I’m looking for a new housemate right now and put up an ad on Craigslist.  I’ve been emailing back and forth with a few people and am pretty sure I’ll find someone by this weekend.  I’m trying not to discriminate based on grammar and spelling, but some of the responses I get are pretty terrible.  For example:

Your place like nice but looks to crowded for 2 more people and the room sees way to small.

I immediately remember being an English teacher in China and have to resist the urge to whip out my red pen when I read things like this.  Unfortunately, this person does not have the excuse of learning English late in life – he’s a native of the southwestern US and is actually attending university.  Unlike many people responding to the ad, however, he gets points for using both capitalization and punctuation.  Now I understand why my school makes it so hard to get out of intro English.