I decided to solve this problem by doing what I should have done a week ago--grade exams. Now, I really don't like grading exams. It's just hours and hours of reading page after page of bad English and assigning it an arbitrary number based partly on the student's skill in English, and partly upon my own whim. It's just a boring, laborious process, and honestly it's the sort of thing that makes me realize I don't want to be a teacher forever.
There are some things that make grading worthwhile, however. One of the sections on the exam was "dictation", which means I read a sentence while the students try to accurately copy what I say. One of the sentences was "You can't hitchhike". We definitely discussed the word "hitchhike"--they thought it was such a cool word to say; they kept repeating it and giggling. Yet for some reason, a week later when the exam came around, they seemed incapable of remembering it.
So I read 27 sentences that said the following:
- You can't hicharge/kitchen/ketchack/
pigcheak - You can't hit chuck.
You can kind of understand how they might write down what they hear. But not all of them make as much sense phonetically:
- You can't eat cheese.
- You can keep change.
And my personal favorite:
- You can't hit shit.
On a less light note, however, I would like to take this time to apologize to the small gecko which I inadvertently killed this morning. I was on my way downstairs--I told you how my temporary apartment is dark and sunless--and I didn't see him there. He apparently didn't see my descending foot, either. And thus his little life was snuffed out.
I found him smushed against one of the steps after I turned on the light. I feel kinda bad for the little guy.
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