November 27, 2007

Sarah and I have been putting this one together for a while…

Here are some highlights of students’ work that we’ve collected. We should say that the intent of this is not to laugh at the mistakes made by people learning English as a foreign language however. Some of these examples are bizarrely creative ideas that can only come from someone trying to make learning more meaningful. Others are just simple mistakes made by someone working to understand a very difficult language. (Note: Indonesian has virtually no verb tense.) Therefore, we have more of a sense of laughing “with” them. Afterall, English sometimes makes little sense. We’ve haven’t changed what follows, so some of them are pretty rough… Take a look.

- Sarah’s class: 6 & 7 year-olds learning past simple tense, a project to make a list of the days of the week and events that happened thereon
“Luther lost his ball
Luther ate glue
Luther drank wine
Luther killed people
Luther flew into hell
Luther married the devil
Luther died (had the devil’s baby)”

- Peter’s class: 6 & 7 year-olds drew an imaginary creature made of many different animal parts (a “following instructions” exercise). They then had to name it. Some names include:
Impulse/Speedy
Spade
Leonardo
Peter
Peterpan
Brownies
Super Santa
Dinotrodon Advantage Spit [my favorite]


- From another of Sarah’s class’s dark imaginations: They were told to write a scary story (Indonesians love a good – or bad – ghost story):

One day there was a ghost named luciver. There is a man who wanted to killed the ghost. Because there was an a evil hand (the ghost’s hand. The man look and Find a virus and a magical sword to killed the ghost. And cup to desapere the ghost. After the ghost killed (the man’s name was garreth) he return the ghost in to the cup [by Ivan]
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1.) Once upon a time there was a alien.
2.) The alien was so strong.
3.) So he wants got all
4.) But there was a knight
5.) From heaven and killed king alien.
6.) 100.000 died
[by Billy]
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One day Irene went to the forest. She saw a very old house. And then a crazy grandpa said to Irene “Don’t looked the house because the house is very scary”. But Irene already looked the house. After that the ghost came to Irene. Then Irene killed the ghost. [by Regina]
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One day, in the forest there is a ghost named ghosty. All ghost friend with ghosty. But if ghosty and another ghost said a people, ghosty and his friend will killed us and ate us. The first people be killed is a girl named Regina. Regina dead and friend with ghosty. Even Regina family. Regina killed them and all people will killed by the ghost. [by Irene]
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