[livinginkorea]

Quote clivehawkins

I'm teaching in Italy, just starting my seventh year. I thought I'd only be here for a year so for the first twelve months I learnt enough to reinforce the stereotype that English people can't \ don't \ refuse to learn languages. Then I decided to stay by which time I'd picked up vocab from students always asking the same questions, 'How do you say . . in English?' Therefore vocab great, structure a little better than awful. Sadly, six years on the grammar hasn't improved much but I now have an Italian wife and baby daughter to help when I get in a muddle.
Incidentally, is it a good thing or a bad thing to be able to speak the language of the country you're teaching in? Is anyone tempted to slip out of English to explain something, or is it acceptable to do this anyway? What do you think?

I guess that a lot of people are afraid of losing their English if they focus too much on another language. I had to study Irish and French on top of English when I was in school and if that wasn't hard enough I tried to learn Korean for a while when I came here until I realised that everybody speaks to me in English anyway, even when I talk to them in Korean!

Also I met this guy before who was in Korea for like 6 or 7 years and his English was shocking! He spoke a lot of Konglish (Korean+English e.g. hand phone) and he was teaching kids all the time so I guess that he actually started to lose his English at some stage. Of course the kids wouldn't have noticed but the adults sure did. Be careful everyboy!!