Singapore's Good English Award in Bad English

Singapore's Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) is currently asking school students to nominate their favourite English teachers for the Movement's 'Inspiring Teacher of English Award'. You would have thought that the least the SGEM could do was to ensure that their own Nomination Form for the Award was grammatically correct. How can the SGEM assess English teachers and give an award to the best English teacher when the whole world can see that it can't even churn out a few sentences that are free of grammatical errors?

You must be wondering how anyone can make grammatical errors in a Nomination Form which has mainly empty spaces for students to fill in. You underestimate the SGEM's propensity for making grammatical errors if you think it can't possibly trip up on a Nomination Form. At the start of the Nomination Form, there is an explanatory note consisting of only five or six sentences. Short though this explanatory note may be, you can be sure that if there is room in any bit of writing for grammatical errors to be made, the Speak Good English Movement is sure to make them.

Fools or Liars?

A couple of months ago, I was seated by myself in my favourite restaurant eating my favourite meal when I overheard a conversation at the next table which was occupied by a small family consisting of a Brit (presumably so from his accent), his Asian wife and their young son of kindergarten-going age. The boy was eating fish and chips and he said very loudly, 'These are my all chips'. His father very swiftly corrected him, 'These are all my chips'.