Chicken Boobs, Teacher!
Memorable moments from teaching English at a Turkish university.
“Let’s talk about meat. What English words do you know?”
“Beef!”
“Meat!”
“Lamb!”
“Chicken!”
“Chicken Boobs!”
“… Wellll”
“CHICKEN BOOBS, TEACHER!”
“ . . . in English, we don’t say chicken boobs. We say chicken breast.” I turned to write on the board, “CHICK-EN BREAST, repeat after me: CHICK-EN BREAST.”
“Chick-en BEST, CHICK-EN BEST!”
“No. BR-east! BR-east!”
“BREAST! BREAST!!”
In a course for working professionals, one student told a story about her university days.
“I lived with a family. They liked me very much. I tutored their children.”
She paused, shifting her gaze from me to a colleague, and said, “Memnun?”
“Pleasure,” he responded.
“Pleasure?” she confirmed.
“Evet, pleasure.” He said confidently, as I worried what might come next.
“I pleasured the whole family,” she said to me with a big smile.
“What are some skills that people have beyond academics?”
“Hand jobs! Hand jobs! Some people are very good at HAND JOBS, TEACHER!”
“Well, we usually don’t say hand jobs in English. . .”
. . . But what DO we say? Hand. . . Manual? Jobs… Labor?
“. . . we say manual labor,” I clarified, “That’s MAN-U-AL LA-BOR. What about other skills?”
“Agrikultur!”
“Fishing!”
The class returned to normal.
“Chef!”
A tardy student arrived.
“Trekking!”
And asked a friend what the discussion was about.
“Army!”
His eyes lit up and . . .
“HAND JOBS, TEACHER!!”
Thanks for reading! I’d also like to thank Sven Howard and Stephen M. Tonic at The Junction for their thoughtful editing and feedback!
