Search results for 'tag:Conversations tag:Language schools' matching tags 'Conversations' and 'Language schools'

Re: Learning English - what's your trick?

Englishuser — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 11:23:58 GMT

Hi Openmind,

It depends on where the student resides whether they will 'have access' to native speakers or not. If you move to England, for instance, you will have access to native speakers. Many English people correct foreigners when they make mistakes - which is very good for the foreigner as they learn by making mistakes, so to say.

People who do not live in an English speaking country, but who wish to improve their English, could do so on a website like this one. In here, you get to interact with native speakers who can answer any grammar related questions you as a learner may have. You can also improve your English by attending conversation classes at an English language school.

letter of application

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 12:14:22 GMT

Hello,

my name is Soeren and I need your help. I must write a letter of application for my study. Could you please help me and check the grammar of my letter? I am not sure but I would say that there are mistakes in my letter.

Here is the letter:

Application for a place in your Bachelor of Aviation Management programme

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you to apply for a place in your Bachelor of Aviation Management programme at your University of Applied Sciences ***.

At present I am attending the Humboldt Grammar School in ***. I will sit my A-Levels in May 2006 and would like to begin my study thereafter.

I am keen to take up the study of Aviation Management as I am very interested in the fields of aviation and commerce. In addition, studying at your University of Applied Sciences would be ideal in helping me broaden my knowledge of foreign languages.

Various information leaflets and conversations with employees from the Schoenefeld Airport in Berlin have enabled me to learn a great deal about the requirements of Aviation Management.

Due to a voluntarily stay in an English Language School in Great Britain during my summer school break in 2005, I enhanced my written and spoken English skills. After nine years of learning English I am now fluent in this language. To my knowledge of foreign languages also belongs Russian which I have been learning since seven years now.

I would be very pleased to be given the opportunity to attend an interview.

Yours faithfully,

name name

---------------------------------------------

Thank your very much!

actually done, but maybe someone can help me to get it in better shape

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 04:38:27 GMT

hey everyone,

this is my motivation letter for an exchange program. i actually finished it, but i m not quite sure how it sounds like. i can imagine that you are all busy, but maybe someone still can help me with checking for mistakes and style. i would appreciate it a lot.

Dear Ms. ***:

I am writing to apply for a placement at the University of *** in *** via the Erasmus program in the autumn semester in ***.

I graduated from High-School in *** in year ***. During that time I already was focussing on Economics and on English as a business language. The process of globalisation and the increase of interdependence of nations between each other as a result, which entail opportunities as well as threats, has always fascinated me. Hence, I always aimed at forming my study as international as possible, for I was sure to follow an international career in the future. Thus, I took additional courses in business English and obtained my degree in âlanguage correspondentâ. I also visited language schools in Great Britain for several weeks and also spent a whole year in the USA. These foreign country experiences, which can hardly be compared to having a vacation in another country, provoked my interest in experiencing new cultures, than merely visiting them. My motivation to continue my studies in the Netherlands was due to the fact that it offered me a more international environment and more opportunities to gain foreign country experience than Germany did.

One reason for my desire to study in *** is that I want to get a better insight into the countriesâ economy, where currently a considerable improvement can be witnessed, and gain knowledge about the political system in terms of an international environment. Furthermore, I aspire to become more familiar with the countriesâ mentality, their way of thinking and perceiving their world, which differs from that of people with the same nationality living in Europe, to a great extent.

Another very important motive for me, why I intend to study at ***, is that the University is located in the inspiring city of ***, which I unfortunately have never been able to visit so far. The city of *** is eminent, not only because of its significant world economical meaning, but also for its splendid historical background, which reaches back until the ancient Roman Empire.

A further criterion for my decision to study at *** University is also that I had the chance to speak to *** University graduate students, one of them the Universityâs student counsellor, who are currently studying at out University. Our conversations also confirmed that I made the right choice by choosing *** University. I already got acquainted to quite a lot of *** University students still studying there by my friends here in ***. They already offered me their help, if I should get picked for the exchange.

I am highly motivated to participate in this project, and I will do my utmost to contribute to a prolific cooperation between *** and ***. On the other hand, it also has the right opening for me, since an exchange would have a tremendous benefit for my personal development and the international career I have in mind.

Many thanks in advance and I am looking forward to receive a positive response from your side.

Yours sincerely,

***

Re: British vs American English

Tallulah Tam — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 16:02:07 GMT

Hello Lusia,

You do not state your native language. It would be helpful to know which country you are from. As you can see I am British living in America so I will try to answer your questions, I will be corrected if I am wrong, (I hope)

Generally it is fairly easy to guess a person's background from their accent. The English, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Canadians, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders etc., etc., all speak English with their own distinct accent, and different parts of England and America have different accents too. We are very tolerant of people trying to speak our language, (unlike the French). If we understand that yowk means joke we let it pass. Obviously in a language school it would not pass but in everyday conversation on the whole we would politely ignore it.

For the second part.

Is word knackered as popular in US as in UK? Being knackered meaning being tired/exhausted?

1) I have never heard the word knackered used in The States.

