. This is normal for me since I've only been here 3 months. I asked him again. I wrote "I will go to mericon" on the board. In an instant the whole class choired "NO!" and I swiftly reacted by slamming my hand on the board and wiping the last word I'd written. I knew this word but was so focused on learning the name of the place I had written the closest word I knew. However, "mericon" is a very derogatory insult for a homosexual person. The student then walked up to the board and wrote "Malecon". Ahhhhh.

My list is shorter this time, but it's hard mode. Like half of these might not even work out??? But these are all bonus names anyway, so it's not as big of a deal if they don't. And besides, I've prepared for this. My anus has never been so determined. I’m ready. Usually at the beginning of the year with new students I try a few of their words from their language. The often giggle because I can neither hear the sounds nor pronounce the words. I always put my hands on my hips and ask, "Are you laughing at me?" They always say no. I tell them that they are laughing because I couldn't pronounce their word because I couldn't hear their sounds or put the sounds together correctly in my mouth. I explain to them that language learning is funny. If you change a sound or use the wrong word, the meaning is changed. It is often hilarious. I tell them that when people laugh when they say something, they are not laughing at them but at innocent mispronunciations which sound odd or mean something else. I tell them when that happens that they should also laugh and tell them it must have been the wrong word; then they should ask how to fix it. I haven't had anyone come to me tearfully because they felt they were being made fun of since I started this more than 5 years ago. I think you could use the stories in this section the same way. Gale is taking similar imaginative leaps with his next novel, which is about the British poet Charles Causley. "He was quite clearly queer – to judge from his private letters and diaries – and yet not remotely ready to be comfortable with admitting that, even to himself," he explains. "We know he was in the Navy and that he wrote poems which suggest his war experiences carried a powerful emotional charge; we know that he kept until his dying day a letter from a fellow officer with whom he seems to have had some kind of relationship. So what fiction can do, which a straightforward biography cannot, is to solve those mysteries in an emotional nourishing way. It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t true because it would have been true for other men in a similar situation."Debbie" or a similar sounding word in the Nanjing (200 km away) dialect means 'vulva' as I discovered from a more open-minded Chinese lady teacher. Oops ! Won't make that mistake again...... However, it's fiction that’s very much driving the phenomenon of bringing "lost" stories of gay life from the past to light. Over the last five years, a trio of Irish writers have delivered stunning gay-themed novels set predominantly in periods of history that didn't welcome them – John Boyne (The Heart’s Invisible Furies), Graham Norton (Home Stretch), and Sebastian Barry (the Costa Award-winning Days Without End). In the theatre, Matthew Lopez's exploration of gay male history The Inheritance triumphed in London before transferring to New York, where it opened the year after a well-received revival of Mart Crowley's seminal 1968 play Boys in the Band. Last year, the latter was remade as a film for Netflix by Ryan Murphy.

Do you think he's gonna win it ? Language: English Words: 1,584 Chapters: 1/1 Kudos: 10 Bookmarks: 2 Hits: 2,271 Vietnamese have a particular problem with pronunciation, in particular, the final consonants in most words. I have been helping a lady from China improve her English reading and writing. We were working on short vowel u words. I was teaching in a language mill in downtown Suzhou one day, (2nd month in China - 6.5 years now) and as I passed the reception desk on the way to another class, one of the Course Consultants stopped me. I teach both English and French and this usually isn't a problem but one time, it was... One day during my teaching practice I was quite ill and had a fever of nearly 39°C, but I wanted to go to school anyway because I had to teach 4 hours that day. So I was there, and after teaching one hour of English, I went to my French lesson. I started the lesson by asking pupils what TV shows they liked and one pupil asked me, in Dutch (my mother tongue), whether I liked 'America's Next Top Model'. Somehow, my brain became confused, and I replied in English that I didn't really like it that much. All 25 pupils stared at me like I was an alien and I didn't understand why until one of them said, Uhmm... This is French, miss... I was so embarrassed! But it's a good story to tell...

I have been teaching ESL in Vietnam for almost 4 years now, and have several interesting stories, but will relate one of the funniest from the class-room environment.