English Teachers Overseas – Students Learn Very Well!
Today I’ve got a Funny Travel Photo from Chris Walker-Bush from Aussie On The Road. You can follow @aussieontheroad on Twitter. It’s of another Engrish Moment, from his experience of being one of the many travellers who have tried to be English Teachers Overseas! I guess that the proof is in the pudding!
Many travellers have a crack at teaching English in a foreign country to help pay for their travels. This usually means that they get to meet many of the locals who are desperate to converse in a completely foreign language that bears virtually no resemblance to their own!
Native English speakers are usually pretty lazy when it comes to learning another language because the rest of the world usually speaks a little bit of English – which the rest of the world wants to learn.
Anyway, Chris says ‘I came into one of my Korean English language classes back in 2009 and one of my favorite students had written this on the white-board.
The first word is her horrendous misspelling of ‘Chris’
This says ‘Chris, Very Well English!’
To be fair, imagine if any English speakers tried to learn Korean? I would be completely bloody hopeless! As an example, I was totally out of my depth when I tried to learn a bit of Welsh. And Welsh uses the same script as English. But with many Asian languages, such as Korean, Japanese and Chinese, you have to learn an entire new script with characters which would probably take decades to master if you decided to apply yourself!
For example, if I was trying to learn Korean, I’d probably say something like ‘where is horse buttock fondling place’ the when I’m asking for directions. And because Asian cultures are polite, friendly and helpful, I would probably get exactly what I asked for!
More Teaching English Overseas Stuff
If you want to create some Engrish Gold like this if you want to be an English Teacher Overseas, maybe you might need to reference Teaching English as a Foreign Language For Dummies.
Ah, this brings back so many memories. When I was teaching my Korean students, we had to do a fill-in-the-blank exercise. The correct answer was “dish”. This is what my student chose: “I like the sweet *gas* Grandmother makes for me”.
love the not quite correct translations!