The trouble-and-strife gave me a right ear-bashing for being late home from the rubbedy-dub-dub cos I went and got me plates-of meat sorted without gettin' on the old dog-and-bone first.

'Linguistics' per se, NO! However, much of my English A-level course (a lifetime ago), included studying a huge amount of 'rhetoric'. In this sense, 'rhetoric' being the language of politicians and something that teachers of 'AP English' are required to teach.

Let me level with you, (level-with-you = being 100% truthful), the subject of 'linguistics' is essentially the 'mechanics' of language, (as you know), but quite frankly I find it about as interesting as watching paint dry. I have an interest in etymology and prefer to know WHY we use words, where they come from etc, rather than how a language is assembled or 'put together'.

You appear to be pretty fluent in Chinese so would know full well that they always put 'time' at the beginning of a sentence, whereas NES put it at the end. That kind of thing doesn't interest me. I'm more interested in why words such as 'folk' and 'people' have no difference in meaning.

Each to their own I guess. But while I am 'coming clean'. I guess I should mention that I have been 'blogging' on another (unrelated) web-site for several years. On that one I am not talking to ESL teachers (or deechers), and I have developed a tendency to write in pretty much the same way as I speak.

Therefore, that reflects on my postings and comments here and that style of writing in no way reflects my teaching ability.

I guess I kind of use two 'heads' - a 'blogging head' and a 'teaching head', and it is for that reason alone that I get quite annoyed when certain posters here want to 'correct' my occasional 'faux pas' or criticise me for being a 'poor thesaurus'.

In the UK there are as many 'accents' as there are 'dialects' in China. The main difference being that most NES can understand them, in China the dialects are mutually unintelligible. I have only ever come across 2 accents in the UK that I have trouble understanding - one is the 'Geordie accent' and the other stems from Glasgow (Scotland). Not only can I understand the others, I can imitate them along with their relevant colloquialisms.

It may have been a long time ago, but I left school with an A+ in Advanced-Level English, I have 240 hours advanced diploma in TESOL and I am one of a handful of NES teachers in China with CITA accreditation, (Consortium of International TESOL/TEACHER Accreditation). I currently teach at the undisputed number 1 high school in our province and my contract has just been renewed for 2 more years, so if certain people who contribute to this forum want to consider me as being a 'deecher', then that is their prerogative. I am happy with what I have achieved, but sorry, a 'linguist' I will never be.

Incidentally, I was chatting with a student the other day on the subject of IELTS learning. I asked her why there are no FT's in the classroom and her reply was quite simply that ESL English teachers are able to teach grammar much better than NES. After thinking about it for a few seconds I found it difficult to disagree with her.

NES or ESL, no-one can ever be 'perfect' at English, simply because English is not a 'perfect' language. I have one colleague (Chinese) who speaks wonderful English, yet after 22 years of teaching, still asks me language questions on an almost daily basis.

Language is a form of communication as far as I am concerned, and as long as you understand the true meaning in my words, sometimes the 'linguistics' pale into insignificance.

That said, how far do we NEED to go with ESL students?

Example - I was asked a question tonight (by an accomplished ESL student). 'When should I use 'even though' as opposed to 'although'?'

I asked for context and this is what he said -

'He gave the speech although he was ill'
'He gave the speech even though he was ill'

OK, so NES can see the difference, and maybe some learned ESL students, but is the difference big enough to matter?.....I mean REALLY matter?

First one = Blame the person that MADE him give the speech
Second one = Oh he's such a 'hero'

But in reality, are these differences THAT important?

As a linguist, you will probably say Yes

But for me, as an NES, if those words were coming from an ESL student, I would never EXPECT them to understand the difference, and as both sentences are grammatically correct, I probably wouldn't care.

How far do we really want to take their English education when they have never lived in a western country?