Coalition Of The Willing

TweetNaturegirl left a comment on my previous post, mentioning a common scenario, where you want to practice your target language, only to find out that the other person always responses back to you in English (or your native language). This is indeed an extremely frustrating experience. This could be by far the number one enemy [...]

Language Guides for Travellers

TweetI walked into the library the other day and saw a CD by Pimsleur. It was a French language guide for travellers. It had only one CD! I borrowed the ‘Pimsleur I’ (or part of it, I believe) from the library a few months ago. There were so many CDs to go through and it [...]

Business Languages

TweetBusiness people can often communicate without knowing each other’s languages well. A few months ago, I had a chance to talk to a retired business man, who was a friend of my father-in-law. He grew up in Shanghai, China, and started a successful printing business in Hong Kong many years ago. He recently sold his [...]

A Negative Comment

TweetI was walking down the Las Vegas Boulevard last week with 2 colleagues, both were native Mandarin speakers. We have known each other for years, well before the time I picked up Mandarin. So we usually communicate in English. Imagine how inconvenient they were not being able to speak their native languages because of my [...]

Parroting

TweetSome people call it ‘chorusing’ or ‘echoing’. I don’t know if there is a technical name for it. I prefer to call it ‘parroting’. I am referring to the type of exercises many people use to improve their speaking skills. You would listen to a piece of conversation or monologue, usually at normal pace, and [...]

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