What They Said

There is a pretty French girl standing in front of me at the intersection, waiting for the lights to change. She is with a Scottish boy; they have obviously just met and there is some light-hearted flirting going on.

"Have you been to the art museum?" she asks him in charmingly accented English.

"No," he says, grinning down at her foolishly.

The girl smiles and shrugs. "I have not too."

"Either," the boys says. "I have not either."

There is a long pause. I can't see the girl's face, but I can imagine her frown. "Why?" she wants to know.

The boy considers this. "I don't know. That's just the way we say it."

It takes all of my willpower not to butt in here. I'd like to tell her that we use either after negatives, but it isn't my place.

The lights change and we cross the road. Before we part ways, I hear the girl ask the boy about Edinburgh castle. But she pronounces the burgh in 'Edinburgh' like the burg in 'Pittsburgh'.

The boy shakes his head. "Not burgh," he tells her, "it's pronounced burra."

The girl lets out a long sigh. I don't blame her. Cracking the code has been hard enough for me here in Scotland and I'm a native speaker of English.

Two middle-aged women in the market are talking. "That's me done with the messages," one tells the other in broad Glaswegian. This makes me smile. Not so long ago, I wouldn't have had a clue what this meant, but now I know it means she's finished with her shopping. Doing the messages doesn't have anything to do with messages. When we first got here, I wondered why people were so obsessed with passing messages to each other. Couldn't they just email or use the phone? It took me months to puzzle that one out.

In my classroom, the students are full of questions about their coming written presentation. "How long we spend on the bag one?" Michael asks me, raising his hand. Michael is from Beijing, and he has a rather cavalier attitude towards English stress patterns and vowels.

I am completely and utterly thrown by this. "The bag one?" I query, tilting my head.

"Yes, the BAG one," Michael says, nodding. "You tell us we should write BAG one."

Is he trying to say the big one? What big one?

"Do you mean the biggest paragraph?" I say, stalling for time.

Michael shakes his head vigorously. "BACK one!" he almost shouts. "You tell us today. We supposed to write report BACK one, you say."

"Write it down," I sigh, giving up. I really need to work with Michael on his stress and pronunciation.

He pulls out a pencil and scrawls it on the back of his notebook: the word he's been aiming for is background.

Yes, we've definitely got to work more on stress and pronunciation. But all in good time. In the meantime, every day we crack a little more of the code.

Cheating Arts

This is it: D-Day. The final examination. I'm in a room full of students who are radiating fear and misery as they chew on the ends of their pencils and ply their eraser stubs over their answer sheets. This is the day when we separate the studious from the screw-ups, the hardworking from the lazy. The students grimace and gaze heavenwards as they wrack their brains for the right answers.

"You!" I whisper, tapping one boy's desk. "Stop cheating!" He shoots me an aggrieved Who me? look and spreads his hands.

But I've sat in on too many exams here and I know all too well what he's up to: while pretending to stare into space, he has in fact been copying what the girl next to him is writing. She's already managed four paragraphs and he has barely come up with three sentences, but what he has written is amazingly like her composition. My name Gamze, she has written. Thank you for email I am festival's very enjoyed Especially rockband. my family go Istanbul favorite holiday. Cheater Boy's first sentence reads as follows: My name Onur Thank you for email I am party's very enjoyed Especially music. my family go Ankara favorite holiday. Part of me is infuriated by his need to cheat; part of me respects the fact that at least he had the presence of mind to change the pertinent bits.

Because as much as it pains me to admit this, not everybody here has the smarts to know how to cheat. Last semester, a girl turned in an assignment about Turkish tourism, but had neglected to change Nigeria and Nigerian to Turkey and Turkish. And this group in particular has a couple of real boneheads in it. I recognize half a dozen from last semester: kids who never paid attention in class, never did a lick of homework, never once came up with the right answer. The worst one, a tall, pimply boy called Cemal, is sitting in the second row, his head bent over his test paper. I don't have the heart to see how he is doing. During his months in my class, Cemal was never anything but spectacularly dense.

In the fifth row, there is a boy who looks exactly like someone I went to school with, Nathaniel Tannenbaum. So far, I've taught half a dozen kids here who looked eerily like old friends or acquaintances of mine, but this kid is so similar to Nathaniel it's truly freaky: the same beaky nose, the same golden skin, unibrow, and long, shapely hands. Even the way this kid slumps in his seat is the same. Every time I have to walk by his desk, I try not to gape. Then I happen to look over Nathaniel's shoulder and see what he has written about his favorite holiday: my went enjoye istanbul september with fammily Three brothers, sister. my very had fun, too much Interesting, istanbul Very fantastik City.

I can't get over my disappointment. Nathaniel Tannebaum was a straight A student with a keen wit. He was in the Gifted English class and cocky enough to mock people who failed to distinguish between your and you're. How could this idiot be his doppelganger?

Cemal writes, never once looking up from his answer sheet. He frowns, he scratches his neck, he chews the end of his pencil and erases hard enough to make a hole in the paper, then writes again.

"What is that? Show me that paper!" I hear my colleague hiss. I wheel around and see him bending over a boy in the second row whose head is lowered in shame. My colleague holds up the crib sheet he has confiscated. I am dispatched to the office to fetch the head teacher to deal with the cheater. As I turn back briefly, I see Nathaniel trying to copy off his neighbor's paper. I feel like crying: Nathaniel cheating? Nooooo! Nathaniel was the guy everybody else cheated off!

I come back to the classroom with the headteacher. As soon as the blushing cheater is ushered out in shame, three of my former students leave, one after the other. I take a look at their papers and feel like crying: they haven't even bothered to attempt the composition. There is no way they're going to pass.

"You--sit--over--here," I hear my colleague tell Nathaniel through clenched teeth. Dark eyes flashing, Nathaniel gets up with great dignity and relocates to a seat in the back row.

Thirty long minutes pass. Two more of my ex-students get up and leave, their test sheets only half completed. My colleague doesn't say anything about it, but I know he feels as bad about the boy with the crib sheet as I do. Because we caught him cheating, that boy will receive a zero for his efforts. Instead of spending the summer relaxing with his pals, he will have to stay here and go to summer school. God knows what he will tell his parents.

Nathaniel and Cemal are the very last students to hand in their exams. A quick glance at Nathaniel's paper shows me that he has almost certainly failed. I don't even bother to look at Cemal's; his failure is a given. At least Cemal didn't cheat, I tell myself. But I still leave the classroom feeling jaded and a little depressed.

Later in the afternoon, I find Cemal's paper in my stack of tests to mark. I am astonished and delighted to find that he passed. If he did cheat, he did a great job of it.

Passed It

"You've got a new student here for the test," Keiko whispered, "and just wait until you get a load of him!"

I leaned forward. "Why? What's wrong with him?" I whispered back.

"He's eighty if he's a day!" Keiko rolled her eyes. "He's waiting for you in the lounge. Though seriously, I don't know what you can do for him." She handed me a test paper. "Just explain it in Japanese if he doesn't understand."

I found Mr. Yanagigawa in the lounge, wearing a stern expression and a grey suit. Keiko definitely hadn't exaggerated his age: with his wrinkled face and white hair, he looked at least eighty years old. He scowled up at me when I walked over to him. I introduced myself and invited him to come with me to the examination room. He understood me, but once I'd seated him and given him the test paper, he waved away my explanations with a terse, "I understand."

Twenty minutes later, I came back for his completed test paper. The system at our school was that every prospective student took a simple grammar test, then, if she passed it, a harder one. No matter what the student's score was, an interview was then conducted, after which the student was placed in the appropriate class.

"Have you finished?" I asked gently.

Mr. Yanagigawa frowned and handed me his paper. "I'll be right back," I said, and went off to mark it. Halfway out of the classroom, I stopped. A quick glance had shown me that he'd gotten the first ten questions right. I read through the next group of questions and saw that he'd answered every one correctly. "Umm...I think you'll need to take our next test," I told him. Mr. Yanagigawa shrugged and grunted his assent.

Back at Keiko's desk I brandished the paper. "Look at this! He might be eighty, but he's nailed this test!"

Keiko blinked as she gaped at Mr. Yanagigawa's test paper. "My God, that's incredible!"

"Mm," I said. "Looks like he'll need the hard one." Wordlessly, Keiko handed me a copy.

"Interesting man, isn't he?" I couldn't resist commenting. "What did he put down under Occupation?"

Keiko pulled out his application form and frowned at it. "Retired." She raised an eyebrow. "He'll never get through the second half of the test!"

"Well, we'll soon find out, won't we?"

Keiko sighed. "Even if he does pass it, there's no way he'll be able to speak English." She examined her fingernails. "I guess he's retired so he needs some kind of hobby."

There was nothing I could say to that. Keiko was probably right. She wasn't being ageist in assuming that Mr. Yanagigawa's English skills would be limited. Thanks to wartime anti-American and anti-British propaganda, few Japanese people his age knew more than the most basic English. During the war years, English language education wasn't only discouraged, it was strictly forbidden. English loan words were purged from Japanese and people were imprisoned or punished severely simply for possessing English language textbooks. Most of our older students who had been children or adolescents during the war years seldom made it to the intermediate level. The fact that Mr. Yanagigawa knew as much English as he did was amazing -- and intriguing.

