It's been a long time ...

Well I can hardly believe it's a few days short of a year since I last posted. In that time I've gained a Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults - CELTA - and since January I've been teaching at the Oxford English Academy in Cape Town, visit our website here.  For now, I'm not coaching privately although I plan to offer this again to a limited number of clients from next year. My old business website at www.learncommunication.co.za has been taken down and no longer exists.

I'm enjoying the focus on teaching English, although I've certainly been challenged on many levels in the last year.  The CELTA itself was pretty grueling, now the daily preparation of lessons and the feeling of being in unfamiliar territory and being stretched to the limits of my teaching abilities on some days is not always easy or comfortable. I've had to dig deeper and look more closely at my role as a teacher, what I want to achieve and what students need from a teacher. I've had the benefit of advice from brilliant teachers on the CELTA and now at the school where I work.  I think I'm becoming a better teacher, I hope so.

And there are other changes afoot besides a new job for me.  We've sold the house we've lived in for the last ten years and will be moving to Fish Hoek in the next month. New work and a new life at the seaside! So a new chapter begins just in time for the summer.

Thanks everyone for all the page views, I hope you found some information that was helpful. There's more to come.

Paired words can make learning English pronunciation easier

I'm not a provider of "neutral global accent" training as called for by the international call centre industry. The intention of this post is to offer assistance to South Africans who are speakers of languages other than English and who are looking for help in pronouncing certain South-African English sounds which are known to be challenging. 

 

PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH VOWEL SOUNDS (MONOPHTHONGS): pair the sound you know with the sound you don't know

People who have worked with me will immediately recognise this exercise as a favourite of mine.  Those pesky English long monophthongs will be tamed by the simple pairing of the sound you know: the SHORT one, with the sound you don't know: the LONG one. Speaking words in pairs in this way helps the speaker to differentiate sounds, it's easier to hear and feel the similarities and differences.

Speak the word containing the short vowel sound followed by the word containing the long vowel sound.  You can slightly exaggerate the length of the long vowel sound in the second word if this helps you. Of course you would not exaggerate it in an unnatural way in everyday speech, but only for this exercise.

SHORT	LONG
ship	sheep
hill	heel
lip	leap
cat	curt
hat	hurt
hut	heart
cut	cart
bid	bead
bit	beat
live (to live)	leave
sit	seat
wedding	wording
cot	caught
of	off

Practise these paired words as often as you like.  Add new pairs that occur to you.
Practising at least twice a day will usually improve your pronunciation of these vowel sounds in as few as ten days.

As always, if you'd like to find out more about how I can help you or if you'd like to contact me, you can do so from my website.

Be more coherent using Linking Words and Phrases

Along with confidence and credibility, coherence is a quality the audience looks for in a speaker and in their presentation.  The Concise Oxford dictionary says that the adjective "coherent" describing a speech means that it is "logical and consistent; easily followed". Language provides us with many devices we can use to show how our ideas are connected so that our thinking is easily followed.  In my experience, however, these devices are not always readily available to us when we are speaking our second or third language.

During the past couple of weeks I've been working with a client who, like most English speakers, did not have English as his mother tongue.  We had noted that his presentations sometimes lacked coherence even though his thinking was logical and were working together to improve this. I was reminded of how valuable it is to show how ideas are connected, in other words to show our thinking.

My client achieved great results simply by using linking words and phrases to show how his ideas were connected and point to his thinking.  At once his seemingly disconnected and random points hung together like beads on a thread.  The flow of his speaking became easier as well and he was able to speak more comfortably without referring to his notes as often as he had been.

Whether or not you are a first language English speaker you might find it helpful to use more of these words and phrases to connect your ideas and show the logical structure of your presentation. Of course, you can use them in your writing too.

Beware! Using a few linking words here and there is not a magic cure-all for poor thinking, inadequate research and lack of planning and certainly won't make a brilliant presentation out of a few random bullet points.  However, especially if English is not your first choice of language to speak in then these words and phrases may be helpful to you.

SOME EXAMPLES OF LINKING PHRASES AND WORDS

To extend the idea: further; furthermore; in addition; as well as this; firstly . . . secondly

To state the idea again in another way:  that is; in other words

To show contrast in ideas or to note exceptions: however; on the other hand; nevertheless; unless; either . . . or; neither . . . nor

To explain a cause or reason: because; for this reason; owing to; for this/ these reason/s

To show results: as a result; for this/these reason/s; consequently

To introduce an illustration: for example; for instance; this can be seen in; as shown in; as shown by

To introduce a similar idea: this is similar to; similarly; in the same way; also; not only . . .  but also

To reach a conclusion: therefore; thus; finally; in conclusion; to summarise; to sum up; from this we may conclude that ...

To join one section to the next: "Having covered ... I'm now moving on to discuss ..."; "This brings me to ..."; "That brings us to ..."

If you'd like more clarity on using words to show logical thinking you might like to browse this article.