Time-efficient? Native speaker girl/boyfriend/partner.
Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-natives?
21–25 of 25 posts
Re: Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-natives?
#22Spaniard in London with the same problem here. The BEST on-line material is BBC's "The sound of English" http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pr... Just watch it and practise with a mirror many, many, many times and you will improve. If you are willing to spend some money, I recommend doing an elocution "soften your accent" course. I did it a couple of years ago (sorry, don't remember the name of…
Found one that looks interesting - maybe it helps other HN users as well: http://www.londonspeechworkshop.com/our-courses/dates-and-pr... Do you have any other recommendations maybe?
It took some fiddling with my old email archive but I found it, Joe Hudson was my teacher:
http://www.pronunciationlondon.co.uk/joe.html http://www.anenglishaccent.com/author.html
He is very good. We spent half of every session learning 'high level' stuff (phrases, paragraphs) and the other half practising 'low level' elocution (where to place your tongue and your lips for each sound).
Re: Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-natives?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
(You missed the 'reply' link) Yes, that definitely looks better! The fact is that you will surely make a few errors, so not capitalizing and the other 'intentional' errors compound those that naturally creep in, making the whole thing look like a big mess.
Agreed. If you don't bother to follow the rules you already know, how do you expect to learn more? It's not like native speakers don't have problems writing correctly. At one point, I couldn't spell the word "necessary" to save my life. One day I decided I would simply refuse to write any word I didn't know how to spell without looking it up. Now I can spell almost every word I know without looking it up. I got a D (…
Thanks. I appreciate the feedback.
Re: Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-natives?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Found one that looks interesting - maybe it helps other HN users as well: http://www.londonspeechworkshop.com/our-courses/dates-and-pr... Do you have any other recommendations maybe?
It took some fiddling with my old email archive but I found it, Joe Hudson was my teacher: http://www.pronunciationlondon.co.uk/joe.html http://www.anenglishaccent.com/author.html He is very good. We spent half of every session learning 'high level' stuff (phrases, paragraphs) and the other half practising 'low level' elocution (where to place your tongue and your lips for each sound).
thanks contacted him.
Re: Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-natives?
#25Your fellow Seedcamp company www.wordy.com would help you on a written basis - check the feedback you receive and learn from it. Being here in London, reading english books and newspapers, and going to the movies will also help. Disclosure: I work at Seedcamp...
Good to know Peter.
Choosing a limited set of words/phrases/phrasal verbs and writing an essay based on them is also a good way of training.