One thing I mentioned way back when Get Into English started was this idea of playing word games either with a pen and paper, or by using your imagination as you commute each day to work.

The idea of these games is for you to go over vocabulary you’ve looked at in class, or just to ‘activate’ what you already know, to see what words you can produce.

Word snakes

For example, start with one word, and then see if you can think of another that starts with the last letter of the previous word:

cat -> tan -> necessary -> yard - dream

You can revise categories of vocabulary you’ve studied in class this way too:

Adjectives to describe people: sociable -> elegant -> trusting-> generous

nb If you come to a letter you can’t think of a word for, then you can choose the letter A and continue.

Phrase snakes

As the English language is full of phrases, idiomatic expressions and collocations, why not try the same thing as above, but with ‘chunks’ of language? ie with words which go together as part of a collocation.

Example

1. in and out 
2. out and about
3. about time!
   
4. time will tell
5. tell a lie
6. lie through your teeth

There aren’t many expressions starting with ‘teeth’ so if you find it hard to create a new collocation here, then you can use the word before the last word in the sentence (eg ‘your’) or you can say another collocation with the word ‘teeth’ or ‘tooth’ in it. eg fight tooth and nail; have a sweet tooth.

Variation
You can do the same as above but put the collocations in a complete sentence.

On your own or with a partner

You can do all the above on your own or with a classmate.

You can choose to do it verbally or write down your answers (so you can have a record for later).

Why not give it a go and see how it can activate your vocabulary!

Quiz

I’ve written in bold eight collocations above. Which one can you use for each of the questions below?

1. Someone who loves chocolate, cakes and other desserts has this. -> have a sweet tooth
2. To spend a short time at home before going out to do something else, before returning again, etc.
3. What is another way of saying ‘to say something which is not true’?
4. What do you say to your friend when they finally do something that you were hoping for or expecting for some time?
5. Which of the above collocations means to say something which you know is completely not true? Often we use it, for example, when someone tells us a story which has some information in it which is completely false.
6. Which of the above means to battle or to put in a lot of effort to achieve something or to oppose something?
7. Which means to be really active? ie to go out and work, run errands, and do other activities.
8. Which means we need to wait in order to find out something? The result of something will be known after some time.

How did you go?

Answers

1. have a sweet tooth eg Suzie has a sweet tooth. She loves anything made of chocolate.
   
2. in and out. eg I’ll be in and out all day so don’t worry about closing all the windows.
3. tell a lie/tell lies eg Do you really want me to tell lies to him after everything he’s done for you?!
4. About time eg You got a new girlfriend – about time!
5. Lie through your teeth eg Did you hear what he told the boss? He was lying through his teeth!
6. Fight tooth and nail eg I fought tooth and nail for you to get on the team, son.
7. Out and about. eg I was out and about the whole day.
8. Time will tell eg I’m not sure if Obama will win re-election. I guess time will tell.

Further reading from the archives

Activate your English vocabulary
15 idioms to get you going
What’s a ‘frenemy’? New portmanteau words in the media

Do you know any other word games? Feel free to leave a comment and share which ones you like.

One of my zouk teachers, a dancer from Brazil who’s lived in Prague for several years, starts his classes with some warm ups.

We then practise the basic steps which form the foundations of the dance.

And following this, he shows us some more complex dance moves and variations, which we do for about 5 minutes.

So the first 15 minutes is a warm up, followed by some new moves which we do on our own.

What I really appreciate is that when we then pair up and dance with a partner, we don’t start a completely new move or figure. Instead, the main figure (dance move) that we practise together is something that we just practised on our own for a few minutes at the start.

The lesson is staged: one ‘stage’ or part of the lesson then leads into the next.

It flows so well that, as a teacher, I wonder if the other students notice this.

Added to this, he usually brings positive energy to the class, and positivity in a teacher is contagious (though so then is negativity!).

What do you notice about your lessons?

Learning is one thing, and teaching is another.

Your teacher should have a reason for organising their lesson as they do, and having a few or more stages is designed to maximise your learning: for you to get the most out of your 60 or 90 minutes.

It doesn’t mean though that the student sees this.

So next time you have a lesson, see if you can work out what your teacher’s plan was.

It doesn’t mean that they will robotically do everything they thought they would do, as things can come up and change the direction of a lesson, but in general there will be a goal or reason why you’re doing what you’re doing.

