– Improve your Business English

Intensive courses in Valls with native teachers

Business English 2016-2017

28 years experience giving a language service to companies in Alt Camp and Conca de Barbara

Monday, Tuesday and Thursday 90 minutes per day

Small groups

Practise:

• Speaking

• Presentations

• Listening

• Discussion

• E-mails

 

>>>> Contact us >>> HERE

English courses in Valls –  2016-17

en català >>>

Native English speakers help you improve your spoken English

28 years of experience helping the people from Valls improve their communication in English

• prepare your English for work
• prepare your English for holidays/travel
• Prepare your English for university
• Prepare your English for Erasmus or study year in USA

Contact us here >>>

Do you have grammar questions for the English language that you want us to help you with?

• – verb forms
• – difference between different verb forms
• – etc etc

This is the place to ask.

This free online service will answer all your grammar doubts.

But don’t expect us to do your homework 

Allow up to 24 hours for the LanguageWell team to give you feedback (Monday to Friday and some weekends)

Basics of good English Language learning ….

Teachers and native speakers!

We will be very happy for you to offer help for our readers.

We require a valid e-mail address and will accept links to relevant websites after it goes to moderation.

Also check your doubts here

Try our English GRAMMAR exercises here >>>>

• There are variations of English around Great Britain and around the world – but the essence of the language is the same.
• An Australian can be understood in London, New York or Durban

But it is absolutely essential to remember that:

It is not French, Italian, Chinese, Swahili, Spanish, Russian or any other language.

You cannot expect that one verb form (tense) in the English language will be the exact equivalent of a verb form in your own language.

Or that one translation of an English word will be the same translation in all situations.

English verb forms are relatively easy to form but sometimes it is difficult to know when to use one form or another. It is important to get to know the basics of  English Grammar but please do not get obsessed with grammar. The most important part of learning a language is the practical day to day understanding and communicating in English

Beware of having a non-native English teacher,  they could possibly make the same wrong assumptions about the use of language as you!

But not all native English people will know why they use one verb form or another ……… but they will usually use grammar correctly and will know when you use the wrong form.

Receiving a good model of English is very important.

Try looking at this article Is Grammar Important .. ? to see another viewpoint on the importance of English grammar

If you think about countries in Europe that have a high proportion of inhabitants who speak English as a foreign language you will probably think of the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark as three examples where the standard is very high. If you are travelling in these countries and do not speak their native language it is generally very easy to find people who speak English and speak English fluently in almost any situation. The level of fluency is very high, so much so that if you ask someone in the street if they speak English often they look at you surprised that you may doubt it!

We almost take it for granted that we will find English speakers in airports, hotels and tourist information offices. But in many countries it is more difficult to find English speakers at bus stations, as taxi drivers, in small shops, in small restaurants and in the street. Not so in Sweden, Holland and Denmark.

So what is so fantastic about these three countries that has so many good English speakers?

Well they have good teachers with an excellent level of English, but that is not the real explanation.

They know that their languages are minority languages in world terms. Very few people who are not native Swedish, Danish or Dutch speakers learn these languages. Many university and other specialised books written by Dutch academics are written in English because it wouldn’t be economically feasible with such a small market to produce them in Dutch.

It is true that these countries have, for many years, adopted a positive encouraging attitude to language learning which has enabled them to develop their commercial and political links with the rest of the world.

But probably the most influential matter that has led to the high level of English language acquisition and acceptance in these countries is television. TV programmes and films that are produced in English are not dubbed into Dutch, Swedish or Danish but are shown in their original English version with subtitles in the local language. These means that from their infancy Dutch, Swedish and Danish children are usually exposed to the English language on a regular basis and both they and their parents treat the English language as a normal part of life.

– The attitude to learning English is very positive.

– They are exposed to the English language many hours of every week. This is extremely important for people to assimilate correctly how English is used.

So, if you don’t live in countries like Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, things are probably a bit more difficult. But do not despair! You can adopt a similar attitude to English language learning in your house and family. To become a fluent speaker of  the English language you have to be a fluent listener of the English language. If you are also an avid reader it helps as well.

