It has been well over 6 months since I have been able to share interesting posts with you and I am happy to announce we are back and extremely happy to be here once again. Since last Winter, much has changed and as I welcomed our baby boy to the world, I also welcomed new thoughts on how we work, learn and grow. I am conscious or aware that the seeds I plant now will be so essential for the future of our little one and the example I set as a working adult will be for him to follow as he grows. Therefore, as Spring came and went and we begin to quickly invite Summer I have given thought to who we are when we work, when we learn, age and evolve. I know,  a bit deep for coming back suddenly, but hey, why not?

This post is dedicated to making us think about the pleasures of being necessary and ourselves at the same time, making those weekends stretch longer and longer and being productive…

One of my all time favorite writers, Toni Morrison, recently wrote on defining the person you are and the work you do. Two separate entities which we sometimes forget. Especially in today’s age when our work weighs so much on us as well as on our identity and we can inevitably lose the definition of who we really are and as a result, that fine line of leaving work behind when we are done with work becomes blurry (not focused). After speaking with her father as a child about work and being unhappy, her father responded the following:

1. Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself.

2. You make the job; it doesn’t make you.

3. Your real life is with us, your family.

4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.

Morrison ends the article with the following: “I have worked for all sorts of people since then, geniuses and morons, quick-witted and dull, bighearted and narrow. I’ve had many kinds of jobs, but since that conversation with my father I have never considered the level of labor to be the measure of myself, and I have never placed the security of a job above the value of home.”

If you want to read the full article: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/05/the-work-you-do-the-person-you-are

What do you think? Do you feel defined, confined or reassured by your work?

On a sweeter note, did you know you can make your weekend feel longer?? Yep, 48 hours can stretch just a little further…here is how (think new): http://nymag.com/scienceofus/article/how-to-make-the-weekend-last-longer.html

And finally, how to keep your sanity if you work alone…this is for all you freelancers or anyone who feels trapped in front of their computer on a daily basis! http://jkglei.com/freelance-sanity/

What are your thoughts? What do you do to make your working life happier?

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The holidays are fast approaching and the smell of Christmas is in the air and we are very excited around here…As many of you already know, Oriol and I are happily expecting an addition to our family any time now and we could not be more excited! I could also have not asked for a better Christmas…But before I sign off to impatiently await this little member, I thought I would share a heartfelt (touching) video on learning English. Apparently, it has become the most watched commercial this last week and if you haven’t seen it yet, please do. Heat up some hot chocolate, pop some pop corn and bring out the tissue.

The Polish Christmas Ad

If there is anything I have learned these last few years is that every single one of you have a different and very personal reason for learning English and there is not a single reason that is better than another one. What does not cease (stop amazing) to amaze me though is the passion in which all of you want to learn and how you achieve your goals each and every time, be it small or large. This is what makes our job so amazing. And I think I can speak for all teachers, that we are fortunate to form part of your learning experience. Congratulations to every single one of you for wanting to learn something new and doing it.

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In our last post, we spoke about moving motivators and what puts us into action. This week I wanted to push the topic a little further and have you ask yourselves who you really are…What kind of worker are you? What kind of learner? Are you introverted or extroverted? Ambitious or relaxed about getting to your final objective? Or maybe you have never given it much thought…

Well, lucky for you, I found a fabulous personality test known as the Myers-Briggs test you can take in less than 15 minutes and find what kind of personality you have. Maybe you agree with the results, maybe not, either way that will make for an interesting discussion…So stop what you are doing and take this test now! https://www.16personalities.com/ 

If you are having problems understanding the questions, have your teacher help you out.

Not familiar with Myers-Briggs? Watch this 5 minute video on the history of Myers-Briggs and why 2.5 million people take this test annually.

It really is useful in becoming more aware of yourself and reaching a better you!

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Last week we had a wonderful round table session on motivators at work and on projects. Marina gave us some interesting information on how to analyze what motivates us most at work and what makes us lose interest. Did you know money is not everything? Do you agree?

Here is more information on moving motivators

She had us rate or scale our motivators above from 1 to 10. 1 being the most important and 10 the least important. It was fascinating to see what we each chose as important and non-important. She then explained what each of these motivators could mean in our professional world.

Afterwards, we related these motivators to Maslow’s human hierarchy of needs. Remember those?

We decided where each motivator fell within the triangle and how they were relevant…It really was a fabulous session.

So, how do your motivators rate? Are you currently motivated at work or do you need to restructure your own motivation?

Thank you Marina for an insightful session!

