I start a language lesson and when I’m giving the instructions for the first activity, the door opens and a student comes in. Knowing I hate unpunctuality, she essays an apology plus an excuse:

St: “Sorry, Adriana, but I ‘got laid’ (obviously the poor thing meant ‘late’ – but a fully long diphthong there plus a nonexistent last consonant changed the word completely!)

Me: (Lowering my glasses and fixing her with my stare – well, at least with one of my eyes!) “Well, well, well, I do like sincerity, but I don’t need to know THAT much!” 

 As I go out of the classroom after a phonology lesson, I hear :

St: “Adriana, Adriana, Adriana” (calling out to me the way you call a dog)

Me: (Imitating his call) “Yes, student, student, student?”

St: (The student smiles but doesn’t seem to register the ‘gentle correction’) “I want to ask you something. En castellano que es más rápido.” (I never know WHY they say that!)

Me: “Ok.”

St: “Qué hacés si una sílaba está ‘estresada’ y_” (Here I interrupt)

Me: “Si una sílaba está ‘estresada’…. ¡Llevala al médico!”

Some years ago, teaching Phonetics I, I was at my wits’ end to make students produce the ‘short u’.

Knowing that ridiculous utterances containing many words with the same sound can make the sound memorable, I urged students to come up with some ‘nonsense utterances’, but wasn’t being very successful. So I decided to give an example myself and blurted out the first thing that came to my mind:

“I would do it in the woods if I could.”

Needless to say, those students still rub it in whenever I meet any of them!