Jon Dao – The Conversation Coach
Category: Improving English Fluency
Judging your life based on others… sometimes I can’t help it, but it’s helpful to stop and reflect. Sure, you probably need to re-evaluate your own life and practice some gratitude, but you also need to reconsider how fairly you’re perceiving that other person’s life.
Luckily for me, I have a great old conversation archived covering this very topic.
Much thanks to Blake and his words of wisdom:
References:
Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy
This is one of the most common English mistakes I hear. So, if you want to sound like a native speaker, you need to be sure to get your “ing” and “ed” adjectives in order.
Very simple summation:
Of course, there’s a little more to it than that. Plus, there’s always some exceptions, but I think you’ll have a way better understanding after watching.
Sometimes the mistakes you make seem bigger than they actually are. That’s because you’re too zoomed in!
Part of the process of improving any skill is to be honest in your own assessment. You don’t want to gloss over problems that you’re making. There’s no point in sugar-coating and saying it was “perfect” when it clearly wasn’t.
That said, it’s a maddening and unproductive path to nitpick apart every single slip up. If you get too caught up in those actions, you might be too entrenched in self-criticism you forget the point.
Are your reflections actually helping to pave the way to something better?
Don’t be too zoomed in.
Zoom out, and make sure the efforts you make to correct aren’t wasted on the trivial things.
It’s not just about seeing the bigger picture, but taking steps to ensure that you’re moving towards a bigger picture.
To understand feels good. Not being able to understand feels bad. And, being able to express you don’t understand is super important.
Having a variety of expressions is also helpful. Too often, non-native speakers will jump straight to “I don’t understand”. Depending on the context, straight and to the point can be best. Unfortunately, if you’re always too direct and basic, it makes your language comprehension skills seem lower than they are.
If you’re in the intermediate-advanced range, you should know different ways to dance around your unfamiliarity:
Those kinds of phrases, while natural, are a bit harder to utilize.
It might be easier to use a substitute like “to wrap my head around” (to comprehend, to visualize, to understand fully/well).
Most of the time, you’ll use this phrase in the negative form:
