I have no faith in how English is being taught

[MrEco]

If you think that's bad you should see how English is being taught here in the states.

Reading college students' papers makes me want to grab our public school system by the throat and choke it until it learns how to construct a proper sentence.

Beat me too it, there are so many people in the U.S. who only speak English in theory.

I have a friend who's first (And only) language is English. He once read this headline on a Gamespot news article: "Diablo III director Jay Wilson on crafting Artisans - Blizzard unveils new non-player character companions; says there are 'no plans' to bring RPG to consoles...yet."

Now to anyone who knows English it should be pretty obvious what the headline is talking about. The fact that Blizzard has no plans to bring Diablo III to consoles and that Jay Wilson is going to talk about non-player companions called Artisans. However, my friend being the brilliant person he is saw the headline and thought that this guy Jay was trying to talk about why the RPG genre should be PC exclusive.
Sadly, my friend tells me he's in our schools literary club and that he plans on being a video game storyboard writer someday. But... don't you have to learn to read before you can write?

[Pulsar_t]

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a univeral language that everyone learns that helps us achieve that global utopian totalitarianship (not a real word I know) that brings harmony to this troubled planet, and leaves those pesky, intricate languages to academia types? /pipedream

[Anayo]

What the heck?

"Gone" isn't past tense of 'go'. It's past participle. English to Spanish would be went = fue.

'Can' never means 'saber', 'to know', ever.

Sounds to me like English is just being taught in a mediocre school.


And now for a free treat for you to laugh at: English as she is spoke! Please enjoy it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_As_She_Is_Spoke

[Betamax001]

Mike thread likey.

[flamepanther]

Beat me too it, there are so many people in the U.S. who only speak English in theory.

Quoted for irony

[Para]

BREAKING NEWS!

[Breetai]

I taught ESL for five years. I can tell you that a very high number of the texts I had to use were piss poor efforts. A lot of them were written by school owners who had no educational background in English at all. Some of them spoke English as a second language themselves ( ), and others were written by people who had maybe a Bachelor of Arts in an unrelated subject... if even that! Every single ESL teacher I worked with that had to use these sorts of book cringed every time they opened them, and basically had to redo a lot of the lessons and point various errors out to the students. It was actually possible to make a lesson plan out of having the students find the errors in the text!

"To be" is definitely be/was/been. "Been" can be used in place of "gone" in come cases, but that does not mean it is part of the "to be" verb forms! You text is just plain wrong if it says that.

Ben (go) to England.

I, naturally, wrote "went" and the teacher, naturally, told me I was wrong because it is "been" because "Ben went to England" makes no sense.

I have an earned certification for teaching ESL, over five years experience, and am one semester away from being a licensed school teacher. I can safely tell you that there is nothing at all wrong with saying "Ben went to England." If your teacher told you that in the context that it was an incorrect way to state an action that happened in the past, I suggest finding a new teacher. Where is your teacher from?

[Bikeage]

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a univeral language that everyone learns that helps us achieve that global utopian totalitarianship (not a real word I know) that brings harmony to this troubled planet, and leaves those pesky, intricate languages to academia types? /pipedream

We do. Speak english Or Die!

I work with the general public, all ages, and sadly get alot of blanks stares when using words containing more than three syllables.

[Ack]

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a univeral language that everyone learns that helps us achieve that global utopian totalitarianship (not a real word I know) that brings harmony to this troubled planet, and leaves those pesky, intricate languages to academia types? /pipedream

They tried that. But how many people do you know that are fluent in Esperanto?

[alienjesus]

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a univeral language that everyone learns that helps us achieve that global utopian totalitarianship (not a real word I know) that brings harmony to this troubled planet, and leaves those pesky, intricate languages to academia types? /pipedream

They tried that. But how many people do you know that are fluent in Esperanto?

To be fair, there aren't many words in Esperanto, certainly not enough for it to properly serve as the only language anybody knows.