How are you, again?

Many of the students finished their Speaking Tests this week. One of the questions for the 1^st Grade was simply: “How are you?”

Simple, isn’t it? You would think, but the trick is that I had a full lesson about not just saying the go to “I’m fine, thank you, and you?” (A-eem pine 10 Q N new?) I wanted students to say something else. Pretty much anything else would have been fine with me. 95% of the students would open with this and I would reply “No ‘Fine thank you’. Change.” The next answer would mostly be the annoying no meaning “I’m so-so”, and there they would stop.

The reason I didn’t want “A-eem pine 10 Q N new?” is because they say this without even thinking. The moment I ask them to change it they don’t understand what they are saying. Even when, after “I’m so-so”, I point to myself with a questioning look, they still do not add “and you?” (or something to that effect). I had high level students who, after many prompts, and after they actually added “How are you?” would be unable to string the two together when I ask the question again.

I honestly understand that a lot of English is just repetition, but this was a whole lesson, we did a review, I made sure they had the correct answers on the review papers and then asked those exact questions in the test, and still they throw “A-eem pine 10 Q N new?” at me.

(When people ask me how I am I generally answer “I’m OK”, or “Good-Good”, but I will very often change that. I do this because when you ask me that I assume you actually want to know, so I think about the answer. I find it rather annoying when I ask someone how they are and they say “I’m fine thank you and you?” while blood is dripping from their ears, and when I start telling them how I am they pretty much ignore me.)