Challenges for Learners of English

As you've read in my foreign language posts, English is the new global language. While it only has 400 million native speakers, close to 2 billion speak it with some degree of proficiency.  Like any language, English presents learners with difficulties, such as pronunciation, grammar, and spelling to name a few. Why is this? Foreign …

Where Y’all From? Success Continued

In part one, I talked about how regional accents are perceived, and how they can affect your professional life in the United States. Being a superpower comes with certain perks, but in our case, certain downsides too– the majority of Americans are monolingual. Some who live on the northern and southern border tend to be …

Speaking for Success

In an ongoing effort to make myself as attractive as possible to potential employers, this week we'll discuss accents and how they are perceived by bosses and coworkers. In the second part, we'll focus on how accents can affect our job, and what can be done to reduce them, if necessary. We may not want …

Languages–Part Deux

We left off last week with me describing the first steps toward learning a new language. The reasoning is simple–you'll make more money, be able to speak with more people, and finally know if your coworkers really are making fun of you. At the very least, you'll keep your brain working better for longer. Best …

Foreign Languages

It's been over a month of my journey toward efficiency, productivity, and happiness. Part of the plan is to become more attractive to potential employers; I'll be exercising my brain with foreign languages, and will outline what has worked well. I've had to make a few minor changes to the overall plan and will outline …