'it is so' gibt es (it is so hard to...), aber nicht am Ende eines Satzes. 'that's the way it is' wäre mein Vorschlag.

Erinnert mich an einen meiner Englischlehrer, der immer fragte: Who will read? - Wer will lesen?

I disagree with krazy_mom. While the expression is uncommon at the end of a sentence, it is not wrong.

Here is the first stanza of the hymn "Everlasting Love":
Loved with everlasting love, led by grace that love to know;
Gracious Spirit from above, Thou hast taught me it is so!
O this full and perfect peace! O this transport all divine!
In a love which cannot cease, I am His, and He is mine.
In a love which cannot cease, I am His, and He is mine.
(emphasis mine)
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/i/a/iamhisah.htm

To a native speaker putting "it is so" at the end of a sentence will sound quasi-poetic, somewhat old fashioned. krazy_mom's suggestion "[and] that's the way it is" is much more common, probably in part because a well-known newsman of a previous generation, Walter Cronkite, always signed off his broadcasts with "And that's the way it is on". "During Cronkite's 19-year tenure as anchor of the "CBS Evening News," his trademark sign-off, "And that's the way it is," became more familiar to many Americans than the Lord's Prayer." http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3612

In addition, the 1919 White Sox World Series scandal (trial in 1921) added the phrase, "Say it ain't so, Joe!" to the lexicon. This was allegedly the comment by some boys gathered at the courtroom door on "Shoeless" Joe Jackson's second day of testimony.

though grammatically not wrong, "it is so" at the end of a sentence is very old-fashioned, to say the least. But more than that, I suspect it is one of the teacher's "pet" phrases because it is quite a literal translation of "es ist so," which in perfectly normal for a German to say, especially when the whole sentence is "ich weiss nicht warum, aber es ist so."

@schmü .Your teacher's not from Northern Ireland by any chance?
In certain regions of NI,you can hear both 'it is so'and 'so it is'. 'It is so'would be used,not exactly as in your example,meaning 'that's just how it is',but more as affirmation of a statement that has been disputed e.g.'xzds is a town in Spain'- 'It is not ' -'It is so'
'So it is'is used more as a habit e.g.'It's raining,so it is'-'he's nearly fifty,so he is.'
See youse English,youse'uns don't understand yer own language, so youse do'nt.

So in Northern Ireland, the teacher is saying something like:
"ich weiß nicht warum, es wird aber doch benutzt, äätsch!"
(But only if she says "I don't know why, but it IS SO!")

For England I agree that "it is so" sounds old/poetic. Actually, it reminds me a little of Star Trek (sorry) ("Make it so") or other science fiction films that like to use mystic-sounding phrases to make their older characters sound dramatic and wise.

OK, you are right, it does exist, but it is not generally in use. But having suffered from more or less incompetent German teachers of English (remember, her class was wondering if that phrase is correct - they wouldn't do that for a native speaker, at least not without pointing out her origin), this is a plain case of someone having no clue, but insisting that this is the way it is done (judging from her performance, that is highly doubtful as well).

Which is the reason why I put something similar from my personal experience in my post.

BTW, this is very typical as far as the standard of English being taught in German schools is concerned. It ranges from unidiomatic to plainly wrong. There are exceptions, but not nearly enough.

We probably all agree with krazy mom that this teacher is most likely not from Northern Ireland, trying to sound poetic or like Obi Wan Kanobi, or quoting freely from the 1919 White Sox World Series :-)
Out of interest, if you are still there Schmü, what level class is this? And what level was the 'who will read' teacher?
(I deeply sympathise with any non-native teachers forced to teach a foreign language and expected to know everything despite their job hardly giving them time or enough money to visit the other country much - although you would think they would look out for phrases they use all the time...)

Das erinnert mich an meine Englisch-Lehrerin, die darauf bestand, dass "however" nicht mit "wie auch immer" übersetzt werden dürfe ... *grummel*

"It ranges from unidiomatic to plainly wrong."

Well, thank you ever so much, krazy mom! There´s nothing like getting your share of praise and acknowledgment every once in a while... :-(

Unsere Klasse ist eine 11. Gymnasium.

So, once more for the record, here's a better solution in English.

