Googlish vs. English

(Jakarta, Indonesia) A systemic glitch has been exposed in the Indonesian educational system regarding the nationwide effort to teach the English language to the country's boys and girls.

Unfortunately, the quality of many English teachers and textbooks is gravely worrying.

Aside from containing grammatical and punctuation errors, some English textbooks produced in Indonesia are even created with, well, Google Translate.

Yes, it appears that Indonesian instructional material is merely cranked into an online translator with the result transcribed into a textbook for distribution and use by thousands of students.

"Googlish" is being taught even though online translators have generally been recognized as less than accurate. In fact, it's hardly arguable that online translators, Google and others, occasionally put out absolute gibberish.

Nevertheless, this is a situation where students are being taught material which likely will have to be unlearned at some point if English language competency is to be achieved.

Companion post at EdWatch.