The top six funniest mistakes from English students: 2010

The number 1 mistake award goes to "I want to making love with you!"

    I always carry a little notebook to my classes to record funny things that my students say. Some of them are cute, and some of them are just flat out funny. Here are my favorites from 2010.

1. Making Love: "Ok class lets practice some of these gerunds." "I want to making love with you!"  Correction: I am falling in love with you! This guy was 32 years old and his name was Tango. There is no way that I was letting this one slide as I blurted out "Making love means sex!" This class was really close and were great friends so they simply laughed hysterically when I told them this. After the class I think the student felt bad, because he invited to take me to Burger King for lunch.

2. Doing work in the bathroom: "The girl was in the bathroom doing her work" "When she finished doing her work she did not wash her hands!" Correction- The girl was going to the bathroom. When she was finished using the restroom (going pee/poo) she did not wash her hands! My adorable low level Talk Time students made this mistake. No one taught them how to simply say, "I'm going to the bathroom!" This is simply a cute and endearing mistake that we all laughed over in class.

3. I'm bad at drinking:"I don't drink, I'm bad at drinking." Numerous Koreans think that they have an allergy to alcohol because their body turns bright red when they drink. This is not a little pink, its full fledged Mc Donald's color red. Therefore many of my students say in class "I'm bad at drinking." They come up with this sentence because they are almost ashamed that they cannot drink, as drinking is a big part of Korean culture. They mean by this that their bodies are actually bad at drinking. I find this quite hilarious, because in all reality no one's body is meant to withstand a six pack of Coors Light or a bottle of soju!

4. Husky voice: "Teacher Carla, is this correct?" "Teacher Marie has she always had a husky voice?" Correction: No correction, I have always had a deep, husky voice!" Everyone that knows me understand that I have a raspy surfer girl voice. My students have never heard anything like it, and so they all always ask strange questions about it, and often compliment me with other weird sayings like "Your voice is really sexy."

5.Feeling me up:  "He was feeling me up!"  Correction: He was sizing me up! Of course my students couldn't possibly know what the idiom feeling up means. But there was no way I could possibly explain this one in class, I had a group of severely awkward students that couldn't even talk about dating with straight faces! So instead of correcting them in class, I let this one slide to save the embarrassment.

6. Reggae hair: "That guy has reggae hair!" My fellow San Diegan co-worker happens to be African American. He also happens to have dreadlocks. Unfortunately, Konglish is so advanced they even have a name for dreadlocks by simply referring to people as having reggae hair. I find this mistake flat out funny because they took the Reggae genre of music and applied it to hair. Would you ever say to someone, "I like your K-pop hair," or "I like your jazz hair?"

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