I am irritated daily by this reply, but I’ve been here so long that it surely sounds correct (although irritating!) Yesterday in class one of my students said her ESL teacher in school said so so isn’t a word and native speakers don’t say it. Really?? I’m a native speaker, but I’ve said it …I think…
Would “OK” make you feel better?
The phrase “so-so” is common to about every language in existence.
Also, the “so-so” hand movement - palm down, ratate at the wrist thing - has been found to be universally understood even at the most primitive culture levels.
“so-so”, “asi-asi”, “cum ce-cum ca”, meso-meso", etc. …its all good.
I am not an english teacher and do not play one on television.
so-so is certainly a word. You can even find it the dictionary.
That doesn’t make it “proper”, but it does show that it is most definitely used by native speakers. In oral English “so-so” is a common reply to that sort of question.
Personally, I find “I’m fine, thank you, how are you” in answer to the question “How are you?” to be annoying and I teach students to give other answers. “So-so” is always one of the options I try and get them to give instead of the cookie-cutter answer.
I solved this problem ages ago by teaching them one new adjective a day to describe their day.
terrific
horrible
alright
enjoyable
uneventful
frustrating
good
bad
busy
and i always follow up with “why?”
i’ve been doing this with my first and second graders for about a year now and haven’t heard a “so-so” since.
you have to give them the vocab and then they’ll use it.
It’s a word and it has it’s place. One problem is that is often used awkwardly though to answer yes/no questions, as in Do you like pizza? So so.
I teach my elementary students “Same shit, different pile”.
Just FYI, “asi-asi” is NOT considered good Spanish in a number of Spanish-speaking countries. It’s in all the American textbooks, though.
“So-so” is certainly current usage in the US.
It annoys me too. One reason is that the Taiwanese use it so often. Back home, yes, you’ll hear it occasionally, but certainly not dozens of times a day like here. I think I heard it once or twice a month back home.
I’s just that so-so is being used too much. I used to hear so-so once in a blue moon, now I hear it almost daily. The French version sounds great to me, though. Comme-ci comme-ca, I hope I’m right.
Yes, Rinkals. Literally it means “like this, like that”.
There seems to be an awful lot of verbal shrugging when the Taiwanese use English. I find that I spend a good part of the beginning of each school year breaking my students’ habits of using ellipses and “etc., etc.” in their writing assignments. They learn these devices, but are never taught how to use them properly… like not using them when you’re expected to write a descriptive paragraph. 
They like “so-so” for several reasons. One, it’s non-commital. It’s hard to ask, “why don’t you have a feeling about this?” Probably more importantly, though, is that it’s short and easy to say. “Ok” is another favorite for the same reasons.
[quote=“ironlady”]Just FYI, “asi-asi” is NOT considered good Spanish in a number of Spanish-speaking countries. It’s in all the American textbooks, though.
“So-so” is certainly current usage in the US.[/quote]
‘asi asi’ is about the only thing I heard repeatedly
on my recent trip to Spain. I figured that it
meant ‘so-so’ and it seems that I am right.
I know it isn’t technically wrong, but I un-teach “so-so” with every single class I have. using the same technique of ading vocab that another poster mentioned above.
For intermediate classes, i also like to un-teach the overused “convenient.” It seems that everything from streets to watches are convenient.
It’s one of those words that will one day give me an aneurysm.
Ecaps
[quote=“wipt”][quote=“ironlady”]Just FYI, “asi-asi” is NOT considered good Spanish in a number of Spanish-speaking countries. It’s in all the American textbooks, though.
“So-so” is certainly current usage in the US.[/quote]
‘asi asi’ is about the only thing I heard repeatedly
on my recent trip to Spain. I figured that it
meant ‘so-so’ and it seems that I am right.[/quote]
Spain is not the only Spanish-speaking country in the world…by far… 
How was you day darling? Not too bad, horse horse tiger tiger.
I’m only moderately annoyed when so-so is used to mean something between good and bad to the exclusion of any other word. I’m more peeved when they use it to mean somewhere on a non-good/bad spectrum like, say, something between easy and hard or between fat and thin.
-
How are you?
-
So-so.
OK, but cliched enough. I reward students who say anything besides so-so or the robotic “I’m fine and you.” -
Do you like spaghetti?
-
So-so.
-
Is your dad’s car big?
-
So-so.
-
Was your test yesterday difficult?
-
So-so.
:fume: <- is what my students see.
So-so is banned in my adult classes. It is just a lazy answer when they can’t think of something better to come up with, which is most of the time.
I know they can say so-so and use it in context, so they can use it out of the classroom when I’m not around to hear it. In the classroom, they can use the time to learn many more adjectives instead of coming out with the standard “so-so” response that got them through cram school and college.