Re: The ONLY way to speak a language

by David Sweetnam on August 8, 2011

What do you think is the only way to speak a language?

Benny Lewis of Fluent in 3 Months, who has one of the most-popular language blogs, says in his latest post simply speak it:

The ONLY way to speak a language is to OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND SAY SOMETHING.

I thought I’d expand on this. I understand Benny is concentrating here on speaking but from seeing hundreds of students in Prague, I’d say being active is the most important thing to encourage in learners, as everything flows from here. So rather than say ‘just speak’, I say be active.

How active are you..really?

How much time do you devote to English? What are you doing when you’re not in class?

Where is English on your list of priorities?

You can do puzzles. Order books for your level. Chat with someone on various forums. Go on a date with a foreigner in Prague or organise a language exchange.

And when you do speak with someone in English, it’s not just about speaking, but being an active listener. Take an interest in what they’re saying:

Why did they decide to go to Japan? Why did they choose their profession? How come they like 12th Century Swedish art? Do they really think Lady Gaga is better than Madonna? Listen, react and respond to what people are saying.

The beauty of being an active listener is that you don’t need much active vocabulary to ask someone a few questions. And if you don’t understand, ask them to speak slower or to re-phrase. They’ll usually adjust their speaking. In addition, you’re getting language input, which is essential for developing your linguistic skills.

Be an active learner – interact with the language. Read an article from your favourite newspaper. What issues are raised? How do people feel about it? What vocabulary can you ‘steal’ from the article for you to try to use in conversation later?

Make the switch

Which things can you do in English that you presently do in Czech? For example, you can change the language of your email service and your mobile phone to English. Especially in Prague you can act like a tourist and speak to shop assistants and other service professionals in English.

How many foreigners do you know? Prague is full of expats from North America, Britain and Scandinavian counties, so it’s FULL of people who speak excellent English.

Don’t know anyone? Go to any major club or bar in the centre of town, you’re bound to come across some tourists or professionals living here. Strike up a conversation with them!

Yes, stop the excuses

I’ve met a lot of Czech learners who’ve complained about their teacher at school or how much the language schools cost, but if you really want to get better at a language you need to take responsibility for your results and get active NOW.

And if you only have time for one or two lessons a week? That’s totally fine if you have higher priorities, but just be aware you may not make progress as quickly and that you need to adjust your expectations accordingly.

What do you think? Please leave your comments below – I’ll be happy to read them

Further reading

Get Into English - Be an active listener in a minute
Check out Fluent in 3 Months

David Sweetnam
Specialising in FCE | CAE | CPE | IELTS Preparation

david (at) getintoenglish.com
Skype: getintoenglish
Twitter @GetIntoEnglish

“And here is the news..” – active listening in a minute

by David Sweetnam on August 2, 2011

Say you don’t have time for English homework? What about one minute a day..?

Active listening

Some of my students + clients listen to BBC news when they come in to work in the morning or when they put their feet up at home, and it’s a great way to start getting more English into your lifestyle. The idea is to create a new learning habit, to ‘switch over’ some things you do in your first language to the language you are trying to learn.

But if you are ‘just listening’ you might not be making the most of your time in English. Even if it’s just for a few minutes, you can be more effective!

What to do?

Active learning is the idea that you’re interacting with the language, even if the interaction is connected to an article you’re reading or a programme on the radio. It’s going from simply ‘just listening’ or ‘just reading’ to actively doing something in the target language.

In short, active, targeted learning.

For example, the BBC has a nice one-minute summary of the hour’s main news headlines here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/

The news headlines involve 3 or 4 stories, developing or changing as the day goes on.

I’d like one of my own students to do this worksheet at home and report back to me in class. And you can too either on your own or with an American friend. Download the worksheet below, and see if you can fill in the information asked.

Level
If you’re Intermediate, then getting the main idea (the gist) is a very good start. The higher your level, the more you can look for specific vocabulary, including collocations and idiomatic expressions, and the more you can listen for specific information.

Time required
Ok, you’ll need more than a minute ;) See what you can achieve in 10-20 minutes by listening to it twice for the headlines and specific information of the story, and a third time to listen out for some collocations.


If the link doesn’t work, this one below should do it:
The Latest Headlines

Example

Today’s first story concerns the problems with the US Government budget deficit and the issue of raising the debt ceiling.

Some vocabulary items you hear in just 15 seconds include:

the US Congress has cut a deal
agreeing in principle
agreeing in principle to raise the country’s debt ceiling [agree to do something]
neither party has got what it wants
the agreement still has to pass a vote

Listening challenge

Listen to the headlines from another source eg Fox News or Al Jazeera . How do they prioritise the day’s news? Are there any differences in how the same stories are reported?

A springboard for discussion

On a heavy news day this can be a good way to start a conversation class. In addition, doing this kind of activity regularly can be excellent practice for the Cambridge ESOL Exams (eg FCE, CAE, BEC Vantage and BEC Higher) and help improve your confidence with interacting in English.