Do knackers mean pants (underwear) in US?

2) Since I have never heard the word over here I don't know, but I think you may be confusing the word with knickers, which used to be what ladies briefs, (underwear term not a legal term) were called in England when they were much bigger. Or knockers which is a rude term for breasts. (not sure which side of the Atlantic that started)

What about Ohh, bollocks!, Buggar!, Bummer!, Crickey! (that's Australian)? If not in public use, what do you say for these in US?

3) The "F" word gets a lot of use over here, (unimaginatively). Out of the selection above, "bummer" is the only one I have heard.

Can someone explain why a British a r s e means an American ass? I was blown away to discover that one time.

4) I thought it was just their pronunciation of the same word until I looked it up, but you are right, it is actually in the American dictionary! "ass n. (vulgar) 1. the buttocks 2. the rectum.

If you don't mind my saying so, you seem to be unduly concerned with the baser aspects of the language.

Re: THE MOST POIGNANT STORY THAT I HAVE EVER READ

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:13:29 GMT

I am Rob Whitehurst and have been fortunate that one of my correspondents has let me know about this forum. I have read the postings and the translation here and am delighted to "get a take on" another effort to bring Thuy's journals into English. I will post the URL to the Vietnam Project: http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/ which can be used to view the original and my translation-to-date. Just click on the first entry about the diaries of Dang Thuy Tram and you can access all of it.

In short, as you have read here Fred put together with help a very rough and literal translation over the years when he first held the diaries. We were able to read part of them as long ago as 1970 when he first kept them out of the "burn barrel". He spent some time with me in the southern part of Viet Nam on a couple of "in-country R and Rs (rest and recreations) and we spoke then of their importance, but of course at that time there was still war between the U.S. and North Viet Nam, so for many years he held them. We would speak about them often and I watched his efforts to find Thuy's family continue without success. Truthfully, though her parents' names were given in the longer journal, Thuy had noted them after several empty pages towards the end of the book. Fred doesn't read Vietnamese, so he didn't realize the significance of the note. I came across it while counting pages to see how many were left in the book when she lost it in December of 1969, but this was in 2004 when I had decided to "tackle" the task of bringing the translation into a version easily read in English. The research for that was primarily on-line with reference to the scans of the original which we kept on a disc. I am not a native speaker of Vietnamese but went to language school in the US Army for a year. When in Viet Nam during 1970-72 I read very little, but became quite fluent in spoken Vietnamese...unfortunately, a lot of that ease has disappeared in the 33 years since I left Southeast Asia. My efforts have been a labor of love, support for a brother, and then increasingly admiration for the young doctor during her time in war. The many people who contributed to the final location of her family all have my deepest appreciation, and the help which I have continued to receive in my efforts to come to know Thuy and her place in time keep me in a state of delight and facination. Her family was not "lost" in truth, but the challenge of locating them for Fred and me was daunting. Two years ago Dang Thuy Tram was a sad and closely held old memory for her mother, family, and friends. For me she was "whispers and smoke" as I worked to make a connection between the small upstairs room where my computer sits and a then very obscure society on the other side of the world. The translation progressed as slowly as the increase in knowledge about the original. Today, after a very remarkable and wonderful correspondence, a hard-to-believe trip to Ha Noi with the meeting of her large family and many, many people too wonderful to imagine...it seems that it was easy, simple, and only natural, but I have to write that I need just to read the correspondence file which is close to 200 pages long to recall the difficulties wanting to be faced in order to get my translation to its present state. Of course now I have been helped by Thuy's youngest sister, many other members of her family, and many newcomers to the effort. Just for instance Thuy recalls Chu Van An twice in her journals: two years ago the only immediately available note about Chu Van An on the internet was the listing of a commemorative postal stamp honoring the school's 100 years. I would have otherwise not known what exactly she referred to. With the knowledge that it was a school I found a couple of sites for graduates, but nothing else. I now see in my mind's eye the dignified collection of old school buildings beside West Lake in Ha Noi and the gathering of her classmates there one morning when we visited in August, also the climb to the second floor classroom where they all took the seats at the desks they used almost 50 years ago, and I can picture the quiet conversation with a number of her friends from that time when I heard of their memories of Thuy. Today Chu Van An is a place clear to me, and hopefully it will be clear to the readers of the English translation.

I continue to work on my translation, now with the attention of Kim Tram to various of my wordings. I have started a section of foot-notes to explain things and people not immediately known to the reader, and I welcome any attention to my efforts. If I didn't spend a lot of my time at work and at sea I would love to get involved in a "round-table" discussion of the translation where anyone with knowledge could contribute to the most correct final version. Just now I am particularly interested in all of the place names in the Duc Pho district where all of Thuy's service took place. I want to note here that during the time covered by the two journals, she served in an area of approximately 15 miles east to west, and 20 miles north to south. I have located some of the intelligence reports from the US forces stationed in the area, and gradually a larger picture of the environment in which she worked has emerged.

I encourage anyone who can read the original text, or the book which the Tram Ladies have published, to do so, and anyone who can correct my efforts at a clear translation will be met by me with enthusiasm.

Regards....