Let’s make us nonsense sentance in bed

I feel incredibly fortunate to have the JTEs I have, they are all nice and I get along with everyone. That said, there is one teacher I somewhat dread teaching with who I shall refer to as Clueless-sensei. He’s a very nice guy, but I’m almost positive he never intended to be an English teacher. The theory I work with is he applied to teach some other subject, and the school said, “Well, we don’t need anyone in that department, but can you teach English?” Most of the time, he seems to be about a lesson ahead of the kids in his English ability, and this year he’s teaching 9th graders. He can also kind of flaky and often forgets to make the handouts he needs, in addition to forgetting he has class with me and leaving me in the teacher’s room least half a dozen times now.

At best, his classes are an exercise in patience. But yesterday, he had an activity that provided me with enough entertainment that I didn’t look at the clock every 3 minutes and wonder when it was going to end.

The 9th graders are learning passive voice (“The chair was made by Jim” instead of “Jim made the chair”) and the activity was to make a silly sentence. The first student in the row would write a person or thing on a piece of paper, fold over the top, and hand it to the 2nd student who wrote a passive-verb and folded it, then the 3rd student wrote the agent (by so-and-so), 4th student wrote the location, 5th wrote when it happened, and bam, ridiculous sentence. One of the phrases in the “Location” word box was “in bed” so I knew I was in for a treat.

Here’s what we ended up with:

A bird was eaten by monkeys at home after school.

Son Goku was made by Mr. Hayakawa at school last Friday.

Okay, nothing too exciting yet, but wait!

Takahiro was lost by the police on the sun last week.

Mr. Ito was made by the girls on the moon 10 years ago.

The kids are really interested in the cosmos.

Now, it finally goes to the gutter:

Clueless-sensei was bought by the girls in bed last year.

Mr. Terata was loved by space out people in bed yesterday.

I initially thought they meant “spaced out people” in which case, I was quite impressed the student knew that phrase. But it turned out he meant “alien”. It’s always only a matter of time until someone gets probed.

And last:

Our teacher was taken by Megumi at home yesterday.

This ended up making me break down and giggle like a Japanese school girl. Clueless-sensei didn’t understand the connotation of “being taken” and was a bit confused as to why I was laughing. Sometimes I’m grateful for his limited English ability.

Impossible Questions: Irregularity

As you know, the only tangible thing you need to qualify for JET is a Bachelor’s degree. In anything. Therefore, not many of us ALTs have degrees in linguistics. Despite this, I am often asked questions about our ridiculously complicated language (I’m happy I was born into it, because it would be a bitch to learn otherwise) that I simply don’t know. I often feel like the mom to the kid who just keeps asking why until the mom breaks down and says “Because I said so!” I call these the “impossible questions.”

Today’s impossible question: Rooren-sensei, how did you learn all the irregular past-tense forms of verbs?

The 1st years (7th-graders) are finally learning about the past tense. They seems to like it so far since it’s a bit more regular than other forms (I cook, he cooks) and doesn’t bother with “am, are, is”. Too bad so many common verbs have an irregular past-tense form (go – went, buy – bought). Hell, I mess up all the time; I tried to use the word “bidded” with my mom yesterday. So, when my JTE asks me how did I learn all these forms, I replied I learned from speaking and being corrected by the adults around me, then refining it in school. The JTE seemed a bit unsatisfied with the answer, saying, “so you have to be taught all this is in school”, indicating we have written drills on past tense or something. I said kind of, but I think most English speakers get it by just using it. Then I mentioned spelling tests, and we spent the rest of the time talking about that.

It is possible I did have drills on irregular past tense form in elementary school that I just blocked out due to trauma. I remember “Daily oral language” being the worst part of my day.