Favian-tech

Favian is an 8th-grade student at the school I teach at in Taichung, Taiwan. Having taught their class several times, never regularly, I discovered that the class had problems with the English language. Most did not recognize that English was a language, and those that did, did not realize that they were being taught English by us.

My colleague, the Commander, is now "in charge" of this class. As part of the unit on technology and gadgets, the Commander assigned them to go home and make a list of all machines and gadgets in their houses. Favian, who is rather large for his age, and his list stood head-and-shoulders above the others. Favian's list has two columns of 25 - maybe one for each of the universes he inhabits - with each entry in English and Chinese. There you will find nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, exclamations and some 18th century English. Here is Favian's complete list in his own handwriting and below are a few excerpts.

• cell phone : high-tech
• yo-yo: low-tech
• the sun: Favian-tech
• TV : high-tech
• orange : Favian-tech
• aircraft carrier : high-tech
• different : Favian-tech
• f*ck : Favian-tech
• piss pot : low-tech
• yacht : high-tech
• America : Favian-tech
• Sabah : Favian-tech

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For all those who reside outside of Taiwan, please go here and read Michael Turton's letter to the Taipei Times. It's excellent in its portrayal of news concerning Taiwan. I don't know if it's laziness, antipathy, prejudice, ignorance or a combination of these that is responsible for this kind of reporting, but when looking at CNN's Asian bureaus, I'm sure laziness and ignorance play a part.