The original purpose

of the long post I just put up, was to say that what had started out as simple chitchat "how did you spend your weekend?" ended up as an exercise. Often, we'd go throug the "what did you do last weekend?" as pretty much a rote activity, with the emphasis on getting the student to produce a comprehensible and grammatically reasonable answer, then going on to the next student. Their English was often so week that I'd give up on trying to communicate new content, and work instead on getting them to parrot a form-- so that at least they could say something.

So I did lose focus on that. There were days when we'd run through the weekend as a warm-up activity, but did it as quickly and as ritually as possible, as something to transition into another topic. Days when I might have answered "I came a Buddhist" as "I became a Buddhist. Repeat after me. Became. Very good. Now Sally, what did you do . . . ?"