Okay, I admit it. We've been lying to you....

This is the real reason you should learn English. Honest.

(Thanks to Stuart for the link and the laugh.)

How to swear like a native, Part 1

True opinion: One of the things that most people want to learn first, when they learn a language, is the swear words. The academic part of me thinks that this is because swear words signify extreme emotions, which you usually want to avoid when you speak a language. The same problem exists here as with any other vocabulary: it's important to use it properly, to show what you mean.

"Shit" creates special problems for Spanish speakers of English for several reasons. First, it's not used as commonly in English as it is in Spanish; maybe it's because I live in Madrid, but I hear people here saying it a lot more frequently than I did back home...and, trust me, people where I come from swear a lot.)

Here are some basic guidelines that you can use when you're using this word:

shit - "a swear word that many people find offensive, used to show that you are angry or annoyed (OALD)". English speakers do NOT automatically use it to describe everything that works badly (Better: "This is useless" or "This is a useless piece of junk"), tastes bad ("This is disgusting/awful/horrible"), or as a countable noun. Similarly, if your boss lands you with a stressful, last-minute task, that is not called "a brown" in English.

There are various variations of the word that, when combined with the name of an animal, gives another idea of "extreme emotion", but be careful because they are used in very specific ways:

bullshit - a swear word that many people might find offensive, used to show that the person thinks the information is highly incorrect or deceitful. ("He told you that he's going on holiday with his grandmother? Bullshit!")

apeshit - (esp. to go apeshit) - to become extremely angry, especially when you receive bad or shocking news.

batshit - (esp. batshit crazy) - extremely irrational or crazy. (The politician may have some good ideas about the economy, but I'd never vote for her; she's batshit crazy.)

(One note: don't try looking up definitions for these words in either Wikipedia - which will direct you to "anger", instead; or UrbanDictionary, which has no filter process that eliminates useless or incorrect definitons.)

No one gives you the title.

One of the reasons why exams like TOEFL and First are so appealing is that you GET something at the end of the process. You study, you do the exam and, if you do it well, you get a piece of paper at the end. Congratulations! You are now "X".

That may be why it's hard to study English when you don't have a clear goal. You can study English and say you're studying English, and there's nothing wrong with that. It seems more REAL, however, if you have something in mind.

Here's a thought: What about studying English so that you can say, with confidence, "I am an English speaker"?

Go ahead. Try it. I am an English speaker. I am an English speaker. I am an English speaker.

I have no authority to tell you whether you ARE an English speaker or not. Only you can do that. Cambridge can't do it. ETS, the people who offer the TOEFL exam, can't do that. They can give you a piece of paper that estimates your level once you're done the exam. But they have no way of knowing what you're going to do with that English once the exam is done.

No one gives you the title of "English speaker". Only you can do that for yourself.

What level are you? And how do you know?

Six or seven years ago, when I was teaching at AXA Insurance, one of my students had to hire an administrative assistant with a "good" level of English. Problem was, when he had to do the job interview, he found that most of the candidates spoke a little bit of English, but not much. They'd have enough English to survive in a bar or supermarket, but not much beyond that.

"Well," I said, "what do you mean by 'good' English?"

"Good!" he shouted. "You know, good, as in...good?"

"You need a better description than 'good'," I said. "Everyone thinks they speak 'good' English, the same way they think they make a 'good' tortilla española, or that their mother is a 'good' person."

The problem with words like "good" (as I've said before) is that it's an extremely useless and inaccurate word. That's a problem for managers, who may need employees with specific English skills, or for job candidates, who want to show how much better their English is. For more people, however, that's a problem. If they haven't done any kind of English exam, such as the First or TOEFL, how can they show what they can do?

Here's one way. If, in the past few years, you've had to use an English textbook, take a look at the back. There should be a code listed on the back with a letter (A, B or C) and a number (either 1 or 2.) That code will tell you where you are, more or less, on the European Common Framework of Languages - the EU system of showing where students are, depending on what they can do.

This description, from the Oxford University Press, gives a pretty basic background into the history of the Common Language Framework, and how it works for all languages, not just English. (So if you're also studying French, German, Italian or any EU language, there'll probably be a similar code on your materials.) To make the description even more basic, here's a quick summary.

If you're A1, you're a total beginner. You had little or no previous knowledge of the language before you began taking classes.

If you're A2, you're more than a beginner. You can talk about yourself, you can ask for basic products and services and you can have simple conversations.

If you're A2/B1, you can speak more or less clearly about yourself, but having a detailed conversation may give you trouble. You might have one specific skill, such as listening or writing, that gives you trouble. If you're in Spain, you know that you have enough language, but you know that you don't have enough English to survive in an English-speaking country

If you're B2, your skills are advanced enough that you could survive in an English-speaking job, or with an English-speaking family, without too much trouble. You might not have enough language to do anything really complicated, like negotiate, but you could present an opinion about a topic, solve a problem with a friend or co-worker, and listen to a short lecture or radio show without too much trouble. (This is the level of competence that you need to pass the First Certificate.)

If you're functioning at the C1 level, you're doing pretty good! You've probably spent a lot of time with native English speakers, or you've lived in an English-speaking country. Watching movies or reading books might take you longer than it would for an average native English speaker, but you're comfortable in most social situations; you have enough language to find a solution to a detailed problem, and you could probably read a longer magazine article or take part in a university class without too much trouble.

If you've worked your way up to the C2 level...congratulations! You're practically the same as a native speaker of English! Now, no one's going to confuse you with a native speaker, but you can probably do most of the things that a native speaker could do without too much trouble.

