Livvypoo

Back when I was learning Spanish, when I was sixteen or so, one of the tasks we had to do was learn to read...sorry, I forget the name of the book. It was something to do with a Colonel and a chicken, that's all I remember. We were expected to read it without the use of a dictionary, or the English version, and honestly I ended up just not even getting that far into it because it was so hard.

No, I don't speak a rare language. But I did try to study Sumerian a few years ago. It's an ancient dead language from the land of Sumer. I also have been exposed to Creole by friends. I've even picked up a few words. Creole is a language spoken in Haiti. It used to be a slang language but now it's been converted to one of the official languages of Haiti.

I thought that Sumerian was so old, that it was impossible to actually speak it, since it's been so long since anyone who spoke it was alive, so we can only read it, and even then only sort of, no?

Well, mostly because I've got nothing better to do. I'll just waste my summer sitting around and playing games and stuff, so I might as well put the time to good use learning a new language, and help my chances of getting employed when I finish, you know?

English feels natural to me, even though it's my second language. I spend a lot of time on the internet, 99% of the time reading or listening to English, not my mother tongue.

I find myself thinking in English quite often. When I'm out with my friends talking about current affairs, I might even have problems coming up with the right Slovene term, so I use the English one instead. It's quite frightening.

I'd never really considered it like that. I mean, the internet, at least the most popular sites on the web in general, are English based, so there's going to be a lot of people like yourself, who speak English as a second language, but spend more of their time speaking it than they do their own mother tongue!

I speak Spanish and English and that has never happened to me. The reason for this may be that you are allowing you to think in both languages, thus you will speak them both in the same sentence. The trick is to never allow you to think in more than one language. If you want to speak in English then think only in English and the same for any other language

It's not always that simple though, is it?

Like I said, sometimes you get tired, and your mind slips. Likewise, you might have to be speaking two different languages at the same time, acting as a translator for people. You can't exactly to think in one language while you're doing that sort of work

It looks like I may be doing some tutoring to help someon get ready for the TOEFL. I have worked with children who are English language learners, but never an adult. Do you have any tips to help me get started with her? Is there a way I can quickly assess her English skills? I will be looking at the TOEFL to see what it involves, but any help you can give me to point me in the right direction would be really helpful.

Honestly, teaching English to adults is very like teaching it to children. The only real difference is that most children are learning it while they're also still trying to get a handle on their native tongue, if English isn't their native tongue that is. So, you're able to actually communicate your ideas and issues with your tutee, and best of all, you can draw upon their knowledge of books and films. One of the tricks I used when I was helping my non-native English speaking friends to improve their language skills was to assign them reading which would entail reading books they had already read in their own language.

So for example, Lord of the Rings was the one we used most often, as it was the easiest to come across, and the one which most of them had already read. They knew the plot from having read it before in their own language, so if they ever got really stuck they could worry the meaning out by thinking, "Okay, I'm at the Mines of Moria. What should be happening about now, and how does this help me understand this word in that context?"

That really does not seem worth it at all. You're being asked to pay someone to read our five words per day to you. You could just as easily open up youtube and get that, and more, for free.

I got introduced to this from one of the professors on my course, since we were studying ways that the internet has been used to help society, and this was one of his examples. It's made by the same team that came up with the captcha system, which acts as a means of verification and helps translate print media to computerized media. So, every time you're entering a captcha, you're helping to digitize all of our old books and such, to ensure that they don't ever disappear from history!

It happens, and it will always happen. I mean, even people who grow up speaking two languages from birth mix up words from time to time. My friend for instance, who speaks Spanish (she's from Uruguay) and English as if she were born to both has been slipping Spanish words into her English talks with me lately because she's so stressed out and tired lately. You just acknowledge that it happened, and move on. It's a bit embarrassing at first when it happens to you, but you get used to it after a while

I get this issue all the time! For example, when I was learning to speak Spanish way back in the day, I couldn't get around the fact that everything I said just sounded very...unnatural and formal even. No matter what I said, it just seemed 'off' somehow.