I was on a lesson Saturday with a pupil and we were doing the parallel park exercise. Part of the way I teach it to most pupils involves reversing the car back to an angle of about 45° (half past one, or whatever), and to do that most of them need to look for where that is and pick a sort of reference point (until they can do it without).
My pupil had reversed back to her starting position, so I asked:
Have you picked your reference?
She thought for a moment, and said:
Yes. That pigeon.
There was a wood pigeon walking on the grass. I replied:
Don’t you think it would make sense to pick something a little less animated? You know, less likely to fly off in the middle of it? How about that big tree stump that the pigeon is standing in front of?
A few seconds later it DID fly off, which enabled me to be even more witty!
Mind you, a couple of years ago I was with another pupil on the same manoeuvre. When I asked him what reference he’d chosen he said:
That plastic bag.
The wind was blowing a plastic carrier bag across a field, and it had come to a temporary rest.
And then another time on the same manoeuvre, a pupil did the whole thing perfectly. After I’d congratulated him I asked how he had managed to get the 45° position. He ruined it all by saying:
I used that blue building over there because that’s what we used the last time we came here.
And once, when reversing around a sharp corner just prior to her test, I asked a pupil how she had determined that she was at the right place to turn, she said:
I lined that Post Box up in the corner of the window.
Language can be very confusing all round. A while back a Chinese pupil completely ignored a speed limit change from 40mph down to 30mph. When I questioned her over it, she said it “wasn’t very clear”. In fact, the signs were visible a quarter of a mile away, were about 1.5 metres in diameter, and had their own lights – plus, I had narrated the approach as follows:
Now plan ahead… [nothing]… look at the signs… [nothing].. what is the speed limit..? [nothing as we sailed through]
It turned out that when she panicked she saw things in Chinese! It would be like me going to China and having to make a snap decision between two routes signposted in Mandarin Chinese. I’d have no chance.
But my most recent one was last week with a new pupil whose native language is Urdu, and whose English is not perfect. At least half a dozen times, when I said “keep left” as he wandered wide he tried to do a sharp left turn in response - twice when there was nowhere to actually turn left into. All he heard was “left”. I’ve told him I am not able to teach him and have given him some phone numbers of Urdu-speaking instructors.