I’m so glad I’ve found this site, as English is my favourite language (ever since I was a little girl - don’t ask me why: probably something to do with a previous life, if there is such a thing) and since I’m constantly in need of brushing it up.
The lessons I’ve read so far are great teaching material and quite entertaining, too, as are the tests. Congratulations to the authors on such good work! Thank you also for giving us the opportunity to send questions and view other people’s.
Hello Conchita,
Nice to meet you here. You seem to speak fluent English. Support us by commenting on mistakes in our posts.
I find lots of Spaniards and Germans to speak English well. They say the Italians are the most and the French are the least enthusiastic nation to learn English in Europe. Any comments?
Pleased to meet you, too, and thank you for your kind welcome.
You are right about the Germans: they tend to speak English quite well: after all, English is a Germanic tongue, like Dutch or the Scandinavian languages. On the other hand, I would have thought that Spaniards, like the French, are among the least enthusiastic language learners, generally speaking of course (luckily I’m not in that group!). I wonder if there is a good excuse to that, but I’d like to point out the following, in an attempt to somehow justify this unfortunate fact:
If you want your children to learn a foreign language relatively well here - either English, German or French, you have to send them to a private, bilingual and awfully expensive school or ‘dispatch’ them abroad (Ireland is ‘in’ right now). Furthermore, all of the foreign films, soaps, TV documentaries, etc. are translated into Spanish (I’d rather not comment on the translations…), so you may easily grow up here without ever hearing a drop of English, contrary to what happens in many other countries and unless you live in a place like Majorca or Marbella. Imported books are terribly expensive (God bless all secondhand book shopkeepers! - or should it be: secondhand bookshop keepers - but there again, the concept ‘secondhand’ is not at all part of the Spanish culture - the famous Spanish pride, perhaps?). Satellite TV is no better: you can’t get many free English or French speaking channels (you do get loads of German channels, though - this, for instance, is when I’m glad I grew up in Switzerland. So, no wonder I have to insist so much on the right pronunciation in my classes, which I must say I enjoy enormously. Speaking of which, I should perhaps be thankful for this state of things, as I teach languages for a living!
Cheerio!
Conchita
P.S. Sorry about all the brackets and hypens. According to my daughter, I seem to do the same when I speak, as I often don’t come directly or quickly to the point.
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Hello Conchita, and welcome. Don’t be sparing of the brackets and dashes-- I use them a lot myself. Our conversations on these forums are not formal compositions (thank goodness!) and members should be encouraged to use all the punctuation they can muster, in order to compensate for the lack of face-to-face conversation.
I would suggest that you use a double hyphenation (–) to represent the m-dash, to avoid confusion. A hyphen separates word parts (pre-Raphaelite), an n-dash separates number spreads, etc (Open 9 - 5), and an m-dash indicates a break in the sentence structure (I say-- is this my hat?)
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Just come across your comments on the site. I was delighted to hear that you enjoyed using it and also pleased that you found some of the material entertaining. It’s always encouraging to receive favourable remarks as sometimes when I sit here in my small study tapping away at the keyboard, I often wonder what sort of reception the end result is getting.
Thank you for your valuable suggestions. What a luxury to have something (or should I say someone?) like your own ‘live in’ private teachers! At least this is what it feels like to me. I’m always greedy – and grateful – for any corrections on my English and I hope that I won’t become a pain in the neck for you all once I start sharing my cartload of doubts.
Thank you, Alan. You may well stop wondering. I don’t want to sound too obsequious – and I know I’m repeating myself – but this site is quite a treat to me.
By the way, I’m very fond of idiomatic expressions and imagery, which I kind of collect and compare in several languages, so in your message I particularly liked the ‘tapping away at the keyboard’ bit.
Hi Alan,
I fully agree with Conchita. You and your team are doing a great job. I think what you need is to do some publicizing for this web site and invite more volunteer professional English teachers to support your work. (I guess Mister Micawber is one of them.)
I believe that with proper publicizing this web site may attract additional thousands of English learners.
Thank you for your comments. I must support my colleague, Torsten and tell you that he does a splendid job with publicity. Without him I don’t think we would be as well known as we are. He is a dedicated worker and we are both full of admiration for our technical guru, Slava.
I think when it comes to spreading the word about english-test.net your newsletter is doing an excellent job. Ever since I found this website I have been receiving the newsletter too and some of the issues I have printed off and shown to my colleagues. I know of at least two of my friends who have signed up for the newsletter themselves and they enjoy reading it. I could imagine that this holds true for other readers. I mean they would read the newsletter and forward it to some of their friends and so on. This is called word of mouth I guess…
- but there again, the concept ‘secondhand’ is not at all part of the Spanish culture - the famous Spanish pride, perhaps?). Satellite TV is no better: you can’t get many free English or French speaking channels (you do get loads of German channels, though - this, for instance, is when I’m glad I grew up in Switzerland. So, no wonder I have to insist so much on the right pronunciation in my classes, which I must say I enjoy enormously. Speaking of which, I should perhaps be thankful for this state of things, as I teach languages for a living!