Biggest English learner mistake

Good morning, good afternoon, or of course even good evening.

This is Julian from doingenglish.com and welcome from whatever time zone you are tuning into us from right now.

Today I’m gonna talk about one of the biggest mistakes English learners make.

Bit of background, I have several friends who are lecturers, professors, teachers at university.

Because we are all language professionals, whenever we talk the topic almost always turns to language.

And one thing that I hear again and again and again is the inappropriate use of language from many of their students.

The biggest mistake a lot of people make is nothing to do with grammar, it's nothing to do with vocabulary.

People are so focused on their grammar, on their vocabulary, on pronunciation, on accent.

But what they don’t realize is the biggest mistakes they make has nothing to do with these things.

You see, good language used in an inappropriate way is not good language.

Really obvious example comes from one of my friends who teaches at a university in Australia.

One of his students sent him an email, using the word “fuck”.

I should not have to point out and neither should he that “fuck” is not an appropriate word to use to your university professor in an email.

So what about other casual expressions?

Now this is where things start to get really difficult.

Because it really depends on the situation and the relationship you have with the person you’re speaking to.

Something which might be appropriate in one situation might not be appropriate in another situation.

There generally is no hard and fast rules about this rather you have to become aware of the way

that you use language and what is appropriate and what is not.

incidentally, this is actually the key topic of this week’s Doing English+ lesson.

In this week’s lesson the boss of City Busy, one of the company’s we regularly

follow in the lessons has allowed his son to come visiting on work experience.

Hi guys, Julian here and welcome to the Doing English+ weekly lesson for May 2016, week number 2.

His son, however, is not exactly taking things seriously and the way that he speaks to

the employees at the company is not appropriate.

Although as far as he is concerned what he is saying is probably perfectly fine.

Another good thing to pay attention to this time is the very subtle way

the speaker expresses his dissatisfaction at the situation.

It’s a pretty short story this time but we are gonna go into a lot of depth about this topic.

And we're really gonna look at the nitty gritty ins and outs of the way that the speaker describes

his dissatisfaction of the situation and the way he describes the boss’s son and his use of language.

Doing English+ members can find this lesson ready and waiting for them

in the lesson content area for May 2016.

If you’re not yet a Doing English+ member, why not?

In Doing English+ we also have a support community where you can ask anything you like

and I will help you with your English problems.

So if you’re not sure whether something is appropriate English usage or not, you can just ask away.

That’s it from me today and remember don’t use the F word with your university professor.