Me fail English? That's unpossible!
My friend Dan is in China teaching English for the summer. He just sent over this pretty amusing anecdote. I thought you might get a kick out of it…
Dan,
So I have been teaching an advanced group of English learners over here. We’ve been talking about religion, philosophy, science, ethics, logic, art, politics, etc. I had my students research different religions and write papers.
This is from an essay a student of mine wrote on Judaism:
“Eating should obey laws. For example, Jews can never be eaten at the same time.”
I definitely agree. They taste terrible together.
Also from an essay on Christianity:
“Because Jesus was died on a cross, when we see crosses we must remind him.”
I also agree. Jesus is always like, “God, I know already!”
Teaching is fun.
Hope things are well,
Dan
Man, and that’s the advanced group? Sheesh…
What is really sad is that my religious school student on the UES write like that too.
“All your base are belong to us…”
Even when interpreted under Chinese grammar, the “Jews eating” quote makes no sense. But the Jesus quote does, when “remind” becomes “remember”.
The sentence that says ‘eating should obey laws’ makes sense because in Chinese there is a word that could be translated as both follows and obey. Or maybe I’ve been living in China for so long that I’ve become fluent in Chinglish.