Sample Dialogue #8

In English class, during a presentation on fantasy vacations.

Student: I don't think we will have any problems in the Bahamas.
Scott: Do you think you will have any language problems?
Student: No, we can speak English really good.
Another student: Well!

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And in honor of the animal stickers from the grocery store that I've started collecting (yes, they are meant for kids), today's words of the day are some of my favorite animal names in German.  Das Stinktier is a skunk (literally, stink animal), das Faultier is a sloth (literally, lazy animal), and der Hundertfüßer is a centipede (literally, hundred legger).

Most Interesting Lessons I've Taught So Far

Advanced English vocabulary

For every mind-numbing lesson I've had to teach on banking vocabulary and Heathrow Airport, I've gotten to teach at least one on a more interesting topic, often one that allowed me some amount of creativity.  A partial list of the more interesting ones is below, although I should admit that "interesting" means I found it interesting and certainly not that the students necessarily shared my enthusiasm.

-Is Paul dead?
-Is Tupac dead? (the class firmly decided that he is not...)
-Bushisms
-Human vs. robot Jeopardy! match
-Facebook (I printed out my friends' profiles and made students assume their identities)
-American artists*
-Pop art*
-Ivy League lightbulb jokes (match the college to its stereotype!)
-Bobbing for apples
-Misunderstood lyrics
-Are you a Republican? (turns out they're not)
-The death of the Sony Walkman R.I.P.
-Comparing James Bond actors
-E-Books (just kidding, that sucked)

And I'd be happy to share any of these lessons with struggling English teachers or really bored Austrians.

*Stars indicate that I was completely unqualified to teach this lesson, but did so anyways.

Sample Dialogue #7

In the classroom, in English.

Scott: So who do think the narrator is?  A guy or a girl?
Student: A girl.
Scott: Why's that?
Student: She's talking about her feelings.

Denglish = Deutsch + English - Proofreading

Although I freely admit that my students are usually quite proficient in English (in many ways better than I am in German), they do regularly make a few mistakes that sometimes make me smile and sometimes make me cringe.

"What did you do this weekend?"
"On Friday I made lots of party and all day Saturday I learned English."

"What did you do for Valentine's Day?"
"I was by my boyfriend and I become chocolates from her."

"Can you German?"
"I cannot.  Can you English?"

"Nice to meet you." (upon >10th time meeting you)

"What did you do this morning?"
"I stood up at 6:30 and then I drove with the bus to school."

"And you?"
"I also."

These mistakes tend to make sense when translated literally from German, but sound rather comical in English.  Hearing "Denglish" is usually a sign that language learners are still thinking in their native language and then trying to translate in their head, which is certainly not the most effective way to speak a new language, although I too am guilty of it.  Especially when I say things like, "Ich will morgen meinen Freund in Wien besuchen/I want to visit my boyfriend in Vienna tomorrow!"

Sample Dialogue #6

Two quotes of note from the classroom today.  In English.

Scott: So what does it mean if the president is "impeached" in America? 
Student: It's like when the president is arrested.
Scott: Sort of, do you know who the last president to be impeached was?
Student: Gaddafi?

Scott: Do you like the snow? [context: it's snowing today]
Student: Not really.  I want spring to come.
Scott: When does spring begin in Austria?
Other Student: Every year.

putschen - to revolt

Motivation

jk

Where the Future is Still in the Future

An Austrian friend of mine once joked that if the world came to an end, Austria wouldn't notice for five years.  Although a disco house track inexplicably titled "Barbara Streisand" has somehow become far and away the most popular song in Austria, the world has not yet come to an end.  Nonetheless, I have noticed that Austria is slow to pick up on some of the latest trends, at least when it comes to personal technology.

Austria certainly has an extraordinary standard of living and an advanced energy infrastructure, but when it comes to technology use in everday life, Austrians seem less cutting edge than Americans.  As I tend to be slightly techno-phobic, this is relieving for me at times.

