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While we were window-shopping at the mall a few days ago, my wife
Leonor nudged me on the ribs and whispered: “Love, did you hear
what that girl over there was saying on her mobile phone?”
“No,” I replied. “Why, have you been
eavesdropping?”
“Of course not!” she protested. “I just
overheard her. She was speaking so proudly and loudly with an
American English pronunciation, call-center style.”
“So what’s so special about it? Most
call-center people need to speak like that. They must sound like
North Americans to the North Americans, so a pleasant neutral
American accent is drilled into them by their call-center English
trainers.”
“I know that, and in fact I wish I had her
nice English accent myself. But the problem is that her English
grammar is simply horrible.”
“Like how?”
“Well, for one, she just couldn’t seem to
put her verbs in the proper form. For instance, I distinctly heard
her say, ‘Text me when it will to finish.’ Isn’t the verb form
‘will to finish’ weird? She mixed the future tense and the
infinitive. The correct form should be the simple future tense
‘will be finished,’ right?”
“Of course, but maybe her mistake was just a
fluke. You know how it is with us Filipinos. We often think out our
thoughts in Tagalog or in our regional language first, then
translate them into English. There’s bound to be some grammar
mishap somewhere sometimes.”
“But I think that girl’s English problem is
more serious than that. I also heard her say, ‘I will go here with
my balance.’ It should be ‘come’ instead of ‘go’ because
she’s referring to a movement towards and not away from where she
was, but she seemed blissfully unaware of the difference between the
two.”
“That’s awful!”
“So now you’re convinced she has a serious
English problem?”
“You’re probably right, but I’m afraid
there’s not much we can do about that.”
“Why not? For a start, I can tell her right
now to read your new book, The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar
Errors. I’m sure she’ll learn a thing or two from it.”
“Don’t be silly, Leonor,” I admonished
her. “That kind of hard sell simply won’t work. She’d really
hate you for it. You might even get slapped in the face.”
“Well, love, it’s just a thought. But there
must be a way to make people like her realize that great English
pronunciation doesn’t necessarily mean great English. Excellent
grammar and usage must also go with it. Why don’t you write about
that sometime?”
“Maybe, but in fairness to that girl, she’s
not alone with that grammar problem. It’s because many people
don’t take their English grammar seriously enough. They are made
to believe they can acquire good English simply by listening to how
it’s spoken and by just memorizing the various English stock
phrases. But good pronunciation is really only the icing to the
cake, so to speak. To be really good in English, you need to be
competent in your English grammar and usage. Only then can you be
sure of speaking or writing properly in English even in unstructured
communication situations.”
“So what do you suggest should
English-challenged people do to improve their English?”
“Well, they need to go back to the very basics
of English grammar and master them. They must learn how to put
together the various elements of English in a grammatically
systematic way—its words into clear, logical sentences; its
sentences into clear, logical paragraphs; and its paragraphs into
clear, logical expositions or compositions. Then they also must
learn enough of the English idioms so they won’t be forever
speaking or writing in stiff or stilted English.”
“Isn’t that a rather tall order?”
“It is, but if you want to speak or write in
English well enough, you really have no choice but to do it.”
j8carillo@yahoo.com
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