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\u00b0 (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).<\/p>\n
My pupil had reversed back to her starting position, so I asked:<\/p>\n
\nHave you picked your reference? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
She thought for a moment, and said:<\/p>\n
\nYes. That pigeon. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
There was a wood pigeon walking on the grass. I replied:<\/p>\n
\nDon’t you think it would make sense to pick something a little less animated<\/u>? 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? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
A few seconds later it DID fly off, which enabled me to be even more witty!<\/p>\n
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:<\/p>\n
\nThat plastic bag. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The wind was blowing a plastic carrier bag across a field, and it had come to a temporary rest.<\/p>\n
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\u00b0 position. He ruined it all by saying:<\/p>\n
\nI used that blue building over there because that’s what we used the last time we came here. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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:<\/p>\n
\nI lined that Post Box up in the corner of the window. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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:<\/p>\n
\nNow plan ahead… [nothing]… look at the signs… [nothing].. what is the speed limit..? [nothing as we sailed through] <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It turned out that when she panicked she saw things in Chinese<\/em>! 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u00b0 (half past one, or whatever), and to do that most of them need to look for where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-funny-related"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}