english is stupid, difficult, hard, crazy, blah blah blah

The title of this post is the official stance of my CE12 students on the subject of the English language. Considering English just another class they have to take after having been at school all day, I don't blame them. Still, I don't think that's reason for them to not get something out of the experience of learning another language.

The students took the test for this unit last week, and there was no official material to complete today, so I winged it. I let my students make a list of what they thought of English, and it was hilarious that they were using English to tell me they thought English was "stupid, difficult, hard, crazy, blah blah blah."

I used my Mandarin dictionary/language guidebook to illustrate what Chinese literally translates to in English, so they could see the differences between how they construct sentences in their language and how the same thing is put together in English. I doubt it changed their entire perspective of English or made them love it. (*hysterical laughter*) But I think it's important to take time to discuss language as a language, and examine it from a perspective you're familiar with. Although there's a policy of "no Chinese in the classroom!" which I personally enforce as best I can, I thought it was important today to let them bring a little of their language in so they could compare it with what they're learning.

They caught on, too. I wrote sentences like "I have a camera." and "They need to go to the toilet.", then the literal Chinese translations, which were "I have camera." and "They need go toilet." I had the kids tell me what a few other sentences would be directly translated from Chinese, and then we went over the words that are omitted, like "to" and "for" and "a" and "the," and the ending "s" for plurals. In Chinese, you have 1 dog or you have 5 dog. You don't have "a dog" or "5 dogs." The kids very often leave out words that don't pertain to the main idea of what they're trying to say: "Yesterday I play computer game." As far as their language is concerned, they know the word for the "when" (yesterday), the action (play), the who (I), and the "what" (computer game). In English, though, this sentence is a total mess. WHEN did you play computer games? Did you play 1 computer game, or many? Did you play specific games, or just computer games in general?

English has a demand for specificity in the structure of the sentence that the kids aren't familiar with, so they have a hard time remembering when they need the "s" or where the prepositions go, or what tense they're in and how they'd change the verb to convey that. A lot of beginning students struggle with he/she, because in Chinese there's just "ta." In their language, there is no reason for them to differentiate between the male person and the female person when discussing someone else, so remembering they have to do so in English frustrates them.

So what I hoped to do today was get them thinking, at least, about how the languages are different and how they are the same. I told them flat out: English is crazy. I wrote, "I buy shoes every day." and "I bought shoes yesterday." Then, "I walk every day." and "I walked yesterday." I pointed out walk/walked vs buy/bought, and asked them why one had "ed" and the other changed completely for "yesterday". They gave me the "Teacher, it's because your language is f***ing loony toons" look, and I said, "Because English is crazy."

I pointed out to them, though, that Chinese has four or five different ways to say many words (such as ma), and that to me, that was crazy. That was hard. So even though languages are different and can be hard to learn, they're not stupid, although they are difficult and crazy and blah-blah-blah.

I have no idea if they got anything out of this, but I hope it makes them think. I hope it opens a window for them mentally so even if they never like English, they can see it as a language in its own right and start thinking about it as something they have to approach with an open mind.