In the gentle mists of vagueness through which I sometimes wander, where laziness or manners prohibit specificity, there is no more "kinda." My old friend "sorta" is gone, too, along with "oh, well, you know..."
Instead, there is "a bit."
Rachel, is it hot today? A bit. Are you hungry? A bit. Do you enjoy playing ping-pong? A bit. Are you, yourself, starting to sound like a beginning English learner? A bit, a bit, a flipping bit! And a British one at that.
My younger students know "a bit," thanks to the British textbooks from which they're learning English. And I've discovered that it's so much easier to speak in the vocabulary my students know.
When they do well in class, when I'm happy and they're happy and everyone's swaddled in the rosy cocoon of understanding, I want to bubble, "You guys are so smart!" Except they don't know "you guys" or "smart." So, I settle for, "Students! You are clever!"
Clever? Clever? Since when? I say! So veddy, veddy clevah! I've taught them smart, but they're getting "clever" three times a week from their Chinese English teachers and "smart" once a week from me. So, clever it is.
And naughty: Any bad behavior is deemed "naughty," from talking in class to running out into traffic. On more than one occasion, I have shaken my head disappointedly and murmured, "So naughty." Like a twittering debutante with a fan and a dance card and the attentions of London's most notorious rogue.
It's a little easier with my older students, though I consistently praise them for being "cool" and "hard-working." They know these ones very well. And whenever I ask them for a noun, I can count on it being "banana." I don't know why, it just always is.
The thing is, I catch myself talking this way all the time now. "The problem is," I told my sister on the phone the other day, "the boys in that class are a bit naughty. And they're clever! They're just not hard-working, is the thing."
*Sigh* I need a banana.
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