English as a second or foreign language Puns

As an English is my second language , I don't feel that "Oh you speak English? That's so cool" feeling from a native speaker when I reveal this "skill".

But when I hear someone foreign who starts speaking my own language, I cannot contain my joy. I even support that action by trying to help him figure out what he doesn't know and build up his trust into using his second language more.

Hello! I need to collect some interviews from students of English as a second/foreign language, and would appreciate your help. If anyone has time to answer questions from one or more of the sections I would greatly appreciate it. It will help me to become a better teacher in the future.

First off where are you from? What is your first language background? What other languages have you studied? How fluent are you?

Vocab

What is the main way that you learned English vocabulary? Around how many words would you say you know in English? How long did it take you before you knew enough vocabulary to feel comfortable speaking in English? What strategies do you use when you come across a word you haven't heard or seen before?

Pronunciation

What are the biggest obstacles and frustrations you have with English pronunciation? What strategies or ways of practicing have you used to improve your pronunciation? Did you find some sounds in particular to be difficult? Do you think that a lot of the sounds in English are in your first language as well?

Social context/Pragmatics

Have you been taught about how to learn English differently in different contexts? Do you remember any occasions where lack of knowledge about English politeness was a problem? Do you have trouble with things like sarcasm?

Again I would greatly appreciate if anyone could take time to answer just a few of these questions. Any that seem to relate to you specifically, anything is extremely helpful!

Their grades in descending order:

95 - Annie

85 - Abed

81 - Shirley

80 - Jeff

79 - Britta

70 - Pierce

68 - Troy

I love how the show maintains the continuity in its characterization, not only individually but in comparison to the other cast members. Annie is the obvious #1, with Abed an understandable #2, crazy complex mind and all. After those two, Shirley/Jeff/Britta represent the everyday people. Shirley at #3 as the most sensible out of the average trio, Jeff at #4 (docked points for ego that overrides logic) and Britta at #5 (wonkier than Jeff, an omen of her diminishing mental capabilities, and in light of episode 1, she was the one who needed help studying Spanish after all). Big dip to Pierce and Troy, who sit at #6 and #7 respectively, with Pierce only "smarter" than Troy simply because Troy is just really dumb (academically).

I love it when shows numerically grade a cast of characters in their proficiency or power (e.g. Dragonball Z in Buu Saga at the World Tournament, for the anime fans out there). It canonizes actual statistics that fans might speculate, and enters the characters into the world of game-like stats.

How would the group rank in Strength? Or Dexterity? Etc?

With the INT stats, you can have Annie and Abed as spellcaster types, with Shirley/Jeff/Britta as your jack-of-all-trades fighters (with Shirley dabbling in faith magic as a paladin, and Jeff&Britta as your classic protagonist type sword wielders). Pierce and Troy are incapable of magic, as they lack the intelligence, but can suffice as tanks (think pillow juggernaut Pierce) or an all-offense Brawler (Troy).

Hey there, so I decided I wanted to change my major from a software engineering major to something that will allow me to experience different cultures and travel the world. I am fascinated by language and hope to learn as many as possible during my life

Now I have been looking into teaching English as a second language because I think it really encompasses everything I'd want to do in life. A problem though is that if I ever decided to return to the U.S. I couldn't do anything with a masters in TESOL.

A few people have recommended possibly a bachelors i linguistics or English, with maybe a masters in education so I could teach here should I ever decide I want to work in the US instead of abroad.

So my problem is, what should I take? A masters in TESOL and be really good for that one job, or perhaps a master's in education and just be certified to teach English in foreign countries so I'm more versatile?

I'm really struggling to find what would be best.

I thank you for your time.

In English, accents like Italian and French are often considered "sexy." I wonder what this is like from the perspective of people speaking different languages.

What was your experience? Where did you teach? Did you feel qualified? What type of lessons did you teach? Any info would be great.

Hi!

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this. I hope you can help me out.

I'm an English as a Foreign Language teacher. I'm not an English native speaker myself. Basically, I was trained to teach elementary kids how to learn a foreign language.

English is tricky in the sense that one same graph or combination of graphs can have more than one sound. For example, 'ou' is pronounced different in 'bough' 'tough' 'thought' 'through' 'though'... There is not a rule to know when to pronounce it one way or another (at least, I'm not aware of it). The same can be said about other combinations of letters. With foreign language learners, that isn't a big deal. They may complain that pronunciation and spelling aren't always correlated, but since they learn the word and its pronunciation at the same time, they don't usually make spelling mistakes. In contrast, natives rely on how a word sounds to figure out the spelling.

