Okay so my little rant this week is about people coming to this great nation of ours and not knowing, well a lot! I am not saying we should lock them all out and keep them from coming here, especially since almost all of us are decedents of immigrants. I just think that they should have a firm prior experience with the English language. Trying to communicate with someone who has had little formal English education is extremely difficult.
I am mostly speaking from an educational point of view, meaning that they are coming here for to get an education and live for an extended amount of time. My roommate claims that he took English classes before coming here, he may have but they were not effective. Having communicated and had friends from around the world through foreign exchange student programs I have noticed that students from Europe almost perfect English and adapt to not only traditional English but our slang terms as well. Then there are people from Asia and the Mid-East, who have obviously had a less then stellar English education.
As I previously stated I don't mind that they come here just that communicating with them is very difficult. Several times I have tried to communicate simple things like "light switch" with my roommate and he had no clue (he actually started looking under his bed, I tried not to laugh). Then the other night I was already in bed and my phone needed to be charged so I asked him to hand me(he was still awake) the cord for it which was laying on the floor. He had absolutely no clue, so he handed me my hat that was laying by it. So I tried saying cable, that didn't work either. I eventually said black long thing and he handed it to me saying, "Oh you mean link". I tried not to be a jerk, so I kindly said "In America it's a cable or cord." He looked at me like I didn't know what I was talking about. I don't mean to say that I am not adapting to help him learn, because I am. I just don't think that me calling everything by how he learned them will help him when 99% of Americans will never call that object that in their lives, myself included its just how we are. So now I am not going to baby him I have decided to be as blunt and nice as possible because it is the only real way to learn at this point in the game.
Okay enough of that rant. Classes are going pretty well. The first round of tests are over now and professors can start reporting midterm grades tomorrow. The only class I am struggling with is English, I like to write just not in "academic format". That's about all I have for this week. I am interested in knowing what you guys think of my writing, and maybe suggestions for future posts. I am also on twitter follow me at twitter.com/jbgcook if you follow me you can see what I am thinking and doing everyday! Very stalkerish! Haha anyway I hope everyone has a safe and happy weekend. GO STATE!!! GOD BLESS!!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment