10 Reasons English is Hard to Teach Abroad

As if we needed to list our reasons ... we all know, even those of us who are native speakers, English is tough.  How many times have you heard your friends at school say, "I don't know where I put it at."  Or, "I don't know where it's at."  And of course, the proper way to say that is, "I don't know where it is."

But there are homonyms that drive new speakers of English right up the wall.  A homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings.  A good example would be, "When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes."

If you're on our Teach in Thailand program or our Teach in Myanmar program and you begin this lesson, it isn't going to last an hour.  If you can get through homonyms in a week, you'll be lucky.

I thought it might be fun in this post to list out my favorite homonyms that gave me the most trouble when I was a teacher.  And that was so long ago, I think God was a baby at the time.

• The farm was used to produce.
• He could lead, if only he would get the lead out.
• A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
• There was a row among the oarsmen on how to row.
• They were too close to the door to close it.
• A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
• The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
• After a number of injections, my jaw got number.
• Upon seeing a tear in the painting, I shed a tear.