Native-like fluency in English

Do this exercise with me!

Here is the text I was reading www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/670293…4836/excerpt

To find more exercises that can help you get better at reading out loud, check out this collection raindrop.io/NataliaTokar/reading-out-loud-22525828

nataliatokar.me

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I teach a self-study exploratory practice approach to learning a foreign language. The result of this method is that people move beyond the levels of "Advanced" and "Proficient", and instead of fixating on achieving a certain "level", they invest in building a deliberate practice routine that might never end.

I show strategies and tools to build a meaningful practice routine for those who need more than the "advanced" level. I share my own process, and I teach the system of very concrete yet very creative exercises that help us develop the necessary skills to get to native-like fluency.

They are:


- attentiveness


- listening & short-term memory


- clarity


- brevity


- writing


- rhythm


- articles


- questioning your own ideas


- diction


- LEARNING HOW TO LEARN

This episode is about brevity - the art of speaking less while saying more in a foreign language.

I'm going to share:

- Why it's frustrating


- Why it's normal


- Tips to include brevity in your practice routine


- Exercises that help

Find more exercises on BREVITY in our Community of Practice (use the search bar to find hashtag #brevity)
https://community.nataliatokar.me/

See the post in the Community of Practice to see the links I mentioned in the podcast community.nataliatokar.me/c/ask-anything/brevity

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I am very excited to introduce Nuri to you.

We had an insightful conversation on what it takes to continue practicing when you're already good. We talked about English practice that can open doors to great career opportunities if you choose not to quit and continue investing in yourself.

Nuri is not a native speaker; she's originally from Kyrgyzstan, and she's currently in HR, helping Getir, a Turkish company, hire legal teams across Europe.

• How do you define the purpose of learning?
• Why watch movies and TV shows in English and HOW to watch them?
• Improving English skills vs improving communication skills in English
• Is Native-Like Fluency a job requirement in international companies?

You will hear us talk about these things, and I hope you'll find this conversation useful and inspiring. #nataliatokar #nativelikefluency

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You can also watch a video of our conversation here youtu.be/3dZuIXHMFHc

Meet Jill - www.youtube.com/c/JillDiamond

Join Jill's program "Find Your Stage With English Communication Confidence" - www.byjilldiamond.com/a/2147503351/ahXUjtis

Use this coupon code to get 15% off until Feb 28, 2022 - "SPECIAL15"

Join Native-Like Fluency. The Community of Practice - pages.nataliatokar.me/community

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This is the story of Fira. She speaks flawless English and Russian.

She lives in the US, and she still puts the work in to continue improving her English skills.

Even though Russian is her first language, she had to do a lot of work in Moscow to improve her Russian to the level where she could enter Moscow State University.

If you already live in an English-speaking country or if you're planning to move, her story may answer some of your questions.

- What do you do when you already have the right environment?

- Why do some people never see any substantial progress with their English skills, even though they've lived in Canada/US/England for quite some time...?

- What kind of everyday routines can advanced learners create to continue progressing?

Enjoy the episode!

To join our Community of Practice for advanced learners who need a deliberate & sustainable practice routine, visit pages.nataliatokar.me/community

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10 Reminders We All Need When We’re Ugly Crying Into Our Vodka and Hate Our Jobs

written by Ash Ambirge

First of all, if you're actually crying into your vodka, you must be drinking from an exceptionally wide glass. I commend you.

Second, I made this list the other night when I was awake at three o'clock in the morning because isn't that what everybody does at three o'clock in the morning? Makes lists? And then publishes them on the Internet? Fuck, how I love the Internet. Though I do not like having to capitalize “Internet” because it reminds me of having to capitalize “God,” and all of that feels really extra—but then again maybe this is really just a way of saying that the Internet IS God. And I am high key okay with that.

So, darling Internet, here are some things that I'm thinking we could really use some reminders on—because no one can live their best life while actually, ahem, hating it.

The full text is here https://www.themiddlefingerproject.org/10-reminders-we-all-need-when-were-ugly-crying-into-our-vodka-and-hate-our-jobs/

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When you create a message with emotional content, it attracts people. Leadership consultant Edwin H. Friedman puts an even finer point on it, saying, “People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them.” Emotion pulls, it doesn’t chase.

