Pornstar Names for Students

This morning I convinced one of my Chinese students to drop his conservative English name of Davidl Apologies to my colleague Dave Davies, but there’s nothing wrong with his old name; he just has more marketing potential with his new name. This is a Business English class after all!

David is now Mr. Happy. Mr. Happy has two classmates named Swallow and Fannie. That was a pre-existing condition, not my doing. But I do have two other gals considering the monikers Microphone and Doublemint.

Looking forward to the role-playing scenarios later this semester!

How real is too real?

Geez did I make a mistake today. I thought I’d teach my sophomore students about the differences in risk-taking between Chinese and US American youth. A perfect chance to show them MTV’s Jackass Lost Tape, or so I thought. There was a scene where they were making omelettes by masticating the ingredients first, then upchucking into a mixing bowl before frying to a golden brown. Another scene showed two dudes and one chick competing to see who could drink a gallon-jug of milk the fastest. At least ten girls dashed back-and-forth to the W.C. in just one hour. Half of the audience kept their faces down during the puke-free rad skateboarding scenes.

Three conclusions were derived from this failed classroom lesson: 1) U.S. Americans have nothing to fear from the ChiComs. If they can’t handle blood and puke on television, do you think they can handle armed conflict with us foreign devils?; 2) China is not ready for MTV; and 3) English teaching is sometimes itself a high-risk activity!

English is Everywhere: A Response to a Journalist (er, Prostitute)

My published response to “English Will Fragment Into ‘Global Dialects'”, by Laura Clout,The Telegraph, March 7, 2008:

English has never been standardized, even though a quasi-attempt has been made with Received Pronunciation. However, RP is simply an aural standard practice by an elite segment of the population and doesn’t apply to grammar or spelling.

Clout’s article makes a jump-cut of sorts, from British English to it’s implications for American English as a global standard:

“In future, users of global Standard English might replace the British English: ‘I think it’s going to rain’, with the Indian English: ‘I am thinking it’s going to rain’, Prof Crystal argues.

This could spell the end of the dominance of American English as the prevailing language of international affairs.”

How does she or Dr. Crystal make this projection? This is irresponsible journalism.

As a TESOL educator with extensive travel experience, I can attest that most curricula in EFL classrooms is published in the UK, and foreign administrators still ignorantly associate the word “English” with “England”.

American English, while more traditional, is frowned upon. Eyebrows raise when I teach articulation of final r’s, aspiration in wh- words, and retention of the flat a sound in words like “can’t”.

American English was brought to the states a few hundred years ago. Our distinct dialect is a reflection of the old language. British English has modernized. Both have simplified over the years, note the changes above and the Great Vowel Shift in the United States. Both are valid and understandable, yet neither are the global standard.

It’s important to recognize the existence of differing World Englishes, however the examples provided are not exactly that. True, the Indian proclivity for present continuous tense with state verbs is a marked dialect of English. Singlish, Taglish, Chinglish,Spanglish, and so forth are not varieties of English, but evidence of linguistic code-switching and code-mixing among diverse cultures. I’m sure Dr. Crystal knows this, but the interviewer didn’t ask for clarification. That’s the irresponsible part.

Laura Clout has written about an interesting topic, but has failed to do her homework. The diversity of English dialects is old news, and the notion of a “Standard English” is an imperial myth.

English is everywhere, and noone owns it. That should be the main point.

My yankee two cents.

Zhuhai: Land of English Schools From Hell

Zhuhai is a Special Economic Zone in China, behind the old Portuguese city of Macau. We are cooling our heels here while figuring out what to do next.

The bus ride here took us through the south side of the Pearl River Delta, where we saw more agriculture and less empty condo-building. Lots of fish ponds are extant, but Janice says they look uninspected and unregulated. She worked in such environments in her undergrad years at Mindanao State Unversity, where she was a marine sciences major, so I believe she knows what she’s talking about.

After checking in to our hotel, we allowed ourself to be fleeced by a taxi driver just to satisfy a KFC craving (everywhere we go the local fried chicken just doesn’t compare to the Colonel’s!). Then we supplied at the Jesco department store, had an ice cream on the street, and retired to our quarters for a long deserved holiday. Janice practiced her Hanzi (Chinese character writing) to augment her Mandarin language acquisition of the last 3 weeks.

On day two we slept in late, walked along the waterfront and then back to the Jusco department store for a McDonald’s lunch and to find some gifts for Ashley, my step-daughter in the Philippines. Had fun browsing in another upstairs stall in a computer mart for my slightly older godson (Lawrence, aka Little Lulu) in Texas. With my limited Chinese, I asked the proprietor something like “have no clothes kind of DVD you have not have?” Dang if we didn’t find a secret cardboard box with the most hardcore pirated skin flicks on earth. Little Lulu’d better hope our Filipino cousins don’t steal them first!

I’m reflecting on the role of social interaction in language acquisition, and how some of my informal techniques at the last summer school may have helped some kids out. They at least know more than the average KFC worker, who says “good morning” to foreigners no matter what time of day. If I return to primary education in China, I’d like to do some research in this area.

August 6, 2007