I reject your reality and substitute my own!
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Sometimes, I think it’s funny that in Anglo countries it’s referred to as ESL, English as a second language.
For us (and I guess many others) it was always English as a foreign language. Could be first foreign language, second foreign language…
Its ESL in English Speaking countries, and EFL in non- English speaking countries
Majority of the world speaks a single language or two at most. Shit half the people I see online can’t even speak one.
It makes sense you when you look at it like that. most people in ESL programs only speak a single language, if you speak more than two you probably don’t need ESL classes and can learn on your own.
Source? I think speaking one language is pretty rare. Most Europeans speak at least two, most Africans I’ve met speak 3, lots of Indians speak 3 as well…
Bit of confirmation bias in that, no?
I think anyone in India and Africa speaks 4 languages easily.
- their regional language (i.e. Masaai, Yoruba, Xhosa)
- the over-regional language (Arabic, Swahili)
- a coloniser language (English, French)
- and possibly just enough of a neighbouring regional language
I think many Chinese people are also bilingual (i.e. Wu+ always mandarin). They often learn another language in school (English or something geographically closer, like Korean).
Well, if you add up the number of speakers of second languages according to this page, and assume anybody speaks at least one language as their first one, you’ll end up with almost exactly 1.4 as the average number of languages any given human speaks.
That’s the lower bound, though, as I only added up second languages where the number of speakers is at least one million, and Wikipedia doesn’t list many more anyway.
If you’re learning in an English speaking country, they’re not going to call English a foreign language.
Because English as an Nth language doesn’t quite have the same ring.
Viewing it as primary/secondary makes more sense of it.
Remember switching to your secondary language is faster than stumbling over the tip of your tongue.
It’s not a foreign language in English speaking countries…
How the dialog trully should have happened:
You: Cool! The entrance to the subway is around the corner.
Bob: Thanks for the help, friend!
You: You’re welcome! Good luck.
I don’t think bad marks were justified. This is how I see every interaction go with polyglot colleagues, its like a modem handshake and they settle into the most comfortable common language
I have always thought that being able to read, let alone write, Cyrillic cursive is a form of magic. I’ve known a lot of grown Russian men who absolutely could not do either.
Obligatory лишишь (“you will deprive”). Cyrillic cursive really is wild
I feel like at least the example here is very legible. What I can not do is read Sütterlin, a historic form of German handwriting script. The text in this postcard is German, which is my native language. Except for some very simple words like “wir” or “mit”, I cannot read this.
What was interesting about my son with down syndrome: as he learned to read he became a master at reading cursive…somehow.
We’d hand him Christmas cards that we struggled to read from old European relatives(that wrote in older script) and somehow he’d read it off no problem.
My guess is words always needed decoding for him and context played a role in guessing the word, so it became a skill somehow
Lizbn grofBalmolhmon mind Peril!
According to Google Translate, it means “Lizbn grofBalmolhmon mind Peril!”
Damn, these look kinda fun…
I can sound out horrific guttural Cyrillic text thanks to Geoguessr, but this just looks indecipherable to me. The urge to leap at typical Latin script pronunciation is much harder to stave off for some reason, and half of the glyphs just look completely alien to me.
Language really is a fucking miracle
I write all text in my own custom font, which only i can read. I cant barely read other cursive cyrillic text.
You: you’re inside it already my dude
Bob: o rly?
You: ya rly
Bob: thanks bro
You: the existence of the subway is actually a lie to make Russia look strong to the west.
Bob: oh damn
You: we aren’t allowed to talk about it in English. The birds are microphones.
That’s why mao killed all the birds.
Hhhhehhhhh… Why do some teachers feel the need to be such dicks? Just smile, have a laugh, get with the joke, let it spice up your life.
I’m in my master’s program for elementary education. If I saw this, I would just pull them to the side and ask them to translate it to me as English. If it comes out sounding plausible, I’d give them full points because they knew how to say it. They could obviously already read it since they knew how to answer the question. So the writing could come later if that was an issue. I could even try and decode it with a translator first before asking for their translation just to see if they were bullshitting me.
If it was a joke, I’d let it slide but let them know that in the future I need them to write it fully in English.
