What Did You Say?

This morning, something funny happened in class. Usually when a student is introducing a new word, the others compete to find in the chapter and read out the sentence with the word in it. This is not hard because the page number is indicated on the handout he/she gives. What is more challenging is that I will ask them to translate the sentence into Chinese or to even act out the sentence. This morning, after a student read out the sentence which gives the word "mess" context:

"He wished he could have talked to her about the whiole dance mess, but ater basketball practice yesterday his father had insisted on taking the whole family out for a pregame dinner."

 I asked them what "pregame dinner" meant to make sure they knew the meaning of the prefix "pre-." A student gave the answer, but it shocked me. Hearing him say "色情網站," I couldn't believe my ears, wondering if he could pass the course. I repeated the Chinese in disbelief. Then he defended, "No. I said, '賽前晚餐.'" The whole class burst out laughing. Misunderstanding could happen when we least expect it.