Thailand’s English standard: It’s not all bad news!

[Slip]

41 minutes ago, Jane Dough said:

Three pages of comment about Scrabble and English. I would say that the OP got you clicking there.

By the way, all of the Scrabble players competing in Malaysia this week have a good command of spoken English, many of them are fluent. The game didn't teach them this...travelling all over the world representing their country and communicating with other players using English has given them that. The OP didn't say scrabble taught them how to speak English, he was remarking on Scrabble being a beacon showing that not all avenues using English in Thailand are dead end streets.

 

And for those who have a comprehension problem and used the word "asinine" it scores very nicely, thank you, being a seven letter word it is likely to get a 50 point bonus.

Talking of comprehension problems, you seemed to have missed the main idea of what posters were saying.  Although not the same as my own comment, it was I believe that the English skills of these Thai scrabble players is far from 'standard', therefore the premise of the piece that the 'standard' is not all bad was quite wrong.  You may infer that 'not all avenues using English in Thailand are dead end streets' but that is not the same as the implication made in the article that the standard is 'not all bad news', and is not the same as most posters were disagreeing with.  The main idea of the original post was that the standard of English in Thailand is 'not all bad'.  This is a point the article failed to demonstrate in any way.

 

Your argument is amusing and quite clever, but entirely fallacious.

 

As for a mere 50 point bonus- pfft.

[ikke]

Me thinks the average Thai speaks better English than the average English speaks Thai....

[nausea]

Very true, but unfortunately Thai isn't a global language.Actually, everyone should learn a second language, it helps you speak your mother tongue better cos you have some understanding of the problems second language speakers face. For me (native speaker) it's speed, vocabulary, and, with Thai, the different alphabet.