Bless Their Hearts

I've spent a lot of time grading the past few weeks. I gave all my students written mid-term exams and my freshmen students had oral exams. The big project though has been grading nearly 70 portfolios from my writing class. It's slow going because there are lots of mistakes (that might be an understatement). These students just really need help with their writing, so I want to make sure I thoroughly correct all of their papers so that they learn from their mistakes.

Anyways . . . I know it's probably in violation of some kind of Teachers' Code to laugh at or take pleasure in students' mistakes, but I either need to get a little bit of enjoyment out of this endless task or else I'll go completely nuts. So I thought I'd blog a few of the funnier things my students came up with. Bless their hearts . . . they're trying, but sometimes it just comes out funny.

In a cover letter . . . "I would like to introduce myself as a qualified applicant for the poison you are offering."

On a resume, one girl said she had a lot of "piratical" experience. I was unaware I had a former pirate in my class.

In an essay about making smoking in schools illegal . . . "Smoking should not be allowed in schools because the students ate teenagers."

In a cover letter . . . "I'm a bachelor." (He was trying to say he is pursuing a bachelor's degree. I'm sure the student has no idea that his sentence had a totally different meaning.)

On my freshman exam one question was "How can you finish a telephone conversation in English?" (Chinese people tend to be quite abrupt on the phone which is acceptable in Chinese but not so much in English) Here are a few of the answer I got--
"I'd like you to go."
"I'm glad to talk about you."
"This is all the information, thanks for listening."

On the same exam I had a section where the students had to fill in the blanks with the correct vocabulary words from their dialogues. When they chose a wrong word, it was rather humorous.
"What kind of institute do you want on your salad?"
"What kind of stink do you want on your salad?"
"Please fill out this stink form first."

I still have quite a few (more than I want to admit or think about) portfolios left to grade, so if other entertaining student quotes come up, I'll update this list.