No simply put you should stop making an arse out of yourself and quit making vast insulting generalizations about certain groups’ speaking abilities based on your own misguided prejudices.
The same exists in Asia, especially in Taiwan, and probably on a much larger scale.
America is the leading English authority in the world right now simply because American movies are shown all over the world. America is able to dictate and introduce new English words to the world through their movies and songs.
No one outside the UK ever watches the BBC.
Here you happy now?
Time to zzz…damn am I sleepy or what
This is due in part to the fact that technological advances have taken people away from such activities as pleasure reading and writing. And I’ve seen this firsthand not only in the US, but also in Asia. Kids and teens in Taiwan, for example, spend 90% or more of their free time plugged into TV, the Internet (where they’re rarely reading or studying), video games, cell phones, and comic books. It’s almost impossible to find one who reads books out of his or her own interest, and that usually involves popular novels at best. As for writing, even most adults have no interest in it, even with the convenience that computers have added.
I watch the BBC. In fact I’m watching Demons through on-demand as we speak. The reason America has such an influence on the language is because 3/4 of native speakers live in North America.
This is what gets me, Americans don’t have this anti-everyone else mentality that seems to pervade other English-speaking countries. You can go down to the video store here and rent movies from the UK, there is often a Baliwood section, and many even have sections on the film of Africa.
Hello all,
I really wouldn’t regard anyone who doesn’t know the saying “the hair of the dog that bit you” as having very little education or very little life-experience. People who don’t hang out at clubs or parties, drinking themselves brain-dead, and then continue drinking the same poison the next morning may not know this proverb.
Oh, but getting drunk is indeed a university student’s favorite pastime, isn’t it? Oki doki … 
Claudia
I don’t put much credence in most idioms as being super important Claudia (and at least with me the remark about education and experience was meant independent of the hair of the dog issue).
Of course really being a great teacher has little to do with what you know and much to do with what you’re willing to learn!
Claudia, the people who don’t know that particular idiom often don’t know lots and lots of ordinary idioms and lots and lots of ordinary words. There has been a general degradation of native speakers’ English, not in the sense of their grammatical habits, but in the sense that many of them have been given impoverished input over the past generation or two and so have very limited vocabularies of both words and idioms.
Hi OxfordBlues,
it’s okay, I used your statement just as an example. You guys amused me with this whole discussion about backpack teachers in Europe and how American English is regarded es inferior and the universities in America are better than anywhere else and how video stores in America rent out movies from Africa . . . and all that commotion because of a silly proverb that is about DRINKING! lol
I’m serious, this thread was an entertaining read!
Claudia
P.S. I like the American school system much, much better, and I like the attitude in your remark “being a great teacher has little to do with what you know and much to do with what you’re willing to learn!” However, I don’t agree that Americans don’t have an “anti-everyone else” mentality. In that, they are just like Europeans, just on the opposite side (literally).
Hi Jamie,
my remark was just mouth-in-cheek. I understand your excitement, but this particular idiom is very . . . how should I put it . . . “scene-oriented”. I don’t think that people who don’t know this particular idiom don’t know lots and lots of ordinary idioms and lots and lots of ordinary words! Besides, many different English speaking countries have different idioms for the same thing. I just can’t agree jumping to the conclusion that a person is uneducated because he/she has never heard of “the hair of the dog that bit you”. But that’s just my opinion.
Claudia
P.S. Yes, no doubt, there are many language impoverished persons, but you can find these types everywhere.
Actually I meant that they tend not to have that mentality. Not to say we don’t have our fair share of bigots and racists, but to make a generalization about a group of people or their abilities based on a stereotype is considered very taboo in the US.
I am sure most people in most parts of the world would consider this a bad thing to do. But unfortunately when an American travels or lives abroad he learns quickly that strong generalizations about Americans seem to be considered ok in most cultures, with other English-speakers seeming to be the worst.
