Why ?

One simple reason.

Without them, we can’t understand.

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.

Paul

paul@lyonlingua.com

http://www.lyonlingua.com

Take this headline on the rtve.es website today, 22nd May.

Rafa Muñoz, campeón de Europa de 50 metros mariposa

Now, I had no idea what Mariposa meant, but I looked at the video (click on the link below for video).

Then, I looked it up on google translate, it had to be, I had guessed, butterfly.

What a great way to remember the word ‘butterfly’, with a second meaning.

http://www.rtve.es/deportes/20120522/rafa-munoz-campeon-europa-50-metros-mariposa/530778.shtml

Learn language naturally, learn language through acquisition.

Paul

paul@lyonlingua.com

http://www.lyonlingua.com

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”):

• négocier l’achat d’une voiture
• négocier un prêt à la banque
• négocier l’achat des cours d’anglais!
• acheter un produit informatique dans un magasin

Pour les formateurs d’anglais, voici une fiche qui peut vous aider à inventer n’importe quelle situation de négociation: http://advancedriskology.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/AoM-Worksheet.pdf

(Vous pouvez la remplir en ligne).

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.

Paul

paul@lyonlingua.com

http://www.lyonlingua.com 

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.

Sorry about the quality of the first video.

http://www.rugbydump.com/2012/05/2539/the-hurricanes-conrad-smith-making-sure-we-know

The second one, comes from an ex-member of my rugby club, Saracens. See if you can identify the ‘you know’s:

England have a got a new football manager, and apparently, well, read the story:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/greggdd69/10-owls-that-look-like-roy-hodgson-england-footbal-5v0w

What does the word ‘boring’ mean ? A lot of my students get it mixed up and think it means ‘annoying’, a mis-translation from the French, ennuyant.

You can listen a bit to the word ‘boring’ on this week’s listen-to-english: http://www.listen-to-english.com/index.php?id=576

But that’s not the reason I’m posting today.

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’.

Paul

Lyon Lingua – Learn language naturally

http://www.lyonlingua.com

paul@lyonlingua.com

The first one, everyone knows: like = aimer. I like chocolate.

The second one, some people know: like = comme. He is like his father.

The third one is more interesting and English people have started throwing it about, practically anywhere in their sentences:

You will find a multitude of examples in the video:

There’s also a Catherine Tate video where this comes up:

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.

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.

O.K., that’s all for today’s post.

I have a complaint.

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).