And even teachers who don’t have a plan may have a valid reason for doing so – which is in a way a kind of plan.

While there is a movement of teachers who believe in making lessons as spontaneous as possible, and therefore throwing away the coursebook and not having a ‘rigid’ plan, even this style of teaching still involves some kind of thinking about what they’re going to do that day.

A lesson that flows in a way that sets the scene for productive learning – it is an art, but something that a student may not see until later on.

What do you think?

Do you see how your English or other language teachers organise their lessons?

How do they create a positive or fun or warm atmosphere?

What’s more important for your learning: the organisation that went into planning the lesson, or the fun (and other emotions) which you had in the moment?

After several years without a TV, I got one this week. It’ll help with my own English lessons as I can link my computer up to the screen and use it for playing some English training videos, but it’ll also help with my Czech.

I know, TV has a bad rap. These days magazines and self-development writers and bloggers are saying “turn it off.”

It’s a waste of time.

Dumbed-down TV programmes too – hardly anything worth watching.

But it’s different when it comes to learning a foreign language.

Tonight I got a kick out of following what looked like the Czech version of the dysfunctional family sitcom. I heard some common spoken Czech phrases, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I could follow based on matching the pictures of what I could see with the words and phrases I could recognise.

Making the switch

Quite often when I’m at my desk at home I’ll play the radio in the background, and listen to a lot of English language pop music. I’m a sucker for this stuff – Pitbull, Gotje, even that song from Twilight.

But while I like Evropa Radio or Radio Expres, they’re not really helping me understand this country any better, nor its language.

So I decided to spend my time differently. From now on I’ll swap the radio for TV while I’m at home like this.

The first night – mission accomplished.

I’ve watched 2 programmes tonight. The first was that TV Nova comedy I mentioned, where the family all went bowling for the evening. I didn’t catching everything of course (maybe 40%), but I could see the teenage girl was acting like she didn’t know her parents. The mother came across as quite clever and witty, and the father a fun but fat lazeabout (is there any sitcom on the planet where the main male role is a smart, successful handsome man?!).

Anyhow, I liked it as I could follow the basic storyline, and I heard a lot of words and phrases that I’ve learnt with my teachers or heard when out at parties. I also got to hear them with emotion – pronunciation is one thing, but feeling the phrase makes it come across as genuine when you say it.

You need input to learn a language

I’ll agree with you that it’s better to go out and have a real conversation with a friend in the language you’re trying to learn.

But as I’ve said before, it’s ok to spend some time on your own and find another way to take in the language (eg see here).

When you watch TV as an active listener, you can pick up quite a bit. I see television as a source of language input, and this is one of the most important ingredients you need in order to learn a language (motivation and practise are also vital).

Input can be from anything – from talking with a native speaker, chatting in English with your friend (wherever they’re from), reading the newspaper, watching a TED video.

In this sitcom I heard a lot of phrases which you come across when talking with Czechs, but which are not in the coursebooks. And thanks to the second programme I watched, I got to revise some vocabulary I’ve studied recently in class.

In short, watching TV helped activate my vocabulary.

And what was that second programme? Actually it was the news! In just a few minutes I got to revise some basic vocabulary:

elections – volby, spokesman – mluvčí, storms – bouřky, rain – přset, cloudy – oblačný, resident – obyvatel.

Summing up – make it active

Again, I still think it’s better to go out and interact with people. But sometimes you’ll be at home, and you may wonder what else you can do.

Mix it up. See what you feel works best for you.

Next time I’ll grab a pen and paper and write down some useful phrases and words I hear.

This is important to make sure you stay active and not passive. If you’re passive, the TV will be another source of background noise.

What about you:

• What you can understand from watching the news or a sitcom?
• What words, collocations and phrases do you recognise? Can you guess their meaning?
• More globally, would you be able to summarise what you’ve watched?
• Are you able to write a review for your teacher of what you’ve just seen on TV?

PS – input

As I said above, language input is everywhere. Even this blog post has a lot of spoken English phrases in it. Did you spot any?

A few include:

TV has a bad rap
dumbed-down TV programmes
Tonight I got a kick out of…
I’m a sucker for this stuff
The mother came across as quite clever and witty…
I’ll grab a pen
pen and paper

If you have an English teacher, they can help you recognise new words and collocations. If not, well, this is a ‘game’ you can play on your own where you look for useful lexical items.

English is everywhere but sometimes you have to find it.

