Old friend Valerio posted a photo of something he saw at Heathrow (en route to Rome) which says "Chat to us via WhatsApp", wanting to know if "chat to" was correct English. He says only "chat with" is used in American English.
This reminds me of my time in Taipei working for Conoco Taiwan.
A radio operator colleague's friend, Mr Yang, was a manager at a hotel who decided to run a little business on the side, training tourist guides.
There was a national exam for it, comprising the obvious elements related to tourism: the geography and history of Taiwan, especially the popular tourist sites, and English.
The English test was in two parts: a multiple-choice Q&A test (for the Listening element), and a one-to-one interview (for the Oral element).
Mr Yang asked me to design a batch of sample multiple-choice papers for his course, then record them (with me and a male voice to distinguish between the Q role and the A role).
Rather than just let the students listen to the recordings (which was all they had to do for the test), Mr Yang decided to invite me along for the feedback once their answer sheets had been marked (by one of his staff). This would give the students extra Listening and Oral practice and interaction, which was all good preparation for the interview element, and of course for real life listening and speaking (which they didn't get much of in those days). Most forward-thinking indeed, to give his business that extra pull factor.
When the would-be students found out at enrolment that the teacher was to be someone from Singapore, a lot of them objected, saying they wanted an American. One of them, a Singaporean studying at the National University of Taiwan, said, "I'm from Singapore. I know what the standard of English is like there. I don't want to learn English from a Singaporean."
Mr Yang said they could attend a couple of lessons to find out for themselves what the quality of my English was before deciding to register and pay. At the end of my first lesson, all the Doubting Thomases paid up for the whole course without testing me for the rest of the two lessons that they were allowed to sit through before paying up. (A lot of them said, in case you're interested, that, in their experience, not all native-speakers knew how to explain to them how the language works or why.)
Their multiple-choice test exercises could be, and were, marked (during the break before I stepped in for the feedback) by Mr Yang's staff using the answer sheets provided by me (the setter). My presence, therefore, had to have a value-added element to it, so:
* Rather than just let them have their marked answer scripts back, I asked them to explain why their right/wrong answers were right/wrong. This gave them some practice in speaking, as well as some training in being what I now call in my teaching of Mandarin "Sherlock Holmes" (one of his skills being deductive reasoning) -- a skill they'd have to apply in real life, without the teacher being there to give them the nod (or otherwise).
* I threw in as much extra information and insights as I could into things related to the English language that they might not know. One example: names used in real life / informal reference / as nicknames, especially by Americans*, don't always match their official versions -- Bill for William is not so far out, but Chuck for Charles is not such an obvious link, nor Dick for Richard, nor Bob for Robert. When I saw them scribbling furiously in their notebooks, I knew I was on the right track. (Taiwan was an ally of America at the time, so they were mostly exposed to Americans, e.g., the soldiers based there. In fact, all white-looking foreigners would be "American" to them, even those who speak with a very strong non-English accent, e.g., French, German, Italian, Spanish, because Taiwanese people didn't know enough English, nor enough about the outside world, to be able to tell the difference. The Western equivalent would be that "all Chinese people look alike" -- in my case, "all Africans" when I first went to SOAS / School of Oriental and African Studies.)
* I taught them as much tourist-scenario-based English as possible, which also served as preparation for the one-to-one interview element of their test. One obvious scenario was shopping, so I went for role-playing, e.g., how to ask about prices / ask for other options in colour or size, etc. To one of the phrases I taught them, "That's too expensive," a student raised his hand and said, "I thought the way to say it is, [complete with an American twang] 'It's a rip-off!'" Hahahahaha, I still laugh now as I'm writing this. I had to issue the warning (and still do, now, more than half a century later) that it would be safer to steer clear of slang.
(Taiwan, 1975)
