Thursday, April 1, 2010

Why Do They Let Me Teach Their Kids?

I play a game with my students to make them practice using "could" and "might" to speculate about situations, since French doesn't really have an equivalent. So I give them a situation and make them compete to try to come up with the most possible reasons, and I tell them that if their sentence makes me laugh, they get extra points. For my own personal amusement, I use the names of people I know. The following are actual student sentences, with the grammar cleaned up a little bit, elicited from the situation "Amelia is very tired today."
  • She might have spoken with her boyfriend. (When I said, "But that doesn't make you tired!" I got the most suggestive eyebrow raise I've ever received from a 15-year-old.)
  • She could have spent the night outside with a pink elephant in a gay bar.
  • She could take Russian lessons at night.
  • She might take wrestling classes at night.
  • She might have woken up in Africa.
  • She could have watched a TV show about tuna.
  • She might have been taken by a UFO.
  • She could have been in penguin-land, where it is night for 6 months.
  • She might have gone to a party with the rugby team.
  • She could have spent a torrid night with Brad Pitt, Jude Law and Johnny Depp in the same time.
Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up.

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