I initially had a few sections about funny misunderstandings that happened in my classes. I took them out because they were not all directly related to language and decided to keep the notes for later -- they would make a few blog posts or perhaps even a new book.
One of these incidents was related to language -- and it took place in an intermediate level writing class. I wrote two prompts on the board and told my students they had ten minutes to write and edit a paragraph on one of these topics.
Write a paragraph about a person who has been important to your language learning.
Write a paragraph about a challenge in a past or present relationship.
One of my students raised her hand, and when I approached her, she said she had just broken up with her boyfriend. She wanted to know if she could write a paragraph about a challenge in her breakupship.
I smiled -- because I loved her creativity -- and said, "Sure! Just don't use the word breakupship because it's not in the dictionary... yet."
When I went back to my seat, I thought about the word my student had cleverly created and decided it should be in the dictionary. Breakups have a whole set of rules and challenges, and entire books have been written about them and movies have been made about them, so why doesn't this word exist?
