Tag Archives: #speakingskills

Look and Learn Vol1

June 6, 2019

With this blog, we’re offering you the chance to download our first Look n Learn collection. A great way to extend your vocabulary and sound like a native!

If you’re familiar with our Instagram posts, you’ll know that we post a new expression every day. We want to help you to LOOK and LEARN.

This idea was born after many Oakfield learners came back from their trips to the UK, Ireland, the US etc. and asked me about expressions they had heard, which sometimes confused them but above all they were delighted to learn and add to their vocabulary. But it’s easy to forget these expressions if you don’t use them. So to help you remember them, we created Look n Learn.

HOW CAN YOU BUILD YOUR VOCABULARY WITH LOOK N LEARN?

Did you know that 65% of us are visual learners? This means that we learn better when we see something in a visual format.

WHAT IS LOOK N LEARN?

With our Look and Learn series on Instagram we share an image with you with an expression. These are typical expressions used by native English speakers, which can sometimes be confusing for those of you whose mother tongue is not English.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The image you can see is connected with the expression so that it’s a brain-friendly way to link the two together. By keeping the image in mind, it will help you to remember the expression.

Check out the example sentence given on the original Oakfield Training Instagram post here.

To help reinforce the meaning, why not write your own example sentence? Check it with us by sending it to:

hello@oakfield.training

You can also use this booklet to test yourself, friends, colleagues or classmates to see how many expressions you can remember.

Now you can be sure that you’ve understood the new expression and it’s time to find the opportunity to use it in a conversation or when you’re writing to someone.

Please let us know how you get on.

Emma and the Oakfield Team

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SIX TIPS TO BEAT THE FEAR OF SPEAKING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

May 30, 2019

You go to all your classes, you do your homework, you watch movies in English during your free time, you read the news headlines in English every day. You feel that you’re doing everything to improve your English, but

when you need to make a presentation in front of the international team or participating in a video conference with senior management, the panic rises and you feel the FEAR.

Maybe you have heard that being afraid of doing something can bring out the best in us, but that’s not always much help when you have to use English at work in situations that you know could have a big effect on your career.  You would still rather be anywhere else than face that situation. And in my case the fear often makes my mind go completely blank.

So how can I stop this happening? We all know that we’ll feel great AFTER the presentation / meeting etc when we realise that we have survived and maybe we even enjoyed it in the end, but how can we prepare to overcome the rising fear beforehand?

When I first came to Barcelona, I spoke hardly any Spanish and no Catalan. In the language training company I was working in, the main language of communication was Spanish and of course to organise the courses, I needed to speak to people in the HR departments in Spanish. Having lived in Italy for many years beforehand, I soon had a reasonable level of listening comprehension but making a complete wasstill difficult – and I still mix Italian and Spanish even now – after more than 10 years! Although this can be a little embarrassing, I have learnt to communicate in Spanish applying the following rules:

1 I accept that I will make mistakes. I don’t need to speak the language perfectly in order to communicate.

2  I am speaking Spanish so that I can communicate with another person who doesn’t speak my language. Therefore, I believe that s/he should make an effort to understand me.

3  If I don’t understand my interlocutor, I will ask them to repeat what they said. If I don’t understand the second time, I will ask again. I will keep doing this until I understand the other person. Communication is a two-way street, we both need to make an effort to allow communication to flow.

4  I will remind myself that I am the expert in my field. I have been organising language training programmes for 25 years. I know about language learning and training. The person I’m speaking to is not an expert, so it is in his/her interest to make an effort to understand me and meet me at a point where we can communicate.

5  I prepare every important conversation. I think carefully about what I want to say, I check any words that I don’t know and I practise. Then I practise some more. I will often have the conversation out loud with myself, record myself and then imagine myself successfully having this conversation.

6  If possible I also practise with a native Spanish speaking friend beforehand so that s/he can give me some useful feedback.

Following these six steps has really helped me to become a more confident speaker of Spanish. Yes, I still need to work on it to become a more accurate speaker and use a wider range of vocabulary, but I can communicate competently in this language.