Are you frustrated with where you are in your language learning? Do you feel you have a mountain to climb? There is a difference between being frustrated or dissatisfied with your language course, and not being satisfied with where you are.

Case 1: “I’m not satisfied with the quality of this course.”
Case 2: “I’m not satisfied with my linguistic level.”

Knowing about these differences can help you work out a plan of attack, and save you some stress too.

For example, someone wrote to me recently saying they weren’t happy with the progress they were making with their present teacher (case 1). Based on what she wrote, I gather that they’ve only had a handful of lessons together. However, assuming the teacher is doing what you’d expect a professional teacher to do, this person may simply not be satisfied with where she is (case 2 in fact).

Being dissatisfied with your level may have nothing to do with your teacher.

In other words, she may be dissatisfied that she’s still intermediate (B1) after all these months or years of learning English, and as a result points the finger at her present teacher as being ‘the culprit.’

But was she really ‘learning English’?

I’ll bring this back to my own situation with ‘learning Czech’ to show you what I mean:

For quite a few years I just had the occasional course, and rarely did the homework. I hung out with people who spoke English or French, and as my job was teaching English, I didn’t get to meet many Czechs outside of ‘English circles.’

Fast-forward to 2012, and I am not satisfied with where I am (B1).

I have to be responsible here and accept that my attitude in the past is the top reason why I didn’t make that much progress in Czech. I just wasn’t that motivated, and I wasn’t that active.

So my present Czech teachers are not responsible, for example, for when I chose to spend each summer in Croatia or Spain or Serbia instead of learning Czech in Prague.

I remember those days well. One month by the sea – or one month learning Czech intensively in Prague. As an Aussie, I just *had* to choose the sea!

But today I’m living with the consequences of this.

So maybe you weren’t that active before – and now you want to change things!

Being frustrated with your present teacher or school or course means, ideally, giving them feedback on how you feel and then seeing if you two can improve the situation.

As a last resort, it may mean changing teachers or school.

Case 2 means working closely with your teacher, and asking for their honest feedback on how you can improve.

You do need to be realistic here about what you can achieve.

A lot of it involves being honest with yourself regarding how much time you have for English. If you have time for one lesson a week, without any homework, then be aware you will need to re-adjust your expectations about what is possible.

You’ll still progress, but not as quickly as someone who has more sessions, and who is active outside of class.

My own solution – the surge

surge n. to increase a lot very quickly
I do have a sense of time running out. I now want to mix in better with Czechs, and to be this level after all this time is…not good (compare this to when I was in France – I reached intermediate after three months!).

Firstly, I am happy with my present learning programme.

Secondly, what I don’t want is to spend another year or two climbing the ‘B1 mountain.’

I’d rather smash through it than go around it like a turtle.

So I’m going to have even more lessons – aiming for 10 hours a week minimum (right now I’m on 5-6 hours a week).

On top of this, I’ve worked out some other activities I can do each week to improve my level (more on this later).

And believe it or not, this summer I’d like to spend in Olomouc, Brno or another Czech city and have classes every day. And meet up with people in the afternoons or evenings.

In a nutshell

If you’re not satisfied with your level, you either need to re-adjust your expectations about what you can achieve or spend more time on your language learning.

In my case I’m going for a ‘Czech surge.’ It’s what I want.

For you to get over your mountain, having a surge of English needn’t cost you much money. If you don’t want to have individual lessons, Prague has a lot of schools offering lower prices for group classes. In addition, there are thousands of English speakers you can swap your Czech with. On Facebook there are groups that organise activities in English too.

“But I don’t have the time for this!”

Some people have companies and partners and children to look after. I get it, it’s a totally understandable and expected priority. Again, please be realistic about what you can achieve, and work with your teacher to optimise your time in class.

In other cases, I’ve heard “I don’t have the time for homework” – and then the student is at the beach for three weeks.

Just like I was in Croatia those summers ago, they may not be ready for a surge of English just now, but at some point their frustration will lead to real action.

And that decision is up to them, not their teacher.

For new readers, welcome to Get Into English and to regular readers, welcome back! Today a short update on some of the recent changes here:

Site news

First up, thanks to Adam Baird and also Yasmina Volet for their help behind the scenes with improving the look and design of the site.