I took the next exam sheet back to Mr. Yanagigawa and told him I'd be back in fifteen minutes.

Barely ten minutes later, Keiko called me. "He's finished," she murmured, handing me his paper. I sat down with the answer key and Mr. Yanagigawa's completed test paper. He'd gotten every single question right. Even some of our better students didn't get every single question right.

Mr. Yanagigawa was sitting in the lounge, his back straight as a rod, his white head held high. He looked up as I approached. I held out his completed test paper. "You are obviously very good at English," I began, but he waved away my comments.

"I'd like to ask you some questions now --" I started to say, but Mr. Yanagigawa frowned and jerked his elbow back to look at his wristwatch.

"I'm sorry, but I'll have to come back another day for the interview," he said in perfect, hardly-accented English. "I've got a meeting in Ichigaya and I really have to attend it."

My jaw dropped as I watched Mr. Yanagigawa stride out of the lobby and vanish through the front door past an astonished Keiko. He never did come back for the interview, but he really didn't need to: I doubt there was anything we could have taught him.

The Patience Of A Saint

"Teacher," Sevge asks me after class just as I'm packing up my things. "What is mean Cheeses ebb?"

All I can do is stare, open-mouthed. Sevge has a habit of hitting me with non sequiturs, usually right in the middle of a teaching point. Last week she wanted me to mark an exercise on the conditional when I was trying to explain past continuous and simple past to the class. The week before, she wanted me to explain the lyrics of a particular song just after I'd taken attendance. "Is it a kind of cheese?" I ask her now, stacking my books into a neat pile.

She shakes her head. "Cheeses ebb."

"Where did you find this expression?" I ask, unplugging the CD player.

She blinks. "Teacher, you say!"

Her classroom companion Onur nods. "You say every time," he agrees. "Cheez us webbed."

I wrack my brain for what this could mean. I have no memory whatsoever of any class discussion of dairy products. "Were we talking about cheese in class?"

They frown at me, then shake their heads.

I slide my CDs into my backpack and erase the white board, trying to buy time. I have no idea what they're talking about. It's been a trying day and a very difficult class. "When did I say it?"

Onur looks embarrassed. "You say when ask leave early. When Aziz go toilet three time. When Beyza come lessons late and sleeping."

"When Abdullah forget book," Sevge adds. "You say three times today!"

I shake my head and sidle toward the door. "Could you say it again?"

"Cheez uz webbed!" Onur repeats, wringing his hands and casting his eyes heavenward in a credible, if highly unflattering, imitation of yours truly.

I slap my forehead in sudden recognition. "Jesus wept!"

They both nod. "What is mean?"

I give up and put my books and CD player back down. "Well, you know Jesus, the Christian prophet, right?" They don't understand, so I draw a cross on my notebook and they both nod. I point to the ceiling. "Sometimes when I'm having a hard time in this class, I imagine Jesus is looking down at me and he's crying a little for me." They stare at me, clearly mystified and I don't blame them one bit. My cheeks are flaming at how ridiculous I sound.

"So I say Jesus wept," I conclude lamely. "Sort of the way you say Allah, allah when you can't understand something and you feel frustrated."

"Cheezes webbed like Allah, allah?" Sevge confirms just as Aycan and Abdullah come back into the class for Abdullah's book.

"Teacher, you say!" Abdullah comments, flinging his arms wide apart and rolling his eyes at the ceiling. "Cheezes webbed:What is mean?"

Thankfully, Onur and Sevge explain this time.

"Absolutely!" yells Aycan, whose voice only comes in top volume. "You always say!"

Onur and Sevge nod. "Absolutely. You say every time, teacher!"

"Cheezes webbed!" shrieks Abdullah in a worrying falsetto. "Absolutely!"

"Teacher, what is mean absolutely?" Sevge hisses. "How spell?"

"A-B-S-- I'll tell you tomorrow," I say, desperate for a cup of coffee and a sit down.

As I push open the door, I hear all four students parroting "Absolutely!" and "Jesus wept!" I had no idea I used these expressions so often.

"Sheet!" Abdullah calls joyfully over his shoulder as they leave the classroom just as my boss is strolling past. "You say sheet every time teacher!" The others echo their agreement.

Jesus wept.

The Five Pillars of Islam

Monday morning. Only four more days of school before the four-day Bayram holiday! I am in great spirits.

Four boys are waiting for me outside the classroom. Right away I'm suspicious: these kids are ultra lazy. They've got a furtive look about them too; I know from experience that if they had thought bubbles over their heads they would read Let's ask her and see.

"Teacher, Bayram," Mustafa says, thrusting out his chest and striking a confident pose. Mustafa is the strongest speaker here, the one-eyed-king in the land of the blind. He has obviously been chosen Designated Speaker as a result of his superior communicative skills.

"Yes, Bayram," I say enthusiastically, playing along. Only four more days of teaching before our four-day break!

"Bayram Muslim holiday," Mustafa continues, right on my tail as I push open the door.

"Yes, Bayram is a Muslim holiday." I love playing dumb. The way I see it, this job is tough enough as it is -- let me have some fun. Plus, I've got good pedagogical reasons for letting this play out slowly: language is all about communication and these boys have something they truly want to communicate. They more they get, the better.

"Very busy." Mustafa thumps his chest, then gestures meaningfully around the group by way of providing a subject.

"Yes, we are all certainly very busy," I say, setting my CD player on the desk. "Especially since we have three units to cover in a very short time. Could you plug this in for me?"

I can see the other boys watching Mustafa like cats watch a fish tank. Their thought bubbles would read Please oh please oh please.

"Many preparation," Mustafa puts in desperately. "Shopping."

"Yes, I know. It's a good thing we have Friday off, isn't it?"

"Teacher please no class today," Mustafa says, finally cutting to the chase.

"Muslim holiday!" puts in Ersoy, practically stepping on my feet. He has been hovering anxiously, unable to compete with Mustafa linguistically, but clearly frustrated that I have not been persuaded by Mustafa's arguments.

I roll my attendance sheet into a baton and whack the side of my desk. "Muslim holiday," I repeat. "And you are all good Muslims? You pray in the mosque every Friday?" This is mean of me, but I can't help it: no way do they go to the mosque every Friday. I've smelled alcohol on their breath before and I know a few of them have come to my class with hangovers. And let's not even talk about lying.

Mustafa has to translate. A few of the boys nod, but they won't meet my eyes.

"Okay, then," I say, an idea suddenly forming in my mind. "Who can tell me what the five pillars of Islam are?" They stare at me, confused.

"If you can tell me the five pillars of Islam, in English--" I pause for effect "--you can go home early to get ready for Bayram."

I know I'm safe here: not even Mustafa could manage this. These boys never study. If one of them were capable of explaining the five pillars of Islam, I'd immediately let him go home: with English that good, an afternoon off wouldn't set him back. And for him to have attained that level, he'd have had to work hard. I respect hard-working students. Smart kids impress me far less than diligent ones. I respect honest kids too. So if anyone tries to play the religious card with me, they had better play it well -- and truthfully.

"The five pillars of Islam?" I say, raising an eyebrow. "Can anyone tell me?"

Their faces radiate confusion. You'd think five and Islam might clue them in, but no.

Mustafa clasps his hands and bows. "Five times?" he says, his eyes pleading.

I shake my head. "Praying five times a day is only one of them. Come on, I'll help you out. The last one is hajj in Arabic."

Now at least they know what I'm talking about. While I take attendance, every boy in the little group does his best to come up with the three remainining pillars of Islam, recruiting some of the smarter students (i.e., girls) to help as soon as they enter the classroom. A few of them mime sacrificing a sheep and distributing the meat (part of the duty of Zakat, or charity), but this is as close as they get. Last term, I had six kids out of three dozen who claimed to regularly attend mosque. They might have managed the five pillars of Islam, but the kids I've got this term could sooner fly to the moon.

Tough love, I tell myself as they all take their seats with glum faces, their vision of a delightfully English free day so much vapor. Teaching is going to be tough today. Still, only four more days!

On the board, I write the five pillars of Islam. (It pays to have an inquiring mind. And a husband who teaches in an international school.)

Shahadah -- Declaration of faith (From my students I'd have accepted 'There is only one God'.)

Salah -- Prayer (from my students I'd have accepted 'Pray five times a day'. Heck, I'd even have allowed hand gestures and 'five'.)

Zakat -- Charity (From my students I'd have accepted 'Giving money to poor people'.)

Saum -- Fasting during Ramadan (From my students, 'Not eating' would have been fine. If anyone had used the word 'fast' without consulting a dictionary, I'd have been tempted to give him the whole week off.)

Hajj -- Pilgrimage to Mecca (From my students, 'Go Mecca' would have been fine.)

It was a long, long class for all concerned. But now it's Bayram: four days of no teaching! I am in great spirits.

Time Well Spent

I have a weird habit: I cart around all sorts of junk just because I think it might come in handy some day.

