A visitor from Lesotho

A few weeks ago we had a visitor in English class, Moliehi Sekese from the African country Lesotho. In 2009 she won the Educator Choice-award in Microsoft's Worldwide Innovative Teacher Award for her project on indigenous plants that she had with her class at her school. She teaches her students that education is the way out of poverty, and sets a good example for everyone in Lesotho.

In her school they only have two computers, and the number of students is 700! At my school, and many other schools in Norway, every student own their own laptop. And many students also have another personal laptop at home for non-school work. The contrasts between the two countries are huge! In Norway we wake up and go to school to learn, with a full stomach and clean clothes, and nothing worries us. In Lesotho many children go to school with an empty stomach, without warm clothes and even shoes, but they still come to school to learn. They have to worry about everything before they can educate themselves, but they still have the motivation to learn because they know it is important.

She was a real inspiration and the visit was really eye-opening. We take everything for granted in Norway and we don't think about how privileged we are, so it is really healthy for us to see how other people struggle in other countries, so we can learn that everybody doesn't live the good way we do and we can help them to a better life!

My group and I interviewed her, and we also filmed when she held a presentation for the class. We made a video, and you can watch it bellow:

(THE VIDEO IS COMING)


If you want to learn more about Lesotho you can visit this link

The Life of Nelson Mandela

Here is a video Shirin, Susanna and I made in English class about the life of Nelson Mandela, the former South African president and activist againt apartheid. I hope you enjoy it!

Varities of English

English is a language widely spoken around the world, and many countries have their own variety of the language. But even though it may seem like English is the number one native language spoken in the world - because we are faced with it every day - it is in fact the third most spoken language by native speakers. Mandarin Chinese and Spanish are number one and two. But English is also the leading language in international discourse and has become the lingua franca in many regions. It is also one of the six official languages of the European Union, and a official language in NATO and United Nations.

It is hard to find exact numbers of how many

English speakers there are in the world, but there are supposed to be about 500 million to 1.8 billion people who has English as their native, first or second language.

To us in Norway, the most familiar varieties of English is American-English, British-English and Australian-English. These three are languages we meet everyday, whether we watch TV or surf the internet. I will now write about two other varieties of English that we aren't as used to; Hinglish and Singlish.

In Singapore there has been developed two versions of the English language with influence from Chinese and Malay, and they are Colloquial Singaporean English and Standard Singapore English. The first one is also known as Singlish. It is an English-based Creole language. There are about 5 000 000 people who speak this language. The use of Singlish is low prestige in Singapore, and the language is heavily discouraged in school and in the mass media. Singlish is most commonly used by Singaporeans who are not fluent in English. Most of the educated people in Singapore speak Standard Singaporean English.

Read more about Singlish here

Here is a funny video about Singlish


Hinglish is the combination of Hindi and English, and is spoken mostly in the urban and semi-urban centers of the Hindi-speaking states of India. But via television, mobile phones and word of mouth, it is also slowly spreading into rural and remote areas. Hinglish is effecting the English which is spoken in England, with the adaption of words and expressions used by Indian immigrants and their offspring into colloquial English in England. This is similar to what is going on in Norway, where our language is influenced by the immigrants in our country. We use words from, for instance, "Kebab Norwegian", which is slang spoken by immigrants in parts of Oslo and other places.

Read more about Hinglish here

When I listen to both of the languages, Hinglish and Singlish, they both sound a bit funny to me. But I guess this is just because I'm used to hearing regular English being spoken, and not a mixture of languages. Sometimes it is really hard to understand what they are saying, because they speak unclearly and they add words like "lah" in the end of a sentence. But I guess with a little training, you can understand it easily! I would really like to learn to speak Hinglish or Singlish one day :)

Exam tasks

A)

1: You didn't see him, is it? -> You didn't see him, did you?
2: When you would like to go? -> When would you like to go?
3: That man he is tall -> That man is tall
4: Her jewelleries were stolen -> Her jewelries were stolen
5: I am understanding it now -> Now I understand (or I understand now)
6: They two very good friends -> Those two are very good friends
7: Sushila is extremely lazy girl -> Sushila is an extremely lazy girl
8: When you leaving? -> When are you leaving?


B)

1: In the tag question they have changed the subject from "you" to it". They have also changed the verb tense from did (past tense) to it (present tense). This is not normal in standard English.