Job Discussion Forums

[Super Mario]

People in glass houses, Klaus.

[vikdk]

teachers are invited to china so certain people can make money - pure an simple

hey man im tingling

[7969]

can we stick to the original topic please? it's useful for some of us and our students, if you dont agree, no need to post.

[Roger]

[Roger]

Here is another linguistic evergreen: yes/no questions and how to answer them:

You: Class, didn't you do your homework???
They: Yes!
(in fact meaning "no!"...
This clearly is of an order exceeding the purely grammatical/semantic level: it is to do with culture-specific "logic". It is in the same league as writing addresses - the western style is the exact contrary of the Chinese way; ditto for names: surname and given name versus given name followed by surname...

The frustration that I sometimes feel about this aspect of teaching is that superficially, my students all probably "know" about these things; (they are supposed to have "studied" them under a Chinese "teacher"). It is in the translation into direct use and practical application that they fail.
This also is true of their incredible spelling and writing mistakes: writing names with lower-case initials - they are supposedly taught that 'China" has a capital 'C', but they all write it with a lower case one... Interestingly, they write "England" correctly, as well as 'English"...

[Henry_Cowell]

Right on, Super Mario. Glass houses, indeed!

[Jizzo T. Clown]

My Chinese/Taiwanese students here in the US have more problems with writing than speaking. No matter how many times we go over it, they insist on substituting the word "American" for "America."

"In American people are friendly."

"American is very different from China."

Their social skills are also lacking (and they shouldn't be!!!):

"The Americans are tall and fat."
(when asked to write a guide for new international students)

And one thing that hasn't been mentioned that is probably on everyone's mind is the horrible pronunciation of "usually," "leisure," and other words with this sound.

[Gregor]

Oh, MAN.
This is why I can't stand that these students learn from Chinese English teachers. Their 25, 30-year outdated teaching methods are bad enough. But the problem I have encountered with "usually" comes back to the teachers telling them that their incorrect pronunciation is CORRECT. They are actually, actively TAUGHT to say /'jur^li:/ (the /^/ sound is meant to be the "u" in "cup"). The really stupid thing about that is that the Chinese language HAS that sound! It is the initial sound in their name for their own country!

The problem with their pronunciation of "America" in MY experience is hypercorrection - they say "Americ" because so often when they end a word with an "uh" sound, they are corrected not to do that. HA! Bless their hearts.

As for Chinese people learning to speak fluent English - I have run across several who have. The Chinese people are NOT different from every other race on the planet, as so many of you want us to believe, and as so many of the Chinese people want us to believe. It's not true. They are every bit as capable of learning English as anyone else in the world. They need decent study habits, a decent, conscientious teacher, willingness to trust that teacher, and time. Then they'll DO JUST FINE.
Same as anyone else.

[sheeba]

[Super Mario]

Prepositions. Choosing the wrong one [I got on the car], or inserting one unnecessarily [I will go to shopping].
And for an earlier poster, I believe spoken Chinese to be simpler than spoken English because:
- Chinese doesn't use gender.
- Tense is designated by a time reference, eg, ming tian wo qu Beijing, or zou tian wo qu le Songjiang, by the addition of "le" to indicate a past completed action. The verb itself doesn't change, and no irregular forms!
I'm sure you know all this and are just being a smartarse.

[Roger]

Sheeba, I appreciate your reply very much indeed! Your feelings were my feelings on many a frustrating day. I have learnt that the job description WE FT's get is misleading and wrong; we have to correct more, and care less about their "speaking" ability!
The problems we have so far been discussing revolve around GRAMMAR and SYNTAX, two areas that Chinese teachers are supposedly competent in. How many of us agree our colleagues are up to task oin those scores? I feel, just a minority is, but even they do not have the right knowhow of addressing grammar adequately.
They may impart THEORETICAL knowledge, a summary of the rules, but they fail to obey them, and they do not practise the use of these rules.
That is why we are faced with anomalies such as confusions of "American" with "America", or nouns ('safety') with adjectives ('safe').

A few other observations:
- "I help you...
Whenever you ask someone to do a job, they "help" you! This is a mistranslation from Chinese! "I help you pay the restaurant bill..." means they hail the waiter and you fork out the dough...

- '...CITY': supermarkets, shops and malls called "...city' - while not
altogether wrong, it shows a lack of familiarity with English. So many "Wine CIties" or "Food CIties" as China has...

- '...have a rest...": maybe not wrong but a little awkward: I would
like them to use "break" or "pause" or "siesta"; they invariably use
"rest", which causes me to shudder as I am visualising myself as
a convalescent by their standards...

- First name: Mistranslation, which I deem very avoidable if only the
Chinese side acquainted themselves with the relevant terminology and
philosophy of Westerners: a "first" name in our parlance means a
given name, a Christian name, but not a surname; "surname" seems to
be a neologism for all my students!

These examples show that cultural undercurrents fail to be navigated by our learners; they may know "foreigners always say their given name first" but they do not transfer this theory to their mind so that they can function appropriately in a western-dominated environment.

[tw]

This one is not very common since the English lingo is not something beginner-level English speakers would know:

"Give you" instead of "Here you go"

[Mysterious Mark]

[Dragonfly01]

What about the so-called native English speakers who wrote "here" instead of "hear" and "acheive" instead of "achieve" in this thread?
Aren't you requiring too much from your students since the bottom line (at least I think so) is to have them get their message through? Sure, we need to correct them after they make a mistake, yadda, yadda...but we should take into consideration that English is a difficult language for their cognitive standards. Ever tried to speak Chinese without making mistakes?

[Super Mario]

Dragonfly wrote: