Went there last night, in the spot where Garica's was. The food was far better than Garcia's. Service was a bit pokey, but it's only been open a week or two, so perhaps in time that'll improve. The menu had a lot of interesting choices. No liquor license yet, but they said that's coming soon. Definitely going back!

[quote=young guns][/quote]

Are you serious?

No shame. None.

If ignorance is bliss, young guns must be ecstatic.

His descendants probably haven't been in this country for anywhere close to as long as those that he's making racist comments about.

I'll soon stop in for a meal, myself.

Surprisingly enough, I was too busy enjoying a pleasant meal with my family than to ask to see documentation from the employees. That, and I'm not a racist idiot that automatically assumes Hispanics working an honest job are illegally doing so.

Just because the ICE Stasi came and led the previous Mextaurant owner away doesn't mean that this owner is breaking any stupid laws. The previous owner was a great guy, btw, and I wish they hadn't caught him. If I saw him today, I might buy him another drink or 3, and he'd probably reciprocate, as he always did.

I hope the new business does well, and I extend to any new immigrants there a sincere welcome to the United Socialist States of Amerika.

We had a Mexican in my ESL class, but since he's going to take his GED in the Spanish version, he switched to a more appropriate class. He'd probably still be in mine, at the same time, but he's also too busy working hard, at a Mexican restaurant.

So, we're down to 5 Chinese, 1 Viet, 2 Cambodians, a Sri Lankan, an Armenian, a Hungarian, a French woman, an Algerian, and a Brazilian.

I had one fool on here the other day who baited me with "If I've made any spelling mistakes, VM Smith will correct me.".

Well...no, I wouldn't waste my time. A man who is that proud of his ignorance will never learn much of anything.

My students are the exact opposite of that. Every one of the immigrants I've had the pleasure of working with, in the last 14 months, has drive and pride; they all want to work hard and better themselves. They have jobs and/or families, but they take the time and make the effort to do it; I have enormous respect for that kind of person. I want to continue to have the inspiring opportunity of associating with people like that, so I've made sure that the place I plan to move to, Greeneville Tn., also has a Learning Volunteer group.

If anyone is interested in improving their English, I tecommend these books:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Grammar+in+Use

I'm going through the intermediate book, and will get the advanced book. Some of our students use the basic, but about half use the intermediate. Any native English speaker who has been through American K-12 should start with the intermediate, as a refresher on what you may have forgotten, and to learn the things you may not have learned, because of having bad teachers, or from being an imperfect student, or both. I think that if you approach it with the focus that a motivated adult can bring to bear, it will put your grammar at the level a 12th grader should be at, but which very few are at, unfortunately.

I figure my English is passable, but I figure passable isn't good enough, if I'm presuming to teach someone; I owe them my best effort. So, even though tutors aren't required to, or even advised to, buy the books, I did. LOL...it's amazing what I've forgotten; a half century will do that. More precisely, although I usually use correct grammar, I've forgotten, or even never completely learned, many of the rules, and I've learned that unless you can quickly and concisely explain the rules governing how and why you do something...how it works, really, then you can't really say you know it. Teaching is, in large part, explaining, and to explain it, you have to know it.

Great, large format, in a quality soft-cover. Every lesson is on a left hand page, with a worksheet for it on the right hand, which makes back-referral easy and fast. Carefully doing each lesson and worksheet should take 10-15 min. 142 lessons, with answers at the book's end, with appendices between.

Where do you teach ESL?

Now that you've had just over a year with those students, I'd like to ask you what you think of the policy of requiring 'proficiency' in the English language one year after entering the country. The 'proficiency' tests are difficult and made for students raised in America, yet the government punishes schools when large percentages of their ESL students don't pass the tests, even if they have no been in the country for one year. (The one year clock includes time spent out of the country. Many of our student go 'home' over summer and for extended Christmas breaks.)

Any Congressperson or US Ed Dept official, or state Ed Dept official, who voted for that requirement, or pushed for it, should be forced to study Spanish for one year, while still working (with all the papers they're working with written in Spanish), and then be tested in it. If they fail, they should be fired. And afterwards, they should apply at McDonald's; maybe they'd qualify to work there. Maybe not, though.

Ithaca, 1st Presbyterian Church...It's a Tompkins BOCES/Tompkins Learning Volunteers/Catholic Charities joint effort. I'm a volunteer tutor, and worth every penny they pay me.

Really, I wish I'd got into it years before. I'm moving to Greeneville Tn., and the fact that they have a similar outfit in that city was one reason I picked that small city. We currently have a Brazilian, a French woman, an Algerian, a Hungarian, an Armenian, two Cambodians, a Sri Lankan, a Vietnamese, and 5 Chinese, all adults, all intelligent and hard working, and all people I'd never have met, otherwise.

They recently held a birthday party for me...the interesting and delicious food they made and brought to it blew me away, and even more so did their impulse to throw the party! They're thankful for my help, and I'm very fortunate to know them.

Everybody there wants to be there, is positive, and eager and motivated to learn, and it's my pleasure.

I see that my prior link to the books is bad. My cover says: Grammar in Use, Intermediate, 3rd Edition, Raymond Murphy and William Smalzer, Cambridge.

Love it! Looking back at my post, it looks as though I am just learning the language.

Proof reading is a habit I've formed at work, but not online. Obviously.

The requirement used to be 3 years, but they said that wasn't fast enough, so it became 1 year. Our district is a FOCUS district because our Special Education (students with learning disabilities) and ESOL students aren't passing the state ELA at high enough rates. Shocked, shocked I am that students with cognitive disabilities and those who aren't native speakers aren't passing an English Language Arts test at high rates.

The book is available in an online PDF, for anyone interested but not able to buy the book. I thought I'd check it out to see how my 8th grade English teacher's lessons have stuck with me. She was amazing in her understanding of how English works. I never learned anything more important than what she taught me, except maybe how to write a paper with proper citations.

http://www.skolest.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Grammar-In-Use-Intermediate-with-Answers.pdf