This is the second in a three part series about one of the most infamous English students in the eastern Shizuoka area; The Thesaurus, who had a more impressive English vocabulary than some of the teachers I worked with. On one fateful evening I ended up in a vocabulary showdown with The Thesaurus in front of a room full of students. I barely came out with a victory.
The Voice room usually has open conversation or some English activities designed to keep everyone involved. The room was full of students from all skill levels, and the infamous Thesaurus. The previous teacher had been teaching some common English idioms to the students (a common topic), so I decided to turn this into a game.
I wrote one of the idioms across the whiteboard, and told the students that using the only the letters on the board, they had to make as many words as they could within a certain time limit. Words had to be at least 3 letters long, and I would award one point per letter. I divided the students up into teams, leaving The Thesaurus on his own, and started the timer. The game worked surprisingly well; students at lower levels came up with lots of small words, while The Thesaurus worked on pulling out the largest words he knew. Any words that students didn’t know got explained to the room.
I repeated this a few more times with continued success. As the time was running out, somehow the room came up with the idea that I should challenge The Thesaurus. I felt like I was playing for the pride of the teachers, honestly worried about being beaten by a man who read the dictionary for fun. The stakes were high and the pressure was on.
We took turns identifying words that we could build. With only minutes left, The Thesaurus managed to find an obscure 11 letter word that could be assembled from the letters available. I was on the spot – flashbacks of endless games of Scrabble against my mother played in my head, defeat after defeat coming into my mind. Here I was, a native English speaker, about to lose a word game of my own creation against the most infamous student in that has ever walked into a NOVA classroom in the Shizuoka area. It would be a blow to the teachers, and to Canadian English as a whole. The students were on the edge of their seats waiting for me to pull out a language miracle.
As I was beginning to lose hope, I saw my savior: the glorious letter “S”. I added it to the end of The Thesaurus’s word, pluralizing it to create a 12 letter word, one more than his 11 letter word. The students oohed and aahed as I wrote down my final word, barely claiming victory from the jaws of an embarrassing defeat as the class drew to a close.
I don’t know if this game was as memorable for anyone else in the room, but I won’t soon forget my epic vocabulary showdown with The Thesaurus.
Drinking in Japan 