Re: Foreigner(s)

"tony cooper" <tony_cooper213@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> skrev i meddelelsen
news:5pbpp4ta8a2ndl35f3972vi5hcv9d44qnk@xxxxxxxxxx
On Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:18:47 +0100, "Arne H. Wilstrup" <ahw> wrote:

"tony cooper" <tony_cooper213@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> skrev i meddelelsen
news:f10pp4lpq6or2d0ldk7lc2mvm7gtk6tish@xxxxxxxxxx


Ahhhhh, screw it. If you are determined not to learn, I'm not going
to make any further effort to enlighten you. Just continue on doing
it your way and live with the ridicule. I do hope your students
have
access to someone who is less rigid and can teach them in such a way
that they don't have to re-learn English when they have to use it.
You are preparing them to amuse, not to communicate at the level at
which they will be expected to communicate.

In short: my students must be technically correct. This is the best
beginning. The colloquial comes later on.

Yes, when they are red-faced with embarrassment at being looked at
strangely for their arcane usage. Other, more fortunate, students
who will have been taught by a teacher who realistically recognizes
that business and personal conversations in English are in colloquial
English will fit seamlessly into the system.

Probably, but we are not to teach our pupils "langauge from the street"
.. When a young pupil says: "He don't because he has heard a film star
say it in an American film, I must tell the student that it is very
wrong, even if he might find it in a "colloquial" conversation.

And the same goes for the examinations. If a student uses the word
"mouses" about 'computer mouses', and a external examiner says that it
is 'mice' in plural in this situation, I will have to intervene and tell
that the use of the word is correct.

The same goes for the high schools (A-level colleges in BrE or upper
secondary schools or grammarschools. It is very difficult to compare the
different school systems beteween the countries) and at the Universities
where English is taught.

If one, however, attends a course just in order to learn English without
thinking of an examination, I see no problems about teaching the
students in a more colloqiual manner. But as a nonnative speaker it is
very difficult to say whether a sentence is correct in a colloqiual way
or is incorrect. Therefor a nonnative speaker must stick to the standard
English and the handbooks.

What you don't seem to realize is that in Danish comprehensive schools,
it is usual that it is not native speakers who teach English to the
pupils, and the same goes for the a-level colleges. At the universities
we can have lecturers who are native speakers and some who are not.

I HAVE TO try to teach my students standard English according to the
conventions, and as you have realized I am not at all perfect. Therefore
it takes relatively longer time for me to correct the pupils essays and
their grammar, but the level at the comprehensive schools do not have a
standard which live up to a native speaker's eloquence, so we are to be
satisfied with less.

I being a B.A. in English is way beyond the level my students have.
Sometimes they are even taught English by teachers who have not had any
formal training in English and who have just had English themselves at
the a-level colleges years ago.
It is due to the consequences of our school system where the teachers
have a lower education than e.g. the Finnish teachers and where we (I am
a teacher) are to teach anything but our major subjects taught at the
teachers' training colleges.

For the time being I am teaching Geography and History, even if I am not
trained in these subjects at all. Actually I have had no Geography
lessons of my own since I attended the upper secondary school more than
30 years ago, so you may realize that the teaching I am performing in
these subjects are not at a level that I am satisfied with. I am,
however, to do it or face the consequences of being sacked.

Comprehensive school teachers in Denmark are to teach in almost any
subject at the school, except a few special subjects like Physics and
Chemestry, or woodwork. And I even may teach the before mentioned
subjects if I just get a security course. That's all. There is a lack of
teachers who can teach in the before mentioned subjects.

Physical exercises are also taught in our schools, but of course a male
teacher to the male students and a female teacher to the female students
as they are to have a shower afterwards.

But it is not unusual that we have substitute teachers in these jobs,
and in is sometimes even difficult to make the pupils shower afterwards
as many parents don't care about it and it is impossible to force them
to do it. I don't know how what the attitudes are in your country and in
the different schools in the USA.

All together, what and how we teach English in our schools in Denmark
seems to be very difficult to what the teaching is in your contry, and
you might even be taught German by a native speaker, French by another
native speaker etc. But not here, I'm afraid.

You might hear a Danish English teacher say: "If I was a rich man"
instead of "If I were a rich man". Both sentences are fully understood
by native speakers, but well educated native speaker might notice that
the subjunctive here is omitted, even if they don't care about it.

It puzzles me, however, how on Earth the musical "My Fair Lady" can have
a song saying "On The Street where you Live" as a correct standard
English has: In the Street where you live" even if the Americans don't
seem to care.

Some native speakers of BrE might tell me why. According to ALD it must
be "In the street" as "On the street" is more likely to be considered as
a person who is actually living on the street (a bag lady for instance).
But this is another story.


.

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