Maslow’s Photo Source

Let’s talk about eloquence on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in October. Sentence structure and sharing our ideas clearly is so important in any language, but we know how tricky it can be to get those words into the right order when studying a new language. There really is no exception to the rule when speaking about word order in English, so the good news is that once you learn the rule, you will not make mistakes!

In Jason Kottke’s article, inspired by Mark Forsyth’s book The Elements of Eloquence Jason states, “…adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”

While the Cambridge dictionary gives us a slightly different order: Opinion, Size, Quality, Shape, Age, Colour, Origin, Material, Type and Purpose, Noun. 

In other words, for a native speaker, this order is intuitive and learned. We know exactly how to construct the sentence, but we wouldn’t know how to tell you what order those words should be in. It’s the typical comment, “that’s just the way it is…” but in all truth, there is an actual order to it.

So, why don’t we try? Put the following words into the correct order:

1. table, a, square, wooden, big:

2. the,cup, tiny, plastic, blue, expensive

3. black, small, box, Turkish, old, a

Want more practice? Check out these links: 

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/adjectives/order-adjectives

http://perso.wanadoo.es/autoenglish/gr.adwo.p.htm

http://www.learnenglishfeelgood.com/esl_adjectiveorder4.html

And an exercise on word order in general: https://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar/word-order/exercises?02

Finally, a lovely poem on word order by Alexandra Teague:

That summer, she had a student who was obsessed 
with the order of adjectives. A soldier in the South 
Vietnamese army, he had been taken prisoner when 

Saigon fell. He wanted to know why the order 
could not be altered. The sweltering city streets shook
with rockets and helicopters. The city sweltering 

streets. On the dusty brown field of the chalkboard, 
she wrote: The mother took warm homemade bread 
from the oven. City is essential to streets as homemade 

is essential to bread . He copied this down, but 
he wanted to know if his brothers were lost  before 
older, if he worked security at a twenty-story modern

downtown bank or downtown twenty-story modern.
When he first arrived, he did not know enough English 
to order a sandwich. He asked her to explain each part 

of Lovely big rectangular old red English Catholic
leather Bible. Evaluation before size. Age before color. 
Nationality before religion. Time before length. Adding 

and, one could determine if two adjectives were equal. 
After Saigon fell, he had survived nine long years 
of torture. Nine and long. He knew no other way to say this.

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Post Insipired by: http://cupofjo.com/2016/09/grammar-rule/

Today is the first day in a long time that the weather is cooler and we all seem to be walking just a little quicker. Did you know that summer is officially over next week? Get your light jackets out, September 22 is the first day of Autumn!

In ode to the summer and to all your brilliant summer tales this week, I thought I would share a very extraordinary story with you about a man, Gunther Holtorf, who decided to go on a 26 year holiday (177 countries and 884,000km (549,000 miles))! Talk about a very long summer.

Here’s a lovely photo-documentary by the photographer, David Lemke:

Gunther’s Travels

This article by the BBC gives you detailed information: http://www.bbc.com/news/special/2014/newsspec_8703/index.html

And before we check out for the weekend, how about an informative video on the differences between British and American English Pronunciation?British vs American | English Pronunciation Lesson

Can you tell the difference? Do you use one form of pronunciation more than the other? Or maybe you have a preference??

Photo Source: Philip Barlow

Welcome Back Everyone! As we slowly start up our motors and turn on our computers for a new season of work, I want to remind you on the benefits of learning English. Take a look at some fun facts above.

So sign up to class, join us for our Fall events and start practicing! This can only be good for you…

This summer has been a very heated season so far (up to now) and the news is unfortunately filled with a lot of stressful events and tension. I thought that perhaps the video below is a great way to remind us where we come from and that maybe, we should all be just a little kinder to each other. Or at least a little more respectful.

I have had lots of very interesting conversations this last week with many of my students and I hope this post helps spark (light) some insightful thoughts and interesting conversation on your summer table too.

And here are some ideas for Binge Watching this summer:

 http://www.npr.org/2016/06/15/481090485/read-watch-binge-like-this-movie-you-might-also-like

Feel like taking a leap (a jump, in reference to a challenge)? Here are the 12 New Books The New York Times journalists are reading this summer: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/books/12-new-books-were-reading-this-summer-and-6-not-so-new.html?_r=0

And for those who feel like cooking up a storm (a lot) here are some ideas:

http://www.yummly.com/

http://mimithorisson.com/my-recipes/

https://kitchenstories.io/

And please be kind to each other…

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