Debating is an art form, isn’t it? Unfortunately great orators and polemicists are becoming a bit of a dying breed. Say what you will about Christopher Hitchens, for example. He was indeed a controversial speaker. You may certainly agree or disagree with his opinions. You may consider his political and philosophical views debatable or even offensive but one undeniable fact is that he was exceedingly articulate. He made clear points and gave his opponents plenty of food for thought. I sometimes have the feeling that over the years speech-writing and speaking skills in general have yielded the stage to emotions and beliefs and, more recently, to "post-truths" and alternative facts. These days speeches tend to be mostly about “connecting with the audience” and much less about articulating a coherent discourse with cold facts, persuasive arguments and informed opinions. But I digress…

Be that as it may, in our courses (B2 and C1) we are only expected to politely agree and disagree, show support and question our interlocutor’s points, which is no small feat in itself. I'm afraid that the ability to be funny, aggressive, pompous, vulgar or creative is truly beyond our scope. So let’s keep it simple by considering an easy subject matter.

The video below these lines shows a (deliberately) shallow approach to a commonplace issue: national stereotypes. Why have I chosen such a trite topic? Because I’m convinced that both upper-intermediate (B2) and advanced students (C1) should first master the obvious statements before they can move on to more versatile forms of expression. The girl in the video is in some ways an over-the-top version of an average American (her hand movements, her enthusiastic mannerisms, her facial expressions are a little on the nose) but, in terms of vocabulary, she offers gold to learners of English. Let me tell you why.

To start with, she uses many B2 level expressions, for instance, “to get to know each other and figure things out”. Pay attention to how she phrases an obvious statement “Germans can often be quite direct”. She resorts to a generalization but she doesn’t say “In my opinion Germans are direct”, which would sound too blunt. Before plunging into a sweeping statement she is smart enough to mention another platitude: “everyone is different and unique but…”.

There is a good deal of C1 stuff as well: “looking back on it…”. Check out the idiomatic phrases: “As an American I’m used to beating around the bush about things, softening the blow…”. All in all, I find this video quite practical for those of you that want to incorporate “standard expressions” into a conversation that (let’s face it) we are all bound to have from time to time.

 

Be inspired!

I got news for you! You already speak English. You can communicate. So congratulations everyone! That is a major achievement indeed. This time I'm not trying to be ironic. I really mean it. Congratulations. Can you imagine you could express yourselves in Arabic or Japanese they way you do in English? Wouldn’t it be great? Unfortunately (because you are learning English and not Arabic) you probably downplay your accomplishments a lot but the truth is... it remains an respectable feat. Still, I suspect many of you need to feel motivated. Don’t you worry about that. I can come to the rescue. How do I intend to do that? Well, before I address that you should read some more. Just bear with me for a minute.

In Europe we tend to be so skeptical of everything, don’t we? We often respect pessimism as if it were a good thing. That may be the reason why terms such as “inspirational” or “inspiring” are viewed with what I can only describe as smug disdain. The thing is... I find that utterly ridiculous (to say the least). One book, one movie, one speech, one conversation, one chance encounter can be truly inspirational. By that I mean that reading a book, listening to a lecturer, talking to a stranger… any of those experiences can make you feel the need to DO something (not just THINK about something). Grant Snider happens to be a great illustrator that keeps a beautiful blog which I find really inspirational. It manages to combine a fresh approach to creativity with a smart use of language. It’s quite remarkable. Trust me. And even if you don’t like his cartoons, just the vocabulary is worth a visit. This is his website: incidental comics. Have fun!

International English

Teaching language for communication or using the communicative approach used to be two of the most frequently used mantras in the realm of foreign language teaching. The power of simply communicating (no matter how) has been partially debunked. It may be a gross oversimplification, but the truth is that, for a number of years most foreign language instructors were obsessed with the idea that anything goes as long as a student gets the message across. Mistakes are unavoidable, accuracy is not critical providing that your interlocutors understand what you mean. Yes. I won’t deny that all that is true. As a matter of fact that's what so-called international English is all about: an imperfect, simple, un-idiomatic "dialect" which is clearly non-native but practical nonetheless. However, it must be pointed out that international English is only acceptable for a student until they reach the B1 level.

