Teacher Trek Day 9: The Fall of Women

While studying vocabulary unit 1 today, the class and I practiced pronunciations and definitions. The words were, predictably, difficult.

As I listened to the students, my mind drifted back to some of the funny words and expressions that I have heard and read across the years. I will never forget the young lady who used the word “consummate” instead of “consume.”  How does one even recover from that?

During grad school, I was working in a writing lab at Purchase Line High School (PA). One of the students asked me to edit his “research” paper that was penned with the wordsmithing skill of a seasoned plagiarist.  My first clue was that he, a 16-year old, chose the topic of post-partum depression, sharing remarkable insights gleaned from the pages of his mother’s nursing textbook. I asked what he meant by post-partum depression. His response: the depression experienced by women who cannot give birth. Some of the depression even rubbed off on me by the end of the conversation.

My all-time favorite, however, is from another teacher, whose student wrote that a lady “fell down the stairs and lay prostitute at the bottom.” The teacher responded that in the future, the student “should take care to differentiate between a fallen woman and one who has merely slipped.”

Yes, being specific is what vocabulary study is all about!