Ads I never finished reading

[Ann1977]

Here's a cut-and-paste of one of those "ads by Google" right at the top of this page.

English Language Learners

We Help You Identify Your Student's Needs
& Create A Culture Of Success

America's Choice | Home


My father once got an unsolicited fund-raising letter from the advocacy group "English First."
Its first sentence was "The President made a promise to you and I."

He sent it to the New Yorker for their little blurbs feature "Letters We Never Finished Reading," but he got a rejection slip!

The whole thing was a funny family story for years.

[Tdol]

There was one offering help with grammer a couple of years ago.

[Ann1977]

There was one offering help with grammer a couple of years ago.

LOL!

Y'know, somehow I feel that if I were operating an actual business...
I might... oh, I dunno... I might take the trouble to sort of check up on the promotional material...

[PROESL]

LOL!

Y'know, somehow I feel that if I were operating an actual business...
I might... oh, I dunno... I might take the trouble to sort of check up on the promotional material...

I've seen ads for ESL that clearly demonstrate that the person offering the service might not understand the concept of writing a complete sentence. Maybe they would like to call it an "informal posting". Just the same, if one is advertising oneself as an ESL-EFL teacher, the least one could do is demonstrate the ability to put together well-formed sentences.

Some of the ads call to mind the old adage "buyer beware".

I've seen writing at sites for expensive EFL schools that could make one wonder what right they have to say that they can actually help people with writing. Of course, I won't mention the names of any particular EFL-ESL schools, but they're out there.

Even more difficult to accept is that there are ESL-EFL schools owned by ESL speakers who don't know how bad the English is at their sites, or how many errors there are. Once again, buyer beware. ESL students might not even know that there are such errors at these schools' sites. Once again, I won't mention any names of schools, but they do exist. I guess they've got capital and they're savvy business people, but that's about it.

[dragn]

My father once got an unsolicited fund-raising letter from the advocacy group "English First."
Its first sentence was "The President made a promise to you and I."

He sent it to the New Yorker for their little blurbs feature "Letters We Never Finished Reading," but he got a rejection slip!

Ooh, that's cold. That's worth at least a handwritten note!

Greg

P.S. In a similar vein are employment ads for English teachers in Taiwan that routinely say "North American accent preferred."

[Ann1977]

Ooh, that's cold. That's worth at least a handwritten note!

Greg

P.S. In a similar vein are employment ads for English teachers in Taiwan that routinely say "North American accent preferred."

Really! I would have thought that the extra class of a British accent would be worth something. One of my friends faked her way into a great job at a brokerage house because of her soft Scottish accent.

Or maybe not if the British accent is diluted with a Taiwanese accent.

My grandmother used to do a killer imitation of a Papal spokesman who spoke Italian-accented English with an Irish brogue. Evidently he learned English from an Irish priest. "The Pooope a-said he niver wanted ta be Poooope," she'd say -- and crack us up.

One of my friends is from Hong Kong. He told me that when he came to the US, one of the first things he had to learn was to "swallow" the 't' sound in words like "cotton." His British way of pronouncing it got too much joking attention.