While in America people are enjoying a new iPhone App that allows them to see what's in front of them while they are walking and typing, Austrians are more likely to send letters and almost always pay with cash.  Older Austrians tend not to have internet access and newspapers here are not facing the same budget crises as their American counterparts.  During a lesson on technology and new media, many of my students laughed at me for suggesting that VCRs were obsolete and few responded kindly to my crack at landline telephones.  In a country where most university-track students are still required to learn Latin, perhaps this conservative approach to technology is not surprising.

In Austria, old things work
and old people don't

 
I have also noticed a major divergence with regard to technology in schools.  While American education wonks are gaga for Smart Boards, PowerPoint, and standardized testing, both of my schools still rely on chalk (albeit chalk of many different colors) to hold students' attention.  Austrians teachers still write and grade their tests by hand and many scoff at the idea of Scantron machines.  But sometimes older technologies are the most reliable; as I've discovered, overhead projectors malfunction less frequently than computer labs and their finnicky projectors.  In fact, I've developed an unlikely romance for the overhead projector and I find it's really quite useful for teaching ESL.  Plus, as any student could tell you, there's just something about seeing your teacher's magnified spit froth on the big screen as he vigorously rubs the Vis-a-Vis off a slide with his many-colored thumb.

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And a relevent relevant word of the day is die Zukunft, or "the future."  In German, I sometimes like to add the phrase der Zukunft, or "of the future," to nouns to make them sound more exciting.  For example Architekt der Zukunft - "Architecht of the Future."

Erntedankfest

Apfelstrudel is basically apple pie.

I anticipated some anxiety on the part of my friends and family on the issue of whether I'd be having a proper Thanksgiving (sometimes called Erntedankfest, or Harvest Thanks Party) here in Austria.  To clarify matters like so much butter - I traveled on Thanksgiving to the village of Wieselburg, home of the famous beer (occasionally on special at the GCB in Providence).  Here I met with an American friend from Brown and we cooked a reasonable authentic Thanksgiving dinner, with the following minor exceptions:

-Instead of apple pie, we had Apfelstrudel, which is more or less the same stuff in a different pie dish.  The nutrional value, at least, is as lacking.
-Instead of cranberry sauce, we had cranberry marmalade.  Although it looked gourmet, I still missed the gelled kind that proudly displays the ridges from the tin can.
-Instead of turkey, we had chicken.  This particular substitution was unfortunate, but supposedly eating chicken is more eco-friendly anyways.
-Instead of American relatives, we ate with two Austrian adults, two New Englanders, and one girl from Northern Ireland.  In such a mashed-up casserole of dialects, I found the Austrian easier to understand than the Irish.

I also celebrated the holiday in the classroom by teaching my students all about our beloved and peculiar institution.  The one aspect they seemed most intersted in, oddly enough, was how to make a turkey out of construction paper by tracing your hand - a rite of passage for all American kindergarteners. 

Sample Dialogue

Part of my job is to educate Austrians about the USA and to dispel stereotypes about Americans.  Sometimes I perpetuate them by mistake.  Yesterday, while answering questions in class:

Student: Is it true that all Americans are obese?
Scott: No, not really... except in the South.


der Heuchler - a hypocrit

On Mistranlsations

Although I usually teach just the 14-18 year old crowd, yesterday I had the opportunity to visit a 1st Form (10-11 year olds) classroom, where the students are in their first year of English.  My teacher and I presented them with the taxing activity of describing cartoon pirates, in writing, with the useful English expressions "he's got a..." and "he hasn't got a..." 

Many of the youngsters shied away from my towering American height, but many more tried to impress me with fancy English sentences about their cartoon pirates.  One particularly ambitious lad proudly presented me his complicated, multiword sentence, "In his face is all big."  I felt that something had been lost in translation, so I asked what he was trying to say in German, to which he responded, "In seinem Gesicht ist alles groß," which means the same thing, fairly literally.  Then I thought maybe the problem was not the English language, but rather with this peculiar's idea of describing faces.  I was surprised to find out later that this is an appropriate way say in German that somebody has a large nose and ears.

And this is sadly why most things cannot be translated literally, why languages are difficult to learn, and why Google Translate cannot do your homework (yet).  And today's German word is der Übersetzsungfehler, or "mistranslation."  The fact that two of my German words of the day were types of mistakes (der Tippfehler)  be a reflection of how flawlessly I've been conducting my affairs....