American Stanley enjoyed learning Chinese and helping others with English on language applications. His fluent Chinese always impressed native Chinese speakers. As usual, he tried helping an English learner named Teresa whose native language was Chinese.

Stanley left a polite comment asking what she meant in her piece, because the context was somewhat confusing. Instead of explaining, Teresa got offended and angry. She said she could easily understand Stanley’s Chinese messages, although he made some errors. She implied that he was not a professional English teacher, so he could not understand what she wrote.

That was the first time that Stanley was doubted about his English comprehension by an English learner whose English was not good. Before he replied, Teresa blocked him. He did not even have the chance to say anything. He thought people on language applications wanted to take advice from native speakers to improve their target language. Apparently he was wrong.

Stanley was rather upset to be blocked out of the blue. He wrote something online relating to this event and received some supportive feedback. People told him that they had similar experience. He felt better, because he was not alone.