Wish to settle down, which country to choose - Poland or Russia?

This is RuSSia - a female teacher was sentenced for telling the truth about the war in Ukraine
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/08/04/russian-teacher-sentenced-telling-students-war-crimes-ukraine/
A court in Penza, 500 kilometres southeast of Moscow, on Thursday found Irina Gen guilty of "discrediting the Russian armed forces" under a new law that has banned any criticism of the war in Ukraine and gave her a five-year suspended sentence. The 45-year-old English teacher will also be barred from working in state schools for three years.

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Let her come to Poland to teach English

A sound suggestion, Pawian! They certainly need it.

If I wasn`t married, I would invite her to Poland and took care of her. :):):):) She looks extremely intelligent - typical of all teachers of English in our region.


Yes, we mustn`t forget - there are decent Russians who don`t support Putler and his KGB mafia who rule Russia.

Is this lady a native English speaker, I hope?

No, of course not. Pure Russian woman. A very decent person.

Irina Gen, the Russian teacher of English, if you can read us, you should know we wholeheartedly support you and admire your bravery and honesty.

Hmmm, then her English skills would most likely be rather suspect!
Unless she is a truly native bilingual in both languages and not merely in the language of academic instruction, I'd never hire this person to teach in my school if I were the principal.....no matter how low the price:-)

Let me tell you the truth - most principals have no choice. :):):) I am not bilingual, 90% of my English is of artificial academic instructions yet I receive a dozen job offers a month. :):):):)

Not to mention that that obsession about native speakers is silly. Without native speakers in school I managed to learn enough English to post here, and move successfully to UK.

The point being that the average English teacher/instructor throughout much of Eastern Europe was for many years little more than an underpaid state-flunkey hack, at least in my experience over many years as both language school manager and instructor.

Hopefully, this is either changing as we speak or has already changed. If not, then the entire exercise is rather like a computer virus which infects the whole system and can never effectively be gotten rid of.

Similarly, even one teacher's poor accent, "artificial academic knowledge", and often sheer idiomatic ignorance can infect, in fact poison, a learner's experience by reinforcing the non-native teacher's errors year in year out.

In the long run, the poor student must later rely solely on the availability of educated English native speakers to undo the damage done by the non-native English speaking instructor. This is usually costly from a financial point of view and time consuming!

Yes, and we come to a fundamental dilemma: which is better - to infect with artificial knowledge and still teach some basics or not to infect and teach nothing in case there is no native bilingual educator. :):):)

Neither one is a viable option, in my professional opinion. Perhaps the issue will never be resolved, as it seems not only Poland, but many neighboring countries would rather save on top quality by getting cut-rate English teachers instead of digging deep and spending on the best.

A majority feel as Lenka that the insistence of native English instruction is silly, since as long as people "understand" a person, there's no problem. On the other hand, maybe the Brits are only being polite and expect less from a foreigner speaking English than one of their own.

My philosophy here is, if you're not going to do it right, don't do it at all!

@Lyzko
English wants to be a World Language. It must be cheep and overall available so don't do it right, just do it.

D'you mean "cheAp", Alien? :-)

I couldn't disagree with you more. Would you or anybody here want a generation of English students to wind up speaking like the character Latka Gravas on the US '70's-TV series "Taxi"??

Clearly not, I hope and pray.

Moreover, precisely because English strives to be a world language aka "passport to the world", shouldn't we try to keep our passport in better condition?

English IS...


Biggest crap ever posted. Learning is a ramp, not a 0-to-100 step function.
If I followed this incredibly stupid advice, I would still be in Poland since my English wouldn't be good enough to go to "America", look for a job, get hired, meet people, get a DL, eat out,...

Nonsense... she simply needs to know English better than her students... a large majority of learners of English in Poland do not need native speaker teachers, they need communication skills that can be taught be non-natives just as well. Certain specialists will need native models but they're not the majority.


More nonsense... English is a pluricentric language which means there is more than one standard and things that are correct in one place will be incorrect in another.

"The government are." is not correct in the US (though it is in the UK) and "She had gotten it" is not correct in the UK (though it is in the US). Things are even more unstable with pronunciation.

