Hi, Mike!  Recently you wrote in a message to ARDITH HINTON:

AH>  I think he's trying to learn English by copying patterns
AH>  & trying out variations on them.  This can be a useful
AH>  learning strategy at times, but it is confusing to the
AH>  rest of us when we can't be sure who said what or whether
AH>  he's reporting accurately here in E_T what's going on in
AH>  his life... [wry grin].

MP>  Yes, but whatever works I guess.  A friend of mine who
MP>  came here from Vietnam c1975 learned English by watching
MP>  TV shows, like "Three's Company" and "The Dukes of Hazard."


           Hmm.  As a learning assistance teacher, I was called upon to help a girl in kindergarten who came to school without a word of English.  I was told she enjoyed the movie ET so much, however, that she watched it numerous times. If she were older I might have recommended STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND....  :-)

           Different people have different preferred learning styles... and if Denis's instruction in English thus far has been mainly from textbooks I think it must require a great deal of courage on his part to interact with folks who routinely use colloquial English in Fidonet echoes.

           I am reminded of two scenarios here... one being my first encounter with a student from Russia.  When we met at university both of us spoke French because it was required under the circumstances.  Some time later we found out we travelled home via the same bus, where he also insisted on speaking French. At the end of a hard day that was just about the last thing I felt like doing; OTOH I realized he might find it as much of a challenge to speak English as it was for me to speak French.  At any rate he corrected me once, I corrected him once.  We were both glad we'd learned something & took it in good humour.  :-)

           The other situation occurred when Dallas's parents invited a couple of our friends to join them for dinner along with Dallas & me.  The wife was a former schoolmate of ours who'd majored in French & spent two years working in France... where she married a Frenchman.  When Dallas's father said "Does your stomach think your throat's been cut?" he was quite baffled.  In an attempt to help, his wife translated this expression literally word for word.  If it made as much sense to him that way as certain French metaphorical/jocular/idiomatic expressions do to me he was probably none the wiser.  As a student, however, I often found such things amusing when they were translated more freely....  :-Q




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+