The English Language...

As you may or may not know...I teach english to children who speak other languages.  

Often times when I have students that are super new to the US they have some

questions on what certain things mean….things we never think about, but if you really

think about it, the English language is pretty crazy and difficult to learn with all

of our weird phonics and grammar rules…..Here’s a few stories:

→One day I had a 5th grade girl that speaks spanish and was learning english come

in from recess and say, “Teacher, what’s Cheez-it?”  So I’m all: “oh, it’s like this little

orange square cracker that kids like to eat for a snack”.  She looks at me all weird, and

says, “No I don’t think that's it…”  So of course my job is now to figure out what the heck

she is talking about….so I ask her how/where she heard this, and she says (in spanish),

“Well at recess all the kids were running around trying to get away from a certain person, and then

someone ran over to me touched my shoulder and ran away, then all of the kids starting

running away from me, and pointing at me saying “cheez-it, cheez-it”.....OH!!!! “She’s it” I say.

 Then I go on to explain this wonderful game called TAG :)

→ Another time I had a new 6th grade girl that had only been at our school for a few weeks

from Mexico and mainly spoke spanish.  She was at her desk working away.  Then she comes

up to me with a little paper and says, “is this how you spell it?”  On the paper I see:   idunnvo.

 I can’t seem to figure out what she’s trying to spell so I ask her and she says, “I don’t know”  not

that she doesn’t know...that’s it, that’s what she’s trying to spell I...Don’t…Know….Ha, when

we know the language we speak so fast that this little girl thought “I don’t know” was one big

word idunnvo :)