September 15, 2006 (old blog entry)
I have to continue our target lesson for this week: Asking and giving directions. So, I let my students listen to the following conversation on the tape:
- A woman: Hi, I need some directions. Do you happen to know where the hospital is?
- A guy on street: You bet! It’s on …..
OK, I let them listen to it a couple of times without any written handout at hand, and had the lights off. In the dark, they can have better sense to “hear” things. Then, we had a great discussion about what they heard.
- S popped out first: “I sink the man say: ‘You back’, be-causi the woman want to hospital, her back is pain, so, it ‘you back’.”
- L disagreed: “No, no, I think the guy is not good. He is kinda ‘bu` hao`’ (not good in Chinese), so, it is “You bad”…”
- X continued: “I think it’s “bed”, she want to go hospital a bed, tired, you know, sleep on bed…”
!@#$%^&*.....
Anyway, I put all the possible answers on the whiteboard, along with the correct “You bet” to help them make a decision. It turned out, everyone thought “You back” make more sense in this dialogue. When I announced the accurate answer and explained this colloquial expression to them, they all said “English is difficult!! Strange!!”.
BTW, B gave me a fresh fig grew in his backyard 2 days ago. A gave me some home-made dim-sum yesterday. J brings me vegetarian food almost every day. Mostly fresh fruit salad. And she’s gonna bring me some vegetarian moon cake tomorrow. Don’t you just love them?
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