In fact, practically everything in my bag does come in handy. If you have a headache, I've got a foil packet of aspirin tucked into my wallet. If you spill something, count on me to always have a couple of spare paper towels nicked from the lavatory. If you need a safety pin, I'll burrow around in my bag until I find you one. I've got a tiny sewing kit in my bag which has saved several falling hems and a dozen loose buttons, a handkerchief that has wiped up dozens of messes, a miniature bottle of hand-wash to keep swine flu at bay, hand cream and lip balm for dry or chapped skin, Kleenex, and -- everybody in the staff room knows this -- a whole mess of sugar packets just in case anyone around me ever goes into a diabetic coma. Nobody ever has, but whenever you run out of sugar for your coffee, I'm your woman.

I should point out that I don't do this out of virtuousness; I'm a born pack-rat. After dozens of moves, many international, I've had to suppress my accumulative tendencies. When I can indulge my inner pack-rat, I feel a lot better.

As much as I love being useful, I hate waste. I've been known to fish things out of the trash if I know I can use or recycle them. I once carried almost a dozen metal biscuit boxes home on the Tokyo subway: I'd found them in the rubbish heap, newly discarded and absolutely pristine. For ten years, they held crayons, loose jigsaw puzzle pieces, Chinese checker marbles, playing cards, and accessories for my kids' Girl Day dolls. If I'd walked past those boxes there on the rubbish heap, I'd be regretting it to this day. Stopping to pick them up was worth every bit of the embarrassment at being caught out, too -- and the hassle of dealing with them on the crowded train.

I hate wasting time too, so I usually have a book in my bag along with my Japanese calligraphy practice notebook, sudoku puzzles, and my harmonica. This way, whenever I get stuck waiting in the car, I can amuse myself in a variety of ways.

The other day, I had to take my class to a lecture on English, delivered in Turkish. I hate it when this happens. Inevitably, I shepherd my class to the lecture hall after taking roll, answer their endless, aggrieved "Do we really have to stay for this?" appeals -- "Yes you do, now sit back down and be QUIET!" -- then sit through the long session myself, bored out of my mind. (My students are lucky: at least they can understand Turkish.)

Good thing I had my bag of junk.

While we waited for the lecture to begin, Ilker started fidgeting, then wheeled around in his seat, his face radiating misery. "Teacher, very illy today. I have cold!" He pointed to his nose and mimed blowing it. I reached right into my bag, pulled out a packet of Kleenex, and handed it to him.

Two minutes later, Cem tapped my shoulder. "Excuse me, I go wash my hands come back, okay?" I rolled my eyes: Like hell he would! I shook my head. "You don't need to wash your hands." Cem's eyes widened. "Teacher, pig flu very dangerous!" I fished around in my bag until my fingers closed around my small bottle of anti-bacterial hand wash. I relished the look on his face as I handed it to him. My bag of tricks was really coming in handy: I even had enough chewing gum for the three people who wanted it.

But boy, was everybody jittery. Even after the lecture began, the seats shook with the boys' jerky, restless twitching as they readjusted their legs, fiddled with their mobile phones (which none of them can go any longer than five minutes without consulting), and passed items back and forth. I heaved a deep sigh: I was stuck here in their midst for the better part of an hour with nothing to do but examine the portrait of Atatürk, study my fingernails, and twiddle my thumbs. Stealthily I fished my calligraphy practice book out of my bag and began writing kuzushiji, the equivalent of Japanese cursive.

Five minutes into my practice, I suddenly realized that Abdullah, sitting next to me, was no longer fidgeting. And he was practically breathing down my neck. "Hojam, what language?" he asked, pointing.

"Japanese," I whispered.

He raised his eyebrows. "You know?"

I nodded and kept writing. Abdullah watched me, enthralled. I might as well have been turning water into wine.

Abdullah pulled out his notebook. "Teacher, you write my name please!" he said under his breath with barely concealed excitement.

Foreign names don't look very interesting in Japanese. You have to write them in katakana, the squarish syllabary used for non-Japanese words and names. People are always disappointed to see their names written in Japanese and Abdullah was no exception when I penned アブジュラー　in his notebook. "What does your name mean?" I whispered. "If you tell me the meaning, I can write it better."

He didn't get it, so I wrote out my own name in katakana. "See, メアリー　is how my name sounds in Japanese. But　芽亜里 is how I write it sometimes, for meaning. 芽 is like a small flower--" it's actually 'bud', but I wasn't about to try that on him "--and 亜 is for Asia, and 里 is for homeland. So if you can tell me the meaning of your name, I can write yours like that." I was pretty sure I'd lost him, but no, after a few minutes of feverish consultation on his mobile, Abdullah came back to me and scribbled the following in his notebook: Abdullah=God's servant.

Grinning, I took the pen from him -- I knew how to write this! 神の召使　I wrote in his notebook. Abdullah's mouth hung open. "Thank you," he breathed. And for the remaining thirty minutes, he did his damnedest to write his Japanese name, 神の召使, as perfectly as he could.

True, the only English Abdullah learned was God's servant. But he also sat quietly for a whole thirty minutes, a miracle in itself.

Next time, I'll have one of those beginning English readers in my bag.

Understanding

"Teacher, I don't understand."

I sighed: Cahide again. "What don't you understand?"

Cahide opened her workbook and pointed. I took a quick look and stifled another sigh. "Can you come and see me about that tomorrow morning, before class? I can't explain all that to you right now -- I've got another class to teach."

I had to repeat this half a dozen times before she got it, but Cahide finally nodded. "Okay." It took her so long to understand, I seriously considered including her in the list of students who belonged in a lower class. I wondered when she would give up and realize that she was out of her depth.

First thing the next morning, Cahide was there with her workbook. I was surprised to see that unlike the majority of her classmates, she had completely filled in the pages I had assigned for homework. While her classmates' books were almost entirely pristine, Cahide's was full of penciled-in explanations, scrawled dictionary definitions of words in margins, erasures, crossed-out bits, and answers. Nothing had been left undone, either; she had even completed the sections I told everyone not to bother with.

It took ages for me to explain everything Cahide didn't understand, but the light of reason finally dawned and she went away, satisfied. It was enormously gratifying.

Unfortunately, she was back the next morning. She caught me gulping down coffee ten minutes before I was leaving to teach another class. "I don't understand this," she said, opening her workbook.

I took a look and blinked: she was already onto the next unit! I shook my head. "We're not doing that yet. Wait until we cover it, okay?"

She furrowed her brow and tilted her head. "Sorry? I don't understand."

I fought the urge to look at my watch. "We will do that unit the day after tomorrow. Wait until then, okay?"

When she finally understood, she nodded -- grudgingly -- then turned a few pages back to the unit we were on. "I don't understand this," she said, pointing.

I let out a slow breath. "Come and see me after class, then."

"Twelve thirty o'clock?"

I bit my lips. "Yes, twelve thirty is fine." There went my lunch break!

Sure enough, Cahide came and saw me after class and stayed an hour while I did my best to explain around hurried bites from my sandwich. She didn't leave until she was certain she had understood everything.

Over the next six weeks, Cahide hounded me and the colleague I shared her class with. She followed us out of the classroom and buttonholed us on our way to the toilet to ask us questions. We took to hiding from her, she was so determined. Her stamina and tenacity amazed us: she did every assignment we gave her, wrote every paper, filled in every form, answered every question. And if she didn't get something, she was never shy about letting us know. We began to dread her Teacher, I don't understand.

But we began to admire and respect her even more. She never gave up. When the rest of the class yawned and looked at their watches, Cahide nodded her head and raised her hand. When everyone else sprinted out as soon as it was break time, she stayed in the classroom and asked endless questions. She walked to the teachers' room with us afterward, grilling us about details. What should she be studying? How many hours? Which compositions should she be writing? Would we read her work after she had finished? Would we correct it please?

Before the midterm examination, Cahide's diligence surpassed itself. She doubled, then tripled her efforts, constantly bringing us compositions to mark and questions to answer. What impressed me the most was that she never gave any preference to my Turkish-speaking colleague. Coping with our language gap must have been as much of a trial for her as it was for me, but it never seemed to faze her. My colleague and I were exhausted, but increasingly heartened by her enthusiasm and incredible determination.

The only thing that worried us was the midterm. Many students fail the midterm, particularly those of Cahide's level. We hoped that failing wouldn't discourage her the way it has discouraged other students.

Yesterday we got the midterm results. Cahide, it turned out, got the best mark in the entire class.

"I am so proud of you!" I told her today. "You are an inspiration!"

"What?"

I wrote it down for her. "Inspiration. Look that up in your English-Turkish dictionary when you get home today, okay?"

She smiled modestly, but she seemed distracted. "Okay. Teacher?"

"Yes?"

She flipped the pages of her workbook until she found the unit we will be starting next. Pointing, she said, "I don't understand."

When The Saints Go Marching In

Ten minutes into the lesson and I've finally managed to take attendance.

"Teacher, what page?" asks a girl in the front row.

"Page thirty-three," I repeat through gritted teeth. "Page thirty-three."

The door whips open and Ender breezes in, reeking of tobacco and aftershave. "Hello teacher. Sorry for late." He looks pointedly at the attendance sheet lying on my desk. "I am here?"

"Teacher, what page?" yells a boy in the middle of the classroom who wasn't paying attention earlier.

"THIRTY THREE!"

Ender is still standing there. Barely glancing at him, I jerk a thumb towards the desks in a sit down gesture. This sails over Ender's head. He takes a step closer and gestures at the attendance sheet. "I am present?"

"You are late. Sit down!"

He doesn't sit down, though. If he knew me a little better, he really would, but he stands there, waiting for me to stop what I'm doing and mark him present.

"You are late, and I am trying to teach," I say, my voice dangerously soft and low. "Now sit down."

"Teacher, page forty three?" a girl calls out.

"THIRTY THREE! I bellow.

Ender still hasn't given up. He jabs his thumb at the roll sheet. "I am present?"

God give me strength! Ender is the third student who's come into my classroom late this morning. My patience stores, dangerously low even before Ender made his ill-timed appearance, are suddenly empty. I pick the register up in both hands and raise it over my head in a fair imitation of Moses ready to smash the tablets. "SIT.DOWN!" I thunder, making the entire class jump.

Students in my morning class tend to come in late because the bus service is erratic. I'd be more sympathetic if I hadn't spotted a few of the offenders outside, indulging in pre-class cigarettes. When it comes to the bus being late, wolf has been cried one time too many. I've gotten hardened after over a year here, and I've grown canny too: Ender is unmistakably one of the wolf criers. Maybe his bus was late. Maybe it was raining/hailing/windy where he lives or his lift didn't show up. Maybe his roommate stole his bicycle. Maybe he has a 104 degree temperature from swine flu, but I don't care. Everybody else managed to get here on time. Ender is on two legs; he looks more well-rested than I do, and he smells like he's spent the last three days smoking in a closet. Nothing short of, God forbid, a dead mother with an authentic, carefully-vetted death certificate is going to change my mind: I'm not marking Ender present. The midterm exam is this coming Wednesday, and my class is lagging far behind. I was hoping to use this period to catch up, but Ender has gone and made me waste five precious minutes.

Amazingly, Ender doesn't leave the classroom once he knows I'm not going to mark him present. Finally getting the point, he stomps down the aisle, throws himself into a chair and lands on his back, legs splayed in front of him, his face like thunder.

"Now open your books to page thirty three," I say quietly. And Ender does. The rest of the class are watching me narrowly, their faces full of awe. In fact, I'm full of awe myself.

How in the world did I get like this? I am the mildest mannered person you could ever meet. I hate confrontations; I will bend over backward to accommodate people; I am gentle by nature and utterly trusting. How did I become this shrill, cynical woman who bullies students into doing their homework, patrols her classroom for slackers, and wrests cell phones from the hands of teenagers? I've gone through an amazing transformation in one year's time.

For the next two hours, I work the kids like there is no tomorrow. I push them willy-nilly through the present perfect tense; I make sure they've got a handle on already, just, and yet; I drill them on Have you ever...?; I give no quarter and accept no excuses and I do not allow them a minute's peace. The deserving are praised, the lazy ones are admonished, and the confused are gently led to the light. I make sure that all of them participate and contribute, even Ender. And we get through all the material, by God. We are now only two chapters behind, and I know I'll be able to cover them on Monday and Tuesday. When I finally dismiss the class, they get up from their seats with glazed looks on their faces; they squeeze their eyes shut and rub their faces and the backs of their necks. I think they may be even more tired than I am.

The truth is, I don't know whether they'll pass the midterm. But this I do know: on the seventh day I will rest. And if there really is a heaven, I'm that much closer to securing myself a spot.

The Devil You Know

"Are you sure you aren't supposed to be doing academic skills?" My voice sounds awfully feeble and wimpy.

A sea of faces stares back at me -- or at least the ones that are actually turned my way. A full quarter of this strange class isn't paying the slightest bit of attention to me. Half of the kids who aren't yakking away shake their heads.

I hold up the book. "But you do have this book?"

"No book!" they practically chorus.

This is a real blow. "You don't have the book?"

More frowns and wiggled heads.

I'm beginning to panic now, so I hold the book high and walk down the aisle. "Does anyone have this book?" I roar at the top of my lungs. Foreheads furrow and lines appear between eyebrows.

"Nobody has this book?" I'm just buying time now. I'm covering for a colleague who has the same horrible flu I have barely just recovered from myself. And I've wasted the last thirty minutes hurriedly planning a lesson that isn't going to happen.

No one, it turns out, has the academic skills book. Not even the keenest, most conscientious, straight arrow among them will admit to having the academic skills book. It's hot outside and the air-conditioner isn't doing its job; I feel sweat beading up on my forehead.

"But you do have your course books, right?"

They all nod. Thank God!

"Okay, hang on and I'll go get mine."

Fortunately the teachers' room is just a mad dash across the corridor. I rummage through my locker with growing panic: my course book is gone! I have a vague memory of someone asking to borrow it earlier. Whimpering, I go skidding into the coordinators' office for a course book, then hurry back to the classroom to take roll.

Good thing I'm back: they're really starting to get restless now. I have to shout to get their attention.

But there is fresh hell: the roll sheet I've been given is not the current one and half a dozen students seem to have been added to the class list. By the time I've cobbled together an attendance record of sorts and dealt with thirty-five strange Turkish names, I'm exhausted. I've had six students spell their names for me and not one of these kids knew the difference between 'e' and 'i' -- in Turkish 'e' is pronounced as eh, while 'i' is pronounced as ee -- so we spent too much time on that. Sure, they'll thank me some day, especially if they ever have to make a phone call in the middle of Grand Central Station and are required to spell their names, but now they're just hot and pissed off.

As I start in on my teaching point, my eagle eye lights on a boy in the back row who seems to be talking. I narrow my eyes: he's holding a newspaper. For the benefit of the class, I point at the offender and mime horrified shock, then make my way towards him slowly, rolling my eyes at the rest of the class. The boy is so busy talking, he doesn't spot me until I whip the paper out of his hands. Everyone else in class is enjoying this too much to spoil the fun.

I don't even have to look at the paper to know that it's in Turkish, but I go through the motions anyway, just for the heck of it. "You're reading a Turkish newspaper," I point out. The boy nods sheepishly. "Although this is an English class." He nods again, trying to smile. I sigh and shake my head. The newspaper goes into the trash; he's lucky I don't rip it in half first. Newspaper boy and his friend are assigned new seats in front where I can keep an eye on them. They blush and drag their feet, but at least they do what I ask.

Now there are only twenty minutes of class time left.

The lesson -- following contextual clues in reading -- isn't an easy one and requires much more preparation time than we have. The class is a typical mixture of keen-as-mustard and don't-give-a-damn. I'd say the ratio was about 1/10. By the time the class is over I have yelled myself hoarse, confiscated five mobile phones and a magazine, and reseated three more kids. I feel like a marginally overpaid babysitter. Are the kids in my class this awful? They can't be -- can they? At the very least, none of my regulars has read a Turkish newspaper in class. Yet.

As I walk out the door, one of my own students, a great, swaggering, sloppy boy who gives me no end of trouble, sees me in the corridor. His face lights up. "Hello Mary Teacher!"

I've told him two dozen times not to call me Mary Teacher. But what the heck, he still looks great.

Getting In Touch

It's that time of year again. All the tests have been taken, all our marks have been turned in, and the final grades have been posted. Tears have been shed too -- tears of joy and tears of bitter disappointment. I have been hugged, begged, thanked, kissed, harangued, and cried upon.

From the staffroom window, I see one of my students showing her parents around the campus. Her mother exclaims at the pretty flowering trees, the fountain-pool. They pose for photographs, the proud father changing places with the mother as they take turns snapping photos. They put their arms around their daughter and smile. I share their sense of achievement.

In the corridor, one of her classmates still sits in stunned outrage. I've done my best to console her, but it hasn't worked. Never mind that she wouldn't be failing if she'd put in a little more effort, I still feel bad. She will be calling her parents later, telling them the bad news. I share their disappointment too.

I know I did my best, but sometimes I wonder how effective I've been. Sometimes I wish to God I could reach these students, who seem to live in some parallel universe to mine.

In the bathroom, I overhear a conversation in English between two students who sound West African.

"Ooh," one girl laments, "jooost look at all this fat on me! I am so ashaaamed!"

Her friend snorts. "What fat? I don't see fat."

"Look," insists the first girl, "look at this here, you see? This greeeat roll of fat." I can hear the pout in her voice.

Her friend snorts all the louder. "Geeet out."

"I have to lose this fat!"

"GEEET OUT, you do not!"

I've been lurking in the toilet, but now I've got to see these girls. I've got to see with my own eyes just how fat the complaining girl is.

Two sets of brown eyes flit over me as I come out. Both girls are stick thin, in skirts so short I want to throw a sheet over them. Despite their skinniness, they are also curvy and drop-dead beautiful and if there's an ounce of fat on either of them, only a determined anorexic could find it. I hope to God the girl who thinks she's fat is just belly-aching. I'd like to tell her to go pig out on ice cream -- that life is too short to angst about weight, but she wouldn't listen to a random middle-aged woman. A random middle-aged teacher. We live in separate worlds, these girls and I.