Schmü, maybe a tactful thing would be to model this phrase yourselves when you're asking the teacher a question:

Do you know a rule for that, or is that just the way it is?

Would this be a useful New Entry?

Does the word order matter in German (So ist es vs. Es ist so)?

Does it need a little filler word like 'halt' or something?

Wow, are we having fun doing some thigh-slapping teacher-bashing here! By the way, what´s your job, krazy mom?

I won't be slapping my thighs if my daughter learns mistakes from her teachers in Year 11. This is a phrase the teacher must need pretty often, not something she came up with once on the spur of the moment.

@hm--us, #12:
re dt. Gebrauch: in schriftlicher Form würde man m.E. definitiv ein relativierendes Füllwort (eben, nun einmal, einfach) einfügen:
Es ist eben so. - So ist es eben
Es ist einfach so - So ist es einfach.
Es ist nun (ein)mal so - So ist es nun (ein)mal.
Auch "halt" ist möglich, doch ist das deutlich süddt. und für mein Gefühl eher dem mündlichen als dem schriftlichen Gebrauch vorbehalten.

Mündlich würde man wohl meistens auch eines der Füllwörter verwenden. Aber auch über die Intonation kann man eine gewisse Relativierung erzielen (langezogenes ist). Ohne Füllwort (und mit kurzem, betontem ist) wirkt so ist es/ es ist ansonsten sehr autoritativ/autoritär. Während mit Füllwort nach meinem Empfinden die Wortstellung keinen Unterschied macht, klingt "es ist so" für mich merklich strenger als "so ist es")

Hi CM2DD: I wouldn´t either. And I never questioned your remarks about this particular teacher. What I´m saying is that I don´t like the kind of generalizations made by krazy mom (maybe you should read the whole thread....).
You were more polite in your remarks earlier on (although maybe a bit condescending), however I doubt that you will find many EFL teachers nowadays who haven´t spent at least one year abroad. I, for one, don´t know many...

I didn't intend to be condescending, sorry if it came across that way.
I can't say much about krazy_mom's experience of the English taught in schools - my kids are still only at primary school. My daughter's English teacher is very good - she makes mistakes like that "Who will read" (I think my daughter may actually have mentioned that particular mistake) but she seems very open to new ideas. My daughter was forced to say that "sheep have fur", but took it with good humour! And at this level it doesn't matter too much, as long as my daughter can recognise the mistakes: they are just using simple language we use at home.
I really hope there are some native speakers at higher levels. I also spent a year abroad as part of my French degree, so am aware of exactly how much or how little you can learn during nine or so months. I would really hope for an English teacher who makes regular trips abroad, regularly reads and listens to the radio/DVDs in English, has English-speaking friends and generally works on her English the whole time.

Since the thread has morphed into a discussion of teachers and teaching in general, I would like to add a few comments.

First, it is impractical to think that every school teacher of a particular language will be a native speaker (especially at the salaries offered here in the US), although some private companies like Berlitz and Interlingua insist on this. That means that there will always be gaps in the teacher's knowledge of language and culture. Of course, there are also gaps for native speakers - they're just smaller and in more specialized areas.

Second, I agree that no matter what the subject area - but especially in foreign language - a teacher has an obligation to be as competent as possible. That's why I spent a year at Eberhardt-Karls-Universität in Tübingen and do my best to spend prolonged periods of time each year in a German-speaking country every summer. (Some of you may remember my asking about the Märchenstraße last year.) It's also why I participate in LEO. I know other teachers who do similar things; unfortunately not all teachers do.

Third, while German teachers of English have their students longer than American teachers of German, it is unreasonable to expect them to produce native-fluent speakers. I have students for less than an hour per day, 180 days per year. Take away time for school business, testing days, presentations, etc., etc., and I have perhaps 150 hours per year with my students. If a student stays in the program all four years, we have fewer than 600 hours of input in the language. Yet the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages reports that 720 hours are needed to reach an intermediate level of German ability. My goal, as a result, is not to produce advanced or superior speakers but to produce people who love the language and know enough to continue learning on their own.

