He's an ALT, not a professional private tutor. Most of those he's "teaching" probably don't know a smack of English anyway, his non-native nuances probably won't affect them a whole lot for the short period of time he spends with them.

I think it's pretty cool that he's able to teach English as a non-native English speaker though, I thought with all the competition nowadays it would be next to impossible for a non-native to land that job. Not that I have any experience on what the situation is like.

edit: So English is an official language in Singapore, huh. ^^'

Last edited by TwoMoreCharacters (2011 September 04, 12:29 pm)

I half expected the author of the blog to be writing in Singlish, which is awesome and not “Chinglish” (which sounds like one of those silly labels like “Engrish”), but it doesn't seem like Singlish to me, just the occasional non-native awkwardness (this impression is not based on the criticisms by the overly bitter commenter).

By the way @istel, it's “tidbits”.

Last edited by nest0r (2011 September 04, 12:47 pm)

istel wrote:

nest0r wrote:

I half expected the author of the blog to be writing in Singlish, which is awesome and not “Chinglish” (which sounds like one of those silly labels like “Engrish”), but it doesn't seem like Singlish to me, just the occasional non-native awkwardness (this impression is not based on the criticisms by the overly bitter commenter).

By the way @istel, it's “tidbits”.

Thanks for the correction. In my defense, that was what I typed but it was auto-corrected by my Firefox spellchecker hee...

Cheers!

Well apparently it's also spelled titbits, but I've never seen it spelled that way, so, my bad? But even if I were from someplace where that spelling is common, I'd probably change it. ;p

nest0r wrote:

Well apparently it's also spelled titbits, but I've never seen it spelled that way, so, my bad? But even if I were from someplace where that spelling is common, I'd probably change it. ;p

It's spelt and pronounced "Titbits" in British English. Guess which type of English Singaporeans learn?

Yes, in England, the land after which English is named, we do indeed say TITbits.

You may now sit. (National Anthem ends)

Last edited by mizunooto (2011 September 04, 5:02 pm)

But to be authentic English it has to
a) Be rickety-sounding like the name of an old country lane, or implausible like villages called Steeple Bumpstead or Nether Wallop [link not perfect but gives reasonable idea]
b) Have possibilities for double entendre
c) Be different to what an American is saying


Most dictionaries seem to have it this way

titbit |ˈtɪtbɪt|
noun
chiefly British spelling of tidbit .
tidbit |ˈtɪdbɪt| (also chiefly Brit. titbit )
noun
a small piece of tasty food.
• a small and particularly interesting item of gossip or information.

However in "Goooooogle" there are 16.9m tidbits and less than 2m titbits. A fascinating tidbid of information!

Anyway I have forgotten what the point of this is now. It's certainly not about "Douche"...

Last edited by mizunooto (2011 September 04, 7:45 pm)

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?cont … moothing=3

^ doesn't sound like you know much about TESOL.

Someone who has done a decent TESOL (like CELTA) will be way better at the start than if they hadn't studied anything about teaching, or practiced and received feedback on their teaching.

Last edited by caivano (2011 September 05, 6:42 am)

The idea that a four week course can transform someone into a teacher is totally ridiculous. It just pre-installs whatever popular teaching methodology X the school prescribes to, I don't think it encourages thinking about how to teach. It's just an extra hoop to make people jump through to narrow down the number of candidates. If I were hiring esl teachers, I would hire based on character assessment and experience not a 4 week certificate.

So in other words you get about 2 days teaching experience and a tiny amount of lesson planning experience with some feedback from teachers who may or may not know wtf they're talking about. How is your performance assessed if not against some model teaching style X held in high esteem by whoever watches over you? It is almost certainly not judged by the progress made by the students in the practice class. This would be almost impossible to judge in the timeframe anyway. Who evaluates these courses? The english teaching industry? It's pretty clear that as long as consumers remain clueless, most of the English teaching industry (at least in Japan) doesn't particularly care about what is effective, just in what sells. And being able to advertise certified teachers can bring in customers. It's like quack 'doctors' with phoney degrees selling whatever online. Or is it the public education system and academia (politics) that assesses these courses?

Last edited by nadiatims (2011 September 05, 9:05 am)

(Off topic!
I've always really liked this one.  21 Accents:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2 … re=related

Peter Sellers is also famous for being good at it (from the Dr. Strangelove special features):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLsVh6Qrpew

The guy you posted has a really bad Japanese accent, haha.  I could do sooooo much better.)

Last edited by Tzadeck (2011 September 05, 9:20 am)

nest0r wrote:

aphasiac wrote:

nest0r wrote:

Well apparently it's also spelled titbits, but I've never seen it spelled that way, so, my bad? But even if I were from someplace where that spelling is common, I'd probably change it. ;p

It's spelt and pronounced "Titbits" in British English. Guess which type of English Singaporeans learn?

Istel wrote that they spelled it “tidbits” but spellcheck changed it, plus in Singapore there's more to consider than the influence of something like British English, which is in part why one mustn't confuse Singlish with Chinese-influenced non-standard English.

I read that it was a UK variant which I'm sure means it's used in many countries, but I can't recall ever seeing it before, which, due to my objective acknowledgment of the depth and breadth of my reading, hehe, leads me to believe it's not very common, at least relative to the variant “tidbits”.

Especially online, American slang is pretty prevalent in English comments, so I'd avoid it, personally, among non-native speakers especially. Yes that's right, I'm calling for the death of “titbits”.

Well... It's a long story but we were basically taught British English since Elementary 1 as Britain was our ex-colonial master. It has pretty lasting influences on much most part of our life here in Singapore namely; government structure, various standards, metric systems and right down to the way we drive here on the roads.

We used to pronounce our words pretty much how the British/English do it with some idiosyncrasies of our own due to the mother tongues' influence (i.e. Mandarin, Malay and Tamil). Along the way, all this sort of got mangled up and that's where the infamous Singlish came about.

Due to the fact that UK's "soft power" around the world is waning and the amount of US media influence that is prevalent on both the TV and Internet today. We pretty much switched from the British pronunciation to the American pronunciation. Although there are words where we prefer the English way of pronunciation (e.g. Lieutenant pronounced "Left-tenent"), we pretty much use the American spelling in our working life. I guess another reason would be that the American spelling are phonetically closer to its pronunciation compared to the British?

Having digressed that much... The reason I find this interesting is because my wife who's Japanese does not subscribe to the fact that non-native Japanese learners could attain native command or "Standard" Japanese accent once they're past the age of teens.

Other than the myths of Japaneses as being "a special race" and the Japanese language being so difficult to learn that the mind can no longer accept any other language due to its abuse on the brain, which supposedly explains their dismal ability to master English.

With this "incident" other than the fact that he's an online troll and the general feel around the Internet, it appears to me that it's not just the Japaneses who felt that way about their language I guess?

The reason why I posted this here was because I believe most of the forumites here believe that attainment of native command is achievable if one puts in enough hard work in one's studies. Which is why I'm extremely interested to hear the comments here as well as when can one finally be recognized as having a native command of any language?

Cheers!