Since early this year we’ve had a new forum, the Student Lounge, which I believe is a first for Prague. The Student Lounge is a place where you can:

• upload your homework
• interact in English with me and other students
• get feedback from me on your writing
• check the record of our lessons

The Student Lounge should be especially useful for clients taking the IELTS, FCE, CAE and CPE exams. For example, the more we all chat and discuss, the more resources and materials we’ll all have. Knowledge sharing is a great thing!

More posts, minimalist style
I’m now working on 2 other blogs, which are already live but still under construction. In addition, I’m going to use a 4th blog for my own language learning!

So it means I need to be very efficient with my time.

I’d like Get Into English to be more minimalist. I’ll be posting more regular content, but without spending significant time behind the scenes on things like searching for photos to use or optimising the site for google.

There’ll be more English worksheets and downloads too. Again, this is to connect with the lessons, and link Get Into English to students’ learning programmes.

I’ll say more about the other blogs later on, but for now I hope you enjoy reading Get Into English and get some value from visiting the site.

Hire me

Finally, if you are looking for a teacher of English and would like to know more about me and how I can help you achieve your learning goals, please feel free to contact me using the form above. You can also write to me at:

David[at] GetIntoEnglish [dot] com
.
I’m also on Facebook and Twitter – please join in the discussion or feel free to share the articles and tips on here with your friends.

Best wishes

Commas are those tricky little things which we use to show a gap or pause between parts of a sentence. Recently a student of mine saw that I’d crossed out quite a few of her commas, which begged the question: when to use them?

Micheal Swan in his book Practical English Usage has already written a nice summary which answers this very question. So I’ll simply highlight a few areas where I’ve noticed Czech and Slovak learners having particular problems:

• A few examples of when commas are NOT used in English (as opposed to Czech)

Myslím, že… -> I think that he’s tired.
Doufám, že… > I hope that Carla Bruni comes to the party. 
Cítim, že.. -> I feel that he’s not listening to us. 

These ‘expressive’ verbs and reporting verbs followed by that do not use a comma. So therefore these sentences won’t take a comma either:

I recommend that we should visit the castle.
I suggest that we head to the conference around 4pm. 
Everyone realised that she was addicted.
She showed me the way to my seat.
It’s important that we all stay calm.
It’s essential that Obama is re-elected so we can be $20 trillion in debt.
It’s absolutely vital that we spend less money.

As these are common verbs and constructions, simply checking your writing before you press ‘send’ or put it in the post will prevent many of your common ‘comma mistakes’

• In relative clauses

Note the differences here:

1. The man standing by the pool was painting a beautiful picture.

2. Melbourne, which has a population of 4 million, is Australia’s friendliest city.

In the first sentence we know exactly know we’re talking about. The phrase ‘standing by the pool’ tells us it’s the man, it identifies him. ie this kind of sentence is called an ‘identifying clause.’

In the second example, the clause in the middle simply tells us extra information about Melbourne. It’s not identifying.

Compare these:

1. Prague’s a place (that) I’ve always wanted to go to. 

2. Steve Jobs helped launch the iPad, which sold millions worldwide.

Commas in use

If you check what your English friends are doing on Twitter and Facebook, you’ll see that most people don’t care about commas for everyday ‘fast’ communication.

These days lots of publications are deciding not to include some commas (where historically we’d include them) because it ‘flows better.’

I believe there are two other reasons for not using commas as much:

1. native speakers know where the ‘chunk’ of language (the phrase or words that go together) starts and ends, and so they pause in their minds as they read. For example, sometimes you’ll see commas not being used after these words:

however
on the other hand
believe it or not
firstly

This is because we can already see that these words are separate from the next part of the sentence.

2. For some newspaper editors and bloggers, their articles look better without commas, and there’s less ‘clutter’ in the sentence. They may even save money on ink or printing costs!

So I say when in doubt, leave them out!

When you really should care about commas

It matters in situations where you want to communicate in a professional or academic context.

I particular recommend you write according to what is generally considered correct in the language when you are taking an exam in English (eg IELTS or FCE, CAE, CPE).

If you’re a learner of English and want to look at this more in detail, then following the basic rules in Michael Swan’s book will be more than enough!

I‘ve heard a lot of language bloggers and even English students here in Prague say that to really learn and speak a language you need to ‘speak, speak, speak.’

My message is simply: ‘speak and be active.’

I’m an introvert and for me to learn a language and speak it better, I get a lot of value from ‘reflective time’ and doing activities other than speaking.

