To swear or not to swear, that is the question

Is it okay to swear in front of your students? There are a few perspectives on this, it seems.

• An outright and resounding yes.
• If a student has really wound you up or if a situation calls for it.
• Maybe, but only if a question comes up about rude words or if you're teaching the language.
• There are other ways to express yourself.
• Never, I'd be too embarrassed.

For me, I'd probably take the middle ground. I have sworn in class, but never in anger - if you can't express yourself clearly and eloquently enough with ESL students without swearing, then you're in the wrong job.

I'm not afraid of using bad language, though. Students are intrigued by it and, let's face it, it's the first element of a language we all go after as soon as we've learnt to say 'hello, my name is...'

Funnily enough, I swore in front of my class of adult ESL students today and they reacted very strangely. The sentence "I swore once when I was a child" came up from the text book and the class didn't know what 'swore' meant. I explained that 'swore' is the past form of 'to swear', which they didn't know either.

"What does 'swear' mean?" one student asked.

"Fuck off!" I shouted. "That's swearing."

The silence that followed was... interesting. I don't think I'll be using that tactic again very soon.