[Grammar] I can teach you better.

[kadioguy]

(A slogan in an English language school in Taiwan)

I can teach you better.

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I take it to mean:

I can teach you English, and after that your English will become better (than you are now).

Or

I can teach you English in a better way than other English teachers do.

However, does the slogan sound (grammatically) OK and natural to native speakers?

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(Source)

 

[Tarheel]

I guess they mean they do it better than other people do it. While I probably wouldn't use that phrase, the meaning is clear enough, which is: "We do it better than the other schools do."

 

[GoesStation]

I can teach you English, and after that your English will become better (than you are now).

That reading is not possible. If you make someone better, they become superior to what they were. "Teach" doesn't work that way.

 

[emsr2d2]

It would have to say "I can teach you to be better" for that to be the meaning. For me, it means only "I can teach you better than other teachers can teach you". It's odd to use "I" in that slogan if it's for a whole school. I imagine they have more than one teacher.

 

[jutfrank]

It's very poor English. It isn't something that a native speaker would say.

 

[kadioguy]

[...] It's odd to use "I" in that slogan if it's for a whole school. I imagine they have more than one teacher.

Technically you are right. However, the madam in the screenshot in post #1 is the founder of the cram school chain, and she is a very famous English teacher in Taiwan. So "I can teach you better" sounds like she will teach the students every lesson in person in her cram school chain (which is practically impossible), but that's a dramatic slogan in my opinion.

I imagine that she would argue that the other teachers in her schools are all well-trained and the teaching materials are all written by her instructions, so she would say, "I can teach you better" means that whoever you meet in class in her schools, that's like I teach you in person. :roll:

[Cross-posted with jutfrank]

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Technically you are right. However, the woman in the screenshot in post #1 is the founder of the Cram school chain, and she is a very famous English teacher in Taiwan. So "I can teach you to be better" sounds like that she will teach the students every lesson in person in her Cram school chain (which is practically impossible), but that's a dramatic slogan in my opinion.

I imagine that she would argue that the other teachers in her schools are all well-trained and the teaching materials are all written by her instructions, so "I can teach you to be better" means that whoever you meet in class in her schools, that's like her teaching you in person. :roll:

I agree. She really means that her school teaches better than other schools. She says "I" to make the ad more personal and inviting. Since it's her school, she feels she can speak for the entire faculty, which she trains and supervises.

The ad isn't literally true, but I don't think it's dishonest. Anyone who sees it should understand that she's inviting you to go to her school and that the school has more than one teacher.

Is her school really better than all the others? It's a well-established custom that advertisers may say they're the best. So we can let her go on that, too.

 

[kadioguy]

[...]

If you don't mind, I am wondering why 'c' in 'the/her Cram school' should be capitalized/capitalised? Is it a proper noun? I would think that it is a common one.

 

[emsr2d2]

If it's the name of the school, or chain of schools, then at least "Cram" should be capitalised, possibly even "Cram School". It depends on the official name of the company. However, if that's not even the name but it's simply a description of what they help students do (cram for an exam), then it shouldn't be capitalised.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

If you don't mind, I am wondering why 'c' in 'the/her Cram school' should be capitalized/capitalised? Is it a proper noun? I would think that it is a common one.

I assumed it was the name of the school.

The phrase cram school doesn't mean anything to me. What's a cram school? A school where you learn to cram? I thought this was a language school. Isn't it?

 

[emsr2d2]

An American friend of mine in Madrid used to offer "cram classes/courses". They were intensive five-day-a-week courses that students could take with her for the two weeks leading up to any important English exam. I think they lasted three or four hours each day. The students worked really hard on all the main things that were due to crop up in the exam. She offered them because she kept hearing from her students that they weren't very good at cramming/revising for exams on their own at home, but doing it in a classroom setting (or one-to-one), especially when they'd paid for it, they were much more successful.

 

[kadioguy]

I assumed it was the name of the school.

The phrase cram school doesn't mean anything to me. What's a cram school? A school where you learn to cram? I thought this was a language school. Isn't it?

Sorry for being vague. I meant this:

[...] it's simply a description of what they help students do (cram for an exam)[...]

I used the phrase 'cram school' to mean that you learn English in the school mainly to be successful in exams, rather than learn it as a living language.

 

[emsr2d2]

Hmm, I don't think "cram school" really works just to describe learning a language with the sole purpose of passing an exam, rather than with a plan to use it. The important word is "cram". It specifically refers to that panic-stricken, intensive study and revision (BrE) students do in the last couple of weeks, days or even hours before an exam. They try to cram as much knowledge as they can into their brains in a fairly short period of time.

See transitive verb definition 4 and intransitive verb definition 2 here.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Right. In the US, kids cram for exams all the time, but I've never heard of a cram school.

That's why I wondered whether the expression exists.

 

[GoesStation]

If you don't mind, I am wondering why 'c' in 'the/her Cram school' should be capitalized/capitalised? Is it a proper noun? I would think that it is a common one.

It shouldn't be. A cram school is a type of school.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Well, there, then! A small c it is!

 

[tedmc]

Is "cram school" common? I have not heard if it.

 

[GoesStation]

Is "cram school" common? I have not heard if it.

I believe such schools are common in South Korea and some other East Asian countries. I first read about them in The Economist, if I remember right.

 

[kadioguy]

Is "cram school" common? I have not heard if it.

In Chinese it is called 'buxiban' (補習班). I am not sure how to name it in English. It is like an 'after-class school' or a 'learning center'. :roll:

 

[Tarheel]

I suppose there's some use for it, but I don't like the concept. Studying something just so you can do well on an exam seems wrong-headed to me. You wouldn't, for example, want your surgeon to have learned medicine at a cram school, would you?