Job Discussion Forums

[Sashadroogie]

Jesus. OK, let's say, merely for the sake of argument, that deliberately bastardising your own English can eventually get you to the stage that you can't tell the difference any more between the real thing and your degraded utterances. This however, is not the same thing as TEACHING English properly. Is this how you all speak in the classroom? With your local friends? What on God's Earth is the matter with you? Too bad if your English suffers as a result. So does your teaching, and so do your students. Tsk tsk.

[steki47]

A lot of teachers here in Japan start to use Japanese English in their daily lives. It starts as a joke and then becomes a habit. Remember what your mother said about making funny faces...

Some of my friends say their daily English has gotten odd but practical. Simple and effective (if slightly unnatural and ungrammatical) statements are the norm.

BTW, at my last teaching job, I recieved a complaint that my vocabulary was too advanced. From the teachers!

[dackinator]

[johntpartee]

[JZer]

[johntpartee]

[Rakuten]

Like other posters have said- and I mostly agree, I think it primarily comes down to carelessness. As well as perhaps partially, how much you integrate yourself into another culture/language, at the expense of sacrificing your own native language. It's difficult to forget your native language, but I don't think it's impossible- if you consider amount of time spent in another country and if you primarily stop using your first language.

For example, children or even young adults who emigrate to another country and stop using their native language completely- often tend to lose the ability to speak it altogether, after a long number of years without it.

I had a Japanese professor in college who had moved to the States after college, got married and had kids in the U.S. and primarily stopped using Japanese-but he still taught basic Japanese language classes. He claimed he had forgotten most of his advanced Japanese and a lot of his extended vocabulary/advanced grammar structures.

So, I believe it's possible to forget a lot of your native language depending on how deeply you immerse and integrate yourself into another culture/language- at the expense of your native language.

Studying Japanese for 5+ years- I find myself more often speaking in passive voice, even in English, as it is so frequently used in Japanese. In addition, sometimes if I am careless before I speak, I say things backwards- example, "the store, you went?" or "____, it was good?". This way of asking questions is also typical in the French language as well, so it's easy to slip up and speak that way if I'm not proactive about, having studied both for so long.

That being said, on my end it is mostly carelessness/not paying attention to the things I say or thinking about it beforehand. But, like I said- I have met others who have claimed and even apparently lost most of their native language, having fully integrated into a different culture and primarily stopped using their native language entirely. Then again, I don't think ESL teaching brings it about specifically, rather- it probably happens more from complete assimilation and emigration into another culture.

[JZer]

[bulgogiboy]

[scot47]

The great proletarian internationalist Johannes R. Becher lived in Moscow from 1933 to 1945. He refused to learn Russian on the grounds that it might interfere with his literary and poetical abilities in his native German. He always relied on nhius buddy Georgi Dimitrove fro his servcies as a an interpreter. "No Joseph Vissarionovich, I think you are wrong there....."

[bulgogiboy]