Kill Your English Teacher

I am the absolute last one to raise any fuss over someone’s English abilities out here in Hong Kong. In fact, I typically will consider someone fluent long before they ever will – simply because I have no problem understanding or communicating with them in English.

My classmates are more likely to criticize a professor’s accent or ability with English than I am; but then, I studied at Georgia Tech – where half the professors can’t speak English. So it comes as a shock to me that I’d find within myself such a strong drive towards posting a criticism of someone’s English – a drive so strong that I would get the post off within hours of the incident, rather than my average days-months mentality. This one, however, is just too funny to keep to myself.

I was sitting in my Chinese Politics course this evening and students were going to be presenting summaries of the readings from last week. So far – nothing too out of the ordinary. Then the first guy starts. He’s obviously from Hong Kong rather than China, because he can speak without a strong Chinese accent — in my mind at least. His English mastery of the language is phenomenal, in fact, and he can easily claim fluency.

But I’ve never heard anyone that has learned English as a second language use the word “like” so many times. I was fortunate enough to have my laptop with me in class. Quickly I started recording from the built in microphone on the screen, flipped the screen around so that it could better pick up his presentation, and recorded his presentation.

My initial reaction was to do as I do when forced to endure a native speaker kill such a useful word as “like,” great marker of similes: I started to count how many times he used it. Losing count after twenty-one, I started to wonder what influence could have brought upon such wanton valley-girl dialect usage by an Asian student in a postgraduate level course. Maybe he’s got family from the S.F.V.? Maybe he listened to English via ham-radio; but, one which only picked up the cell phone conversations of middle school girls. Maybe he had an American English teacher who used the word incessantly; or, even worse, a Chinese English teacher who continues to teach millions of students that speaking in this manner will make one appear more native.

Whatever the reason, I send out this plea. If you’ve been taught to orate in the manner captured below, please do the world a favor and kill your English teacher.*

*-Don’t actually kill your English teacher. Just tell them they’re full of horse manure. If you can send me evidence that they are promoting such hideous interpersonal skills while using the English language, I’ll write you a note exempting you from taking their course – and hopefully anyone else who would have been brought to suffer.