In my first year of teaching English here in Turkey, I made all sorts of amusing mistakes. Here is one. I was teaching suffixes, namely -ish, as in "like". (Okay, I admit, a pretty lame point to be teaching but I thought it was neato at the time and I was very VERY green at that time) Conversation stopped, and everyone stared at me, aghast. Wha'd I do wrong? Steven, blushing and in halting English, English, told me "Teacher Ernie, we eat those." During my first year of teaching in Dalian, PRC, I went with Steven, one of my students, to his "small" (pop.500K) city near Sheyang, NE China. I told her what it meant to say a man is well hung here. She blushed and I think her husband probably got an ear full when she got home. With his parents and a driver, we had lunch (like a seven-course meal!) in a surprisingly ornate restaurant in the countryside.

One day, about eight years ago, I was teaching an advanced group and had them doing some conversation exercise, which I eventually wanted to bring to a close. I stood at the front, clapped my hands and waited as the group slowly got the message, except for two young women, who were deep in conversation. I then whistled and one of them looked at me and said, "We are not dogs!" Not being one to miss a vocab opportunity, I said, "No, you are bitches!" Fortunately, they still speak to me when we meet in the street.Well, I handed out the photocopied material to my adult students and began the exercises. 1. I dont have a watch but I think it is twelve-ish. Very good. 2. She is 45 years old but she looks youngish. I have been teaching ESL in Vietnam for almost 4 years now, and have several interesting stories, but will relate one of the funniest from the class-room environment. Stephen Hornby, national playwright-in-residence for the UK's LGBT History Month, argues that our stories have long been actively suppressed. "The only interest used to be in censoring or denying any queer elements of the records of the past. So, things were kept from public display, passages were omitted from books and sexual relationships were presented as passionate friendships. That was wilful and deliberate distortion."

Of course the participants have no idea why the new teacher is in fits of laughter at this, but when the lesson progresses and we get to the correction part, and the error is pointed out, and what the alternative means, the students first become very embarrassed, but this turns into giggles as they begin to realize what they had just been saying.It was my first day teaching Kindergarten alone at a language school in South Korea. My boss was very adamant about the children not being allowed to speak Korean. So, like a good worker ant, I kept shouting at the student the whole time to stop speaking Korean (what a waste of time). One little boy was especially getting on my nerves because he was jumping up and down and speaking Korean (boss told me he was a handful). I told him very forcibly to sit down and stop speaking Korean. Next thing I knew, he went quiet and started staring at the floor. A minute later I took a peek and realized he had peed his pants! Any guesses what he was saying in Korean?