What is the Best Way to Teach a Japanese Student About Breast-Feeding?

Answer: Sounds and body language.

A teacher asked me to help a student prepare for his university exams today. He wanted me to read a passage to the student and ask him questions about the passage in English to test his listening comprehension. And because I am an all-a-round brilliant teacher, I figured that this would not be an issue. Seeing as I have done this very activity with many students before, I decided not to prep any material and just go into the tutoring session blind. It was at this point, when I first looked at the passages that I was to read, that I noticed that the first difficult vocabulary word was "breast-fed." Why in Atheismos' great, green Earth did this teacher choose this passage. I will speculate as to that reasoning at the end of this story.

Have you ever tried to explain a concept that is obviously such a normal and everyday thing that even language does not seem to be enough for the description. It's like trying to define religion to someone who does not speak the same language. Well, this is how I felt when attempting to explain breast-feeding. It was completely obvious to me that the breast feeds something, usually offspring of some species, preferably some genus of homoerectus (cromagnon, homosapien, primate, European). My apparent lack of words and use of body language and sounds to illustrate this concept was hysterical to the student and the teacher. It was only then that I noticed that I was miming holding a baby up to my chest and making suckling sounds with my mouth. I feel this was one of my more triumphant moments in Japan. The student immediately understood what I was attempting to say. Success.

Later in the same article, the topic of diarrhea was mentioned. I think everyone will agree with me that the topics of babies and breast-feeding are inexorably linked to the inevitable result, baby diarrhea. For the record, I am a huge proponent of scatological humor. I think it is one of the more underestimated comic motifs. As such, I decided to teach this young man and this old man some American slang that they most likely have experienced first hand. The Runs. Yet another challenging concept to explain to a non-native speaker. Both the teacher and the student looked puzzled at me when I mimed the international sign for, "holy crap, I have to crap." Which is a horribly pained and mortified facial expression coupled with a determined trot and a futile grabbing of the stomach. It took them both a moment to understand what I was attempting to teach them, and they both nodded in appreciation (presumably accepting my acting skills) and in painful, most likely first hand, understanding. The rest of this tutoring session continued on the subject of breast-feeding and its apparent IQ benefits. To be honest, I think the reason my teacher chose this article was merely for the entertainment value of seeing me explain breast-feeding, diarrhea, and various other less comical medical conditions.

At the end of a rather entertaining day, I was editing some essays for the third year students. One of my students, who I know rather well because she is in several of my classes, asked me to check her essay. To be honest, I was not expecting much from her, which is horrible of me to think. But my time with her in class has taught me that although she tries very hard, the quality of her work is usually rather low. To my surprise, her essay was quite fantastic. She wrote about how most people take happiness for granted and do not take the time to look around them and find happiness everywhere. Something very profound from an 18 year old with presumably no future plan other than marrying her 30-something boyfriend. There was one line in her short treatise which caught my eye, she wrote, "Because happiness is often overlooked, and due to my recent fight with my boyfriend, I have decided to be free and expose myself to everyone, all the time." Presumably, she was referring to being open to new things and new people. But her insistence of the use of the word "expose" shocked me and made me chuckle. I eventually composed myself long enough to explain (again with hand motions and body language) the difference between "exposing oneself" and "remaining open to new things." I am almost certain that she understood the difference yet still wanted to use the word "expose." What could I have done? At least she did not say, "I want to expose myself and so on to everyone all the time." I think that would have been a bit over the top.