Sometimes all it takes is one word

From the title, you're probably thinking that this post will be about a cool witnessing story, but unfortunately it's nothing so deep. Just another ESL story.

Tuesday night when the class was supposed to start, the teacher wasn't there. So I started teaching, so that the students wouldn't be just sitting around. Half an hour later the teacher showed up, then ran out for something, and by the time she came back it was actually 45 minutes into the class. I turned the class over to her and watched her lead an exercise asking the students to read ingredients in a stew from the textbook. All was fine until the book said to put the food in a saucepan. She started discussing whether a saucepan was really the right equipment for a stew. She was right from a culinary point of view, but from an English point of view it was way to subtle a distinction to bother with, for students at such a low level. The more different words she used, the more confused they became.

I sat there listening to her talk, and realizing that my students in the Food Pantry class had taught me a peculiarly pertinent word. Out of all the words in the world, they taught me how to say 'pot' in Chinese. So when the teacher finally paused, and looked at me for help, I couldn't help it:
guō I intoned tentatively (hoping that I was sounding the 4th tone properly)
The Mandarin speaking students started nodding, and gesturing, and then translated for the other students. Soon the entire class was nodding happily.

The power of one word.