The girls freshen up their lipstick and pat their perfect hair with manicured fingers. They leave the bathroom in a fog of body spray, clattering on high heels. Ah well, I'm glad that at least one of them has some sense in her.

Before I can leave, the door slams open again and another girl hurries inside. She is in tears. She grips the side of the sink and leans over it, sobbing. I wash my hands slowly, embarrassed to be witnessing her misery. I don't know what to do as she dabs helplessly at her tear-stained reddened eyes and nose; she must be mortified that a strange woman is in here with her. I ought to leave and let her cry in peace.

But I just can't do this. There's something about the way this girl cries that reminds me of my own daughters, as toddlers. She seems on the verge of getting over her grief, and then new waves of misery wash over her and she bursts into fresh tears.

"Are you okay?" I ask as gently as possible and she squeezes her lips together and tries to nod, but her face crumples and more tears slip out.

Suddenly, I can't stand it. I open my arms, the way I used to do when my own little girls were in tears. And to my amazement, this girl steps right into them. She accepts my hug, letting me pat her back and offer her mindless "There, theres". For a brief time, she even stops crying. When I say goodbye, she even gives me a tremulous smile.

My inner mother hen is thrilled. Finally I've reached one of them.

Crime And Punishment

When I was a child, I knew from its name that the most beautiful country in the world had to be Czechoslovakia. In fact, given its name, I secretly didn't even care if it wasn't beautiful. I was heartbroken when Czechoslovakia got divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia -- what a shame to break up that beautiful name! How sad that only one side got to keep the Z! -- but then the Soviet Union got broken up into so many wonderful new places, all with wonderfully exotic names.

Like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Lucky me: every term, we get a handful of students from former Soviet bloc republics, such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and they have proven to be even more interesting than the names of their countries. First of all, though a handful of them are ethnically Russian, most of them look Asian. Some of them are astonishingly exotic. When I walked into one class for the first time, I saw a red-headed boy with skin far whiter than mine, scribbling away. When he looked up, I did a double take: his face was entirely Asian, but his eyes were a bright cornflower blue. The fact that most of these students are bilingual in their own language and Russian makes them all the more fascinating.

As a general rule, the Kazakhstani and Kyrgyzstani students have also had better English language skills than the average Turkish student. My first week here, I had to monitor a test. As I strolled around the classroom, I could see that the 'stan' students were tackling the writing component of their exam with gusto while almost all of the Turkish students were making heavy work of it. After the test, one of the Kazakh students approached the desk. "Can I ask you a question?" His pronunciation and intonation were a little stilted, but near native.

"Sure."

"Well, foolishly, I neglected to allocate enough time to filling in the last part of the writing section. I know that the examination is finished, but I was wondering if you might allow me --"

My chin had dropped at neglected and my eyes had popped at allocated. I held out a hand to stop him. "Forget it."

The boy's face fell, so I leaned closer. "Take it from me, if you can say that much, you've already passed." And he had: even with the missing reading questions, he'd scored 92%. Some of these students are so good they finish the placement exam in one quarter the allocated time, scoring close to 100%. And like the West African students, the tiny minority who screw up and fail end up being our high fliers.

But of course there are exceptions. Like Karim.

Karim looked so much like my Japanese students, it was uncanny. He even acted like them: he was bashful and hardly ever talked in class. Because he never talked, it was hard to know what his level was -- or what was on his mind. When he turned in his journal, though, I was astounded: all the words he never got out in class were there, penned in the beautiful, meticulous copperplate these students have all been taught. The first paragraph made me sit up straight:

Although I was exhausted from attending lessons all week, my rooms were not clean, so I spent some time in tidying and sweeping. I dislike such domestic chores because I am not used to performing them, but I realize that these things are necessary if one is to live alone.


I was so astonished by this entry, I caught Karim after the next class. "Did you really write this?" He shyly nodded and I shook my head: like my Japanese students, he was even humble!

His next week's entry was even better:

Unfortunately, I caught influenza and was forced to go to the doctor, who prescribed some medication for me as I had a high temperature.

This almost made me swoon: Karim was able to use relative clauses!

After taking the medication, I rested in my room. Truly, I missed my mother's wonderful care and attention. I reflected to myself that it was a real misfortune to have fallen ill in a foreign country where I must look after myself.

This did make me swoon. Long, flowing sentences that were a pleasure to read! More relative clauses and three-syllable words! Why in the world had this kid failed his preliminary examination?

When I talked to one of my colleagues about Karim, she shrugged. "He's a repeat student, you know. I had him in my class last term. He never turned in his homework and hardly ever came to class."

I was amazed: Karim was repeating the course with English this good? But in fact, he seemed to miss a lot of my classes too. When I called him on this, he smiled shyly and handed me his next journal entry:

On Saturday, my good friend Shukrat came to visit me from my country. He and I hoped to find some amusement, so we went out in the evening to pass the time together. We happened to find a place to drink and remained there for a long time. My friend and I talked until the early morning hours, remembering the happy times we spent together in our own country. The next day, we went to the beach and ate a picnic lunch we had prepared.

Well, no wonder Karim had gotten so brown. I smiled and shook my head at the phrase ...picnic we had prepared: Karim even knew how to use the past perfect correctly! I couldn't wait to see how high he would score in the midterm.

To my utter amazement, Karim failed to show up for the midterm. When I asked him what had happened, he gave me another shy smile and a shrug. "Overslept."

"How could you oversleep when you had a test?" I wailed. Frankly, I'd been counting on Karim to bump up the class average.

Karim squirmed and looked contrite. I couldn't help notice that he was even more tanned, as though he'd spent a whole week outdoors.

It wasn't until I gave the class their first pop quiz that I finally figured it out.

Karim squirmed in his seat and chewed his lower lip as he stared at his paper. He seemed to grow even darker as I observed him, as though he was blushing under his tan. I misunderstood his nervousness: Karim hadn't been on the castle field trip like the rest of the class and I assumed he was worried he wouldn't get credit. "Don't worry," I told him. "Write about some historical place you've been to in your own country and I won't mark you down."

When he turned in his paper, it was surprisingly short, and Karim couldn't quite look me in the eye. In the staffroom, my face fell as I read the following: It isin AlmatyCityCentral Museum a veryPerfect location in city Centre. It has all history about Kazakhstan I ashamed, but it is fat I don't know history of the Museum I liked Museum because after visit I feeling very good. I like Museum because I can know history of the Kazakhstan Museum the beautiful place I loved it.

The copperplate was shaky too.

I found Karim outside with a group of his Kazakh friends. "Whose diary is this?" I asked as Karim reached for it. One of the boys giggled.

"Seriously," I said, "which one of you guys is Doystoevsky? Because I know it's not Karim here."

One of the boys burst out laughing and elbowed Karim in the ribs. And now he did blush. I handed him the journal.

"The only reason you guys got away with this," I hissed, "wasn't because you were smart, but because I was stupid." I turned to address Karim's pals. "Next time, dumb it down a little and you might fool someone." Then I swung around and narrowed my eyes at Karim. "Or better yet, stay away from the beach and do your own damn homework for a change!"

Looks like Karim will be repeating the course in summer school. No more trips to the beach for my young Raskolnikov.

Pressing A Point

I'm only a few feet way from the vending machine when I hear footsteps behind me on the marble floor. Wheeling around, I see three of my students standing there with worried looks on their faces. "Hojam," the bravest one of them says very respectfully.

"Yes?"

Ahmet clears his throat as the other two all but push him forward. Poor Ahmet: his English is no great shakes, but he's a lot more fluent than Alper or Ilker. He's obviously been voted the designated speaker here.

"Why Alper and Ilker didn't get extra points?" he asks breathlessly, cutting to the chase.

Extra points are given at the end of the term for excellent attendance, a real consideration at time when a few extra points can mean the difference between pass and fail. They ought to know this, too: I've been reciting it in their class like a mantra for the past two weeks. Alper and Ilker lick their lips, their eyes flicking from Ahmet to me.

"Because they missed a lot of classes." Duh.

They make a brief stab at protesting, but in the end they have the good grace to accept this: after all, I've got attendance sheets to back me up. But Ahmet isn't finished.

"Why they didn't get points for composition?"

Alper and Ilker narrow their eyes and move a little closer.

"Because they copied." Frowning, I turn to Alper and Ilker. "And I warned you many times that if you copied, I'd give you zero points."

"No, hojam! No copy, I swear!" puts in Ilker, his dark eyes flashing.

"Ilker, you copied. You wrote the same thing a lot of other people wrote -- the exact same words." I look longingly at the vending machine. The water cooler in the teachers' room is empty again, and it's hot. The boys don't see this: those elusive extra points are the only things on their minds at this moment and even if they knew how thirsty I am I doubt they'd care.

"No copy," Alper protests weakly, but his eyes are shifty and there's a look on his face somewhere between pain and amusement.

I take a deep breath: I'm going to play the religion card. "You boys go to mosque every Friday, don't you?" They'd better go: they've missed enough of my late Friday afternoon classes on this pretext.

Ahmet nods. "Yes."

