Frequently, when I edit multiple papers for the same client and see a consistent issue in that client's writing, I'll recommend that the client seek one-on-one, advanced English instruction with someone who teaches English professionally (ideally, with an ESL focus).
What if you're no longer a university student, though? What if you're a faculty member who's not eligible to enroll in classes at your home institution? What if you're not in academia at all? What if finances or consistent scheduling are issues? Where do you start when looking for an English teacher? My first tip, which will address most of the above concerns, is to post advertisements seeking a lesson trade or barter arrangement. Obviously, this might be easier to arrange if you're in a large city or college town with many people who enjoy learning new things. If your first language is (for example) French, you may find that an English teacher in town would really love to take French lessons with you to prepare for a trip to Paris. You may trade one English lesson for one French lesson or come to some other arrangement that suits you both. As a pianist who frequently performs with opera singers, I decided to start voice lessons one summer; knowing that many singers need help preparing for piano exams at IU, I advertised that I would trade voice lessons for piano lessons. The arrangement was successful for the time that scheduling allowed us to do it, and because neither of us spent any money, it was a great financial decision too! To address the location issue that potential English students may face when they don't live in a populated area (or live outside an English-speaking country), I'll talk a bit about remote instruction and what to look for in a great English teacher. Remote instruction (via Skype, FaceTime, or Zoom) is an excellent choice if you currently live in a country whose primary language is not English, which makes it more difficult to find great English instructors locally. As a music instructor who's taught a few hybrid and fully online courses for IU, I highly recommend Zoom software for both Mac and PC users. (As a bonus, IU network members automatically have pro accounts!) Many teachers have started reaching out to online students; thus, you have to know what you're seeking in a teacher. Firstly, when you search for and visit a potential teacher's website, make sure that the text on the website is grammatically and mechanically perfect. (You might have an English-L1 friend check the website for you if you're not confident in your own English yet.) If the teacher cannot lead by example with perfect English, how will he or she teach it to you? Perhaps one or two typos on the website might be forgivable (particularly if the teacher hired someone to create the website on his or her behalf), but someone who has fully mastered English and English instruction needs to demonstrate through his or her advertisements that he or she can effectively model what will be taught. This should be the case for any teacher you're looking to hire: music teachers should also be able to demonstrate exemplary playing on their instruments! (Voice is a little different because advanced age will affect a person's ability to sing opera.) Another consideration is that, if you're interested in undertaking speech and pronunciation instruction from this teacher, you may be looking for a teacher with a specific accent or one who is from a specific place, like England or Australia, so you may develop the same type of accent yourself. Conversely, if you begin lessons with a teacher whose accent is really unfamiliar to you (I have difficulty with the Scottish accent myself!), you may struggle more in the early instructional stages than you would with a teacher whose accent is more neutral. A related consideration is that some rules and spelling conventions vary between British English and American English (for example). If you're planning on studying at Oxford, you may prefer to practice English with someone from a country that uses British spellings and mechanics rules. If you're not sure of your prospective teacher's English background, just ask! He or she should be happy to tell you. Finally, after you've looked at teachers' websites, inspected their credentials (whether they have an English teaching certificate of some kind or have taught in other countries for years, etc.), and narrowed down a list of people to contact, ask your friends! If you have many friends who are also nonnative speakers and have recommendations, they can tell you a lot more (and in much more detail) about a specific teacher than a website can. Word-of-mouth referrals are vital to my editing business, too, and many of my most loyal clients first came to me with referrals from friends. Teachers work the same way!
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About a year into my graduate music theory studies at Indiana University, I took a Teaching Music Theory class with one of my favorite professors, a professor known for his excellent teaching. While I don't remember the context in which he offered it, he once told us a funny story about the way he best learns information. He mentioned that sometimes, when he needs to remember something, he will write it down—but then he'll throw the paper away! His wife always teases him about this. However, there's some truth to what my professor said: writing something out by hand is a great way to lock it in your brain!
As long as you don't have something like a Disorder of Written Expression or motor dysgraphia, you might also find that (re)writing necessary information on paper, by hand, is a great way to commit it to memory! This is why I always recommend that clients new to studying English (or any client interested in improving his/her grammar skills!) review the comments I've left in each paper's margins and rewrite them by hand in a notebook. I think you'll find that if you do this, your grammar and usage skills in English will improve much more quickly! This might be especially helpful if your first language doesn't use the Latin alphabet, because it will provide writing practice using the Latin alphabet too. Have you tried rewriting my paper comments by hand to retain the information in them more accurately? If so, let me know how it worked for you! They say that immersion is one of the best ways to learn a language. You were probably told that as you were preparing to begin your academic experience in the US (or wherever you are studying). And one would think that, if you're studying in an English-speaking country, you're getting the full immersion experience, right?
Well, not necessarily. When you're not in classes with American (or otherwise English-L1) professors, how are you spending your time? Are you joining clubs and other extracurricular activities through which you're making English-speaking friends? Or—let's be real—are you watching movies in your first language or hanging out with friends who speak your first language, because it's more comfortable and you're just so tired from all your classes that thinking in/speaking English feels like more work for you? Trust me, I've been there too! While I didn't formally study in another country, I briefly toured as a pianist on the ms Zaandam, a cruise ship that spent most of its time in Spanish-speaking countries (Spanish is my 2nd language). Knowing that I wouldn't have many other Spanish-language immersion experiences in Indiana, I made a decision to seek out as many opportunities to speak, listen, read, and write in Spanish as I could possibly find! As a result, I immediately and dramatically improved my skills during my 4 months on the Zaandam. In fact, when my Mexican art dealer friend would give me a wake-up call to ask if I'd help with his next art auction in a few hours, I'd sometimes find myself thinking in Spanish first, even before my English would kick in! (This amused and somewhat annoyed my violinist, who had taken 4 years of high school Spanish but hadn't kept up with it!) Additionally, because I intentionally spent more time with the native Spanish speakers also working on the ship, I formed great friendships with some people I never would have met otherwise. Four years after we met on the Zaandam, one such friend and I are creating a performing group and another friend has supplied me with Spanish-language poems to use in composing art songs! Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "I'm a shy person and I don't think I can just start making English-speaking friends the way you befriended all those Spanish speakers!" And that's no problem! There are other ways to start the immersion process if you're more introverted or don't feel ready to join clubs with English speakers in them. One simple way to begin the immersion process—one that will also help you as you write papers and have me edit them—is changing your laptop's settings so that everything displays in English. I actually require all Arabic-L1 clients to do this (at least in Microsoft Word, if not on their entire operating system) because Arabic's right-to-left writing system makes it impossible for me to type comments in English within their Word documents. Also, as students, we spend so much time on our computers that if you set your computer's default language to English, you'll be giving yourself hours and hours of additional reading/writing practice without even thinking about it! Understandably, not everyone can do this (maybe you are sharing a computer or you don't have administrative privileges on yours, so you can't go in and change these settings), but if you can, it's a very easy and valuable way to get yourself more comfortable with English. Some other ways you can immerse yourself in English (if you are not ready to introduce yourself to new people on the street!) include:
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