For example, in French, we could say: “J’aime vraiment ta robe”!
Now, the foreigner studying French might have only studied the verbs “aimer” and “robe”. He might not have studied “vraiment”.
In fact, the essential meaning is just “J’aime ta robe”.
So, it’s important to know the typical “vraiment” because then you can parse it out. I mean, you can ignore it. But before you can ignore it, you have to know it.
It’s the small words that are important, and the small words vary depending on which langauge you’re studying.
Il est plus facile de prendre un verre dans un bar en anglais que de négocier un contrat qui vaut quelques milliers de dollars. Dans une négociation, on est sous pression, d’autant plus s’il s’agit d’une négociation en langue étrangère.
Au niveau B2 du Cadre Européen Commun de Référence pour les Langues, on nous dit que: La personne peut communiquer avec un degré de spontanéité et d’aisance telle qu’une conversation avec un locuteur natif ne comportant de tension ni pour l’un ni pour l’autre.
Le niveau B2 reste un niveau relativement avancé: c’est le niveau qui est exigé pour les ingénieurs afin de trouver un travail dans une société internationale (ce qui correspond à 750 au TOEIC). Donc, a priori, il faudrait avoir au moins un niveau C1 pour gérer ce genre de situation. Pas facile.
Dans la salle de classe, nous pouvons proposer plusieurs situations de négociation qui peuvent habituer l’apprenant (je préfère ce mot au mot “stagiaire”):
Ce genre d’exercice permet d’aborder plusieurs points: chiffres, questions, vocabulaire professionnel – fournisseur, client…).
Après ce genre d’exercice, nous avons l’habitude de demander du feedback, c.a.d. de savoir si la mise en situation était facile pour l’élève, si il y a eu des difficultés avec les chiffres, la syntaxe, la formulation des phrases…Ceci permet de voir où sont les points à travailler.
J’aimerais que ce soit aussi simple. Finalement dans la pratique, si ce n’est pas possible pour quelqu’un de converser dans une situation sans stress, c.a.d. dans un bar, dans un restaurant, à la machine à café, il est rarement possible de se lancer tout de suite dans une situation de négociation.
Last week, I posted about the use of ‘like’ in English.
This week, I would like to post about the use of ‘you know’ in English.
I don’t want to make a judgement about whether it’s good or bad to speak like this, I just want to make a comment that a lot of people do speak in this way, and that it’s very important to understand when people are using this kind of word to break up a sentence.
It’s actually a bit similar to punctuation. These days I see more and more e-mail messages with ; (:, lol, etc.
Perhaps there is also a deeper meaning when people are using ‘you know’ or ‘ya know’, too, in English, to try to get the other person’s agreement on something or to try to get the other person to understand/empathise with what they’re saying.
But in any case, you will need to understand it. A few years ago, I was in France and I couldn’t understand what someone was saying, they were using the word ‘quoi’ every other sentence:
“C’est comme ça, quoi”
It means, it’s obvious, c’est une évidence.
After I understood that, I found myself understanding the rest of what they were saying, the ‘quoi’ had been blocking out the rest of the sentences.
So, here are a couple of videos to show how often ‘you know’ or ‘ya know’ are used.
The point of today’s post is to talk about how learning some more ‘advanced’ words can reinforce the more basic ones. For example, if you learn a new word in context, like the following:
- swimming pool
- waiting room
- running shoes
- printing paper
- toilet paper
- can of coke
- music website
- running track
The above are all what we call in the jargon: collocations. Collocations are all words (verbs or nouns or adjectives) which go together well. For example, swimming pool goes together well, but so does to get a coffee, to have a coffee, to grab a coffee. But I digress.
The point of today’s post is to say that if you learn swimming pool in context, you will acquire the word swim, because you will probably remember better the word swim. The same with waiting room ==> wait, running shoes ==> run, etc.
If you listen to the listen-to-english podcast, you will hear about 2 towns, ‘dull’ and ‘boring’. One is in Scotland and one is in the U.S.
Someone has had the bright idea that these 2 towns should be twinned.
Twinned ? What does that mean ? It’s not a collocation but it is a more advanced meaning of the word ‘twin’.
A twin usually means brothers or sisters that were born on the same day. You can have identical twins or non-identitcal twins.
But if you were listening to the podcast carefully, and you figured that ‘twinned’ meant ‘jumelé’ in French, then perhaps you would understand that a twin was a ‘jumeau’.
How to become a fluent speaker of another language like English (I’m an English teacher) is a well documented process. It’s well known by the language learning community.
The flip side of that is that it requires a lot of hard work and time.
So, perhaps it’s best to just sit back, get a beer or a coffee and soak up the sun ?
What are the objectives for the modern day language learner ?
And why should I learn another language ? It’s a good question and I’d like to put it out there to the web community for answering. I’m particularly interested in answers from French people as that’s who my students are.
There is a song on the radio at the moment. I think it’s called somebody I used to know. Here it is:
It’s by goteye, I think.
Anwyay, one of the main lines in the song goes like this: Now you’re just somebody that I used to know.
What is he talking about ?
In fact, he’s probably talking about a relationship that was once very strong but the couple have grown apart, and here is the meaning: “Now you’re just somebody that I used to know”. I knew you once, in the past, but now I don’t know you anymore.
1. This is the first meaning of used to. It’s in the past, in French, we say it’s “révolu”.
For example, I’m an Englishman living in France, I could say: I used to live in England. It’s not true now, but it was true in the past.
2. The second meaning of the phrase used to in English, is when you become accustomed to something. For example:
When I first arrived in France, I drank tea. In fact, I drank tea for the first few weeks. Then I noticed that most people were drinking coffee in the morning, so I switched to coffee. At first, it was bit odd (strange). But now, I’m used to drinking coffee in the morning.
You’ll notice that the construction is: I am used to drinking coffee, that is a part of ‘to be’ + used to + verb + ing.
A similar meaning is: “I’m getting used to it”, which you can use if you’re in the process of becoming accustomed to something at the moment. For example, if you’re learning English, it might take some time to become accustomed to the sounds of the language.
So you can say: It’s taking some time, but I’m getting used to it.
One last thing: don’t get used to confused with usually: I usually go to the cinema on Fridays.
Often, as an Englishman in France, I stop at zebra crossings to let passers-by cross the road. What annoys me however is that when you do that, they seem to slow down. You know, they just wander across the road at leisurely pace without a care in the world. Maybe it’s the sun ?
And another thing. When you indicate to move over on the motorway, they speed up to not let you in.
Paul
paul@lyonlingua.com
http://www.lyonlingua.com
NB:
slow down = ralentir
speed up = accélérer
move over = se pousser / déplacer
Les verbes ci-dessous sont des verbes à particules (phrasal verbs).
; (:, lol, etc.
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