One time back in AP physics on a test I was prompted with “Find the accelerating force on the electron”. I could not think of the way to do that in the moment, so I literally wrote No, and wrote down a fake answer so I could use that number for the next part of the problem. I got back the test a few days later and the teacher wrote a smiley face down there. Apparently I made her laugh so long and so hard her family had to check in on her so she just gave me the points.
Back in middle school history, they wanted to know who the UK Prime Minister was during WWI, and I couldn’t remember so I wrote down James Bond, and got half credit for making the teacher laugh.
in college calc classes, my handwriting was famously quite poor. I’d scribble down some illegible notes and formulas, draw a few pictures illustrating the problem, then come up with a random answer. most of my classes graded work, not correct answers, so if I had an inkling of the right way to do it I could fake it and usually get at least 75% credit for the question.
always hated the questions that make you use the answer from previous questions. always a good time when you get to the end and have a nonsensical answer and have to redo 4 pages to find where you forgot to carry a 1.
I can laugh and not give them the points at the same time.
The “???” suggests they didn’t get the joke. Like come on, not even a sarcastic “very funny, 2/5”?
I read the ??? as “Are you fucking kidding me?”
What’s the joke?
That the conversation was continued, just not in English
And to be fair, nothing in the question specifies the language to continue the conversation in.
Sure it’s ESL class, but within the context of this question… No rules were broken.
Might as well continue the conversation with completely unrelated sentences. Maybe the testtaker is socially anxious and ignores Bob. Or murders him.
Nothing says directions have to be provided
Edit: to be clear, in the murder scenario the testtaker is not socially anxious.
It’s a very brave thing to do imo
That’s not a good enough joke for extra credit.
Kinda weird how people hated learning so much they wanna project bad intentions on some question marks and innocence onto the little shit who thought they’d be “cute” and waste everyone’s time. This teacher had a stack of papers to grade. And it was a pretty meh joke in any case.
Same score but an LOL instead of ???
No points for you then.
when it’s every now and then it’s great! but some students try to get out of learning by being funny, and it’s your job to actually teach them something
On our German tests back in hs, there was a vocab section where we’d use words in sentences. I didn’t know one of the words in one of the tests, so I wrote “ich weiß nicht was <word> bedeutet”, which means “I don’t know what <word> means”. Our teacher accepted that one with a laugh, but said it was a one time thing and it would not be allowed again. People still tried their luck with similar tricks after that, but got nothing.
Me, I was just surprised she’d never seen that in her career before. I wasn’t expecting to get any points for that. Thought she for sure would have had other smartass students like me.
Thank you for having the sane take.
It’s being a dick to express confusion about why a student is mocking your lessons for them? But the student doing it is just a hilarious and harmless joker, of course. Pretty weird take tbh
Plus, if that kid can write in Cyrillic cursive, good for them!
Reversed, this is how English as a first language conversations go in foreign lands
In American English it would go
“Do you speak English”
“Nein”
“O K. I. Will. Talk. Slow. So. You. Can. Under. stand. Me.”
In many countries they don’t even ask. They recognize your accent and reply in English right away.
Very much how it is in Québec which is unfortunate as someone trying yo better my French
So I find it to actually be a really helpful “barometer” of language skill. When I’m in France, if I go in a store and conduct s full conversation in French, I know my accent, word choice, and general language skill is good. If halfway through the exchange we switch to English, I know I either made an egregious language error or I started sounding like an American. If the conversation switched to English right away, I either made a critical language mistake OR I just happened across a very competent English speaker.
I can carry a basic conversation - certainly enough to get by and be understood. Last time I went to Quebec though, most locals were like “hell naw” and assumed I couldn’t. Here’s the thing though: this was without hearing me speak a single word. They had an uncanny ability to just guess my primary language by appearance alone. I’m guessing they could tell I was American, maybe based on subtle mannerisms.
This is in Montreal, btw, where French and English seem to coexist as two primary languages. I did spend some time around the Mont Mégantic valley area, though. (A super rural area between the border and the cities, basically farm country vibes). There, I encountered people in the tiny village markets and service stations whose English was definitely worse than my French. I was able to get some practice in with them, but I could tell they didn’t necessarily like it much, haha!
sounds like you need to work more on your “hon hon hon” and a little less on your “baguette”.
Why would the question have 5 lines instead of 3, it’s almost entrapment
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