ESL Archives - Ann Hedreen, Writer Teacher Filmmaker

Wow!

Ann Hedreen2026-05-27T15:20:29-07:00Categories: arts, Creative, featured posts, memoir, reading, travel, Uncategorized, writing|Tags: Australia, Belle Burden, Beth Macy, Camille Dungy, ESL, Helen Fremont, memoir, OED, Oxford English Dictionary, Wow|

It’s been almost forty years since my husband and I spent an entire month driving around Australia in a yellow station wagon with two British friends. But I can still hear them teasing us about how often we used the same three-letter word, over and over and over. “Wow!” they would say. “You Americans just can’t stop saying Wow, can you?” They were right. Rustin and I overused Wow like crazy on that trip and on every other trip we’ve ever taken. It’s just so handy. It says so much, depending on how you say it. And it’s always right there, ready to launch, without all that rummaging around in your brain for a more creative alternative. And now I know that we English speakers have been saying “Wow!” for more than five hundred years. Wow. Right? I mean, just, WOW. It was an ESL teacher who casually mentioned this fact to me. I volunteer in her classroom, and I can’t remember who said "Wow!" during class that day. It might have been me. It might have been a reaction to how hard the spelling test words were. Fantasy, reality, and comedy were on the list. Maybe one of the students nailed one of those words on the first try, which would have definitely deserved a good loud Wow. When I got home, I looked up Wow in the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary (free with your library card). Sure enough, the OED identifies the earliest written use of the word in 1513, in a [...]

English Class

One recent Tuesday morning, I held up two laminated photos: one of hot dogs, drizzled artfully with mustard and catsup; the other of pepperoni pizza. “Which do you like better?” I asked C, a new student from Eritrea, who is learning English at a galloping pace. “Hot dogs, or pizza?” We were practicing phrases like, “I prefer hot dogs,” and “I like pizza more than hot dogs.” C pointed at the hot dog. “What?” he said. “Hot? Dog?” He sounded the words out slowly. Incredulously. And then he started laughing. I nodded. “Yes. Hot. Dog. It’s a… a sausage. In a bun.” C laughed even louder. “Hot dog? Dog?” He made a barking noise. “Yes.” I laughed too. “That is the word. Dog.” Now C looked horrified, and I realized why. “But it is not the meat of a dog!” I shook my head vigorously. “Not dog! It is beef, or pork. Cow or pig.” I turned to M, an even newer student from Ukraine. “M, do you have hot dogs in Ukraine?” I asked. “Yes,” M said. “Hot dogs. In my country. We say—hot dogs.” He smiled, for the first time that morning. It was his second day in class. C burst out laughing again. He could not get over it. What next, in this nutty country? M and I started laughing too. So did the other students. A week has passed, and I keep thinking about that moment. All I have to do is say to myself, hot dog, and I smile. I don’t [...]