I never enjoyed classes where the right answer was the one the instructor was thinking of
I remember my university spanish classes well. The instructor didn't like me for three reasons:
1. I was a French speaker first, Spanish second
2. I was good friends with the French professor
3. I approach languages from a concept perspective, not a rote perspective.
By that last, I mean that I use languages to express a concept, not to memorize a dictionary of terms. So if I have to translate "drill press" into French, for example, I may say "the machine that puts holes in the metal" if I can't think of "drill press" (perceuse) in French. Yeah, it's longer winded, but it gets the point across.
In one Spanish exam, I was supposed to translate "the attractive girl". I could not think of the word for attractive, so I guessed: "la chica attractiva". That's correct (although not common usage; "hermosa" is more common), but since I spelled it wrong ("attractiva" has one "t" in Spanish), I was marked fully wrong on the question. Apparently, had I spelled it correctly, she would have given me credit.
[img]graemlins/madhell.gif[/img] Still gets my dander up when I think of it.