Troublesome Students? Try Humiliation!

For the most part of my career, I have been lucky enough to have absolutely lovely people in my classes. They have been fun to work with and to teach and they have been very focused on their language goals.

However, every now and then I’ve come across a problem student. I have one now, in fact: an Italian stallion, god’s gift to ragazzi and a nightmare. He never listens to instructions, he makes fun of other people’s accents (and gets very grumpy when others to the same-a to him-a) and is generally an administrational pedagogical horror story.

Like most horror stories though, there is usually an Achilles heel to the villain of the piece. With most students, it’s humiliation. Today, for example, the Italian was being even ruder than usual. We were practising future continuous and I’d written a list of time phrases to use with it. Students ask questions like ‘What do you think you will be doing… after dinner tonight?’ or ‘next week?’ or ‘this time next month?’

I gave an example ‘What do you think you’ll be doing at the weekend?”
You could say “I will be relaxing.” or “I will be working.”

The Italian said in a loud voice “I will be fucking.”

It grossed everyone out a bit, so I came back with: “I don’t think it’s called that when you’re on your own.”

His blush was almost as loud as the laughter that met the comment.

I suppose I should have recognised the fact that he’d used the language correctly and quite naturally… for once.