It's a Constant Game

I explained to someone today that teaching English is like a constant game called "Let's Understand Each Other!" The winner is the one who can use their words to best describe what they mean. Sounds simple, right? Extra points are for the person who can explain what they mean to say without using hand gestures. I lose at that part. I use my hands when I don't need to, waving them around as if that will make the student understand the meaning of the phrase "pretty much" (which, by the way, is more difficult to explain than you'd think).

I played an extreme game of that today with a student. She is the ultimate sweetheart. I asked her to express her opinion on motorbikes in Chiang Mai. I asked her to talk about the advantages and disadvantages. After talking about the advantages she said, "They will be to steal you." I said, "Do you mean they could steal the bike? They could steal your bag out of the basket?" She said, "They will be to steal you." I explained that if the object is 'you,' it means that the person is stolen, not the object. With the shake of her head... let the games begin. Through a series of short phrases, and gestures and sound effects, she won the game. Her intended meaning was starting to surface from the depths of my deductive sentences. "So you mean a man is driving a motorbike with a woman on the back.. then a bad guy comes up behind them and hits the man and then grabs the woman off the back of the bike and kidnaps her?!" She nods with glee and says "Kidnap! Kidnap her!" She writes 'kidnap' in her vocabulary book. Then she says, "What is the word for the bad man does some bad things with the woman?" I hesitate to say it.."Rape?" She nods and writes it down. I said, "Does that really happen?!" But I think what I really meant was 'did this whole conversation just happen?'

I played the same game with another student last week but he definitely lost because when he couldn't think of a proper word to use he would randomly throw in the word 'dominated.' As in 'My friend was so confused and... dominated.' This just made me laugh to myself and let him carry on. So I guess I lost that one too.