Fourth, all of us have certain words and phrases that we repeat, and they become part of how people identify us. Even for native speakers these are not always the most common terms, nor do they always fit the "standard". When I was an undergraduate in college, we had a professor with a repertoire of "pet" phrases. The various sections of his lecture classes played baseball based on his phrases. One particular phrases was a base hit; a different one was a double; and one of his less-used terms was a home run. The teacher in question, for whatever reason, obviously has a pet phrase that is admittedly unusual. Does this really call into question everthing she teaches or has taught?

Fifth, and I have no idea what the answer to this question is, was the intent of the question simply to clarify a point of usage, or was the intent to find fault and therefore impugn the ability and undermine the authority of the teacher? If it was the former, and the student truly believes he or she must address the issue, then hm -- us gave the best answer: simply model the more common usage. (It's a standard teaching technique that is much in vogue in the US these days; we are taught in methods classes to avoid overt error correction except where it interferes with communication and instead model correct language. Supposedly the brain will eventually register this, and the correct language will eventually "fall out" of the learner's mouth.)

Thanks for reading. I know this got long, but that's the way it is.

Sorry, this was not to be a general teacher bashing, but related to mine and those of my children, Gymnasium. The 'who will read' teacher was 9th grade Gymnasium.

Judging from what my kids show me ('we will see us Friday' - 7th grade Gymnasium) and what I see in tests and books - I am sorry, but there is lots of room for improvement.

As I said, this does not apply to everybody, but some teachers are PROUD (and mention it at every occasion) of never even having spent any amount of time in an English speaking country - puleese. There is maybe one good teacher (I don't expect them to be natives, but to have an acceptable accent and speak some sort of idiomatic English) for 4 bad ones (stangely enough, there are few mediocre ones).

The problem is not limited to German teachers of English, from my personal experience the ones in France, Italy and Spain are no better, and the ones teaching German in other countries are a mixed breed as well.

I am sorry if I stepped on anybody's toes, but the question made me remember all that lost time in school, time that could have been spent learning something worthwhile, if only there had been more teachers beyond the 'ze sree broken sretts' level.

I would even go farther than Robert and say that I've never been in or heard of a school that had native speakers as foreign-language teachers. Just statistically it seems pretty unlikely, even in a Gymnasium.

Even teachers who really work at keeping their knowledge up to date may be more the exception than the rule. As Robert pointed out, most schoolteachers get pretty modest salaries. Taking an extended vacation in another country isn't cheap, and it may not be practical for teachers who themselves have spouses and families. The students themselves probably have more time than their teachers to do things like watch DVDs and listen to music and news in the foreign language, if they want to. Teachers may already have to spend several hours after school grading papers and planning lessons. If, in what little free time is left, they don't necessarily sit down with the BBC every night for an hour or two, it's hard to fault them.

In the US at least, certification is also an issue. Even a native speaker would probably have to have a degree in the subject or a related field, and also take several undergraduate-level education courses (what Germans call pedagogy) and do supervised practice teaching, in order to be certified by the state to teach in a public school. This is often portrayed by politicians and teachers' unions as a way of keeping standards high, and it does hopefully weed out many of the least qualified people. But it also weeds out many of the best, the ones who don't want to sit through so many lectures and take so many exams about not very useful stuff they already know. Private schools may not require certification, but they tend to pay even less.

Add to that the increasing problems in many schools with discipline, budget shortfalls, bureaucracy, paperwork, and state-required testing, and there seem to be even more reasons not to become a teacher. It's hardly surprising, then, if many schoolteachers are only moderately competent, and if many native-speaker expats -- like, I believe, CM2DD and krazy_mom -- aren't schoolteachers.

So if you have the good fortune to come across a teacher who, native or not, seems to be doing it for the love of the subject matter and the kids, and who at least tries to keep learning things and is open to correcting his or her own mistakes (which is also a good skill to model for learners), you're probably already lucky.

Though I can totally understand that things like the sheep with fur would make you wonder. (-: But then again, maybe the teacher just had a really bad day that day. How many translators have laughed (wryly) about their own howlers of errors in this forum? Everyone makes dumb mistakes once in a while.

Sorry, I see that krazy_mom isn't an expat, but clearly she's near-bilingual.

Thanks to paleo for the explanation in #15. I've suggested it in New Entry.

related discussion: Es ist so. - That's the way it is.

Sorry if one innocent remark (it wasn't directed at all teachers like the 'faule Säcke' comment of our former chancellor) raised such a lot of dust.