I'm prepared to believe him. Not only does he appear to bathe regularly, he turns in his homework on time, pays attention in class, and obviously irons his cotton shirts. Ilker and Alper nod too, but they're a hair behind Ahmet and they won't quite meet my eye. They watch furtively as someone feeds coins into the vending machine and a can comes rattling out.

"So you know how important it is not to lie, right?"

They give me sullen looks: they see where this is going.

I'm beginning to hate myself a little, but I'm sick and tired of students niggling over the extra points they have not earned. I'm also over-the-top tired of the plagiarism issue -- and I'm thirsty -- so I press on. "Well, when it comes to students copying, it's impossible to fool teachers because we always know. We're a little like God." I point up to the ceiling and three pairs of eyes follow my finger. "So don't copy from now on, okay?"

They heave deep sighs and nod.

Finally, they leave me, shoulders slumped, heads down in defeat.

Feeling an ungodly thirst, I go to the vending machine, hoping there will be a can left.

Sweating It Out

Mert sits in the back of the class, against the wall. The classroom seats are in long rows, bolted to the floor. The rows are close together too, making it impossible for me to check the work of wallflowers like Mert. It's no puzzle why he sits there: he rarely comes to class and he will do anything to get out of speaking, reading, or writing English.

Today, he is present for the first time in ages and he looks nervous. Small wonder: we're less than two weeks away from the final examination and Mert's chances don't look good; apart from his lousy attendance, he blew the midterm. The one example of homework I have from him is, to say the very least, not stellar.

During the break, I collar Mert before he can sneak out the door for a smoke. "Are you okay?"

Mert still has the deer-frozen-in-headlights look all the other students lost after the first few weeks. Unlike the others, he's never gotten used to the idea of a non-Turkish-speaking foreign teacher. His jaw drops now and he stares at me, stricken, unable to answer.

"Are you feeling well?"

"No," he hisses. "I am illy."

"You're ill?"

Mert's mouth remains open. "You're ill," he affirms, and I try not to sigh.

"Is that why you were sleeping in class?"

His jaw drops again. Another student translates my question and Mert shakes his head. He's not sick now, it seems; he was ill last night, but now he is better. Since I have an obliging translator, I take the liberty of grilling Mert a little further. "You've missed a lot of classes. Were you ill for two months?"

He nods. Before he can go on, however, our interpreter leaves and Mert is forced to finish on his own. Mert doesn't call me tee-cha; he calls me hojam, the Turkish equivalent. Squeezing his eyes shut, he finally comes up with an answer. "Hojam, Turkey."

"You were in Turkey?"

His head bobs up and down.

"For almost two months?"

More nodding.

"Why?"

All of a sudden I notice that Mert has begun to sweat. His upper lip has a thin glaze over it and beads of sweat are collecting on his high, pale forehead. Even as we stand there, the drops of perspiration seem to join up and double in size. A large drop loses its hold on his temple and begins to trickle down the side of his face.

He swallows painfully. "Hojam, mother. Illy."

"Your mother is ill?" Boy, am I getting tired of 20 questions!

"Yes!"

This is awful. If he's telling the truth, this poor kid deserves all the sympathy I have. If he's bluffing, how dare he come up with a lie like this?

"What is wrong with your mother?"

Now Mert is visibly shaking. If there's any time left after this, he's really going to need that smoke!

"Hojam, greep."

Good thing I've taken French. Let's see...grippe must mean flu.

"Influenza?"

He's got a packet of Kleenex out now, and it's about time: the sweat is running down his neck in rivulets. A drop quivers on the end of his nose. He hastily wipes it off. "Yes," he almost whispers.

"Your mother has had influenza for two months?" I can't keep the incredulous tone out of my voice.

He nods.

"Is she in the hospital?" Fortunately, I know the Turkish word for this, so I use it. I have to.

Now Mert really does look ill. He is so pale that I can see the blue veins throbbing in the side of his head, still slick with a sheen of sweat. Edging away from me, he licks his lips. He knows he's backed himself into a corner: any mother who's had the flu for two months ought to be in the hospital. He starts to shake his head, edging away from me, his hand automatically going to his shirt pocket where he has his cigarette pack. His eyes are filled with desperation and misery.

I give up and let him go. It's just not worth it, subjecting a kid so disinclined to learn to this sort of torment.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with his mother -- I'll bet you a hundred dollars. But I almost wish she'd give up on Mert's English too.

Turkish Waterloo

Some years ago, I spent a summer working as a dishwasher in a Japanese restaurant in Amsterdam. I got to be pals with the sushi chef, a shy, gentle man who did not speak English. One day, he confided that he had given up trying to learn English as it was too hard to pronounce. I was young and stubborn and believed that I could help him. I asked him what words he found so difficult.

"Some English words sound exactly the same," he told me.

"You mean like here and hear?" He had asked me about these words earlier.

He shook his head. "No, different ones -- words that mean entirely different things."

"Such as...?"

Looking embarrassed, he answered. "Ugly, angry, agree, hungry." He ticked them off on his fingers, considerately adding the Japanese meaning for each one in case I had trouble understanding him. I was grateful for this: he pronounced all four words exactly the same.

At the time, I was halfway through a Master's Degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and fired up with teaching fervor. I told him that vowel sounds are shaped by the position of the tongue in the mouth; that some vowels, like the ee in agree are made with the tongue held high, but others, like the uh in ugly are formed with the tongue in a low position. I told him that other vowel sounds were actually a combination of two vowels, or diphthongs, like the a sound in angry. I talked about stress and I demonstrated with examples.

My chef friend listened politely and he was a good sport about playing along. When I wrote out four sentences, he gamely gave them a go.

"I HANGREE with you!" he intoned, brow knit. He licked his lips and made a stern face. "You make me very HANGREE! He frowned and held the paper closer. "Those shoes are HANGREE!" He took a deep breath. "I did not eat lunch. I am HANGREE!"

When he looked to me for approval, I tried to smile. I explained that H is aspirated, that it starts in the back of the throat and is pushed out. I wrote out more sentences and he did his best to pronounce them. And he produced the exact same results.

After about a week, I gave up. The sushi chef smiled and shook his head in a resigned way. "It's really no big deal," he told me. "At least I don't need to use English."

I felt bad, but I couldn't help feeling a little superior too. I'd never had any trouble pronouncing foreign languages. Thank God I didn't have a tin ear for foreign vowels like my poor friend!

Fast forward to now. I am taking roll in a class of twenty-five restless Turkish teenagers, including Gökay, Özlem Çınar, Osman, Unsal, Ünal, and Tufan. I call out Gökay's name and am met by a burst of snickers. Gökay corrects my pronunciation -- "Guuh-kigh, not Goo-kay, tee-cha!" -- and I give it my best, but it only makes everyone laugh harder. Ö, my daughter keeps telling me, is pronounced like the first syllable of Ermintrude, though how this is supposed to help me, God knows; I never have occasion to use Ermintrude in speech.

Osman's name is mercifully not a challenge, but Özlem's thoroughly flummoxes me. I can feel sweat beading up on my neck as I try, again and again, to get the vowel right. Özlem is nice about it -- "It is okay, tee-cha, it does not matter" -- but she is an exception. Çınar and Ünal rub my nose in it.

The sad truth is that while I can sometimes hear the difference between O, Ö, ı, Ü, and U, I can't pronounce them. My daughter, who can pronounce Turkish just fine, finds this hopeless vowel butchery of mine a little exasperating. She cannot see why I can't distinguish between the ı in Çınar's name and the Ö in Özlem's.

Agree, ugly, angry and hungry all sound very different to me. O, Ö, ı, Ü, and U all sound pretty damn close. Sigh: I've reached my own linguistic Waterloo.

Good thing my kid is learning Turkish.

They'll Never Know

Ilker sidles up to me, eyes shifty, like I'm a drug dealer and he's shaky for a fix. "Tee-cha, when pop quiz?"

I try not to sigh. "You know I can't tell you that! It's a pop quiz. That means no one knows when it will be." I crane my neck, trying to look past him. "The others are still in the dungeon," I say meaningfully, hoping he'll get my gist.

But no such luck.

Instead, he moves closer, regarding me intently. "Tomorrow?"

"Look, I don't know." I give him a stern look. "And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. Now go back and finish the tour of the castle!"

"What we have to write?"

I give in and let out a long sigh. "You know I can't tell you that either!"

"History of castle? Peoples live in castle?"

"Maybe." Shrugging, I look up at the sky. It is a brilliant, beautiful blue, not a cloud in sight, if you don't count Ilker.

He all but wrings his hands. "Pleeeease!"

He won't believe me, but I really don't know. The powers that be don't tell us: they're suspicious our students will winkle it out of us. The powers that be know that our students feel about writing the same way Superman feels about Kryptonite.

Three days later it happens: we teachers are given the three questions the students have to answer about their field trip to our local castle. I announce the pop quiz and write the questions on the board. The class absorbs them in stunned silence:

1) Describe the castle's location.

2) Describe the history of the castle, and some of the castle's features.

3) What did you like or dislike about your visit to the castle?


