Schüler Say the Darndest Things

In general, I've been really impressed by the English levels of my students. I am, of course, getting a bit of a biased sample, because only the ones who feel comfortable enough to speak in English tend to participate in class. And I'm not surprised that some of them prefer to not speak, because the kids can be quite brutal to each other. On Wednesday, for example, I had one of my sixth-form classes do small group discussions about various issues in the American election. One of the groups was talking about Afghanistan, and so one of the boys said, "Yes, war is bad. It costs much death of soldiers." Whereupon his partner gave him a dirty look and said, "Much death of soldiers? Seriously?"

Because young people in Austria watch so much American television*, they have a really good idea of what correct English sounds like -- even if they can't quite speak it themselves. Stefan, a friend of mine from my dorm, for example, speaks absolutely awful English. (He once asked me how to translate "Studenten" when he was trying to have a conversation with one of the people in the dorm who speaks no German.) But another time, we got to talking about TV shows, and he quotes me an entire scene of Family Guy, in perfect English (punctuated, of course, by German phrases like "Und dann schaut er durchs Fenster und sagt...").

I try to be supportive of my students even when they make mistakes, so that they'll continue to want to speak. Sometimes, though, I find it hard not to laugh along with their classmates at some of the things they say. And so, in the spirit of Schadenfreude, here are some of my favorite exchanges with students in the past three weeks:

Me: "You five, bring your books and follow me into the next room for a speaking exercise."
Boy: "Should we bring our pants? ... I mean pens!"


Student #1: "Igor is Soviet."
Me: "I'm pretty sure he's not; the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore."
Igor: "No, I am Soviet."
Boy #1: "He has a tattoo of the Soviet flag on his left ass."
Me: "Oh. Really?"
Igor: "Yes. Would you like me to show you?"


Girl: "Do you not like our class because we are bad?"
Me: "No, I like you guys. You have energy. That's so much better than the eighth formers, who just stare at me and say 'Uhhh.'"
Boy: "Yes. They are stupid, we are gay. ... Wait! I mean, they are gay, we are geil!"



Me: "Did you ever have any teachers that flew off the handle, that went a little crazy?"
Student: "Yes, at my old school there was a teacher. He was a little bit crazy. One day, he brought a, a, a -- wie sagt man 'Hahn'?"
Me: "A chicken."
Student: "No, the male one. Not a hen but a - but a cock. A fighting cock. He brought the cock to class and the cock shitted all over everything. Over the desks, over the chairs, everything."
Me: "You mean a rooster."
Student: "No! Its legs were thick. It was a fighting cock!"


* I've been searching for over two months for a website where I can stream TV shows in German. But every time I ask an Austrian, they look at me askance and say, "Why would you do that?" There's definitely a cache here to watching films and reading books in the original language, and I've on multiple occasions been hanging out with friends where we watched an English-language film while speaking to each other in German.