'Excede' is a mistake that a foreign language learner wouldn't make simply because they've only seen it written as 'exceed' from the moment they learnt the word or heard it for the first time. Native speakers might think that 'excede' sounds exactly like the word they want to write, and it's true, but the spelling is not accurate.

I'll be tutoring kids that are learning how to read/write in their mother tongue: English. I expect them to make spelling mistakes or to have trouble reading some words (I mean, if they find that 'ou' or any other combination, they might read it as any of the possible pronunciations and that might make understanding difficult). Similarly, when writing, they may write 'month' as 'munth' since 'u' is often pronounced as the 'o' in 'month' ('but' 'cut' 'jug' 'much'...). Technically, their logic is okay, but the spelling is erroneous. Those are only examples. I hope my point is clear.

A graph representing more than one phoneme is something that my mother tongue has as well. The difference is that the rules re when to write one graph or another and how to know the pronunciation are simple. We introduce those rules to kids progressively. In English, these rules don't exist. If they do, there must be lots of exceptions that complicate the reading/writing process.

How do I teach native kids how to read and write in English taking into account phonetics and spelling? Is there a proper way to do this, or do English kids just learn spelling by reading a lot and memorising words? Perhaps s

I've been watching a lot of Grimm, which has plenty of French and German spoken with English subtitles and I am slowly starting to hear some actors speaking it with American-ish accents. Am I right?

I'm gonna be teaching some Spanish speaking teammates English and I want to try to anticipate any problems.

Do foreign students at Missouri State who are studying English as Second language, make American friends or stick with those of their own country to speak their home language?

I'm an American student, and am studying abroad for about a month in Italy come May. I've been working with Duolingo (the only service I can afford) to try and learn Italian for about a month now, and I could probably get by with very basic conversational things. My worry is that Italians will be frustrated by my attempts to speak Italian with some sort of "Oh, look at the stupid American tourist who learned a few words from Google Translate and thinks he can speak the language" mentality. Can any frequent travelers (or Redditors from that area) attest to this? Is it better for me to speak broken Italian as often as I can or simply own up to the fact that I am American and can only fluently speak English?

People who frequently communicate with people in other countries irl due to work, family or friends, what language do you prefer to communicate with each other?

I noticed that when I am in the Netherlands, that I much prefer speaking English with people rather than German, even if the person I am talking to speaks German as a second language. The reason for that is, that when I am speaking German, I feel like I need to concentrate really hard to not speak in my dialect, speak slowly and clearly and to cut down on slang, to make sure that I will be easily understood. When speaking English, it feels like we are more on the same level and I can speak more freely.

For those of you who can relate, what language do you prefer to use and why?

The UK and Ireland go without saying. Italy, no problem. I can do it in Slovenia, which I suppose functions as 'close enough' for Croatia and I presume the rest of the former Yugoslavia, but I don't know about elsehwere in the Slavic world. In Germany and Austria I suppose I could just bellow "dunkel bier!!!" until my favorite style of German beer appears in my hand.

As the title says, I (as a German whose native language isn't English) am wondering if there's a subreddit for people like me that don't speak English as their native language to ask questions about grammar and how to better phrase/describe certain things?

Thanks in advance for your answer!

proof: https://imgur.com/a/6dyppMN

My career is one that allows you to work all around the world. If you want to know about it, AMA.

My wife's taking advantage of the travel to make a living as a Youtuber.

Hi everyone I’m seeking some advice for improving social skills as a person who came from a non-English speaking background and speaks English as a second language. So I have been living and working in a English speaking country for the past 6 years. I’m fluent in the language, however not very confident with my social skills, which has been impacting my work recently. I used to be able to cope using the social skills that I picked up from observing others when I was working as a casual worker. But now it seems that they are no longer adequate as I recently started a full time job in an office. As I work in community service, there are a lot of social interactions involved when engaging with clients and coworkers. Even though no one has made a complaint about my social skills yet, I can’t help thinking that they are not that great. I struggle every day from the moment when someone at work starts asking me how are you. I cannot tell whether they would like me to stay chatting a bit longer or it was just a greeting. There are too many other situations like this where i just wasn’t sure how to respond to sound polite and not too cold.

When I’m speaking my first language I’m also a bit of introvert. But as soon as I get to know people a bit more I become very chatty and I would also joke a lot. It’s a shame I haven’t been able to do that when speaking English because I was too scared of ending up saying something rude, when it wasn’t my intention to be rude. It is also hard knowing what is the right thing to do or say when you can’t learn this stuff from your parents.

I’m planning to see a good therapist but I don’t know how long I will be kept waiting. Would love to know If anyone has any advice on how to build social skills for people from non-English backgrounds.