• Find every opportunity possible to be in contact with English
• Find English language TV stations. At first it might be a little difficult to follow, but please don’t give up! Remember babies spend 2 – 3 years listening to their mother tongue before they start speaking.
• Download podcasts from the BBC and other sites. Listen to the same section of dialogue two or three times a day for at least a week.
• If  you go to classes and have a textbook, find the CD for all the dialogues in the book. If the student’s book doesn’t include them all, ask your local bookshop to get you the Teacher’s CD. Listen to the unit you are doing, the one before and the one after, two or three times a day. It’s not necessary to listen very hard, you can just have it playing in the background whilst you are driving or eating
• Find English blogs, messenger etc where the communication is in English

and

the most important thing to remember is:

Only you can learn a new language for you. Nobody can do it for you

Languagewell will be updating a number of times a week, so that we can give you more information and tips to help you improve your language acquisition.

Do you want to be an English teacher for non-natives? >>> here

1. Does the school look user friendly? If it looks friendly with information in English that is regularly updated to help their students improve their English every day, this is a positive sign that the school wants to stimulate their students to learn English well.
2. Do they make you feel welcome, or just another customer? It is important that you feel that the school is at your service and that it doesn’t see you just as another punter to fill their bank account.
3. Are the classes conducted in English? If the classes are conducted mainly in the local language and not in English the message is very clear: they do not believe that you are capable of learning English in a natural way. There is a lot of evidence and many studies that show very clearly that people’s spoken English and their understanding improves very quickly if the classes are given in English
4. If the teachers are native speakers, do they have experience teaching? Native English speakers as teachers will be able to give an accurate model of spoken English. However, sometimes young native English speakers see English teaching as a means of travelling around the world. This could mean that they are not committed to teaching you and might disappear very quickly when they have another opportunity to go somewhere else. But it is good to hear different voices and accents, and to have different subject for conversation.
5. If the teachers are not native, do you think that they can give a good model of English which will be valuable to you when you try to use the English that you learn? Many non-native English teachers understand the particular language learning difficulties of their students if their native language is the same. But if the teacher hasn’t lived in an English speaking country for more than 2 years it is difficult for them to completely understand how English is used on a day to day basis.
6.  Are their very big class groups ? If the class groups are bigger than eight (8) students per teacher it is difficult for the class to work in a dynamic way that enables all the students to participate in the use of English.
7. Do all the students have the same first language? If the school is in your own country this is the usual situation. The disadvantage of all the students having the same first language is that they usually make the same grammatical mistakes and have the same problems of pronunciation. If you go to study abroad try to make sure that the school has a policy of a maximum of two students from each foreign language .
8. Does the school teach English or teach English examinations? Some schools, especially those with big class groups, concentrate most of their course preparing their students to pass exams (Cambridge, Trinity etc) These qualifications can be very valuable but there is often the danger that the English learning is academic and there is little value given to effectively using English as communication
9. Look for a school that encourages you to dedicate time out of class doing things in English. Watching English TV, listening to English radio, listening to podcasts in English, regular repeated listening of the class CDs etc, speaking English as often as possible, writing English e-mails, reading English books, newspapers, magazines, comics etc .
10. You want a school that shows you how to learn English effectively and well. A school that demonstrates that they believe that you can learn English if you put in your part outside of class. A school that sees the importance of all aspects of learning English: understanding, listening, speaking, reading, conversation, situational English, practical English

Three effective ways to learn to speak English well:

 If I told you that I know that you are definitely going to win the lottery would you let me tell you

–          when and where to buy the ticket?

–          What numbers to choose?

–          Which lottery system to use?

Or would you prefer to keep trying your luck? This year I’ll buy random numbers, next year I’ll try my family’s birthday dates and ages, Hey there’s a new lottery on Wednesdays now, let’s try that! Look! I’ll just keep buying a ticket now and again because it’s almost impossible to win. “Sometimes I even forget to check my numbers for ages. You know I never get lucky, other people seem to attract luck”

Do you do the same with your language learning?

Every year do you try something different? But you still haven’t found the best way for you to learn English.

You started with a non-native English teacher who explained everything clearly in your native language.

Have you tried English home study courses?

Have you tried English courses online?

Have you done in company classes?

Maybe it would be better to try another English language school

Have you signed up for courses to take Cambridge English exams?

Maybe you have attempted to find a native English teacher

Perhaps you feel that you need a better English dictionary

Or a more relevant English language text book

Then maybe you bought audio classes or podcast courses

Next summer perhaps you should go away and do an English course abroad

This list could go on and on

Let’s make things very clear:

Everybody can learn a language, we all learn at least one when we are babies.

Everybody can learn two or three or more languages and do it without studying or effort. Yes, language learning without effort

Stop any native English speaker in the street in London, New York, Sydney or wherever and ask them this question:

Excuse me, can you tell what the Present Perfect  third person singular of the verb “to know” is?