I definitely would not want to be a teacher today. I try to raise my children to be polite, helpful and studious, but that is not always easy in today's environment, and many parents (please, I do not intend to open another can of worms here) do not place any kind of emphasis on the behavior of their children. In fact it is quite an issue just to have education take place - AT ALL. Thus any teacher who can keep the kids' attention, gain their respect and manages to put across the information has my greatest respect.

Maybe we were just plain unlucky, but too many of the teachers my kids and I had in school were not as proficient in English as I would have expected (and had hoped for).

Once again, I am not looking for native speakers, but they are supposed to teach children - questions like: Are you not interesting in that? in 12th grade are off-putting, to say the least. Also, if even the students notice that the teacher's proficiency (in whatever subject) is questionable, he will have a harder time than ever.

But I have learned something from this discussion, even a seemingly innocent childhood memory (I wonder what became of Mr. Schr...?) can cause lots of controversy. I'll try and remain even more factual than previously...

@krazy_mom #19: I am s-o-o-o sorry that you children's educational experience, at least linguistically, has been lacking. Perhaps I am in an anomalous situation, but all of the language teachers at my public high school work to improve their competence in the field. We have a couple of native Spanish speakers, and the rest of us do a variety of things to stay current (though not everyone makes the summer trips). We had one teacher a few years ago who would fit into the category you described of poor teachers, but she was only one and soon left the school. In addition, I work with a very dedicated group of language teachers who conduct workshops and prepare materials to share with other teachers and help them improve instruction.

I cannot imagine anyone actually being proud of ignorance. It boggles my mind. (But then, I want to know everything about everything.)

My non-PC opinion is that if the education establishment in the US did a better job of policing itself and promoting excellence, we wouldn't be fighting some of the battles we are currently fighting. That may or may not be true for Germany as well.

This whole exchange has made me reflect on my experience here in Australia and I realise that all of the school language teachers of my children, my wife and me were native speakers (German, French, Japanese, Chinese - actually, not Latin!). Whereas I admit that is unusual, I don't think it is unique. Australia, as one of the traditional immigrant countries, has a constant pool of first- and second-generation speakers to draw on. I get the impression that Japan also has little trouble getting native English speakers to teach there. Are there no teacher exchange programs in Germany to allow teachers to go over for a year or two?

I heard of one expat over here who wanted to become a schoolteacher, and he had to start from scratch, going to university and doing the whole course (is it 6 years?). As most expats come over, like him, when they have already finished their university degree, and want to start earning money, you can see why it doesn't appeal to many. I taught in private language schools for five years full-time and five part-time, but was never tempted to get a German qualification, partly for that reason.
I suspect that one main problem in Germany at the moment is the underfunding. Our son's first teacher openly admitted at parents' evening that she had been dragged back into the classroom from the brink of retirement, that she hadn't wanted to teach a class, and that she was not very motivated. Our daughter's teacher obviously wants to do her best for the children, and is a good teacher, but constantly seems depressed. At the last parents' evening, she said that there would not be a special event to mark the end of term(and Year 4) this year, as 'es gibt nichts zu feiern'. The school is being closed.
But they're not all like that; we've moved our son to a different school, where the teachers are younger and still seem to have a tiny spark of enthusiasm in them :-) And I'm still hopeful that the atmosphere at Gymnasium, and maybe the funding, are better.

I'd definitely agree with the use of "It is so!" in an argument as mentioned by JGMcI in #5. In fact, it is certainly used in England as well as in Northern Ireland, although I don't think I've ever heard adults use it. It basically means "Ist es doch!"

By the way, my dauther's English teacher is no better, but at least he isn't teaching 11. Klasse Gymnasium! If he was, he'd probably show up for work in the sports hall each morning ;-)

Not wanting to highjack the conversation but I am doing the PGCE teaching qualification in the UK at the moment with a view to teaching German and French in the UK. I have already got my masters in and have 3 years experience of tefl - however as i understand it, if i wanted to teach in germany (which I#d much rather do), i'd have to go back to uni and start all over again with lehramt, which is what, 5 or 6 years? Whereas I believe that German teachers can 'convert' their qualifications much more easily. Have I understood that right? I was gutted to find out I'd never be able to teach here! but i guess that explains the lack of native speakers - it'd be way too much of a commitment too early on, does anyone ever know aged 18 that they're going to want to live in germany? save the people who already do of course.....!

