November Chopin.

I have a major issue with bad English. Nothing irritates me more than coming across sentences with incorrect spelling, wrong tenses and terrible sentence structure. Was reading a friend's blog the other day and I read this comment left by one of his friends:

"I will catch u if u fall, and make sure the shattered and broken u, will be fixed back in sg and then packed u up and sent u back to australia for the nx semester."

.......

I immediately pasted the entire comment to Piggy, after which I remarked, "God... the English is F*** bad".

And then off we embarked on a conversation, about WHY people with such a bad command of English (like the person mentioned above) are able to survive in university (or even get into uni?!). Does proper language not matter to anyone anymore? It seems to me, after three years of tertiary education in a university with a huge international student intake, that perhaps it is content that the graders are looking out for now, and as long as you express your ideas in a way that is still understandable, no one gives a rat's ass about grammar/tense/sentence structures.

I feel somewhat stuck in a dilemma, because there are so many students at MU whose first language is not English... and while I really admire their courage for taking up the challenge to do their tertiary studies in a second language and sympathise with them when they are unable to contribute much to tutorial discussions because of the language barrier, it kills me when I have to listen to their tutorial presentations, because most of the time I have to (1) force myself to pay attention, or (2) bite my lip to prevent myself from cracking up at the way certain words are pronounced... yes, sue me please - I am very mean, but that's reality for you.

Just for the fun of it, here are more examples of "EngRish". Note that these were written by Singaporean university students, whom I seriously think need to return to Primary School for basic English lessons... NOW.

1. hey... want to caught up movie?

2. dun mistaken that i hv ulterior motive. i dun wan to spolite the relationship betwn us.

3. thank God! must reserved good looking guys as well!

4. i really glad that i know him... but sometimes i wonder on what basis were our friendship built on?

5. and i always wonder why are there Peter Pan in the lyrics of this song.. i never knew why... till i found out the song title of this song... n i do a check on the lyrics... i realise... there is not PETER PAN in the song!!!! oh man... lucky i never ask people "Hey u all know the song with the Peter Pan one is what title huh?" u all know i mistaken Peter Pan to which part of the lyrics?

....... I am seriously disturbed that all these people are in uni!!! -_-

I know I am not the best writer, nor will I say I've mastered the English language at my fingertips. I don't write A-class essays, my vocab is lousy, but I sure as hell can spell, and I sure as hell know my basic grammar!!!!!!

X X X

好不容易又能再多爱一天
但故事的最后你好像还是说了Bye Bye.

周杰伦 - 晴天