Yesterday afternoon in one of my 1-nensei classes, Sato-kun asked me what the word "fuck" meant. He simply said the word that his friend told him to say. I made an X with my forearms that meant "dame" or "no". Once Takeuchi-sensei translated to him that it was a profane word he put his hands together and said to me, "Ohh, sorry." I told him not to sweat it - he didn't know what he was saying in the first place.

"Shut up!" and "Fuck you!" have a mainstay in English education for some reason. This week I was grading pairs for their dialogue practice. One of them ended like this:

A: "...can I borrow it?"
B: "No, sorry."

B-san finished up while A-san then decided to flip his middle finger at the guy. I told Yoshimura-sensei to tell him not to do that hand gesture again. Not realizing the gravity of his simple gesture, he did it again.

The kids must be getting our expressions from movies and whatever other media they can get their hands on. Most likely television - I can't think of any other place out here they'd pick it up. Certainly they don't just hear it off the street or on the radio.

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Today was a twist on interpretation. Each student had their own card with three pieces of information: a place, a time and an action. So students would have to go up to others and ask "Do you have any plans for the holidays?" and the other would respond with whatever was on his or her card.

I was walking around the class, listening to kids exchanging information via english in addition to being asked as well.

"Do you have any plans for the holidays?" asked one of my kids.
"Yes... I'm going to go visit Yamaguchi next Sunday."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to swim at the beach."

He started to write down the information. With another friend in tow, they spoke amongst themselves to recall what I told them.

(in Japanese)
A: "What did he say?"
B: "He said swim... swim at the biatch."

I let out this small laugh and said "Umm, don't say that." And then I realized why he said that - he was just pronouncing the word beach in some ways like a Japanese would read a japanese word written in english (otherwise known as romaji). Beach = be - ah - ch.

He stopped writing out the word beach when I told him not to say it. After some confusion, I told him he was spellling beach right and then voiced the proper pronunciation.

I think it's safe to say that I was a little worried since this week had it's share of profane english slang.