Job Discussion Forums

grahamb · Joined: 30 Apr 2003 Posts: 1945

I know it's a sweeping generalisation, but... Spanish people can't keep quiet. A conversation often involves everyone speaking, nay, shouting simultaneously. I always say to the kids, "Listen with your ears, not with your mouths."
Funnily enough, when I tell them to speak in English, the silence is, unfortunately, deafening. It's ironic how such open and uninhibited people have such a sense of embarrassment when it comes to speaking English.

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

Strange you talk about the Spanish being inhibited speaking English; I've never found it. What age group?

Sounds like a control problem; but yes the Spanish are noisy.

Lucy Snow · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 218 Location: US

dmb · Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 8397

Mosques at 4 o'clock in the morning

grahamb · Joined: 30 Apr 2003 Posts: 1945

Stephen, I was referring specifically to teenagers. The adults I've met have been much less inhibited.
Control? What's that? I guess I'm too soft!

SueH · Joined: 01 Feb 2003 Posts: 1022 Location: Northern Italy

Spanish students? My summer school Spanish students are bliss compared with the UAE cadets I have been teaching....

grahamb · Joined: 30 Apr 2003 Posts: 1945

Is your camp in the UK? Maybe the students are more sedate out of their natural environment!
Seriously, however, I think mine simply resent having classes during their summer holidays. I've all but abandoned the course book for game-based activities and songs, but whenever they get a bit noisy I hold up the book and point to it. Instant calm!

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

I think there has been a change in Spanish teenagers over the last twenty years. The "jo qu� s�?" mentality seems on the increase.

There is also the question of whether the material is appropriate and whether they do have a high enough level of English to say meaningful things.

Shonai Ben · Joined: 15 Feb 2003 Posts: 617

In Japan I would have to say the trucks with the loudspeakers that go on continuously trying to sell something or the politicians that are waving from their cars and blaring some kind of message in Japanese.It's damn annoying. Mad

baby predator · Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2003 8:26 am Post subject:

Construction, construction, construction. All day and all night.

In the brief spells when the construction stops long enough for me to hear it: karaoke and spitting.

Gawd, the Scottish countryside is gonna sound deafeningly quiet when I go back. How will I sleep? Rolling Eyes

MonkeyKing · Joined: 24 May 2003 Posts: 96 Location: Beijing

Like a baby?

My appartment in China overlooked a main road, so for me it was car horns...constant, twenty-four -hour-a-day beeping and honking. Those dumper truck drivers just lean on their horns.

(Monkey King, currently enjoying the deafening silence of darkest Fife!)

NumberOneSon · Joined: 03 Jul 2003 Posts: 314

Wolf · Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 1245 Location: Middle Earth

1. My students answering a question with something that they know how to say, but isn't related in any way, shape or form to the question.
I once asked someone abut China's neighbors. They told me about the second opium war. Now, out of the 8 countries involved in that, only one - Japan - is by any stretch of the imagination a neighbor to China. Rolling Eyes

2a. "HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! I LOVE YOU (another guy is the speaker)!!!
2b. (I wish it was not to be): "I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABY!!" - scremed accross a crowded running track where I was engaged in the titilating activity of ... jogging.

3. "Please teach (insert ridiculously large population demographic here) English." Um ... I want a life outside my job....

4. "Patriotic" songs. So bad I thought they were parodies/satires of patriotic songs (like the 303 song from Wag the Dog.)

Echo · Joined: 23 Mar 2003 Posts: 38

The grinding, ear-splitting screeching squeal of tortured steel being mercilessly jammed against rapidly spinning, equally-tortured steel in a desperate attempt to slowly reduce the speed of the recklessly-driven bus which has accelerated into a blind corner and is now in immanent danger of mowing down some innocent person who was so foolish as merely to obey the rules of the road, once again proving that all large vehicle owners in China seems to regard brake-pads as a sort of "optional extra".