Don’t get me wrong – speaking is still essential. But it’s not the only thing you can do.

Beyond ‘Just Speaking’

For example, I find reading really helpful. I get to see the words (I benefit from visual activities) and this helps me remember them when I speak or write to people. I’m also more likely to immerse myself in the language as I try to understand what the writer is saying, and work out if there’s any deeper meaning beyond the words they use.

And these days reading need not be something formal or something altogether different from spoken English. If you check out many news sites, webzines, and magazines for women and men, you’ll see the language used is often snappy spoken English: full of phrases, idioms and collocations.

Writing too across a range of genres can help you see differences in formality, register and style, and this can help your speaking when you come across people from different backgrounds. For instance, I found writing essays and stories in French years ago helped me see how French sentences are constructed, and how I could better develop the points I wanted to make.

Even looking at your favourite English coursebook or collocations guide can help you. Recently I got one new book for my students which presents features of spoken English. It’s full of useful observations on how English native speakers communicate with each other. For example, one unit deals with the different ways we use ‘actually’, ‘just’ and ‘really’ in everyday speech. It’s gold for anyone looking to get a deeper insight into spoken English.

‘Speak, speak, speak’ can have its limits

There are two main problems I have with ‘just speaking’. The first one is that if I’m in the middle of the conversation, trying to interact, express myself and listen to the other person, I’m less likely to be able to make deep observations about the language.

I’m less likely to see the full picture.

Sure, now that I’ve been teaching for many years I can notice some aspects of a language quite well, but non-speaking time can help fill in some gaps for me that I wouldn’t learn from ‘just speaking.’

Related to this, one advantage of reading, writing, listening, and looking at useful vocabulary and grammar books is that you will have the opportunity to learn more about which vocabulary and grammatical constructions are more frequent. Yes, speaking itself will help a lot here, but an integrated approach to learning will help build a better all-round communicator.

The second thing about ‘speak speak speak’ is that while I totally agree it’s a vital part of learning, I grow and learn when I have time to myself to reflect on the language. As I said, I’m an introvert – I value time on my own, and this is beneficial for how I develop.

Be active, not an avoider

Speaking is still an essential ingredient of language learning. I’m not giving you excuses to avoid going out and speaking.

I am however saying that simply being active and in charge of your learning is a better overall philosophy to have than just ‘speak speak speak’.

So a new rule can be: speak as much as you can and be active in the language outside of ‘speaking time.’

Read more

Mindset

Have you heard the expression ‘throw your hat over the fence‘? Well, one day a boy comes across a dead-end road, and all there is between him and where he wants to go is a high fence. He doesn’t know how to get to the other side. What happens next?

A villager comes along and sees that the boy is trapped. He grabs the boy’s hat and throws it over the fence!

- “Hey, why’d you do that?!” he shouted at the elder villager.

- “Well, son. Your hat’s over there, and I can see that’s where you want to go. Now, you gotta go there.”

- “But how?!”

- “Your hat’s over there, so if you want to see it again, you’ll find a way.”

The wise man walked off, and the boy scratched his head. Sure enough, some time later he found a way to climb this hurdle before him.

Climbing over hurdles

Even though there are things we would like to do or want to do, it doesn’t mean that we do them. For example, perhaps you want to do more English outside of class. Write a diary, read a new book, study new vocabulary. Whatever it is, you end up procrastinating – you put it off:

“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

The moral of this story is that for you to really achieve what you want, you need to throw your hat over the fence.

Throw your hat over the fence – and you can make it happen. You’ll find a way.

Which brings us to the next question: what can you do now to throw your hat over the fence?

Photo credits

Image Stephen Heron
Licence CC by 2.0

Today something different – looking at an awkward article written by a blogger in the United States, and at a few themes which come out of it, including the angry reaction from others. And if you’re a non-native speaker of English, you’ll see for yourself that even native speakers struggle with writing well in English!

If you remember, recently I wrote about how important it is to look beyond worrying about the grammar you use, and instead ask yourself if you have achieved your purpose, that is, the reason why you’re writing or communicating. Is the message that you’re saying the same as the one that the other person hears? This is especially important for learning English and when taking the Cambridge FCE, CAE and CPE and IELTS exams, but of course in everyday life.

