Check this out: http://www.engrish.com/
Although this is a funny, hilarious page, it is also scary in many ways. Unlike the Western cultures, ours is certainly closer to the North American, and certainly closer to it in terms of the common roots that our languages have. This should mean that teaching English is easier for us than it is for those living on the other side of the globe. Nonetheless, this proximity in distance does not guarantee that teaching the language becomes an easy task.
Probably not as terrible as some of the signs wrongly translated by the Chinese, we do find that our students (and many other English speakers as well) directly translate their thoughts and words, one by one, from Spanish to English. It is then one of our tasks to prevent this from happening. To avoid the funny making-up of words and expressions, and to somehow make our students grasp the whole range of syntactic and grammatical functions that may allow them to think in English, not in Engrish.
It would be interesting to begin this academic year by having our students reflect on this, and by coming up with a list of such words and expressions that make us all laugh but that should also make us stop and think and possibly change.
Have a great week, and an amazing first week of classes!
No comments:
Post a Comment