Recently, we were assigned a project for Biology. We needed to be in groups of four, five or six, and my group was only a trio. I read the message board, hoping to find someone desperate for a group to join. Naturally, I did–my section is at 8am in the morning and a lot of people miss\/skip class occasionally because of public transit or sleeping in.<\/p>\n
So we had a meeting on Sunday (only three out of five showed up, but that’s another story.) Two of us have met before, but the other member was unknown to both of us, so we started chatting about nice, neutral things–courses, for one. So the topic of English class comes up, and we learn that our new friend is not taking an English course! Why not? He didn’t pass the language proficency test.<\/p>\n
It actually wasn’t too surprising. He didn’t say much of anything throughout our meeting. When he did, it was quite evident that English was a language he struggled with. (We could have all spoken Cantonese, but a biology discussion in Cantonese is not my idea of a good time.)<\/p>\n
Yet, the test is written, not oral. Even though a person may struggle with speaking, it’s very possible for them to be a decent writer (eg, my French.) From his emails, I deduced that the one part of English that he does have down pat is Internet slang. Naturally, that won’t help you write an essay. It just strikes me that he might have a better chance of passing the test if he tried to use standard English in his communication. The only way to become fluent in a language is to use it<\/i>. Properly. Not in some chopped-up, abbreviated fashion.<\/p>\n
-_-;;<\/p>\n
<\/end pointless rant about the degradation of the English language><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“lol” won’t help “u” write an essay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undreamt.org\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}