English with Kirsty – episode 299
My language homework – when we choose what’s easy instead of what’s needed
You can listen to episode 299 here:
It’s story time! I’m a language trainer and mentor. I work with others to help them on their language journeys with English. But I’m also a learner with three languages at different stages of fluency. And that’s really good because I also have the perspective of a learner. Not all of my clients have the same challenges as me – though many do! My solutions won’t work for everyone! But there are things that I can share from my experiences of improving my language skills that will probably resonate with some of my listeners too.
In this episode, I’m talking about an experience from my Portuguese class. My Portuguese level isn’t at the same level as the English of mmost of my clients, but we’re not talking about language level today. We’re talking about the choices that we make when we don’t feel sure. Sometimes they are choices to protect us and make us feel safe, but they can also dilute our message.
My task was to describe three of my services in English and then to talk about the same three services in Portuguese. This is what happened and the feedback I received when we compared them. I’m not talking about aspects of the language, so you don’t need to understand Portuguese to listen to this episode.
Has anything similar happened to you? Are there occasions when you play it safe with your additional languages? What could the consequences of that be? The first step to fixing something that isn’t serving us is recognising the patern or behaviour in the first place!
And, as we were talking about my mentoring service, where we look at how you communicate, how you communicate in English, and how you can use your English voice to be more authentic and impactful, you can find all the details here.
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