I’ve always been a fan of humour in advertising, and most of the ten-thousand-plus commercials I’ve directed over the last twenty-five years were humorous. All marketing is an intrusion. It piggybacks on the real reason people have focused their attention—watching television, listening to radio, perusing a newspaper or surfing online. They are there for the content, not the advertising (though the Super Bowl may be the one exception to this rule). So if advertising is an interloper, how do you make that interruption the most polite or, at minimum, the least intrusive message possible? Even more, how do you give something back in return for the loud knocking? Humour is one answer.

It’s important to understand the difference between humour and comedy. Humour is giving, it’s generous. Comedy subtracts and is usually sarcastic or biting. That’s why humour is better suited to marketing. To make someone smile, or laugh, forges an emotional connection. Humour gathers people. Think about people you know. The ones who make you smile are the ones you most want to be around. Humour doesn’t pursue, it pulls.

Not long ago, I attended a talk given by filmmaker Richard Curtis at the Cannes advertising festival. Curtis is a very successful screenwriter and director whose credits include Mr. Bean, Blackadder, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and Notting Hill, to name but a few. Not a bad resumé. He was in Cannes to unveil a new marketing campaign he was spearheading to tackle extreme poverty and climate change. The campaign was going to begin with a cinema ad that would be shown on the same day in every movie theatre in North America and Europe. It would be the first global cinema ad ever done. When Curtis previewed the ad during his talk, the press was surprised that its treatment of extreme poverty and climate change was humorous. Didn't the subject matter call for a more serious tone?

Here’s what Curtis said: In his early days as a writer on Blackadder, he realized the only way to get the audience to remember an important plot point was to attach it to humour. So if Sir Nigel Ridgley was coming for dinner, few people would remember that beat. But if Sir Nigel Fatbottom was coming, no one forgot. Humour made it stick.

Now, humour isn’t the only answer to effective marketing, but it illustrates the rule. Emotional content makes people care. That said, most learning institutions put much more value on intellectual reasoning than they do on emotion. Yet emotion fuels the world. Even in a math-and-science-driven institution like NASA, the decision to go to the moon wasn’t driven by rational facts. It was propelled by the emotion of John F. Kennedy’s challenge of landing a man on the moon by 1970 to prove American superiority. Throughout the 1960s, NASA continually marketed the moonshot with emotion. It signed an ongoing contract with Life magazine to feature full-colour stories on the astronauts and their families; it framed the new satellite communications technology and even the small RCA cameras the astronauts took onboard as innovations that would have a beneficial impact on the daily lives of Americans. Maybe the most emotional pitch was the one that warned of letting the Russians (read: Communists) control outer space, dropping bombs on America “like kids dropping rocks from a highway bridge.” That pitch alone persuaded the government to keep signing those big cheques.

Full text is here www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/258334…0373/excerpt

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When was the last time you listened to someone? Really listened, without thinking about what you wanted to say next, glancing down at your phone, or jumping in to offer your opinion? And when was the last time someone really listened to you? Was so attentive to what you were saying and whose response was so spot-on that you felt truly understood?

In modern life, we are encouraged to listen to our hearts, listen to our inner voices, and listen to our guts, but rarely are we encouraged to listen carefully and with intent to other people. Instead, we are engaged in a dialogue of the deaf, often talking over one another at cocktail parties, work meetings, and even family dinners; groomed as we are to lead the conversation rather than follow it. Online and in person, it’s all about defining yourself, shaping the narrative, and staying on message. Value is placed on what you project, not what you absorb.

And yet, listening is arguably more valuable than speaking. Wars have been fought, fortunes lost, and friendships wrecked for lack of listening. It is only by listening that we engage, understand, connect, empathize, and develop as human beings. It is fundamental to any successful relationship — personal, professional, and political.

So it’s striking that high schools and colleges have debate teams and courses in rhetoric and persuasion but seldom, if ever, classes or activities that teach careful listening. You can get a doctorate in speech communication and join clubs like Toastmasters to perfect your public speaking, but there’s no comparable degree or training that emphasizes and encourages the practice of listening. The very image of success and power today is someone miked up and prowling around a stage or orating from behind a podium. Giving a TED Talk or commencement speech is living the dream.