In years of teaching in Germany, the only anti-American Germans I ever met were Ossies who after a few beers admitted that they had no real reason to dislike Americans but that 50 years of being taught they were evil is a hard habit to break. Unfortunately I met SO MANY Brits, Irish, and Australians who were vehemently anti-American and even badmouthed all the American teachers to students just because they were American.
It’s easy to look past it for the most part, but when it becomes incessant from certain groups it can really wear on your nerves.
Boy this thread really did take a dive lol!
OxfordBlues, I’m with you on that. When I moved back to Germany, it was during the Iraq war, and I was treated like a leper. Meanwhile, the hostility has eased up a bit, but I still feel like a foreigner in my own country often enough. Still, I like to think of my fellow-countrymen as a generally friendly people.
Claudia
Yes, Germans are generally friendly if you have 10 or 12 years to get to know them.
LOL! Good one!
Claudia
Those same Ossies probably also dislike Russians or anyone else from the former Soviet Union because of the way they were brought up. And I bet that many of the Ossies you are describing also dislike any ‘Wessies’ for the same reasons they don’t like Americans and Russians. As a matter of fact, it’s very possible that those Ossies don’t like anyone including themselves.[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC short conversations: A customer enquires about trousers in a different size[YSaerTTEW443543]
Well in all fairness there are so many places in the former east that still have 30-40% unemployment rates with no realistic chances of it getting better anytime soon. I think you’re right that a lot of these guys choose to dislike anyone they can because it’s easier than just disliking their situation. I suppose this is probably the reason the SPD manages to hold on and hasn’t fizzled out as a bunch of nuts yet.
The unemployment rates in parts of East Germany are so high for two major reasons: 1) Productivity in those places was extremely low before reunification and 2) both the social benefit system as well as regulations slow down innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. Which brings us back to the initial question of this thread: How important is it for an English teacher in East Germany to know a lot of idioms when what really counts are much practical skills such as coming up with new business ideas, finding employment without much formal education and building and growing your own social network?[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC short conversations: An employee invites colleague to lunch[YSaerTTEW443543]
Right. I’ll stand by my opinion I’ve stated several times. I think idioms are among the least important things to teach. Probably second only in uselessness to question tags.
There is so little valuable classroom time and so many more important things to cover (like grammar and vocabulary, and in the case of unemployed learners, the language skills needed become employed again).
Idioms are EXTREMELY important from a career point of view.
Once a person reaches a basic functional level of workplace English, a HUGE amount of the gap between mere Neanderthal functioning and full participation as a coworker is idioms. We native speakers don’t notice it, but in workplace meetings held in English so many idioms are used that foreign engineers, CFOs and other employees are clueless as to what’s going on. They’ve got no idea what it means to cut corners, pick up the tab, bat a thousand, bottom fish, or a few hundred other things that are said all the time in meetings.
This grammar and vocabulary only approach results in the type of student I get from Europe all the time: A new CFO arrives to run an American division, or maybe a quality manager shows up to run that department. Maybe the guy is even a board member of a huge German conglomerate. They almost all speak low intermediate English with a large vocabulary of professional terms and no workplace idioms. Some of them don’t even understand what “in case” means, and most of them don’t know the difference between politics and policy, both of which many of them refer to as “politik”. If you just teach them the difference between those two words, they already act like you gave them a million dollars. When you break out the idioms, and they see that week by week they’re able to understand more of what their subordinates are saying around them, they are extremely grateful.
The only kind of company that ESL without idioms helps anybody at would be a place like Nokia, where the official language is a truncated form of English with a vocabulary of 2,000 words, no complex sentences, and no idioms. In a normal company, they definitely need the idioms.
Certainly in a situation like that I would agree with you (although still find question tags pointless as I know so many natives who use them). But those are advanced students who have already reached a point where they are able and willing to use the language. In that case, sure, add idioms into the mix. But when you’re dealing with the basics, leave the idioms and slang for later. Learners need to see patterns and idioms and slang often hide the natural logical patterns of the language.
I’ve never had a problem introducing such forms later on as needed, but I have seen total catastrophes from teachers who insist on using nonstandard or idiomatic speech early on.