Speaking with one of the professors at the school, who, like many, was educated in the United States (NYU in this case), I was interested to hear about his comparison of teaching in America and here.
At a community college in the US he taught at in the US for two years it was not uncommon to have students who barely seemed to have a command of the English language. They could not express their ideas and, Lord have mercy, could not write a meaningful sentence or a coherent essay. He was stunned.
By comparison here, as I can confirm, the students' command of English is remarkable and even flawless and accentless in so many cases. About the only thing they don't know well are idiomatic expressions.
Never do you realize how many of these phrases you use until you speak daily to non-native speakers.
Communication via cliche, the heart of a language.
That is a horse of an entirely different color grey, as Henry Watterson liked to say.
I send them to this cliche finder site to look them up.
At a community college in the US he taught at in the US for two years it was not uncommon to have students who barely seemed to have a command of the English language. They could not express their ideas and, Lord have mercy, could not write a meaningful sentence or a coherent essay. He was stunned.
By comparison here, as I can confirm, the students' command of English is remarkable and even flawless and accentless in so many cases. About the only thing they don't know well are idiomatic expressions.
Never do you realize how many of these phrases you use until you speak daily to non-native speakers.
Communication via cliche, the heart of a language.
That is a horse of an entirely different color grey, as Henry Watterson liked to say.
I send them to this cliche finder site to look them up.
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