Obviously, this is a HUGE simplification of the system, and if you'd like a more detailed idea of what people can do at each level, the Association of Language Teachers of Europe Can-Do Document has a much better description than the one I've provided here.

So give yourself a grade -- it's much better than simply saying "I'm good"!

English and salary levels

On Saturday, I posted that I didn't know how much salaries were affected by someone's level of English. Europa Press has provided some idea...

http://www.europapress.es/economia/laboral-00346/noticia-economia-laboral-secretarias-ganan-15-mas-2009-ett-20110110131531.html

Interesting...

Some (more) thoughts on translation

One thing I really like about Twitter is the ability to follow what other English teachers, experts, gurus and mavens are doing. This morning, Jeremy Harmer, who definitely falls into the "guru" category, was Tweeting live from the Directors of Study conference. Reporting live from the presentation of one Guy Cook (who argues for using translation in the classroom), he sent a tweet through that...well, I shouldn't re-type it word for word, but it basically said that students don't want to pretend that they're native speakers when they're in a monolingual situation.

If I can provide another point of view...

I grew up speaking English and French, but it wasn't until I went to Prague in 1999 that I was forced to live in a situation where I didn't speak the language. To be honest, I think that it is something that all teachers of English should do. That way, a teacher can better understand the sense of humility, the frustration, the curiosity and the confusion that a person feels when trying to learn English.

I should mention that, in 1999, the Czech Republic had changed a lot, compared to its Warsaw Pact years. There were only five public universities in the whole country, and to be able to attend one, you had to have the First Certificate of English. As a result, there was a lot of demand for English classes. (There was also a lot of demand because boys who attended more than 20 hours a week of English classes were exempt from military service; and some of the boys were quite eager to learn English.) After all, if you attend university and you want to have a decent career, Czech will only get you so far. The chances of working as a Czech-speaking lawyer in London or Los Angeles...or anywhere outside of eastern Europe...are pretty small.

So most people under the age of thirty could manage to speak some English. A lot of educated people over the age of thirty could, too. But if you had to get your hair cut, obtain a visa, read a store receipt, deal with the banks, have lunch in a non-touristy area, visit the pharmacy, not get cheated by fake public transit police, buy a train ticket and not get charged double for being foreign, or try to communicate with a bus driver...good luck! It was Czech or nothing. I clearly remember one co-worker, a vegetarian from Toronto, had a really difficult time trying to have something to eat because he couldn't communicate his dietary needs to anyone. A group of us went out for lunch, and our coworker ordered a fried cheese dish called smazeny sýr. And I'll never forget the look of disgust on his face as he poked at it and muttered, "I'm SO f***ing sick of smazeny sýr that I could vomit." (He eventually got a Czech girlfriend who translated food sayings for him.)

What I'm trying to say is this: No language learner ever wants to forget how to use his or her first language, but there are times when you have to behave like a native speaker, even if you don't particularly want to, and even if you know that THEY know you're not native. Does it suck? Of course it does. I'm not going to say that it's easy, that it's fun, or that it saves you from embarrassment 100% of the time.

There's another problem: translation only works if everyone in the classroom speaks the same mother tongue. Even in Spain, that's not automatically true any more, unless you're in a one-on-one situation. What happens if you have students from Morocco or Brazil or Romania in your class? Do you automatically assume that their Spanish is as good as the Spanish of the rest of the students? What do you do if it isn't?

Three months after I arrived in Prague, I started Czech classes. Our teacher, Petra, spoke wonderful English, but she did NOT speak it in class. In the first class, we were given a page with common expressions. If we couldn't say what we wanted to say, we had to wait until the end of class, or try to put together sentences to tell her what we wanted. (And if you've ever tried to learn a Slavic language, you know that it's not as easy as putting words in a set order.) Was it comfortable? No. Was it easy? No. Was it effective? You bet: the minute we stepped out of the school and had to do anything in our lives, we were prepared for it. I only took one semester of Czech, but I'm proud to say that I still remember how to count to ten, how to order 100 grams of ham and how to ask for aspirin in the pharmacy (lekárna!). I admit that in the nine months I was there, I was never brave enough to get a haircut in Czech, but I learned how to stare down a corrupt police officer and paid 50% less for my train tickets than other foreigners.

Translation may be helpful, but it isn't always effective.

What would you do if your bosses demanded THIS?

From "The Times of India": English is no longer an option for pilots.

http://tinyurl.com/33b6the

(Not entirely original) Thought of the Day:

"Don't be scared - just be prepared."

Thanks to the Canadian Hurricane Centre for that one!

http://tinyurl.com/pcny7v

Another FREE TOEFL resource

Here's one for you students who will be doing the TOEFL this year - a free online practice page, courtesy of The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper:

http://toefl.testprep.globecampus.ca/

How high can a dead cat bounce?

Here's one for you advanced-level business students: Today's "Guardian" has an amusing piece about how English business newspapers and television often use animals to provide imagery when they talk about the stock market. Sometimes, it's easy to understand what they mean; sometimes, it's confusing even for English speakers.

http://tinyurl.com/277xmfp

FYI: A dead cat bounce is the idea that anything (a stock market, a dead cat) will bounce (=come back into the air) if it hits the ground hard enough, and from a high place.

...and while we're on the topic of English and immigration...

...I had a chance to talk to my friend Nancy over the weekend. Nancy is a program officer with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and she confirmed that yes, indeed, people who want to immigrate to Canada should do the IELTS exam, just as before.

There is some talk about introducing a new exam, but that's not for another year, and candidates who want to apply now should and can do the IELTS to show how well they can speak and work with English.