10 August 2018

A Story From My Past

A friend of mine posted this meme on Facebook. I responded saying, 'OMG! Having done both, the stories I could tell!'



And here's one of those stories!


Many years ago, when I was in university, I worked in the university's textbook store. During 'rush' at the beginning of each semester there wasn't room on the shelving for all the books we had, so we had floor stacks of books that were in high demand, usually books for lower level courses.


As it happened the English books were shelved on one side of an aisle, the French books on the opposite side. At the end of the aisle was a floor stack of French books.


I had a student come in to buy his books. He had his schedule in hand that carried the title of each book he needed for his classes. He picked up a book from the stack. He examined it minutely, looking at the cover, the title page, leafing through it. It was published in France and entirely in French. It is possible that it contained Library of Congress cataloging data in English, but that would have been the extent of the language.


After his careful examination, he turned to me and asked, 'Is this book used in English 1?'!! Whilst we had lots of foreign students at the school, this young man spoke standard, Midwest US English. He was not someone who knew no English.


I was so tempted to tell him, 'Yes, it is', but I restrained myself!

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