Wow, his has developed into a really interesting conversation and I thoroughly enjoyed reading all your comments on teachers and teaching (- haven´t been online for a while...)
I guess schmü has never intended to open such a can of worms here - what was his question in the first place? :-)
Anyway, thanks a lot to all of you out there for giving me some food for thought!

German schools are absolute rubbish, carolion. You're much better off not teaching here! It's a crazy bureaucratic system, and the PISA studies speak for themselves.

Of course, in the UK it's perfectly normal to say "C'est la vie" in such a situation (although I realise that an English teacher at a German school, especially such a teacher, may well shy away from using French).

"German schools are absolute rubbish, carolion. "

Was soll denn das für ein Kommentar sein, DW (EN). Das Schulsystem in Deutschland unterscheidet sich stark von Bundesland zu Bundesland (und die manchmal fragwürdigen Ergebnisse der PISA-Studie auch.) Ich bin von den Schulen und Lehrern meiner Kinder durchwegs angetan und auch in unserem Bekanntenkreis gibt es keine Horrorstories. Die Kinder gehen allerdings auch nicht auf irgendwelche Gruselschulen in Großstadt-Brennpunktvierteln.

Ich kenne mehrere Schüler, die ein Auslandsjahr in Amerika und Kanada eingelegt haben und eher enttäuscht darüber waren, dass das Niveau der Highschools dort (British Columbia, Québec, NY, Massachusetts) deutlich unter dem ihrer Heimatschule lag.

Hear, hear, Birgila.

After my (English teacher) husband's 20 years' exchange experience with a US high school and the school careers of two daughters plus what I hear from nephews, nieces, and friends and relatives in the UK, I couldn't agree more.

Sorry, please forgive that generalisation.

It's all very subjective, isn't it.
When my daughter started school, the first time we saw her classroom I approvingly noted the desks in little groups, not in rows. The first thing the teacher said was "Of course, when school starts, the desks will be in rows facing the front".

Or: I went to school at a time when creativity was high on the list of priorities; we wrote poems and stories as soon as we'd learned the letters, with very little correction, and had no homework until we were 11. This was to get us excited about school, make us eager to learn, and free our imaginations.

So, naturally, I find it unpleasant, not heart-warming, that my children have spent most of the first few years of school copying sentences off the blackboard or doing dictations, that they get regular homework from age 6, that there is a strict system of "correction" (we even got a booklet explaining the proper way for children to correct their work; use this colour for underlining and that colour for correction, write it X number of lines below the original...).

No doubt parents who went to school in Germany and are now in Britain are worried that their children will ever learn anything without regular dictations and copying :-)

Then again, the education system in the UK has undergone major changes in recent years, so comparing our experiences with those of our children may or may not be a fair comparison of the countries.

#37 That's right - the only experience I have of the modern British system is when my daughter spent some days at my old primary school a couple of years ago. Many things were familiar and seemed 'right', like the groups of desks, the bright pictures everywhere (not allowed here due to fire regulations), the book boxes with loads of modern books (our underfunded German schools have ancient books, many from the GDR still, some even from the '70s), the heavy emphasis on music, story-telling and creativity. The fact that you can't just wander into the school from the street. But, now I know the German system, many things seemed unpleasant too: the loudness, the rushing from one activity to the next without stopping, the evident bullying which teachers didn't even seem surprised by, etc.

I am probably more critical of the German system than I would be of the new British one, though, partly as I'm still slightly resentful at having to stay in Germany at all (nice as it is, I'm stuck here like it or not) and partly as the other parents often like and praise things I see as restrictive or boring, so I feel in the minority (making me even grumpier!). I also don't feel in a position to suggest any changes or openly criticise the system, as I'm a foreigner here, and I feel people will think I'm sticking my nose into things I don't understand and which aren't my business. So I feel powerless and grumpy. See what I mean by "all very subjective"? :-D

I guess the grass is (almost) always greener on the other side. But even if/where it is greener, it may be inedible, or even astroturf.

That´s a rather cryptic remark, Trilingual (*hmmmmm...thinkthinkthink*)