And you don’t need to pay a single cent for it. Pretty cool, huh ;)

David Sweetnam
Specialising in FCE | CAE | CPE | IELTS Preparation

david (at) getintoenglish.com
Skype: getintoenglish
Twitter @GetIntoEnglish

Bring a friend..and double your English!

by David Sweetnam on July 28, 2011

This is an offer to my existing students – and indeed anyone else who wants to join in : )

How long have you been learning English?

A lot of people in Prague say: “10 years.” And yet many not happy with where they want to be.

But how many of those years were you seriously learning and speaking English..?

As I’ve already written, learning English requires 3 main things:

  • motivation
  • practice – in fact targeted practice
  • a positive attitude

So how can I help here?

What I can do is make you an offer so that you can get more hours of targeted practice. Instead of paying for 4 individual sessions a month, what if you could get 8 sessions for the same price?

English for Two

If you can bring a friend with a similar level of English and register for a full term together (that’s a 12-week trimester), then the price will be the same as for when you’d pay for 4 sessions/week on your own.

That means if you are presently on 75 ‘learning hours’ a year with me, then suddenly this doubles to 150!

It also means that I’ve removed any financial reasons for why you can’t have more focussed learning hours!

Curious? Please ask your friends or colleagues at work if they’re interested + then we can chat more about it together!

David Sweetnam
Prague English Teacher
Engage s.r.o.

Learn English in Prague with me:
david [at] Get Into English [dot] com
Skype: GetIntoEnglish
Twitter @GetIntoEnglish

Student journeys: Gabriela’s story

by David Sweetnam on July 24, 2011

A BIG thank you to Gabriela, a student of English here in Prague who has kindly volunteered to be the very first to write about her journey of learning English. I hope you’ll find it fascinating (and interesting to see that everyone has their challenges to overcome).

Guest post by Gabriela

I have to admit that I’m a typical product of the Czech educational system. In terms of language lessons it means that I studied grammar, grammar and grammar. I graduated from primary and secondary school almost without uttering a word in English. On the other hand I was perfectly skilled in present perfect clauses.

From today’s perspective, I was lucky that I wasn’t accepted to University just after my secondary education had finished. What did I do then? For one year I was devoted to English at a commercial language school and consequently passed FCE and the Basic English State Exam.

At University, I faced the reality regarding my English knowledge for the first time. During business English classes I realized that I barely understood when my classmates were speaking. All these guys spoke fluently with various accents as they had spent at least one year at some US high schools. These lessons were my nightmares. I counted every single minute that passed and I still survived without total humiliation.

As I didn’t want to be the everlasting outsider in English I decided to go abroad. In my fourth year at University I went to Canada for half a year. There I worked as a waitress. The feeling that I didn’t understand a word came back to me but somehow my English knowledge improved little by little. When I came back I had a feeling that if I’d met a foreigner there would be no need to pretend I didn’t speak English at all (which I did before!).

Still, my English wasn’t good enough. I found this out at my first job at an international company in Prague. I was struggling to write a simple business letter or email. And what’s more, seeing the ease with which my colleagues talked in English, I started to be embarrassed about my spoken English once again. This company made its employees prepare for BEC Higher, which I passed but with a great portion of luck.

My English inability pushed me to find a foreigner with whom I started one-to one classes. This guy was an Australian teacher, originally from the Caledonian School. The lessons helped a bit. Then I started to read books in English, watch films without dubbing, listen to the BBC. I also started to study ACCA, a special training program for auditors which contains 14 or 15 exams written fully in English.

Now I’m having one-to-one lessons with David, my best English teacher so far. I’m probably improving but the improvement is hard to measure. I’ll tell you in a couple of years.

English is my lifelong battle which I’ll probably never win. At least I’ll try to be a continuous fighter.

- Gabriela

conditionals_if I met Petra Kvitova

If I met Petra Kvitová.. – conditionals

by David Sweetnam on July 21, 2011

Today a short review on conditionals, something which my Intermediate class have found difficult recently:

“If I ever met Petra Kvitová, I’d definitely ask her about how she prepared for Wimbledon this year.”

“If I meet Petra Kvitová, I’ll try not to talk about the match.”

Which of the above sentences are you more likely to say and which is something that Maria Sharapova might say?

Do you notice that each sentence has a different structure? How so?

Maria Sharapova, who lost to Petra Kvitova, might joke to the media:

“I wasn’t really happy with my performance. I know I can do better. If I meet Petra Kvitová anytime soon, I’ll try not to talk about the match!”

In this sentence, because Maria is a professional tennis player and because she played against Kvitová, she sees this as a real situation. She sees this as part of her reality.

Compare this to the second sentence:

In a conversation you might be talking to a friend about this year’s women’s Wimbledon final:

“I’m a big tennis fan, and every year I rush home early just to watch Wimbledon on TV… Wow, Petra Kvitová played so well. If I met her, I’d definitely ask her about how she trained for Wimbledon this year.”