Now I am sick and tired of my students copying things off the internet and trying to pass them off as their own work, so I read them the riot act on this. I write PLAGIARISM on the board in 3-inch letters. I tell them loudly and clearly that even one copied sentence will earn them a zero grade -- for the slower ones, I demonstrate this by writing two identical sentences on the board with an X through them and a big frowning face -- and I repeat the whole spiel for good measure.

And when I collect their papers, here is the very first one I see:

1) XX Castle is situated in the southern section of YY City and is a stunning backdrop to the harbor.

2) Largely built during the Hellenistic-Roman period the castle is thought to date back to the eighth century B.C. It is likely that the castle was built to defend the city from Arab raids. With its horseshoe-shaped main tower, Byzantium style of fortification, and embrasures for archery defense, the castle is a unique example of its type.

3) I very think XX Castle small so small room and very bad Dungeons because it's have got a poor people but Very beatifull view very beatiful tours.

A quick glance confirms my worst fears: I've got half a dozen more almost exactly like it

I just manage to collar one of the plagiarists before he leaves the classroom.

"Alper, you did not write this." It's hard to keep the rage out of my voice.

He is all injured protestations, his voice an indignant whine. "No, tee-cha, I write!"

I suck in my breath and pull out a pen. "Okay," I hiss, pointing to my notebook. "Show me. Write me just one sentence now."

He takes the pen with a show of bravado and goes through the motions, but all he can produce is XX Castle is before he puts down the pen with a weak smile. "Tee-cha, how you know?"

I shake my head and snap the notebook shut. "Zero points!"

"How you know I don't write?" he asks again. I give in: I roll my eyes so hard it almost counts as aerobic exercise.

But I don't even bother to answer: if he has to ask, he'll never know.

The Ways of Their Errors

A Japanese friend once told me that he could study English just listening to my Japanese. I was hurt at the time -- I was trying so hard! -- but I know what he meant: some of my students come up with English that is so convoluted and over-the-top bizarre, it might as well be Turkish. Sometimes they come up with unintentionally hilarious misuses of English, which is something I've done my share of in Japanese. But teaching has made me look beyond the surface errors to separate the grain from the chaff, and I am as grateful for this as I am for the amusement their errors provide. And speaking as a language learner who has entertained and bewildered others, I am pleased to offer you some of my students' mistakes.

Mehmet is very friendly, shy, talkative, handsome, hardworking, agrassif, serous, and very joker. Some might say that this is inconsistent. And yet, Mehmet may be all of these things. Sometimes I feel friendly and sometimes I feel shy; sometimes I feel very serious and sometimes I like to clown around. Let's give Mehmet and his friend the benefit of the doubt.

I can't do anythink because always you in my mind. Sheer poetry, with a slightly Slavic ring to it.

He hat his father becaus his father is very bad person. All this kid needs is a few more Es and the odd article. And another review of third person singular.

Ahmet has got yellow blue eyes he is not tall or short, he is normal. he is blan. he has got blan hair. Girls were falling in love his hair and me to long hair and brow eyes. I'm guessing that Ahmet's yellow blue eyes are actually green, but what a lovely image. And at least the writer's consistent with the misspelling of blonde.

My apartment door was open and I am be very affired Yes, I know this is wrong, but I still think that affired is a more evocative way of expressing fearfulness than afraid.

Istanbul very fantastic and beautiful city. So I have historical and enjoy. My students suffer terribly from adjective abuse and overuse. But how can I tell them that enjoy always takes an object when 90% of the waiters in America don't know this?

My room small but very sweety. You can see where this one came from when you think about adjectives like funny, silly, chatty, dopey, and sleepy. My heart goes out to my students, grappling daily with the nightmare of English adjectives.

I cannot come class for to take lessons. Because I was illy. Same as above.

He's smilish, he hardly ever be angry Well why not, considering 'stylish', 'British', and 'churlish'?

He's intelligent, romantic same as Don Juan Extra points for the cultural reference and correct spelling of 'romantic'.

In the way, I saw nice view So how is a beginning student of English supposed to know that 'in the way' refers to an obstacle? You can see a nice view from the window, so why not in the way?

I ate food cake drank cola Say this to yourself a couple of times and tell me the rhythm isn't compelling.

Dance was fantastic. While I was watching danced persons boy came near me. That boy very handsome. True, we need to work on the difference between -ed and -ing adjectives, and a lot of non-native speakers struggle with articles. But one line into this girl's composition and I'm already hooked. And she's nailed the past continuous with simple past construction.

I love my childhood friends because she is angle and funny girlfriend's. I'm not defending anything here, but if my local greengrocer's in Scotland can put up a sign reading Fresh Raspberry's, then my Turkish students ought to be allowed. I'm betting they've had fewer opportunities to hone their English punctuation than my greengrocer.

He looks like smallish weak and thin but he's very stronger person and sometimes pessimistic Yay, he got the third person singular S right and used look like in a personal description! We'll work on the appropriate use of comparatives and separating physical and personality descriptions later.

My world love only man friend. Because man only very trust. Uh oh: someone's had his heart broken by his girlfriend, hasn't he? I'll cut him some slack.

My mother's cock is delicious. Proving once and for all the importance of correct spelling (two Os in cook) and careful attention to grammar (cook is only a noun when we're talking about a person; if we're talking about what a cook prepares, we have to add an -ing.)

I'll never be able to explain this error to the shy, quiet girl who made it. But I'm grateful to her all the same.

On Error

In Japan, I once had a class comprised of four young ladies who had just finished college and were working towards their Mrs. degrees. They were sweet, pleasant girls who spoke passable English, but they all had the same fault: they hated making mistakes. Their compositions reflected this: their prose was painfully accurate and unadventurous, meticulously penned in copperplate. Every sentence carefully followed the subject-verb-object formula. They took no risks -- and they bored me half to tears.

I used to dread marking their compositions, which invariably went like this:

I went to my friend's house on Saturday. We played tennis. We had a lunch at Bon Appetit. We went for a drive in Den-en-chofu. We enjoyed ourselves very much. I went home. I helped my mother in the kitchen. I did my homework. Then, I went to bed.

One day another student joined this class. Fumiko was a young housewife, the mother of two small children, and a real breath of fresh air. Every day she came into class with funny stories about her family. She rolled her eyes and giggled as she told us about squabbles and skinned knees, and her English was atrocious, but creative and wonderfully communicative. Her compositions were almost too ambitious, but they never once bored me. She obviously worked with a dictionary, and she was a firm believer in incorporating English proverbs into her prose.

Whenever I sat down to mark Fumiko's English journal -- which she turned in to me on a weekly basis -- I reached for the aspirin. You could tell that she had scrawled her entries at the kitchen table: there were spots of grease, ketchup, and soy sauce on the pages, and Fumiko's handwriting was nowhere near as neat and precise as her classmates'. But I always marveled at her creative, adventurous use of English and I laughed myself silly at her humor, both accidental and intentional:

I am tell husband finishing homeworks when after dinner is finished eating. His thinks everytime after finishing dinner doing nothing because man's job allready finished. I am tell my jobs never finished. When woman becomes mother, all labor increases: Putting one's baby to breast, cooking dinner's preparations, and clean floor's. I say him "You come home as work is finished but I have homeworks even sleep time!!" We disputing all day long, again and again. A man will work from sun to sun, but woman's work is never done!

When Fumiko got her compositions back, I could see her classmates glancing from their virtually unmarked sheets to hers, on which I had always written plenty of comments. I could read quiet victory in their eyes: Look, our compositions are perfect, but Fumiko has made so many errors!

Fumiko didn't seem to mind what the others thought. She stayed after class when she could and asked me endless questions about grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and colloquialisms. She brought her Japanese-English proverbs dictionaries to class and we would pore over them together, trying to find the proverbs which were the most contemporary and useful. Proverbs are used more often in Japanese than they are in English and I had my work cut out for me convincing Fumiko that it was possible to overdo it with proverbs in English. Still, after a while I could see the value of having some of the more structurally accurate, commonly used English proverbs at the tip of your tongue. But even as I managed to convince her that proverbs weren't always useful in English, she managed to persuade me that they were useful in Japanese; I began to see that even the tritest cliches could contain pearls of wisdom. In fact, through Fumiko, I got hooked on Japanese proverbs. And a year later, Fumiko's English had vastly improved while the others had made only modest progress. Cliche though it is, Fumiko had truly learned from her mistakes.

I learned from her mistakes too. And although there were occasions when I wondered what in the world she was talking about, Fumiko became my role model when I started writing Japanese in earnest. I took risks; I was adventurous; I put my all into my compositions, resigned myself to making the occasional howler, and pored over my teacher's painstaking corrections and explanations.

And I bought an entire series of Japanese proverb books and dictionaries, and learned dozens of them. To this day I can still bore my kids by reciting the appropriate proverb when the occasion demands, and they've even learned some themselves.

So thank you, Fumiko. Thank you for showing me such a good example. Thank you for hours of entertainment, and who cares about the headaches? And thank you very much for getting me hooked on proverbs. 七転び八起き Nana korobi, ya oki, or Fall down seven times, get up eight. (If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.)

A real pearl of wisdom, that. And it's come in handy for a lot more than language learning.

