Kevin teaches warmth, caring and indefinite articles

For the past couple months now I've been teaching English as a second language through a local community college. Having not served as a teacher for over five years now, I seized the opportunity to jump back up in front of a group of students and take the stage before a brand new captive audience. The hours are minimal with pay that beats what I was making at my last job salting fries so I can't rightly complain. As with any job, what makes it most delightful though are the people I work with.

Or should I say "the people with whom I work?"

A Taiwanese student of mine impressed me this evening when she asked if the question I wrote on the board, namely Where are they flying to? should be corrected to simply Where are they flying? Whether you follow the antiquated adage that ending your sentences in a preposition is verboten or even the omit-needless-words rule, you kinda have to agree with her. Then again, if you do, you probably don't like reading the fadverb kinda either.

By the way, I've now coined the word fadverb to denote an adverb commonly used in spoken language but not so often in written language. For the record, I have also coined the word fauxnoun though I can't come up with a definition for it off the top of my head so I'm moving on.

Teaching English to adults poses other dilemmas as well. Or is it delimmae? Anyway, I catch myself using colloquialisms that native speakers can sometimes get away with when talking with other native speakers but that shouldn't really be taught to new students of the language. Tonight, when a student correctly distinguished between the indefinite and definite article, I said to the class, "She used 'the' instead of 'a'. How come?"

How come?

I cringed after I said it. At least I didn't say how's come though. That's even worse.

I wrote the expression on the board and explained that this is something Americans sometimes say instead of why. Suspecting it might be specific to the southern United States, I googled it when I got home to find its origin.

The first thing to come up in the search when googling "how come" was I'm a Guy . . . So How Come I'm Developing Breasts? This article makes for interesting reading, but the ins and outs of gynecomastia don't really serve as an answer to my question.

The next article though was from Random House's word of the day where people can write in and ask about etymologies. According to Random Houses's cyber wisdom how come dates back at least as far as Shakespeare though it doesn't really say whether or not people throughout the entire US use the phrase or just hapless rednecks like me. Not only that, but the cybernaut who asked the question identifies herself as Zydeco Mom so I don't think she exactly hails from Upper Wisconsin or the Jersey shore.

Oh well.

Sometimes it's not what I say that catches me off guard but what my students say. A few weeks ago a more advanced student from Mexico came up to me and wrote down the word lifestyle wanting to know what it meant. I fumbled through a choppy explanation of the word being careful not to mention condom name-brands or more politically weighted expressions like the gay lifestyle. Just when I thought he would return to his seat contented, he wrote the words warmth and caring up on the board as well wanting to know their definitions.

I didn't want to embarrass him but I couldn't help but wonder if I was helping him compose a personal ad. A neighboring teacher confessed that she had to explain junk in the back of her trunk to one of her students. Ay Dios mio!

One more interesting thing is that out of twenty-something students from eight different countries, all of whom were invited to call me either Kevin or Mr. Black, only one student actually takes m up on the offer. To the rest of the class, I'm known as Teacher.

Teacher, can we go on break?

Teacher, I can write in the workbook?

You need to ask Teacher before you leave early.

If one more student calls me Teacher, from that pointon he/she's going to be known as Student.

By the way, I've just decided that he/she is an example of a fauxnoun.