Salsa: I’m fortunate in that all of the teachers that I work with legitimately speak English. I know that may sound silly since we teach English, but I don’t think that it’s always something that can be taken for granted everywhere.
Recently, during one of our essay class band meetings, however, we were discussing potential essay topics for explanatory essays, and after throwing around some ideas, one of the teachers suggested that one of the options should be how to find “salsa” in the library. Everyone nodded as they thought it over and decided whether they thought it would be a relevant and rigorous enough prompt.
I also thought it over, but I had a feeling we weren’t thinking the same thing. Hmm…how to find salsa in the library? I would be curious to read those essays, and I wondered where I could find this mystical library myelf. Then it finally hit me and I got a laugh to myself, as I had been trying to figure this out on my own while the conversation continued had on. The question was about how to find sources, pronounced “salsa,” in the library.
Dishonestrials: I came across this word in one of my student’s essays, and I remembered it because I actually think it would be quite a useful addition to the English language. From context, I think I’m accurate in saying that it refers to people who are dishonest. For example: I really think it’s time for those dishonestrials in the government to face justice for misleading the country to war. It works well, I think.
Microwaves, Ovens, Night Tables, End Tables, and Other Household Furniture: Yes, pictures often help to illustrate English words that are difficult to describe effectively by using other words. And, yes, night tables and end tables can be fairly easily explained by describing how they relate to other kinds of tables and through pictures. How do you explain a microwave, though, to students who don’t even have familiarity with convection ovens? It gets a little hard to use pictures when there’s no recognition of the image in the picture. Describing it as being similar to an oven but as one that uses microwave signals doesn’t help much either. It’s something that I wouldn’t have necessarily thought about as being a potential complication before living in Cambodia but which now stands out to me as such a glaring example cultural ignorance in our textbook. And, to be honest, I still don’t think my students really understand what a microwave is right now, even if they tried to appease me and get me to move on by saying they kind of had an idea about what it was.