| > the general tendency to be welcoming and non-offensive makes it very hard to get corrections and feedback from people you are talking to In New Zealand it is usually offensive to “correct” someone’s English, because the act of “correcting” pronunciation and grammar is often associated with status signalling (higher education is associated with high status by many stuck-up knobends). The same dynamic occurs in other English speaking countries too. I have seen the same thing in Spanish with madrileños too, and I am sure it happens in many other cultures. Correcting someone is often fraught with issues: * Foreign speakers have clammed up, or gotten upset, when I have carefully tried to help. It is very difficult to be tactful without causing embarrassment. * Many native speakers are ashamed if caught out making mistakes, so we eventually learn to avoid correcting the mistakes of others, even humdingers. * Usually we want to remain on the topic of conversation. It is hard to inject corrections without breaking the flow, even in a one-on-one conversation. Nearly impossible in a social environment. * The mistakes of ESOL speakers are often ingrained and resistant to improvement. Trying to fix errors over and over again is tiring for both people. |