Is your mother fatter than you?

Today in my class we reviewed books. Sometimes when I read ESL books the questions asked are kind of funny and sometimes they are a little thought provoking. In one book today a student saw the question, "Is your mother fatter than you?". We were laughing because the question is very inappropriate and we are teaching that to non-native speakers. We also were wondering what the answer was supposed to be. This question worked perfectly with one of the lessons a student taught today on euphemisms.

 There are a lot better ways to ask that question than to phrase it that way. I think that would be an ESL lesson in itself, how to phrase questions so they don't offend people. He started the lesson by mentioning words like death, bathroom, and unemployed. He listed other words and phrases that we could use and then gave students lists of phrases and had them quiz their partner on what they could be euphemisms for. 

Sometimes ESL books list questions you are supposed to ask your partner. One of my favorite questions is, "If you were God what is one thing you would change in the world?". Common responses are that there would be no more world hunger or rid the world of war. My favorite response was by a Korean woman that said she would make Korean the "world language" so she could travel around the world teaching Korean, sort of like I did with English.

Another question that is fun to hear the answers is, "What would you do if you were invisible for a day?". The most common answers are to go to a woman's shower, to rob a bank, to go shopping and take any clothes they want. The most unique answer I got was a guy would go to sleep. I said that maybe he didn't understand the question, I explained that he could still walk around, but no one would see him so he could do anything he wanted and no one would know. He said he understood the question, but he is always asked to do things so if he was invisible he would like to just sleep to be by himself.