a cold joke

In Chinese the idiomatic expression "cold joke" refers to a cheesy or lame joke.

Monday one of my students was on his toes when he made a cold joke in the middle of class.

We were discussing onomatopoeia  for animal sounds.  You did know that dogs go "woof, woof" in English but "wang, wang" in Chinese, right?  Onomatopoeia is not only a fun word to say, but it is also a very fun thing to discuss with people from other cultures/languages.

Anyway, they were shouting out names of animals, and I was giving them their English sounds.  One of them asked for "deer."

And just like I said for rabbit and mouse, I replied "deer don't make sounds."  And another student said, "Yes the do.  They say 'honey.'"

Ha. Ha. 

But, actually for an EFL student to make a play on the words "deer" and "dear" right there in class is pretty impressive.