I can guarantee that most English speakers will not know the answer, are you surprised? English speakers do not need to know what the present continuous or past perfect passive is. They learnt it when they were young children.

So………. What is the best way to learn English? To learn to understand English and to speak English is not a lottery. Every year thousands of people do it and do it well.

There are only three effective ways to learn the English language well.

1. Grow up in an English speaking country and go to a school with the teaching in English
2. Grow up in a non-English speaking country with native English parents or go to an international school where all the classes are in English

Ooooh! Ooooooh? So if it’s too late for you to be able to do either number one or number two …………. Do not despair, there is another solution.

1. Try and copy as many of the daily activities of the people (children) in situation 1 and 2. Only by regular contact with the English language, every week and all year can anyone realistically hope to attain an adequate level that allows communication in English.

In other articles we will talk about specific tasks you can do, and methods you can use to help you effectively improve your level of English in all areas:

Understanding English

Speaking English

Writing English

Reading English

Communicating in English

If you like what we are doing:

–          write and tell us

–          link your website to us

–          recommend us on your Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

–          tell your friends, your teachers, your students

–          sign up to our newsletter

If you think we could improve things:

–          write and tell us what we can do better

–          suggest topics for articles

We want to help people improve the way they learn to:

Speak English

Write English

Can you recommend any good English books?

Can you give us some good effective English grammar tips Grammar here

I know a person who did 70 hours of English a week. Yes! A week.

That was about 300 hours learning English a month and over 3,000 hours a year!

It was a free English course. It was with native speakers.

It included listening to music in English. There were also high quality DVDs in English

When he watched TV he always watched in English.

He used only English books

It sounds excellent doesn’t it? How much English do you do every year? Does it compare well with this student? I suppose that it doesn’t

With so many hours of English every week he did:

–          The past simple and past continuous

–          The Present simple tense and Present Continuous

–          The present perfect and the past perfect

–          Passives and imperatives

–          All conditional forms

–          Question tags

–          Phrasal verbs

–          Etc, etc, etc.

But, do you know what?

After 12 months:

–          he couldn’t read English

–          he couldn’t write in English

–          and he couldn’t speak English

 

It’s incredible but it’s true. What is even more incredible is he was very happy with his course!

Every year the same thing happens to hundreds of thousands of people learning English and also people learning French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Swahili and many, many more languages.

So …….. what was the problem? Did he have some kind of handicap that prevented him from speaking or reading or writing?

NO! The reason is very, very simple ………… he was a BABY.

This is how we all acquire language. From when a child is born, or even before, a child is exposed on a daily basis to the language or languages in its home setting. If a child has more than one language at home, or in its regular contact with people like grandparents, childminders, nursery teachers etc, it can distinguish between them at the age of only six months.

Our brains are “pre-programmed” to be able to slowly make sense of all the strange sounds and language stimuli that it receives. Our brains then start to see the patterns of how their language or languages  are formed. It is normally only after thirty months or so that children begin to talk in any kind of understandable way. It can still take a few years more before a child completely masters their language or languages.

For a child to discover that the protuberance in the middle of their face, which is so often full of snot, is called a nose, does she check a dictionary? Or perhaps we have a pre-programmed vocabulary list in our brains just waiting to be activated? Of course not! The child learns the names of things, actions etc based on repeated hearing and associating a word sound with the object or action etc. So after the child’s mother, father, big brother, grandmother, grandfather, next-door neighbour, childminder etc has said things like:

–          I think he’s got his father’s nose.

–          What a cute little nose!

–          What a snotty nose, do you want Mummy to clean it for you?

–          Let’s put some sun cream on your nose, so it doesn’t get burnt.

–          No Johnny, we put our food in our mouths, not on our noses!

tens, or even hundreds, of times, the child’s brain associates the word sound “nose” with this object in the middle of our face.

It is absolutely essential to remember this basic reminder of how languages are learned. Knowing this and understanding it will help us all to make the right decisions when starting, or re-starting, to learn another language that is not our own mother tongue.

–          To be able to learn, understand and use a language it is necessary to have regular contact with the language.

–          It is also important to have a good language model, if possible.

–          Children do not spend one year learning the present then go on to the past

–          Remember the purpose of language is to allow communication with others.

So, why don’t you test yourself?

How many hours contact do you have with the English language every day, every week, every year?

What do you do?

In future posts on the blog and articles on the web we will give you advice on how to learn English in an effective, and we hope enjoyable, way.