Lying in a Foreign Language and a Troubled Conscience

Khoram Balaee

Khoram Balaee, MA in Teaching English as a foreign language, teaches for Kish Language School in Tehran, Iran.
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I teach English as a foreign language and sometimes I tell lies in my foreign language. Worse, I may have led some of my students onto the wrong path.
Khoram

'Have you ever saved anybody's life?' I asked my students once, and instructed them to share their stories in groups. When the group work was over, I asked if anybody wanted to tell the class their story. I do this often to raise my students' confidence and evaluate their performance. After some told their stories, one student turned to me and asked 'How about you, teacher? Have you ever saved anybody's life?' Well then, I told them how once a friend of mine and me saved an old woman while we were on an adventure journey. We were checking out some wells along a highway on the outskirts of the city to see if there was any fish in. Surprisingly, instead of fish we found an old woman at the bottom of one of the wells. We informed the police and they rescued her. When I finished my story, an eye-opening event happened. To my shock and annoyance, suddenly, some of my students cried out 'Teacher, you're lying!' Some others agreed with a nod.
Well, it is right that I sometimes tell lies in my English classrooms. But, they are just white lies. For example, when students ask me about my grandfather I decide that I cannot just simply say 'he's dead.' , so I tell them tall stories about my granddad. And, honestly, my students had never accused me of lying till then. Now, they were accusing me of lying. Nevertheless, they were not to blame. I WAS. I had told them to lie in my class.

Learning a foreign language is difficult. Particularly, if you bump into a handful of tourists once a year and they turn out to be Spanish. Or, if you don't have access to English channels, or Internet. It is worse if you cannot afford to attend private classes. English classes at school? Just forget them. Under these circumstances, I started teaching myself English. I purchased some books and cassettes, studied them, and memorized the conversations. Sometimes, I found a friend and we practiced together. Most of the time, I had to make conversations in my head, though. I had to create situations and characters, and talk to them. Several times, I found people looking at me with surprise, and I realized I had been talking to myself in English. This was not a big problem.
My big problem was the fact that I did not have much to say about myself. And, this was pretty boring. I could not always say 'I am a student.' I needed to practice other jobs, too. In some situations, I even had to pretend to be a different person. I mean, for example I could not say 'I am a student.' to impress the girl in my head. I had to find a way out. And, that was when I started telling lies. Honestly, I did not feel guilty. However, now, as I was standing in front of the class telling my students over and over that my story was nothing but the truth, I knew there was something wrong I had done.

When I started teaching, I learned that often some students do not have much to say. For instance, 'Have you ever moved house? , 'What was your first job and why did you quit? or, 'Have you had a trip by air?' In my classes, most of the time there was a couple of affirmatives. Therefore, they, usually adults, talked and the others just had to listen. When such occasions happen regularly, others, apparently less experienced teenage learners, will get bored and they will think they are not practicing the language enough.

I had to overcome this problem. I told my students they did not have to tell the truth all the time if they were in a language classroom. They could tell lies if they were just practicing the language. Seemingly, they liked my word and followed it. I also decided to use lying as a strategy to expose my students to the language. I could not have exposed my students to a lot of language had I just told them 'My grandpa is dead.' As you well know, students show a lot of interest to learn about their teacher's life. So, when they ask you something personal you cannot miss the chance to feed them some appropriate food. And, I did not. However, this was not as simple as I had thought. I had missed the downside. And, now, I was struck by the first blow of my prescription. My students refused to believe me.
This incident was on my mind until later in another class of mine I noticed two students. One was speaking excitedly and the other listening open-mouthed. When the first stopped, the second said "How wonderful! You are really brave!" To my amusement, the first one replied calmly 'I'm not brave. I was lying.' And, they both burst into laughter. At another time, I saw a teenage student encouraging his friend to weave a story but his partner just simply replied, "I don't want to lie."
All this, finally, made me ponder if what I was doing was right. I thought to myself 'Well, firstly, students have a choice. They can decide to lie or not. Secondly, they are told that this is just ok when they want to practice, not to cheat.' However, something else really got me worried. I thought 'Is it possible that my students may feel more comfortable with and less ashamed of lying in their second language?' As you may know, studies in psycholinguistics show that speaking about topics that are embarrassing and cause anxiety is less disturbing in your second language that your first language if it is not the dominant language. I guess that for most people the first language is the dominant one. Then I thought 'Is it possible that my students may transfer this to their first language, and as a result, they may feel less ashamed of lying?' Well, we know there is linguistic transfer, and there are talks about resocialisation when people begin to think and behave according to the values and norms of the culture (a second language) which they are learning.

So here I am, with no definite answers to my questions. Have I led my students to the wrong path? Have I turned them into liars? Can lying for language practice end in practicing lies? My conscience is beating the walls of my heart.

References:

Gonzaez-Reigosa, F. (1976). The anxiety arousing effect of taboo words in bilinguals. In Spielberger, C. and R. Diaz-Guerrero (Eds.), Cross-cultural anxiety. Washington, DC: Hemisphere, 89-105.
Pavlenko, A. (2002b). Bilingualism and emotions. Multilingua, 21(1), 45-78.

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