The grammar and vocabulary you choose have a more important role – to help you communicate the message you’d like to express. This is something we all have problems with from time to time. Imagine the girl who just wants some space for a few days for some time on her own, and tells her boyfriend she’s going to her mother’s for the weekend. Meanwhile, he’s getting worried thinking she wants to end the relationship! And of course politicians are easy targets – think of the leader who says he’s one of the people, but would never use public transport, only hang out with celebrities and the wealthy, and so on.

I have a job for you!

So guys let’s look at a real, live example of an article written by a native speaker of English. Please read this and as you scroll down the page, ask yourself:

• why is she writing this article?
• how do you think a non-native speaker of English would react to this?
• who do you think her intended audience is? ie who did she write this article for?

Ok, so please read the article (link below) and then come back – no coffee break just yet

Bloggers who are not native speakers struggle more

So what did you think?

Does the nationality of the writer really matter? Do non-native speakers really struggle when they write? Any more than some American bloggers??

First, I’m guessing she meant this article to be motivational. I think she wanted to say that if you’re from China or Japan or another non-English speaking country, then you needn’t write or do business in English. The real ‘treasure’ in your life could well be right in front of you! So if you’re Czech and you write a blog in English, maybe you’re not seeing the potential for business and self-realisation that you could get in your native language.

Why did she write this? Well, as I said, it could be to inspire non-native speakers to get in touch with what’s happening locally. On top of this, she offers a solution for any problems here, as her job is: “I’d like to offer my advice about a niche project that you are working on.”

In addition she says “I am into building relationships online” and “Feel the power! Go make somebody’s day!”

The self-development industry is very lucrative in the U.S.A – and elsewhere – and she is advertising that she can help you with your project. So that was the motivation for this post, as I see it – a way to attract new business, and this is something we all do to some extent (even this site partly promotes English lessons in Prague).

But would someone in China or Norway or any other country choose her as their consultant? I don’t think so.

How would a non-native speaker respond to her tone and choice of words?

Well, Robbie from EnglishHarmony, a blog designed for people learning English, was angry and offended. He even made a video to react to this!

This is the opening paragraph from Bloggers who are not native speakers struggle more:

One thing I consider myself very fortunate for is having been born in the United States. I grew up speaking English right from the get go. I know all the different dialects across our country. It is very obvious when you come across some blogger who grew up with English as a second language. I feel for them.

Robbie thought it was condescending – yeah, it hit me too just how patronising the tone of the article is. ie she looks down on the people she’s meant to be ‘helping.’

For me this is one of those articles where the American writes that they’re so rich and blessed to be American, and we, the rest of the world, but especially all those people in the non-English world, are just unlucky from birth.

“I feel for them”
We use “I feel for you” when someone experiences real pain. Maybe you lost your job and you need to look after your 12 year-old son. Maybe you have a serious illness. Or your lover got into an accident and has lost their sight.

Blogging is not a real struggle like losing something you hold dear or love. And she needn’t feel for them – or me for that matter. So, yeah, I winced when I read that.

Next up:

I guess there was not any major goal with this post other than to point out the fact that we native born English American bloggers and other Brits, Aussie’s, New Zealander’s, etc. ought to consider ourselves lucky. We have an advantage over the millions of other bloggers out there who simply don’t have those English skills.

She’s telling foreigners pretty much to STOP writing in English because they don’t have the skills. At the same time, she’s making mistakes. Lol. I think my own students could re-write this better, and they’d be able to translate it into 2 or 3 other languages. Because they were born in Europe, where knowing one language simply isn’t good enough.

Two points from this sentence of hers:

1. No idea why she’s added an apostrophe after Aussie, New Zealander. She should be using the regular plural form.
2. What’s a ‘native born English American’ blogger anyhow?!! Hmm, I won’t go into that, the main point is that she’s using the language of exclusion, not inclusion.

Next:

As the Chinese economy grows by leaps and bounds, more of those Chinese people are going to be online.  As anyone would guess, their bloggers’ audience is going to be a lot larger than ours is.

Statistics show that the Chinese are already online more than Americans, though per capita internet use is still more across the 50 states [source].

She also writes:

Right now, the English speaking world has more wealth than the non-English speaking world.

According to global GDP figures, this is simply not true [source]. And if you search for how well Americans are doing per capita, you’ll see they’re DOWN the list of countries throughout the world [source].

Finally,

So, if you are an Asian who is struggling to blog in English, you might want to think about what the future holds in store.  There might be other opportunities popping up for you that you have not yet realized.

