Job Discussion Forums

Larry Paradine · Joined: 22 Jan 2005 Posts: 64

Has anyone worked for this company? If so, your comments would be appreciated. LS also offers Russian language courses, at a hefty price. A friend of mine is interested in taking one of their courses, but would like an appraisal from a genuine former student (the blurb on their website is a little too euphoric to be true).

neil1979 · Joined: 15 Nov 2003 Posts: 33

I worked for LS in St Petersburg as an English teacher and my experiences were quite good there. The pay is okay and the atmosphere is easy going. People looking to teach English I'd recommend they try there.
As for their Russian courses - yes they are expensive and I don't think they offer anything special. You can get the same for cheaper elsewhere.

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

"for cheaper" ???

jpvanderwerf2001 · Joined: 02 Oct 2003 Posts: 1117 Location: New York

I'm thinking neil1979 is American. I'm from the midwest and we often use the "for cheaper" construction. You can take a man out of Minnesota...

sebastienupper · Joined: 20 Apr 2006 Posts: 29 Location: Australia, Western

Well I'm from Australia and the "for cheaper" construction is in common usage here.

It's shorthand for: "You can get it for [a] cheaper [price]"

Larry Paradine · Joined: 22 Jan 2005 Posts: 64

My thanks to neil1979 for the information. I can't comment on the altercation between the other nitpicking pedants as I'm not from that side of the water myself.

jonniboy · Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:45 am Post subject:

It's not really nitpicking, it's genuinely interesting to know which constructions are actually used so that we don't mistakenly "correct" students usages which are just based on another form of English than our own. I once corrected "shot to death" to "shot dead" only for a student to show me an American article that they'd got it from. No one's perfect. Embarassed

Larry Paradine · Joined: 22 Jan 2005 Posts: 64

Sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings, I'll admit to having been feeling a little liverish at the time. Actually, I remember a similar incident : on my very first day in my first TEFL job (before most readers of this forum were even born) I was corrected by the inevitable class swot when I said that the negative question form of I am is "aren't I?" No, he said, it should be "Am I not?" I told him such a construction was formal and effectively archaic. Next day, the head of the school sent for me and bawled me out for teaching British English when my instructions were categorical: always to teach the American form when it varied from the UK norm. So jpv and the others, I withdraw the criticism. I'm showing real humility. Aren't I?