Question of the Day

So the sannensei are currently studying the relative pronouns "who," "which" and "that." The example sentence that T-sensei wrote on the blackboard was: "This is the best book I've ever read." She then asked for a volunteer to read the sentence and to translate it.

No one volunteered, but one student raised her hand to ask a question (in Japanese): "Is "I've" a contraction for "I love" or "I have?"

As soon as she asked the question, she realized how absurd it was, but it was too late: the entire class burst into laughter. =P

On the topic of amusing questions students ask, I was at Towada JHS on Monday and it was my first time teaching the ninensei there, so we had the requisite self-intro "speech" followed by a Q&A time. Of course one of the students came up with "What do you think about him (points to a student named Miura)?" (he asked in Japanese and I translated for him). My answer: "He's probably a nice guy." The funny part was that when I was eating lunch with them, the teacher (not a JTE) asked students (by student number) to stand up and ask me a question. I got a lot of the usual--"Do you like Japanese food? What colour do you like?" etc.--but one of the last guys to go asked: "Do you love Miura?" The students found my answer of "Sorry, I don't know him well enough" extremely amusing; I suspect they only listened to the "Sorry, I don't" part. =P