Sure, it comes back to what I think she was trying to do – encourage people to look at what’s happening in their own backyards.

But this is a great example of how it can be tricky to write – and shows that she herself is struggling to connect with her readers (on this note, I wonder how I’m going?! )

Two morals of this story

1. If you have an opinion, feel free to express it, but you also need to back it up. If you make a claim, then how did you get this information? In her case she makes statements which can be argued against with data available on the internet, and in addition, she never even identifies who she’s talking about. Who’s struggling? Who? I have no idea.
2. Think about how your writing will be received. Cambridge refer to having a positive or negative ‘effect on the reader.’ It’s REALLY important to take this into consideration for the FCE, CAE, BEC and CPE writing exams, as well as in other English exams, such as IELTS.  If Kathy Blogger’s intended reader was a non native speaker of English, then Robbie’s reaction shows she may not have passed a CPE writing task.

Why was this article from Kathy Blogger important to me – and who cares anyway?!

Some people said to Robbie that he’d needn’t worry about this, that it wasn’t such a big deal. But I sympathize a lot.

Because the same thing happens to me almost every day when I speak Czech with Prague people.

I’ve spoken before about the barriers people have within them when they’re learning a language. Well, those barriers inside you are big enough to hinder you that the last thing you need is for someone else to add to them!

In her case, I think Kathy was unintentionally discouraging people from expressing themselves how they choose. And how dare she say that they’re struggling.

Some Prague people don’t want to communicate with me in Czech when I speak to them in shops or when I go to companies in town. As I said, it happens almost every day, and these kinds of people are not very encouraging. I even had a bizarre case recently when I wrote to a teacher of Czech asking for lessons – I wrote to her in Czech, she wrote back to me only in English (seriously, you can’t make this stuff up!).

How to deal with ignorance

I’ll write more on this another time. But, in short, the world is not as rosy as some self-development writers say. You WILL encounter resistance or disapproval or negativity from others.

But remember – they’re the ones with the problem!

If you’re a blogger from a country where the first language is not English, but you love writing in English, well keep going! Do what you love doing.

Have the strength to say “f*ck you’, I’m doing this” while having the passion and compassion to live your life positively.

The world is changing

We all have to deal as best we can with the cards we’re dealt with. While some parts of the USA are absorbed in lamestream media scandals, going to wars abroad and not being responsible with their finances ($16 trillion in debt, with China holding $1 trillion of this), other countries are moving ahead. FAST.

In such a globalised world jobs are moving from the USA to countries like India. Being flexible and being multi-lingual is more and more important. Yet many Americans haven’t read the foreign section of their newspapers to see this. Even Presidential candidates John Kerry and Mitt Romney are MOCKED for speaking French, and as we’ve seen, some believe that being born an English speaker is a natural advantage.

There are, however, many English speakers who realise that being born on an island of English is not such an advantage, and that we in fact have to work hard to learn other languages and be competitive in today’s global jobs market.

And finally if you’re from another country, you can definitely take some great ideas about business from the USA, their positive approach to dealing with people and interacting with others, and add them to your CV which you’ve worked hard to build.

Ultimately you may not speak English as well as an American, but when you both go for the same IT job abroad, your Czech, German and English is going to DWARF the American’s resumé.

Let’s end this with a dose of real can-doism

This motivation and lifestyle coach, Danielle la Porte, is also American. It’s pretty clear she’s advertising her book, but she does so honestly and I really like the message she’s communicating. It’s a great 107 seconds, and I’m pretty sure that she’d say the same thing to you wherever you are, whatever country you come from.

Do you see how she communicates her message differently?

Credits

Image: Konstantinos Dafalias
License: CC by 2.0

My zouk teacher made an interesting comment last week when a few of the class stopped dancing half-way through a song.

Usually we wait for him to direct the class and say what the next move or next steps will be.

This time was different. He turned around and saw that we were waiting for him. Instead he said: “Don’t always wait for the teacher for you to know the next step.”

I liked what he said straight away. Let’s say I forget to give you some homework this week. Well, you shouldn’t need your teacher here to tell you what to do.

Learning a language is a bit like learning a dance: ultimately it’s up to you to move in the direction you want, to enjoy the journey of learning, and to take responsibility for the steps you take along the way.

Read more

151 words: exploring the topic
151 words: a mistake that really matters

Photo credits

Image: Steve Heron
Licence: CC by 2.0