Job Discussion Forums

[MO39]

[hlamb]

They also just use commas to put sentences together, they never seem to use periods except at the end of a page, it's very irritating to mark, they don't write in Spanish much, that I can see, they don't learn good punctuation or writing skills in their first language, it's hard for them to have god skills in English, even people with a masters or PhD here seem to have trouble with it.

Whew! It's hard to write like that!

[MO39]

[FuzzX]

...you like Banda

...you've been to a Belanova concert

...you know who Cafe Tacuba are and where they're from

...you've been there

...you hate the word 'propina'

...you know that winnie the pooh sounds better in Spanish and that he sounds like a dirty old man to mexicans in english

...you burn cockroaches with a lighter

...you hate other expats

...you only like other expats

...you start using the 'us' and 'them' to describe english speakers vs mexicans

...you include your mexican spouse in the 'us' part of your rant

...you've seen at least 1 UFO

...you wonder how anything gets done in mexico at all

...you wonder if all students suffer from chronic lateness

...you play HALO in your spare time

...you think 20+ pesos is expensive for a cab ride

...you eat at comida corrida and take your folks there when they visit you

...you BECOME cheap

...you wonder why mexicans hate fat gringos and not fat mexicans

...your inlaws inform you that you are a nice person but 'not for my daughter'

...you learn about racism

...you are charged a special gringo price

...you never get your correct change back from a walmart cashier

...you miss mustard

...you speak & spell better spanish then most mexicans

[Jetgirly]

[wildchild]

so what was the assignment?

anyway. I'd like to see you do half as well writing in Spanish (or your foreign language of choice)

[GueroPaz]

My intermediate students are relieved to know there is a coordinating conjunction besides and, or, so. Also, they can end one sentence with a full stop. Furthermore, they can begin the next sentence without "so." "Therefore"explains why the new sentence is there for. "However" starts a sentence better than "but" does. Finally, "well" is nearly equal to pues, sometimes. Well, I think it is, anyway.

[hlamb]

Yes, it's true that most of my students can't and don't write in Spanish, so expecting them to do it well in English is a bit of a stretch. But even those who should know how to write (PhD students for example), have trouble. I've seen plenty of sentences like Jetgirly's example. The good news is that they can learn to do better, but it takes a lot of time and practice.

[Phil_K]

1) You realize that washing the dishes in a bowl in the sink and bathing in a tub (i.e. in both cases washing in the dirt you're trying to remove) in not exactly hygenic when you've been doing it all your live and it never occured to you before.

2) You miss having carpets in the living room (we have them in bedrooms, thank God!)

3) You use American English (realize (above)) when you're British.

[TheLongWayHome]

[JimT]

...you prefer to stand on the bus rather than sit inside someone else

...you bring booze to a kid's birthday party

...you met someone 10 minutes ago and haven't yet been invited to their cousin's wedding / kid's confirmation / sister's quince anos. You wonder what you've done wrong

...after heavy rain, you take off your shoes, roll up your trousers to your knees and wade across the highway to get to work