The B2 level requires an increasingly high degree of lexical accuracy (kill > murder > assassinate). A person, for example, can be a patient at the doctor’s practice but a client in a lawyer’s office and a contestant in a TV quiz show. Using basic terms such as person, man or woman in every context tends to be annoying to say the least. Still, even the B2 level is, for the most part, descriptive and therefore not too exciting.

The C1 level, of course, is slightly more demanding. As we have seen, a C1 speaker is expected to use colorful expressions, idioms, proverbs, phrasal verbs, similes, nuanced words that show an attitude, etc. Why? Just compare a cold boring expression like former lover with the more idiomatic old flame or the rather flippant ex. Do you feel the difference? I bet you do.

It goes without saying, the more you know, the wider your range of options is. Let’s suppose, for instance, you have walked in on someone stabbing another person. How do you refer to that (horrific) situation? You can say you caught the criminal red-handed (idiomatic), in the act (neutral) or in flagrante delicto (very formal). Since the nuances are different, your listener’s reaction will of necessity be different. For similar examples check out the following chart:

Plain	Colorful option # 1	Colorful option # 2
I was surprised	I got the shock of my life	I was caught off guard
Never	When pigs fly	When hell freezes over
No matter what	Come rain or shine	Come hell or high water
There’s no more to say	Period	End of story

All this comes to prove that, while communication remains a respectable aim, there comes a point in a language student’s life when relaying the message is just not good enough. That’s when you realize you want to be able to sound funny, folksy, agressive, elegant or distant. In other words, you want to be an advanced speaker.

Pronunciation

Hi there language freaks! I thought I might cheer up your Halloween break.

As I said at school, I have decided not to teach pronunciation like I used to do (i.e. 10 minutes every day). If I’ve learnt something over the past 25 years on the job that is the grim truth that teaching pronunciation is pretty useless. No matter how hard I try. No matter the angles I use. On average, most adult learners in Spain dismiss pronunciation out of hand. I do know they would love to pronounce things a little bit better but I suspect that some of them would also like to be a little bit taller and their attitude to both wishes is surprisingly similar. For the most part, they are just not willing to go the distance. Part of the tragedy lies in the fact that, unlike children, grown-ups have a special gift for finding excuses not to pronounce things. Here is a brief summary of the standard excuses:

Excuse	Truth
I feel weird when I say things right	That is your problem. Many speakers from other countries don’t have that problem
The Spanish media mispronounce words	Your teachers don’t. Native speakers on the internet don’t. Many speakers from other countries don’t.
People might laugh at me if I pronounce words correctly	(Some) people may laugh at you when you speak with an embarrassing accent. If they don’t, they might only patronize you. Not nice, is it?

Comedian John Oliver (the one and only) recently used the graphic below to joke about a confusion. In Spain that is no joke. What am I talking about here? The dreaded [v]. What about it? Well, the truth is that Spanish speakers (and Basque speakers, for that matter) are probably the only people in Europe that have trouble pronouncing the V-sound. What does that entail? For one thing unwanted mix-ups (best/vest, very/bury, blog/vlog, etc.). Another undesirable consequence of bad pronunciation is miscommunication. Suppose you’re on the phone and need to give someone your work email address, which happens to contain a “v”. Suppose you pronounce a [b] instead of a [v]. You know what? You may never get an email from that contact. Finally there’s the “prestige thing”. Believe it or not, people react differently to speakers who don’t pronounce basic sounds… I could also comment on the widespread inability to articulate simple words like “she”, “English”, etc. So… what can you do about it? Just practice simple sequences like these: everybody, vibration, bravery. This website has a lot of minimal pairs (in case you're curious).

There is really no use trying to venture any further if you don’t master the basic problem areas first. In our case that means: the V-sound, the SH-sound, the initial sp- st- sk- clusters and the regular past tenses (played, worked, etc). Once you have that down we can begin to wander into uncharted territory. Remember that even if the context makes it easy for people to understand what you mean, the impact of bad pronunciation is inevitable. Food for thought.