In this short dialogue you see this situation as not being a real possibilty.

Perhaps you’re having a drink in a cafe and you see this situation as being unreal:

You’re just imagining a situation which you don’t see as being part of your reality.

Please note that we use a past tense form in this ‘unreal conditional’ but we are not referring to the past.

We are in fact referring to NOW or the FUTURE. And we are using a verb in a past tense because it is a way in English to communicate ‘distance from reality’.

Let’s say you have to work all next week while your colleagues are away on holiday. But imagine if you had the week off, where would you go?

Maybe you’d go to Italy. [= maybe you would go to Italy if you had the week off work]

Note here you can use a variety of modal verbs to express what you would do:

If I had next week off, I could visit friends in Moravia.
I should clean up my flat.
I definitely wouldn’t go to the mountains.
I’d have to visit relatives in Litvinov.
I’d go to the beach in a flash.

Now here’s a question for you to answer in the comments section below. Write one paragraph on the following topic:

What would you do if you had a million dollars?

Words in the media: “Phone-hacking whistleblower found dead”

by David Sweetnam on July 19, 2011

The first today in a new occasional series on words you see in the media.

Hack [verb, noun]

This word has been all over the media in the past few weeks. British tabloid newspaper News of the World was closed down and now its owner News International is facing criminal charges after some of its staff allegedly hacked the phones of celebrities, victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, victims of the 7/7 terrorist attacks, as well as countless others including the telephone of a British schoolgirl who went missing and was later found murdered.

Yet despite the appalling nature of this behaviour, it didn’t stop about FIVE MILLION British people from buying the last copy of News of the World (I can happily report that I don’t purchase this company’s products).

HACK has a number of meanings. In the example above, it means to access or get into someone’s computer or telephone without their permission. Usually it’s illegal behaviour. In addition, it needn’t be just a computer or telephone, it could also be any kind of personal account, such as your banking account:

eg ..whether News Corp. employees attempted to hack 9/11 victims’ phones or records (from the Guardian)
eg ..to hack into their cell phone records and voice mails (from the Guardian)

You can hack into a phone | an account | database | a computer OR you can use hack without the preposition into.

A hacker is the person who does this.

This story is commonly reported as the hacking scandal or the phone-hacking scandal. Compare this to the sophistication of French newspaper Le Monde who calls it l’affaire des écoutes téléphoniques or le scandale des écoutes téléphoniques!

The latest news from this story is that a former News of the World reporter and whistleblower Sean Hoare (ie someone who reports illegal or immoral activity in their company to the police or another authority) was found dead today.

The police are saying his death is not suspicious. Hmm…

Hack can also mean:

  1. to cut something in a rough or violent manner.
    eg He hacked his way through the thick bush.
    eg His reputation was hacked to bits.
    eg They hacked apart the building’s support columns.

    This meaning is also used in horror films or violent death stories:
    eg He was hacked to death.

    You can now see the play on words which The Times of London used when it reported the closure of the News of the World:

    Hacked to death was the headline!

  2. to mean you can’t handle something or you can’t manage it or can’t cope with it:
    eg I want to quit – I just can’t hack it anymore.
    eg He can’t hack the pace at Liverpool.
  3. to annoy someone or to be annoyed
    Just today controversial airline RyanAir advertised their airfares making fun of News International’s recently-resigned Chief Executive Rebecca Brookes. The advert asks:

    “Hacked off with high fares?”

    Then there is a photo of a stressed Brookes thinking “I’m outta here with RyanAir.”

    What hacks you off? Traffic jams, crowds, late trams ..Rupert Murdoch ;)

Hack [noun]

has a few surprising meanings:

  1. a writer who does a lot of work, but not good quality. It’s especially used for newspaper writing (haha, maybe it’s not so surprising after all)
  2. a political hack is a politician who is part of a small group that has power over a political party for influence or their own selfish reasons

    3. eg Dick Morris is a hired political hack for Fox News. (from the Huffington Post)

    Paradoxically, a hack in politics can also mean the opposite: an unimportant politician.

    eg I’m tired of these old party hacks.

  3. a taxi or taxi driver (in the USA)
    eg a hack-driver

Finally some self-development writers use the term hack for finding solutions to problems.
eg I’m a life hack.

What’s on Twitter now:

StopDailyMail Daily Mail Watch
In fairness, the Daily Mail doesn’t need to hack phones when they can just hire a bunch of ill-educated bigots to make up stories #hackgate

Meanwhile Mashable reports: Murdoch’s Sun Newspaper Hacked by LulzSec

What do YOU think of all this? Is the media in your country more responsible? What are tabloids like in your country? Is this just human nature? Please write your views below!

Learn English in Prague with me:
David Sweetnam
Prague English Teacher
Engage s.r.o.

david (at) getintoenglish.com
Skype: getintoenglish
Twitter @GetIntoEnglish