Hymonyms in the English Language

Volunteering and teaching English continues to expand my perspective on everything: me, my family, my future, the world. There are two other people that regularly teach class with me: Robert, and another expat from the United States, which all try our hand at teaching despite none of us being teachers prior to moving to Panama. We try to create lessons based off of things that may be relevant for a job, things that interest them, or common questions that come up.

This week was all about Hymonyms since students were frequently asking about them. What is a homonym? It is a word that sounds the same as another but means something different. Start thinking about it and there is a whole list that comes up. A website, always grow personally had a picture about this online which depicted the English language to a tee:

Obviously there are a lot of homonyms that we use regularly. In fact, one website identified 706 sets of these! While we only discussed about 30 of them, it was hilarious for even the native English speakers to try to break down the words slowly. Although I think for the most part we succeeded. While I feel like I automatically know the difference and can hear the difference between these sets of homonyms, it isn't always easy to say the word slowly so somebody can learn the word.

Our class seems to be developing a cohesive bond where everyone seems to be a bit more engaged and a little less embarrassed to make a mistake. After all, everyone does at some point in the class and we all learn. It was amazing to see that everyone seemed to be learning, trying to test each other with the correct usage and pronunciation of the homonyms they just learned.

I do not think I would ever want to be a teacher as a profession. It is hard work on many levels, and having an open class adds to this difficulty. Despite the unlikelyhood that I will ever get a teaching degree, I get what can drive and motivate teachers. It was a rush to hear some of the students read sentences with the homonyms and see them leaving class with smiles. Days like that are when I feel I get more out of it than the students who come to learn.