Hi, I'm Hilary and welcome to day six of the Seven Rules of Adept English, our free course.
You know the format, there's an e-mail and you've linked through to this video.
There's also an MP3 file and a PDF file.
Now just to recap Rule One talked about the importance of understanding.
Understanding first, before anything else.
Rule Two talked about practising, repeating listening until you gain that understanding.
And...
Rule Three said 'Stick at it'.
Make it part of your schedule.
Rule Four of Adept English says 'Be nice to yourself, don't be critical of yourself.
Learning is a gradual process.
And..
Rule Five talks about the power of learning grammar and vocabulary within context and
'Nothing but English' - the explanation is also in English.
So today we come to Rule Six.
And this is really about how Adept English can give you a 'Helping Hand'.
So it gives you opportunity to listen to material which has been specifically written for English
language learners.
Now when I tried to learn French, trying to improve my French, I remember finding it really
difficult to come across material online that was suitable.
Most of the French was either too slow and too simple or really fast and there was not
transcript to help me.
So in French there is lots of elision, lots of things which are contracted.
And the same in English, so there's often quite a difference between the way languages
are taught and what you hear in the country, what you hear native speakers say.
So in English, you might know 'I am going to go and do this', but a real English speaker
might say 'I'm gonna go an' do this'.
So you've got to get used to listening to the second version.
When....again, with my French, I found it a whole lot easier to understand Parisian
French, so French as spoken by people who come from Paris.
Obviously not everybody comes from Paris and accents vary.
And it's not different in the UK.
So there's accents and there's dialect - so ways of speaking that are from a particular
area of the country.
And also there's slang as well.
So bear in mind, say on accent, even people in the UK, from different parts of the UK
may have some difficulty understanding each other, so it can be quite difficult.
So I think that this can be a topic worth focusing on and worth covering.
Other things that I include in Rule Six of 'Helping Hand' - so materials specifically
for people who are intermediate - they've got good understanding of English and a good
vocabulary already but they want to move to fluency.
So Adept English - it's slowed down slightly.
Most of the time, I remember to speak more slowly and more clearly than I might usually.
Apologies, sometimes I get excited about my subject and I might be speaking more quickly
which makes it more difficult to understand.
But on the courses, we gradually speed it up.
And the way that I'm speaking to you now is not at all unlike how I might speak to a member
of my family.
The Helping Hand also gives help with parts of English which might be confusing.
Now - and sometimes it's illogical!
Sometimes it doesn't make sense even to us English speaking people!
Now, don't be downhearted when I say that, don't be discouraged.
Every language has its difficult bits and its easier bits - and English is just the
same.
So for example, French and German are the two other languages which I know.
Now, in French and German, you have to learn the gender of the nouns.
So everything is masculine or feminine (or neutar in German!)
In English, you don't have to bother with this!
If it's masculine or male and it's breathing and alive, then it's 'he'.
If it's feminine or female and alive, it's 'she'.
Everything else is an 'it'.
Aside from storms and ships occasionally, but that's a simple rule.
Similarly in English, adjectives are much easier, so describing workds - red, green,
big, little, small, large.
They're always the same, they don't change.
So it's a big girl, it's three big dogs, it's the big house, it's a big idea.
It doesn't matter!
Those parts of English are much more simple and more complicated in some other languages.
So we focus on some of the difficult bits.
I've already mentioned the way we contract 'I'm gonna go an' do it' as opposed to 'I
am going to go and do it'.
Another example might be word order.
So if we're talking about something like this here (this is off my daughter's desk) 'a little
red book'.
You wouldn't say in English 'a red little book' - well, you might, but it would sound
odd to a native English speaker.
So...'a little red book'.
But if you said 'A little, interesting book' - that would sound odd too.
So we would say 'An interesting little book'.
It's not logical, but that is the way we would expect to hear it 'a little red book', but
'an interesting little book' . And only by hearing these things lots of times, will you
naturally say it the way a native English speaker would.You won't find this kind of
hting in a dictionary.
Another example - and this is quite a common one - we use a lot of idioms in English.
So for example, we might say 'Uh - she's barking up the wrong tree'.
And you might hear that and think 'What's this?
A woman who's barking?
Really?'
What we actually mean here is that she's got...mmm...'She's got the wrong end of the stick' - there's
another one!
She's misunderstood, she's got the wrong idea, she's incorrect in what she's thinking.
If you think of the picture associated with this idiom.
So you imagine a dog, chasing a cat and the cat runs away and it runs up a tree.
And the dog is standing at the bottom, barking, but it's barking up the wrong tree.
It's got the wrong idea.
So because we use so many idioms in English, I think it's useful to have some language
learning that's dedicated to that.
You probably have them in your own language, but we really seem to like them a lot in English.
Another example, there are lots of words in English that look the same written down and
sound the same, or sound slight different, sometimes, but have different meanings.
So something like 'present'.
So present might mean a gift, like a birthday present or a gift..
Christmas present.
It may also mean here-and-now, right now, like the present tense, it's happening....[knocking]...right
now.
Or it could mean you're present in that place, you were there - and you were 'present and
correct'.
There's also a verb 'to present' - so I guess what I'm doing now - is making a presentation
to you, I'm presenting.
So there's probably even more meanings than that, but there's four meanings of 'present
or present'.
So Adept English aims to give you help with those kinds of things.
We're nearly at the end now.
Don't forget the other rules and don't forget to listen to Rule Six at least five times.
Bear in mind 'The Helping Hand' and we're also fairly interactive at Adept English so
if you connect with us on Facebook or Twitter and you have a question about English language,
something that's been puzzling you, we are on hand to answer questions.
So again...much better than looking it up in a dictionary.
Have a lovely day and I hope you will join me for Rule Seven tomorrow.
Good bye.