The Richard Simmons of EFL

A week or two ago, Ruby came into the office bearing some materials for a promotion Shane wants us to do around the holidays. Basically, around Christmas, Taiwanese malls will be decked not, as American malls are, in ersatz Santas but in green-clad Shane employees offering passers-by short assessments of their English. These assessments will take the form of a "spider graph"--a 6-sided chart that will rate shoppers on six aspects of their English.

I've thought a bit about this since, and what it says about the status of English in Taiwan. For a while, it seemed as though everyone in the country desperately wants to learn the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, and--at least between stints in rehab--Paris Hilton. But on closer inspection, I have come to realize that, in the Republic of China, improving one's English seems to occupy the same social netherworld that fitness occupies in America: it's something everyone knows they should be doing, and something everyone makes New Year's resolutions about, but rarely something that inspires any actual action. The English grammar, it would seem, has the same place in the average Taiwanese bureau that a Jane Fonda video has in the bureau of a housewife in Chillicothe, Ohio.

How else am I to explain that, despite being forced to learn English practically throughout their school years, despite the proliferation of bushibans such as the one that has brought me hither, and despite the professed interest in all things Anglophones, people on the street seem content to spend the rest of their lives saying "Tomorrow I shopping", using he to mean she, and being greatly perplexed as to how to respond when a native speaker such as your roving reporter extends his hand and says, "Nice to meet you"?

The comparison between EFL in Taiwan and Buns of Steel in America doesn't end there, however. Just as, in America, there are hardy souls (and hard bodies) who brag about how much they can bench press while everyone else is content to do the odd push-up between bites of their Sonic Double Cheeseburger, Taiwan bosts not a few people who are almost single-minded in their effort to speak and write the Queen's English. I wonder how good a goal this is, since I imagine speaking the Queen's English would actually impede one's ability to speak with real Americans, who say all y'all and think the past participle of think is thunk.

Such a soul is my friend Jacky, whom I met changing money at the Bank of Taiwan when I first got here. Jacky studied Stateside for six years in (I gather) high school and college, and worked in America for a year before his visa expired and he was forced to return to the land of Chang Kai-Shek. To me, Jacky represents about the best that an EFL teacher can hope for. He speaks fluently and coherently, if not without the occasional grammatical lapse. He communicates with real English speakers in real time--not the time it takes to play a CD listening exercise three or four times. I have never seen examples of any formal writing by Jacky, but given the general coherence of the few e-mails we have exchanged, I imagine they must be quite good, and that his occasional grammatical lapses in e-mail are due to the haste the medium inspires in all of us.

I wonder sometimes, though, whether he takes it too far. Last Wednesday night, Jacky was kind enough to take me to the airport for my run to Hong Kong. He confessed to me en route that, in addition to reading English-language novels and highlighting words he doesn't know, he keeps a book of English idioms and tries to learn ten a day. To me, this is a tad obsessive. English knows no end of idioms. We Anglophones are never content to say a car is old and brokend own; we must say it is on its last legs. We never get hungry at 3:00 AM; we get the munchies. To accompany that 3:00 AM order of waffle fries, we drink and get not merely drunk but half seas over until we lose our lunch. Each June, we do not merely marry but get hitched. If we don't marry, we shack up, and if our marriages go south, we find ourselves (if male) married to the old ball and chain and (if female) to a fellow who plays the field. All of this must be daunting to someone like Jacky.

It's hard to know how to explain to Jacky that his pursuit of perfect command of the English idiom is likely to end in nothing but frustration. I like to think that intelligent English-speakers, aware of how complex our language is, cut some slack (ech...there I go again) to those who have to learn it as a second tongue. I want to tell Jacky that it's perfectly okay if he goes through the rest of his life getting hungry instead of getting the munchies, and satisfying his hunger by eating rather than grabbing a bite. That it's enough that he's able to speak well enough to understand and be understood by native speakers.

But somehow, I find the cat has my tongue and I'm at a loss for words.