Monday, September 24, 2007

How to queue lessons

Foreign students visiting the UK are to be educated in one of Britain's most important etiquettes - how to queue properly.

Youngsters used to scrumming at bus stops in their home countries have upset locals on the Isle of Wight by barging past them in queues.

Now the Hampshire island's bus company, South Vectis, is contacting local language schools asking them to pass on tips to their students on the correct way to queue. Operations manager March Morgan Huws said the island had visiting students, especially in the summer, from across Europe including Scandinavia, Italy and Germany.

He said: "On the Isle of Wight we get lots of foreign language students staying with families. In their cultures, they do not queue for buses where they live and there is a scrum every time a bus turns up, while in British culture there is a nice orderly queue. We have had quite a few complaints from residents who queue up in an orderly fashion then all those foreign students push past them. What we have said is that we will work with the language schools to provide some instructions on the etiquette of queueing. We won't be marching the students up and down showing them how to queue, we will just leave it up to the group leaders to pass on the information."

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