Two Little Anecdotes

Gonzalo E. Troncoso, Chile

Gonzalo Troncoso is a teacher at Germania School in Puerto Varas, Chile; and he is currently teaching students from 8 to 18 years old. He specially enjoys working with the little ones. E-mail: gtroncos@gmail.com

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In class
A joke

In class

This year while I was working with my students (8th graders, that is to say 13 or 14 years) I took them to the computing lab to work in some exercises I had prepared to make them discriminate between Present Simple and Continuous.

At the beginning of the explanation one student asked me how he could know when to use one or the other; as I had just talked about it a moment ago I repeated the question to the students: ‘When do we use the present continuous?’ and one of them raised her hand and replied: ‘On Wednesdays!’

Everyone, including me, looked at her with astonishment and I asked her why on Wednesdays and her answer made laugh for about a couple minutes

-‘Well, because on Wednesdays we have English and we use the Present Continuous in English’

It took me around 10 minutes to explain to her why I had laughed

A joke

There were to English teachers who had won a trip to Hawaii and they were discussing how to pronounce it correctly while they were walking on the beach; one of them said that it was /hawai/ and the other /havai/. At some moment one of them said: ‘Let’s ask her’ pointing to a girl that was there sunbathing.

• ‘Excuse me little lady’, one of them said, ‘but my friend and I had a little problem with the name of this island.’
• ‘Yes?’
• ‘My friend here says that the correct pronunciation is with a /w/ at the middle and I say that is with a /v/.’
• ‘It is /havai/,’ the girl said.

The man looked at his partner and then went back to her:

• ‘Thank you,’ he said
• ‘You’re velcome’

Please check the Pronunciation course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Improving English through Humour course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the English for Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.