Re: 'Sneaky Words' - a spelling conundrum.

Django Cat <vivjunkmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
[...]

They are also fond of throwing in adages like "a penny saved is a
penny earned" and "a friend in need is a freind indeed", which I
must hear at least twice a week every week that I remain here.

Those I can cope with. It's the ones I see on the lines of:

"As everyone knows, 'it's no good throwing dumplings at your
grandmother's dog if this fails to bring forth the dragon of
prosperity'"

that really throw me.

This sounds like a stock Chinese proverb. It's too high-level for 99%
of our students, but if I saw it, I'd write it off as an
unintentional parody. If you just created it -- and it seems that you
did -- I'd call it a clever parody that captures everything funny
about "The influence of sheep and Charlie Chan movies on Far East
Asian education", a typical University of Iowa American Studies
dissertation topic.

[...]

Yup, as an IELTS Examiner I see (and ignore) learnt material
continually. The stock phrases that really bug me are when you
give them a non-controversial subject to write about such as the
wearing of school uniform and you get things back like

"The issue of whether or not children should wear school
uniform" [this half of their opening sentence cut straight from
the rubric of the question] "has become a matter of considerable
public controversy and debate in recent years" [learnt stock
phrase].

ARGHHHH!!!! NO IT F***ING HASN'T!!!! People are not sitting round
in pubs plotting bloody revolution over whether the kids wear
school sodding uniform or not. To repeat myself: ARGHHHH!!!!

Then there's that learnt one about 'in all discussions it is
necessary to carefully consider all sides of the argument before
making a decision'. Complete arse, that one gets the red pen toot
sweet.

Yes, yes, yes! Those are much too long for me to remember, but I
rarely see them at my school because our Applied English majors are
from vocational and technical schools and have never taken high-level
academically oriented English classes, i.e., those aimed at students
who want to go to National Taiwan University in Taipei.

[...]

Yup. But (having never been closer to the Far East than my local
Chinese takeaway), I do think, generally, Japanese, Korean and
Taiwanese students are more outgoing and willing to participate in
class than when I first taught them 20 years ago, especially the
girls. It's only about five years since I first ever taught a PRC
student. They're generally OK, but you do get bolshy ones, which I
suspect is as much to do with the one child policy as anything
else - there's an awful lot of spoilt little buggers in the
current generation. Do you think things are changing?

I never see them here in Taiwan, and I'm happy about that. I used to
teach them and their professors at The University of Iowa twenty-six
years or so ago. I remember one who was looking for a private tutor.
My Linguistics Department advisor introduced me to him. He told me,
without cracking a smile, that he would let me know whether he
thought my English was good enough. We had a small department, and
half the graduate students were from Taiwan, Japan, Spain (two
Basques), and the USA. It was easy for my advisor to know whose
English was best. In addition to which, I had much more formal
education than my fellow students did, so I was able to talk about a
great many more academic topics. I told the guy to let me know if he
thought I was good enough to teach him. Of course I would have
refused, but he never called.

--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
Native speaker of American English; posting from Taiwan.
"It has come to my attention that my opinions are not universally
shared." Scott Adams, The Dilbert Blog, 23 Jan 2007;
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/
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