(no subject)
I expected Marina to be more harsh...
"I am a student of Mima Bakoeva and was taught for one term by Mr Kenneth McGraw. This article, however, shows the situation from a quite different angle than I saw it. So I consider it important to add my comments, at least for the sake of my classmates and me.
We Bulgarians, as a typical nation of the Balkans and Eastern Europe possess a pretty low self-consciousness and, as a result, are eager to make foreigners love our country. That is why we were so kind with Kenneth (though I must include his charisma). Americans, obviously, don't have such a problem, quite the opposite actually: they sometimes tend to look down on the other nations. This is a fact that one needs to remember if travelling to another different culture. On the other hand, there isn't a culture nowadays that can surprise a traveller. I find the moment with the chicken hearts ridiculous- should I remind the menu of a not "barberian" country, e.g. Sctoland: black pudding, haggis...
Back to the international teachers, it's true that Mr McGraw considered it his duty to say 'Excellent' after any student's answer and some classes loved that, but he could go to extremes. So I guess this depends only on the student's personality, whether one likes that way of teaching or not. By the way, is it true that in American schools, when a child asked how much is 2+2 and answers '5', the teacher says 'Well done, you are close!'
Some parts of the article, however, are impossible to comment. I'll just say that we, Bulgarian students, have more than enough money to buy ourselves notebooks and textbooks. Didn't anyone find that information strange?!
As to the 'pleasant experience' of Mr McGraw, I would like to mention the fact that while Ms Bakoeva had to read more than 15 books for her classes, he taught us only one book (from 6) during the whole term (stressing more on the content rather than on the literary qualities and specificities) and thus, he endangered our performance on the matriculation exam...
One last thing: I noticed something interesting in Mr McGraw's behaviour. The first month he was very punctual and always called us 'M'am' or 'Sir'. This changed very soon.
However different a culture is, one can get the hang of it quickly."