What am I Doing?

Thursday, May 22, 2008

ESL is for Quitters

Dear Diary,

"Wall Knocker"[?] is Korean and speaks Koreanese.  Or is it Koringrish.  Oh, duh, it's Korean.  He is Korean and speaks Korean.  That's embarrassing that I just did that.  Almost embarrassing as the time I went to Hong Kong express and ordered some food.  Instead of saying flied lice I accidentally said "fried rice."

"Wall Knocker" asked me for my opinion about some footnotes he was writing for one of his reports.  He thought the sentence sounded awkward.  After reading the sentence, I agreed, it sounded bad.  We rewrote it and as he was leaving my office he said, "Thanks, English is my second language."  I laughed and said don't worry; Korean is my second language so we're even.

My beef with "Wall Knocker" using the English as a second language, or "ESL", bit is that he moved to this country when he was eight years old.  When you're 26 and you've been in this country for 18 years I don't think that you can use the ESL card anymore.  If you do, then I probably should not have hired you because writing and publishing written reports is a part of your job description.

ESL is for quitters.  Don't use that excuse as a cop out.
.

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