Never lose your accent. You sound so cute.” I used to hear this sentence a lot when I first moved from Europe to Minneapolis, Minnesota and started to speak English. While I nodded and smiled politely, my soul was screaming from the inside: “I don’t want to be cute when I speak. I’m not a […]
Do you feel your English is still not good enough?
The power of community – a weekend in NYC
Common questions during job interviews in the US
When I was working on my Master’s degree at the University of San Francisco, one of my professors told us a story about a Korean man who had applied for an open position at the university. The interview went great, my professor said. The candidate was knowledgeable and pleasant to talk to; he answered all […]
How to speak up – even in “imperfect” English
My last flight from Europe back to the US went so smoothly that I was almost suspicious. “Could anything still go wrong?” I asked myself when the plane landed at the San Francisco airport. My husband and I spent the last five weeks in Europe, splitting our time between our two respective native countries Poland […]
10 commonly confusing English phrasal verbs
Prepositions give many nonnative speakers of English a very hard time. And when they are used to form phrasal verbs, they seem even harder. Oftentimes it is challenging to remember what preposition follows a certain verb in order to communicate a particular meaning. According to the Oxford dictionary, a phrasal verb is a verb that […]
How to be an effective communicator
How to start thinking in English
“You nailed it” and other idioms
A while ago I heard a nonnative speaker complaining that he had totally misunderstood his boss because of a phrase the latter had used. The situation was the following: the nonnative speaker presented something at work and after the presentation he asked his boss for feedback. “You killed it,” his boss said. The presenter was […]
What does it mean to be fluent in English?
Do you consider yourself fluent in English or are you waiting to reach this “perfect” level when you will no longer make any mistakes and speaking English will feel as natural as speaking your native language? What does it mean to be fluent in another language anyway? When I started college in the US, I […]