Anyone else just see the episode??? Woah! How SAD??

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Having taught English as a foreign language for many years, not to mention having dealt with foreigners frequently all my life, one of the big giveaways of foreigner speakers even those who master the language is to use the long verb format in their sentences. Although it seems easy to English speakers, the use of contractions for foreigners is very hard to grasp, even for polyglots as in the case of Ziva. Furthermore, it's one of the things that tends to annoy those of us teaching English as a foreign language to students with advanced level, i.e. Cambridge Proficiency Certificate (Top grade TOEFL - but exam function has a a different format), is their tendency to use long format, mainly because they feel uncomfortable using the contracted format. Also contractions are difficult to understand for foreigners, you need to be really immersed in the language 100% for several years on the trot.
I find my father even after 60 years in the UK at times still reverts to the long format, particularly if he's been speaking to somebody in his own languages (Basque + Spanish - which also have contractions by the way) for a while beforehand, and until he gets back into the swing of English he does not use contractions.
Don't presume to be an absolute authority but after teaching over 20 years, I reckon I do have some authority on the matter.

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