Below you will find the first stories of my next project “Teaching (the) English).
Some of them are translations of my “Wer mitten im Englisch steht” but there will also be some new ones about teaching the English. Enjoy!
Chapter 1 – My first Lesson
I can clearly remember my first English lesson in April 1996, teaching a group of business people from an engineering company in Bochum, Germany. I had just gained the LCCI certificate ‘How to teach English for Business’ and was dead keen to put my newly acquired knowledge into practice.
About 10 minutes before the start of the lesson I was ready to rock. I had checked the whiteboard, tested the felt-tip pens and gone through my lesson plan for the umpteenth time. At 7.30 five men, aged between 40 and 50, came in, said “Good Morning”, sat down, leaned back, folded their arms and smiled at me, as if to say: “Look, mate! We’re here, now be so kind as to entertain us”.
After I had introduced myself I started the so-called needs analysis and asked them why they were attending the course. Answers like “ I want to improve my English” or “My boss told me I have to do something for my English” clearly showed that they did not have concrete learning objectives. They all agreed that grammar was boring and they would prefer to talk as much as possible and write down as little as possible. Then they introduced themselves briefly. Sentences like “I am working by GEA since 12 years” indicated that there would be a lot of work waiting for me.
The aim of the lesson was to familiarise the learners with the Simple Past, so I asked Learner One: “What did you do at the weekend?” I had my pen ready to jot down any mistakes regarding the tense or wrongly applied prepositions. I could see him thinking, and after three or four seconds he replied: “Nothing special” and switched to ‘mute’. Learner Two and Three followed suite and also claimed that they had done “nothing special”, followed by silence.
I was bemused. My lesson plan stated 30 minutes for this task including a discussion about football results, cinema visits, gardening or going out to the pub or to a restaurant. So far 30 seconds had passed.
I changed my strategy (a.k.a. reflection in action). “What did you do at work yesterday?”, I asked Learner Four. His answer was short and sweet “Nothing special”. I managed to look calm although my blood pressure was going through the roof. “Alright, nothing special” I heard myself say and I deeply regretted that corporal punishment had been abolished in lessons some years ago.
“Let’s sum up, what you have told me so far. Nothing special. That was really a lot of input. First the good news: There is no grammatical mistake in your statements. However, you could work on the pronunciation of the ‘th’ in ‘nothing’. But guys, you wanted to talk, so please talk. Now you have the chance to speak English. Come on!”
“So, what did you do at work yesterday?”, I asked Learner Five. His answer was even shorter: “Nothing”. I was ready to pounce on him and strangle him, but then, with a subtle smile on his face, he said: I was ill and had to stay at home”
Chapter 12 - Use of the F word in the English language (x-rated)
Today, the so-called F word is regularly used in the English language and, for that reason, should not be ignored by ‘Consultants for International Communication’ like me. You might already be aware that the F word is particularly popular with football players and football fans. Why? It has developed into a word that seems to fit in whenever someone struggles to find an appropriate descriptive word. As a result, its original meaning ‘to have sex with someone’ is rarely used today. Nowadays people use the F word to describe someone ‘doing a bad job ’, to invite someone to ‘go away’ or replace words like ‘absolutely’, ‘stupid’ or ‘really’.
a) I had my first close encounter with the F word at the beginning of the 1980s during a football match in Southampton. I think the Saints were playing Aston Villa at the Dell. I was sitting next to a typical English gentleman who followed the match without any comments. The only emotion I could notice was the occasional raising of his right eyebrow. Two rows behind me, however, there were two ‘lager louts’ who, after every decision of the referee against their team, would sing: “The referee’s a wanker”.
“Excuse me, Sir”, I asked the gentleman, “What exactly is a wanker?” The poor man blushed and then whispered to me: “It is a really ugly word for someone who masturbates”. “Sorry, Sir” I said embarrassed and tried to concentrate on the match. Then a Saints player was sent off by the referee for his third or fourth bad foul. “Oh, fuck off, you wanker!” shouted one of the two ‘hooligans’ to the referee.
I still do not know what came over me but I thought I had to say something. “Excuse me” I said to him when he seemed to have calmed down “but you should either say ‘fuck off, you fucker’ or ‘wank off, you wanker’ but not ‘fuck off, you wanker’ because that is not logical”.
And believe it or not, but that ‘geezer’ later admitted that I was right. He even visited me in hospital to apologise for breaking my nose and inflicting several bruises. Okay, linguistically speaking, I had taught him a lesson but I will never, ever correct any football hooligans again.
b) During a meeting of the Bitterne Park Working Men’s Club, where I was a member from 1992 until 1996, the following happened: There was a motion that women should be allowed to enter the snooker room, and even be allowed to play snooker, if there was a free table. For many MCPs (male chauvinist pigs) this was as bad as the downfall of the British Empire or England’s 4:1 defeat against Germany.
When the MCPs realised that this motion was likely to be successful, one of their leaders made a last desperate attempt to stop this ridiculous equal opportunity rubbish. “I have to warn to the ladies” he started pontificating, “there is a lot of really bad swearing going on in the snooker room”.
He saw some mildly shocked female faces and began to believe that his idea had worked. Then, after a second’s silence, one of the ‘ ladies’ at the back retorted: “Oh, just piss off, you fucking moron!”
After the roaring laughter had died down and it had become clear that the weak sex could also use strong language, the motion was passed almost unanimously. By that time the MCP left the meeting room red-faced and had to console himself with a pint of ‘Boring Old Fart’.