Candy Face

I don't know about you, but there's a lot of stuff I'd like to put on my resume that I can't. My husband feels just the same way. Once, not long after we'd married, we were visiting my best friend back in the States and her little boy introduced us to his friend. "This is Mary," he said, "she's my mom's friend. And this is her husband. He's wicked good fun."

To this day, he remembers that. He'd like it on his resume, just after Publications and Professional Presentations: I'm wicked good fun. References and testimonies available upon request.

There are a number of things I'd like on my resume. Once a friend of mine commented on my pot-washing skills. She claimed her pots were cleaner after I'd been at them. You know why? I wash not only the inside of pots, but the outside. It's just one of those things about me I can't change. I can't bear pots that are clean on the inside, but filthy on the outside. For years, it's irritated me that I can't note that down, somewhere between Education and Past Experience: When I wash pots, I get the outsides clean too. It has been noted and commented upon. References available upon request.

I'll tell you what else would go on my resume: I have a candy face.

I didn't know about my candy face until two weeks ago. I'd had a tough time in my Wednesday afternoon class; I'd had to yell at half a dozen kids who were yakking away in Turkish, only pretending to write compositions about their home towns. I'd had to bring up the embarrassing subject of their midterm results -- abysmal -- and my worries that they would not be ready for the finals. After class, I gathered up my papers and two girls approached my desk, smiling winsomely.

"Tee-cha, you are okay?" asked Melen.

"I'm fine," I said through clenched teeth. "I'm just a little worried about a few of you." I zipped up my pencil case. "I'm afraid some of you will have to repeat."

Esra sidled a little closer. "Tee-cha, you work hardly for us!" she whispered. "We like this!"

I looked up suspiciously. Their midterm results are done and dusted and they know damn well that nothing they say can change them.

Esra took my whiteboard eraser and began to erase the board. "Tee-cha, when on the weekend, we miss you! We miss your face!"

"Pffft!" I said, flushing. "You miss being yelled at!"

"No, tee-cha!" Esra insisted, still erasing. "You sometimes yelling, but you have sweet face!"

"Candy face!" chimed in Melen. "You have sweet face like candy!"

My hand went up surreptitiously, but no, not a trace of breakfast jam was stuck to my face.

And I cannot begin to tell you how genuinely honored I am. Never mind that I've had a good look at myself in the mirror and know The Real Truth, Melen says I've got a candy face. But where can I put that on my resume? Under Education? Qualifications? Past Work Experience?

Sometimes you just have to hide your lights under a bushel.

Getting Away With It

"Tee-cha, why you write children's?" Alper asks me, his brow furrowed.

I wheel around and look at the board where I have written the following sentence: The children's room is the smallest room in our house.

My mouth gapes open. "Why did I write it...?"

Alper makes a vague gesture with one hand. "Why you write--" He turns to the boy sitting next to him and mutters something in Turkish. After a moment of consultation, they look up at me "ah-pose-trph," Alper concludes, the wrinkle still between his eyebrows.

I look at the board again. "Apostrophe?" I ask, pointing to the offending punctuation mark.

He nods vigorously.

"Because the room belongs to the children, so you use an apostrophe after 'children' and before the S," I explain.

"No, tee-cha, mistake!" shouts Aysa. "Apostrophe always after S!"

Aysa is one of those students who make me bring Bufferin to class: she knows it all even if she doesn't. Oddly enough, learning time after time that she is wrong hasn't put a dent in her astonishing confidence. Aysa has corrected my spelling, my grammar, and my syntax, and bless her, she has never once been right. During the break, I'm happy to let her teach me Turkish pronunciation because this gives her a gratifying sense of her own superiority -- but I'm damned if I'm going to let her get away with this now.

"The S comes after the N in children's," I say sternly. "Children is already plural."

She doesn't believe me, but it is time for my break and boy, do I need it. When I get back fifteen minutes later, Aysa has her grammar book open to plurals and she looks suitably chagrined.

I don't rub it in, though. I'm above that.

But two days later, she's at it again. We're doing personal descriptions this week, and on the board I've written the following sentence: What is your boyfriend like?

Aysa is practically leaping out of her chair at this. "Tee-cha, not is, does!" she splutters, pointing an accusatory finger.

Uh oh -- have I made a mistake? It's not unheard of, after all. I study the board, but no: everything's fine. "Look, there's no mistake here, the question is--"

But Aysa is half out of her seat, scrabbling for her grammar book again. "Tee-cha, what do you like to do?" she calls triumphantly, tapping her book with one stubby finger. "Boyfriend he, so does," she concludes breathlessly. "No what IS boyfriend like, what DOES boyfriend like!" The look in her eye says it all: this time she's got me -- victory is hers!

Confused and exasperated, I go to look. What do you like to do in your free time? I read. Now I'm the one with a crease between my eyebrows.

Then I get it. The crease between my eyebrows turns into a tiny flashbulb just over my head.

Back at the board, I write the following: What is your boyfriend like? and What does your boyfriend like doing in his free time? I explain briefly that What is he like? and What does he like? mean different things entirely.

Aysa watches warily, her eyes distrustful. Even now, she suspects I'm trying to pull a fast one.

I don't rub it in, though. I'm above that.

Fast forward one week. I am teaching my last class on my longest teaching day. My feet hurt, my head is throbbing, and one teacher is off ill, so I've got two classes rolled into one, and worse still, I'm teaching a lesson I've had no chance to prepare for. It's standing room only, and the class is about as quiet as Grand Central Station during rush hour.

"BE QUIET!" I roar for the third time, but no one pays me any heed. So I scrawl it across the board in four-inch letters.

An instant hush fills the room. They're never this responsive! I can hardly believe my good luck.

Aysa stares at me, her mouth hanging open. "Tee-cha QUIT!" she practically shouts.

"What?"

"Beekwit!"

If she were on her feet, she'd be jumping up and down. The boy next to her is pointing to the board, so I turn around.

And I see what I've gone and written in my flustered haste: BE QUIT!

Now this tale could end here. Aysa could have had her Great Victory and I could have ended up with egg on my face. But the fates were with me.

"Open your books to page 58!" I splutter, after correcting the offending QUIT to QUIET.

There is a great rustling as fifty students open their books, and half the class smiles and nods. One boy laughs out loud and gives me an appreciative wink. And I read the instructions to the lesson I so hastily cobbled together: Find the mistake in the text . We're doing a unit on error correction.

Aysa casts me a baleful look. Her arch enemy, Mary the All Grammatical, has scored again.

My very first whopper of a mistake and I've completely and utterly gotten away with it.

I may not rub it in, but I'm damned if I'll ever tell.

Objective, Subjective

"Tee-cha, can you explain?"

It's my break, but Alper is standing there, notebook in hand, looking troubled. Alper needs all the help he can get, but quite apart from that, Alper is one of the students I've identified as a trier. He may not be Einstein, but boy, does he do his best. He turns in his homework every time, faithfully writes in his journal, and frequently asks me reasonably pertinent questions. I will do just about anything for a student who tries -- they're thin on the ground around here. Giving up my break is the very least I can do.

"What do you want me to explain?"

"Why this did this one not?"

"I'm sorry, can you repeat that?"

"Why this did, this one not did?" He holds out the notebook. In it, he has written the following two sentences:

Who did Madonna marry? and Who married Madonna?

"Why this one did, this one not did?" he asks.

Okay, now I get it: he wants to know why you use the auxiliary verb 'did' in the first question, but not in the second question.

Fortunately, I'm right on top of this one: I asked a Turkish colleague about it just last month. This is one of those niggling idiosyncrasies that we native speakers of English manage to absorb with our graham crackers and milk, but non-native speakers have to learn explicitly. Fortunately for me, I teach with a lot of non-native speakers of English. I've never met a non-native speaker of English worth his or her salt who couldn't explain this better than I can.

"Okay," I say now, writing on the board Who did Madonna marry? " In this sentence, Madonna is the subject because she is the one who is marrying someone." I point out that the word who here should technically be whom because it is the object of the sentence, not the subject. And that when the answer is not the same as the subject, we have to use the auxiliary did. I then explain how the opposite is true in the sentence Who married Madonna? In this sentence, Who is the subject, and the answer will be the same as the subject, so we don't use the auxiliary.

We go through a few more examples of this until Alper obviously understands. He leaves the classroom with a satisfied look on his face and I feel like doing a little jig on my desk; it's not often that I get my point across. Now Alper knows the difference between the objective and the subjective and one little bit of chaos has been turned to order.

But I've missed my break and I'm more than ready for a trip to the ladies' room after the class. Unfortunately, when I get back to the teachers' lounge, I am irritated to see that the key is missing -- again. I scrawl the following sentence on the board: Will whoever took the ladies' room key please return it?

A few hours later, as I'm getting ready to leave for the day, I see that some idiot has changed my perfectly correct whoever to the incorrect whomever. Shocking but true: one of my colleagues does not know the difference between the objective and the subjective.

On the board, I circle the offending whomever and write the following: Will whoever made this correction please consider a review of the subjective and objective cases?

I know I could have just walked away from this, but I'm all about order over chaos.