WHY?!

by mikka


Above: totally unrelated to this post, but - hooray! - mikan are in season, even if they're all green. 

A problem that constantly arises when teaching "conversation" classes to low-level students is that conversation fizzes out pretty easily when both students speak limited English, so I often find myself encouraging students to Ask your partner for more information! in pretty much any speaking activity we do in class. In one of my favorite Beginner classes (where the students are all co-workers and have a particularly good rapport with each other), this has given way to a phenomenon I've started thinking of as the evil why. It goes kind of like this:

Student A: Which do you prefer, cats or dogs?
Student B: (innocently) I like cats.
Student A: (evilly) .... WHY? 
Student B: (gets a look of unspeakable dread on his face.) 

An evil why is is used aggressively, yet gleefully, usually after a slight pause that falsely allows the recipient to think he's off the hook when in fact he is now forced to speak yet more, unscripted English, while the rest of the class cracks up and its victim mumbles something about cats being cute. Who knows, maybe they just think my pleas for more information in such a simplified context are just that absurd, which I'm not saying they aren't; but having been the lowest level speaker in my Japanese class last February, I can certainly relate to the feeling of dismay that comes when you thought you were finished hammering out a sentence only to find you have to keep working.