The page in the course book couldn’t be better, as it relates directly to the daily experience of everybody in the classroom: a vivid colour photograph of a Bangkok traffic jam and the statement: ‘The traffic in Bangkok is so bad that around 300 babies are born in cars on their way to the hospital each year. Many traffic police take a course in midwifery (delivery of babies nursing)!’

As it happened, the last time I taught this particular unit, one of my students was at a very advanced stage of pregnancy and we all shared a laugh at the possibility of our mother-to-be giving birth to her baby in her car while driving back home after the lesson!

On a more serious note, students invariably believe that the best way to reduce Bangkok’s traffic congestion and improve the environment is for the city to have an extensive network of BTS and MRT lines covering all districts, similar to many other large cities around the world. Disappointment is also expressed about the very long time that any extension – for example the two additional BTS stations after On Nut on the Sukhumvit line – or the development of completely new lines actually takes to become a reality here.

In other lessons when the general topic is transportation, our students often wish for an investment in faster inter-city train links which would be a more environmentally friendly, comfortable and safer method of travel than by road. Our text books display beautiful pictures of the latest passenger train technology such as the high speed trains of France and the bullet trains of Japan – imagine zipping from Bangkok to Chiang Mai in just a couple of hours in one of these amazing machines!

To end on a postive note: we eagerly await the start of regular services on the new Airport Link trains that are due to enter their final test runs in December – undoubtedly a move in the right direction to make the air we breathe cleaner!

The T-shirt texts cover a wide variety of messages, ranging from cute romantic phrases, lines about popular tourist attractions around the world, school events and advertising slogans of every description. The designs of the shirts are just as diverse: some being single colour with words only and others multi-coloured with an eye catching picture, photograph or cartoon.

Unfortunately the written English on the shirts is not always one hundred percent accurate – a little spelling or grammar error has crept in, often causing me to have a little smile to myself. However it is not the fault of the person wearing the linguistically offending item of clothing, so I do not make it a practice to go up to them and point out the mistake!

In fact I actually own and wear a grey T-shirt, chosen because of my earlier profession in the magazine publishing industry,that bears the words:

Coming in your next issue Well come too … 

Shouldn’t this read : Welcome to …?

Now and then I see a T-shirt that is not altogether polite, that is displaying a word or expressions that are definitely not to be found in English conversation course-books because they are for many people offensive or taboo. Whether these kinds of garments are good fashion is very much a matter of personal opinion.

There is an old saying: ‘Clothes make the person’, and in the fashion industry you make

 ‘a fashion statement’. In other words, the clothes you wear are an extension of your own

personality. The wide offering of different T-shirts certainly helps to brighten up the BTS journey and I hope new creative and original messages continue to be printed on the clothes.

By the way, English Click has its own very stylish polo shirt in a range of colours which I wear for special occasions, and these can be bought by our students at a very affordable price.

What do you think about T-shirt designs? Talk to a friend about it – in English if you can!