lost in translation

I've taken up a job in the afternoons and evenings. I'm teaching at an English language school. A British school. They don't mind having Americans, but they ask that we (ok, I) emphasize the British over the American, which normally isn't a problem. (Most of the kids don't even realize I'm not British, which also tells you how much they are speaking English if they can't hear a difference!) Then one day I came to the lesson on the short "a" sound. The page had a box in the middle with various words in it, and on each side there was a column. One said "bag" and one said "bath". The kids were supposed to separate the words into the bag and bath column based on the short a sounds. Are you confused? Don't worry, I was too.

When Americans pronounce the words bag and bath, they sound the same. They both have a short a sound. So how are you supposed to separate the words when they have the same sound???? Then it hit me. In England, it's not bath, it's baaaath. With a stretched out a! So it's a different sound! Normally there is a CD with this book, but of course, today the CD wasn't working, so I was stuck trying to put on a British accent to distinguish between the a sounds for the kids. You can probably imagine how awful this lesson was going. I have no clue what the right answers are, I'm putting on a horrible fake accent, and all the 9 year-old kids are looking at me with blank or confused expressions. I tried in vain for about 5 minutes to get the point across, but when the frowns of confusion got worse instead of better, I decided I was doing more damage than good. I guess you can't win them all.