VNtomboy

yeah I think so too. I have a friend (her family lives in Norway) and her mother ONLY speaks Vietnamese. She doesn't speak Norwegian or even English. JUST Vietnamese. Keep in mind she's been living there for over 2 decades. I just found it so mind boggling how you can just NOT learn the language of the country you're living in!

It depends on the context, but like the above commenter said, people do say "super foods" and it's fine. English is an ever evolving language, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

IT IS!! Translating idioms is insanely difficult. When I first started translating fiction novels, I thought it'd be a cakewalk since I'm fluent in both languages! But no...there are so many things that you have to consider: the slang, culture, swear words, etc. Very tough.

Didn't selfie already make it into the Oxford dictionary last year? In any case, I'm really liking the fact that the dictionary is evolving with each year. It's very cool, because I used to think they were *set* things and only had *professional* words

I've encountered a few of these little buggers, but I found them to be fairly easy. You can tell the first and last sentences right away, and then from there I just try to identify which sentences go after the 1st and before the last

Yeah I get this as well. There's just this instinctual gut feeling I get when I see a wrongly spelled word, and when the word is right, I also get a gut feeling that it *looks* right. These days I'm just relying on spell checker so the gut feels are weakening

Honestly it depends on each person's strengths, but I imagine that it'd be insanely time-consuming for most of us. It's not the most natural way to learn a language, especially if you want to speak it in ordinary conversation (which I'm assuming Latin learners don't really need to do :grin:)

Practice is around 90% of it, I think. The other 10% is whether or not you have a natural knack for interpreting. What you can try and do is find volunteering gigs at events and things like that (depending on where you live and what you do, of course). I've done several interpreting jobs at college fairs here

It really depends on you. I don't think taking the PSAT does much of a difference if you're willing to study for the SAT. In fact, I know some people who got high scores on the PSAT and became somewhat arrogant and lazy when it came time for the real thing

I don't think it should be taught, no. It's really something that you pick up OUTSIDE the classroom (online, in conversations, etc) but if you were to write it into a school essay or in your resume...that'd be bad. Plus, it'd really confuse learners I think.

Do you mean films that are in English or films made in England? If the former then probably "Mr Nobody". It's an amazing film that really blew my mind. If the latter then I'm not too sure since I haven't seen that many, but English TV series are amazing though (Skins, misfits, Black mirror, etc)

I really don't enjoy proficiency tests very much, I feel like they don't do that great a job, although if I were tasked with coming up with a better test I wouldn't be able to :grin: I know pretty much for a fact that a lot of native speakers would NOT do well if given tests like these, yet because they're natives, they're automatically assumed to be at the very top level :bored:

Another thing is that when you're writing things down, you can take a quick peek at the dictionary, whereas that'd look a bit odd if you just busted one out during a face to face conversation

Well obviously no system is ever perfect, but I think the EU framework is pretty good. It's pretty comprehensive I think. The saying "you're only as strong as your weakest link" applies here. I mean if you had lower level writing skills but were in the upper level classes, wouldn't you REALLY struggle?

So here in Vietnam, there's a video that went viral that talked about this. This guy who's studying in the States said "you're only fluent if you can pick up girls in bars", to which I was like...WHAT?? :confused: Seriously, people forget that languages are just a tool to communicate. That's it.

Yeah teachers are INCREDIBLY important, especially with language learning. It's not something like math where you can work at it by yourself. Language teachers here (in Vietnam where I'm from) are very well compensated for their work though. I'd actually like to become an English teacher myself someday

Swedish and Finnish are just like freakin unpronounceable languages. Seriously, I don't even know if it's a nasal or a throat sound to make sometimes. Incredibly difficult languages

For sure. I think when you're going through intense emotions, it's very hard to pay attention to linguistics, since much of our mind is preoccupied with that emotion. When I get super angry or even super happy, I just use this mix of my mother tongue and English, haha :grin:

I think this somewhat depends on the languages. Languages are a tool to help people communicate, that's all. You don't have to speak like a native in order to get your point across. However, when you're not even bothering AND it starts to get confusing, THEN you should probably try to improve.

haha, that COULD be due to Benedict Cumberbatch's sexy low voice. Seriously, his voice is like silk

It's self confidence really. Speaking is pretty tough for a beginner, since with native speakers, they speak really fast so it's harder to hear. Also, when carrying a conversation, you have to come up with words on the fly, so if you don't have a good vocab, then it's VERY difficult to have a good conversation

While I agree with everyone else here that learning languages should start at an early age, I don't think it HAS to be before 5 years old. I went to Australia with my mum in the 3rd grade (so around 9-10) with ZERO knowledge of English whatsoever, and I managed to pick it up okay.

So I've taken both, and it really depends on what you're good at. The TOEFL is better if you don't mind sitting in front of the computer for a few hours and are shy speaking with a native speaker. If you enjoy writing academic style essays, then the IELTS is for you.

Given that I've lived in a few English speaking countries and my native tongue isn't English, yes I have haha. I absolutely agree that it's super difficult to speak in a foreign language let alone over the phone where it's not as clear as in person. Speaking is really tough, especially to a native speaker because you can get insecure about mispronouncing words or having a weird accent :confused: