Rant: English

It's not like we never went for English classes in school. I'm Chinese-educated, but my English didn't suffer, and neither did my Chinese.


From primary school all the way into university, we're taught BASIC GRAMMAR. Past tense. Present tense. Future tense. Nouns. Adjectives. Verbs. All that bullshit. Every single year it's almost the same goddamn thing, and yet somehow, people still manage to mess up.


Not using the language on a daily basis is not an excuse. You read, don't you? You listen to music, don't you? You watch movies, don't you? You can't bloody rely on subtitles and lyric translations for the rest of your life.


It appalls me how so many people can still manage to confuse singular and plural nouns. While I can understand it and accept it in day to day speech, it makes me wanna claw at my scalp when this happens in academic writing and professional presentations.


I mean, really? Don't you take pride in how you present yourself? Even if your pronunciation is off, your grammar plays a big role in giving a good impression. I wouldn't consider someone with bad language as a professional.


For young children, fine. They're still young and learning, they can be corrected and taught. C'mon. You've been alive and in touch with the language for over two decades. For the sake of your own future, please? It's embarrassing and unprofessional.


It doesn't matter how good you are in another language - if you fail in another language, especially in a franca lingua, you fail anyway.