Social media has given everyone a virtual megaphone to broadcast every thought, along with the means to filter out any contrary view. People find phone calls intrusive and ignore voicemail, preferring text or wordless emoji. If people are listening to anything, it’s likely through headphones or earbuds, where they are safe inside their own curated sound bubbles; the soundtracks to the movies that are their walled-off lives.

The result is a creeping sense of isolation and emptiness, which leads people to swipe, tap, and click all the more. Digital distraction keeps the mind occupied but does little to nurture it, much less cultivate depth of feeling, which requires the resonance of another’s voice within our very bones and psyches. To really listen is to be moved physically, chemically, emotionally, and intellectually by another person’s narrative.

This is a book in praise of listening and a lament that as a culture we seem to be losing our listening mojo. As a journalist, I’ve conducted countless interviews with everyone from Nobel laureates to homeless toddlers. I view myself as a professional listener, and yet, I, too, can fall short, which is why this book is also a guide to improving listening skills.

We are, each of us, the sum of what we attend to in life.

To write this book, I have spent the better part of two years delving into the academic research related to listening — the biomechanical and neurobiological processes as well as the psychological and emotional effects. There is a blinking external hard drive on my desk loaded with hundreds of hours of interviews with people from Boise to Beijing, who either study some aspect of listening or whose job, like mine, is listening-intensive; including spies, priests, psychotherapists, bartenders, hostage negotiators, hairdressers, air traffic controllers, radio producers, and focus group moderators.

READ MORE here

www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2019/de…d-listeners.html

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Excerpt

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

I remembered it before I turned the corner and saw it, in all its dilapidated red-brick glory: the Hempstocks' farmhouse.

It took me by surprise, although that was where the lane had always ended. I could have gone no further. I parked the car at the side of the farmyard. I had no plan. I wondered whether, after all these years, there was anyone still living there, or, more precisely, if the Hempstocks were still living there. It seemed unlikely, but then, from what little I remembered, they had been unlikely people.

The stench of cow muck struck me as I got out of the car, and I walked, gingerly, across the small yard to the front door. I looked for a doorbell, in vain, and then I knocked. The door had not been latched properly, and it swung gently open as I rapped it with my knuckles.

I had been here, hadn't I, a long time ago? I was sure I had. Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good. I stood in the hallway and called, "Hello? Is there anybody here?"

I heard nothing. I smelled bread-baking and wax furniture polish and old wood. My eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness: I peered into it, was getting ready to turn and leave when an elderly woman came out of the dim hallway holding a white duster. She wore her gray hair long.

I said, "Mrs. Hempstock?"

She tipped her head to one side, looked at me. "Yes. I do know you, young man," she said. I am not a young man. Not any longer. "I know you, but things get messy when you get to my age. Who are you, exactly?"

"I think I must have been about seven, maybe eight, the last time I was here."

She smiled then. "You were Lettie's friend? From the top of the lane?"

"You gave me milk. It was warm, from the cows." And then I realized how many years had gone by, and I said, "No, you didn't do that, that must have been your mother who gave me the milk. I'm sorry." As we age, we become our parents; live long enough and we see faces repeat in time. I remembered Mrs. Hempstock, Lettie's mother, as a stout woman. This woman was stick-thin, and she looked delicate. She looked like her mother, like the woman I had known as Old Mrs. Hempstock.

Sometimes when I look in the mirror I see my father's face, not my own, and I remember the way he would smile at himself, in mirrors, before he went out. "Looking good," he'd say to his reflection, approvingly.

"Looking good."

"Are you here to see Lettie?" Mrs. Hempstock asked.

"Is she here?" The idea surprised me. She had gone somewhere, hadn't she? America?

The old woman shook her head. "I was just about to put the kettle on. Do you fancy a spot of tea?"

I hesitated. Then I said that, if she didn't mind, I'd like it if she could point me toward the duck pond first.

"Duck pond?"

I knew Lettie had had a funny name for it. I remembered that. "She called it the sea. Something like that."

The old woman put the cloth down on the dresser. "Can't drink the water from the sea, can you? Too salty. Like drinking life's blood. Do you remember the way? You can get to it around the side of the house. Just follow the path."

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