Day 294: The Longest Word

I teach Vocabulary instead of Reading to all my afternoon classes on Fridays. It's a nice break from the reading material and the curriculam is so perfectly planned out that literally all I need to do is just walk right into class with the text and go right from there. It's easy as pie! Sometimes I like to throw in odd random stuff just to make it a little more fun and interesting for the kids, and today I did just that.

I taught them the longest word in the English language.

Now many people incorrectly think that the longest word is supercalifragilisticexpedaliocious, but not only is that not even a real word (sorry Mary Poppins) but there's one longer than that. I learned it in Grade 4 and can still remember it to this day. That word is:

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

It's actually surprisingly easy to spell and pronounce, if you break it up into its individual parts. It's the name of a disease that you get from inhaling volcanic dust that causes some form of lung cancer. It's a real word - honest! - go and look it up!

Anyway all my kids thought I was pretty smart for knowing a word like that, and were all quite eager to learn it. I also told them that there was a vocab quiz next week, and that the bonus question of the quiz would be to try and spell that word, and if they were able to do so correctly, I'd give them a free homework pass. Now *that* was some serious motivation! It's fun to be an English Teacher and to be able to throw out random not-so-little words to the Koreans like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis!