Job Discussion Forums

[Cleopatra]

Wrong thread alert?

[MIKEBUCHAN]

Cleo,

I sincerely hope you are being sarcastic when you use the term fascist to describe teachers!

And for your information, I Spoke Japanese and Spanish before I learned to speak English and have learned Russian and a little Turkish, but sadly very very little Arabic.

As you descend into a holier than thou position, how many languages do you speak? And please excuse my sarcasm

[Cleopatra]

Do I detect a note of defensiveness here?

I wasn't accusing you of being monolingual or 'fascistic', I was simply saying that the ESL industry - and many of the less competent teachers - act as though being monolingual were actually an advantage, when I strongly believe it is not. Their reasons for so doing are pretty obvious, and I can honestly say I have rarely - I wont' say never - met a bi-lingual teacher who does not occasionally translate or explain things in the student's L1. Sometimes you get local teachers who are intimidated by the native speakers and feel they need to overcompensate by claiming to never ever speak their own language in class. But I'll bet even these have their moments.

[scot47]

Longton is wrong.

The thing to do is take the housing allowance and sleep on a bench on the Corniche !

[Bebsi]

[MIKEBUCHAN]

Cleo,

I am not smart enough to be defensive.

You are evading my question --- How many languages do you speak? Or are you one of the monolinguals that you were railing against?

[sheikh radlinrol]

How does someone with a good Scottish surname like Buchan learn Spanish and Japanese before English? Interesting story- let's hear more.
Not surprised about your difficulty in understanding your granny. We Glaswegians often have difficulty communicating when 200 miles from home, let alone in America.

[MIKEBUCHAN]

Sheikh,

It was easy! My parents and the entire family came to America after one grandfather lost his business in Peterhead. I was the first born in America. And just after the US Government released all the United States citizens of Japanese ancestory from the WWII prison camps, I was born. If you know about the segration in the U.S. in the late 40's and early 50's it was not restricted to only American blacks - it included immigrants too. So, my parents lived on the edge of town with the Mexicans on our side of the street and the Japanese on the side further out of town. In order to play with the other kids and being the minority of one - I learned to talk with them, in their language. And then when we were old enough - we all went to school. And the rest is very boring history!

[007]

MOD EDIT