She'd do fine in Poland (though I really doubt she'd want to).

Of course she'd "do fine" teaching English in Poland; no one would know (or hear) the difference vs. a native English speaker of similar background LOL

My Latka Gravas analogy still applies; he doesn't hear how he sounds in English and frankly, nobody around him really cares one way or the other! They figure he just sounds weird and so the heck with it all.

@Maf, French too is a pluricentric tongue, yet care and attention are taken by her writers, not to mention rank-and-file users, to ensure that her standard remains high, no matter how "creative".

Face it, folks. All of us are applying the eternal double standard when it comes to English and I'm getting pretty sick of it.

English can be a native, ethnic language with high standards maintained and learned mostly by those who care about it or an international language that most people are forced to learn no matter whether they care about it or not.

Can't have both (think cakes and having and eating).

Lyzko, I can` t recognise you. Such an amasing change of style of expression. Very interesting. :):):)

@pawian
He must have moved to another neighborhood?

to the UK ;)

And be able to teach.


This is very true.

Yes, we need to be careful, Big Mother is watching.

Again Mafketis and jon, I roundly concur, indeed thoroughly accept, the fact that there is not ONE "English" standard! My point is, has been, and always will be that whatever the standard, it nonetheless should remain a consistently high one.

Who would have thought when I was in school that the English language, pride of so many countries which speak her as their authentically native tongue, would somehow become the rubbish bin of language, the pit into which all the filth spewed forth by the lazy and ignorant?

There's British English, American English, Canadian English, and "Austrailish". Yet all four strive to maintain a commensurately engaging level of usage.

Compare US-American today with fifty or more years ago. Even within my brief lifetime of fifty-something, the language has been experiencing a sort of schlerosis, an Alzheimer's, before our very ears. Basic vocabulary such as "trestle", "siblings", "to fare" and so forth has practically disappeared from daily speech and the only way Millenials would ever recognize them, would be if they had unusally older parents.

@Bless you, Atch! From your click to his eyes.

Couldn't agree more.
As long as you are understood, it works.


Rubbish!
It's about communication not perfecrion.

@Lyzko

As usual, you have missed the point completely.

The reason why English is the number one language in the world is exactly because you can get it wrong and still be understood.
Which is not so possible in most languages.

No... all languages are like that. I've heard Polish that would make your hair stand on end "Ja nie ma czas tam iść" (not a real example but similar to things I've heard). That didn't stop it from being completely understandable to the Polish people it was directed to.

All human languages can be put in the wringer and be understood... English speakers are maybe unique in not especially caring about how non-native speakers express themselves....

...and getting it wrong means that true understanding is missing, if we're talking here only about approximation rather than exact transference even of a simple message:-)

Marek: Ach, co za piekne Stare Miasto!

Krzysia: Mark, it's ok, we talk more English language.

Marek: Oh, I just remarked how beautiful your Old Town is!

Krzysia: No, why? Buildings are still same age as other buildings, I mean, like,uh, no not really!

Marek: Ahem, sorry Christina, I only meant that the architecture is so pretty.

Krzysia: I dunno. It's like we don't see any difference, sort ot...

Marek: Krzysiu, moze byc tu nie zrozumialas mojego zdania.

Krzysia: Hey, Mark! I f****** understand all what you talk, but it's stupid, you know!

Etc..ad nauseum.

Should I be barked at by a foreigner for speaking THEIR native language in THEIR OWN country??!
Clearly, my friend merrily misunderstood what I was driving at, yet was too stubborn to admit it. Such conversations I'm sure are repeated a bazillion times, yet few will admit it.

youtu.be/UUyFa9lyw1I

😁

if you're in their country, they YOU are the foreigner....

and I have no idea what point the dialogue was trying to make...

The obvious point is that I was attempting to make normal small talk with a Polish woman whom I'd first met in the States and with whom I later met up in Szczecin!

She was practicing her English with me, yet refused to confess the fact that she was missing what I was saying, that's all. Polish was naturally the language we both had in common, but Krzysztina was simply being obtuse.

Are you by any chance trying to play the Devil's Advocate here?