My picky opinion about using languages

I was teaching in a quiet coffee shop this afternoon, but it wasn't quite anymore since several girls came in speaking English loudly. In the very beginning, I didn't know if they are Taiwanese or not. Yet, after a few minutes, I realized that they are actually Taiwanese because they started to talk in Mandarin. They kept being the most noisy group in the shop. In their conversation, it's about half Mandarin and half English. Among the English part, the most words I heard is "shit". Yes, "shit". It's really uncomfortable hearing that from time to time, especially from girls at the age of 13-15.

It is a very interesting phenomenon in Taiwan: we tend to admire people who speak fluent English. English is one of the subjects in school, but very few people really like English and use it well. That's the reason why people envy those with proficient English ability, especially speaking ability (because you can only know if a person's English is good from his/her speaking ability at first)

Consequently, you can always find people speaking English loudly but not really fluently in public places. Sometimes I call it sort of "show off".

From a very picky perspective, if you want to speak a language, just use it thoroughly. It is reasonable sometimes if you happen to forget how to say a word in your non-native language. But using English WORDS when you speak Chinese?? That's very weird. It shows nothing but how bad both your English and Chinese are. Because you can not say a whole sentence in English, and also not be able to know how to say the ENGLISH WORD in CHINESE. Of course, if you are in English class or having language exchange, that would be a totally different situation. Instead, students who try hard to express themselves are supposed to be encouraged.