Most Embarrassing Language Experience
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Language Learning Experience
Write a blog about a language learning experience you have had. It could have been a beneficial, funny, confusing, embarrassing experience.
What happened? What did you do or say? What were others' reactions? How did you feel? What did you learn from your experience?
Most Embarrassing Language Experience
Most Embarrassing Language Experience
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Ahmed Alhemeiri
ReplyDelete2/21/2017
AC
Learning a new language is a bit difficult, today I thought I’m going to tell you the most embarrassing Language Learning Experience. My story starts when I was 10 years old in Paris, one day I was going to get an ice cream and the man in the cashier told me how many do you want, I kept telling him four but he didn’t understand me, I remembered when I was in school the numbers in French so I told him quart so he was thinking about the word and I kept telling him quart for more than one time tell I showed him my fingers that I asked for four ice creams, the man started laughing at me I was embarrassed little bit then he told me the right word it was “quatre” and there is no meaning for “quart”.
Learning another language is like becoming another person. I had wonderful experience when I learned new languages. First time was 5 years ago when I traveled to Turkey for working. I remember how much was hard to talk to people without knowing their language, I just know Turkish for saying "Gunydin" that its means “good morning” and “iyi geceler” that its means "goodnight". However, I tried to spoke English but, unfortunately most of people couldn’t spoke English. After two month I learned Turkish as well as my native language and it was amazing time, especially when people felt comfortable to speak with you. Another experience happened in the United States. When I arrived to the US I get home sick person because I couldn’t talk English good and when people wanted to talk to me, they just leave the conversation after 3 or 4 sentence, because my pronunciation was too bad and I had many grammar errors. But after 2 semesters in ALP courses my English is very good now and not only I can talk to people readily but also I can make friendship too. In my opinion new language is new world and its gives you a great feeling about you can communicate with other people in other culture also they enjoying to talk to who is know their language.
ReplyDeleteOne day I went to a restaurant with my friends, during eating the dinner my friend needed a spoon so I ask the waiter to come to ask him a spoon for my friend, once he came he immediately said: do you want another spoon? I said yeah exactly. I was wondering how he knew what I want before I talk! After a while I surprised when he came with a cup of soup rather than a spoon. In that time, I realized that I didn’t focus on what he said, but I only focused on what I wanted to hear or say. The waiter was saying a soup not spoon. Because of unpaid attention to what saying to me I couldn’t say that the waiter’s fault and I had to paid more money for another soup that I don’t want. I leaned to be more careful in listening to the people rather than guess what they would say.
ReplyDeleteLearning for a new language is difficult for me. 2 years ago I have started learning English at Mission College. At the first time I knew a little about English. Then I had to go to orientation alone because my sister had to go work, and that was happen to me. I understood a little what they were talking about, and one of the big thing I thought is worry. At the college has a lap for international students, so they told us next week on Monday was holiday and school started on Tuesday, and the lap will open on next two weeks. It happened to me. I thought the school started next 2 weeks same with my sister, so I didn’t go to school for 3days and the school called my father why I didn’t come to school. Then I went to look at my schedule again. This is teaching me to cautious when I will do something. I don’t just listen a little, but I have to doodle check again if it isn’t clearly.
ReplyDeleteThere was one time I tried to learn Japanese just by listening to Japanese music or watching Japanese movies because me and my friend have a bet on who is going to learn Japanese faster in two months, and it did not went well at least for me. In the movies they speak very fast; I gave up and move on to their songs. Turns out Japanese songs are not as fast as daily conversations, but some difficulties are still there. Finally the due day has come, but I haven't made any progress with the songs nor the movies. Therefore I decided to show my friend I could talk to any random Japanese using just simple phrases, and here is where the story getting funny. In Japan people use the phrase "uso!" (lie) at similarity with "no way!" or "that's amazing!"; "uso" sounds very similar to "kuso" (sh*t). We were asking this one guy and he was telling us about how he can speaks fluently Japanese, Chinese and English at the same time. After that to show him how exited I was I supposed to shout "uso!",but "kuso!" came out from my mouth instead. At first the Japanese guy glowered at me as if I was a tiny Godzilla or something likes that, but then he figured it out by himself and explained to me that "kuso" is a bad word in Japanese. We were then all laughed in awkwardness and said goodbye to him in Japanese. what an embarrassing experience!
ReplyDeleteFor me, the most embarrassing experience happened when I was 9 years old. That semester was the first semester that I started to learn English, and teachers taught us some pretty easy words, such as school, bus, hat, mother, etc. We were also requested to study how to speak and listen English. By the end of that semester, we did a final exam, and one part of the English examination is to draw a picture that we just heard from the listening material. The word in the listening material was hat, but I drew a cat, because I was so confused about cat and hat. When the teacher gave the paper back to us, I was shocked like just shot by the thunder, because all the students drew a hat except me. That was not the point, the most embarrassing moment was that the teacher ask me "Tong, can you tell me what you draw for this examination question? A disable people with 8 mustaches which 4 mustaches in each side of his face?". Every my classmates had been laughing at me for almost 3 minutes. That was the most embarrassing language learning experience in my life, but I tell the story to others as a joke now.
ReplyDeleteLearning English is one of the most interesting experiences that I have had in my life. From my point of view, pronunciation is the most difficult skill that makes me confusing and even changes the meaning of the word I want to say. For instance, this situation occurs when I worked for an international hotel in Vietnam and I decided to quit my job in order to study abroad. I met my manager and said that "I want to resign because my contract is expired and I want to have more opportunity to develop my career". After 2 days, he gave me a new contract to sign again, because he misunderstood my pronunciation. He heard that I want to "re-sign" the new contract; because I pronounced the "s" as the "s" and emphasized first syllable instead of saying "resign" which means to quit my job and the “s” is pronounced like the “z”. I felt so embarrassed and had to explain for my boss. It wasted our time, but I had learned a helpful lesson that pronunciation is very important to express my idea, so I have to focus carefully on word stresses and vowel sounds to pronounce correctly the word I want to say. This experience helps me a lot in my learning English that I have never forgot.
ReplyDeleteI have learned English for almost 10 years.It is basic subject in junior and high school. My English teacher in junior high was very strict, we had to take a word test in each morning. At first, I do not like memorizing words because it is boring. Now, when I reading an article, I always highlight words that I have not seen before and search in the dictionary. I start to enjoy the sense of achievement that I am building vocabulary. In china, English teaching is more focus on grammar and words. I think it is not bad because it is the basic of learning language, but in the same time, improving listening and speaking skill is also important. So, I decided to continue my English study in America. My English has improved a lot during the time in ALP. At beginning, I am not confident to use English to express my thought, but now, I can clearly show my idea to others by using English. In the future, I hope I can speak English like a native speaker through my effort.
ReplyDeleteGoing to abroad to study is a dream for many people, I am one of them; so when I graduated from high school, I decided to go to abroad to study. As for me, learning English is very difficult, but I still to try to learn English because it is my dream. And then, I took a course to learn English, I remembered that I didn’t know anything about English when I began to learn it. I started to learn it from basic, including how to organize language to express, how improve listening, and how right use grammar in competition. Experience trained, I got progress of my listening and grammar, I write a paragraph or sentence more fast than before learning it; but speaking still was a difficult problem for me. Therefore, my teacher taught me one by one. She told me: the best important of speaking is don’t be shy, just said whatever you want, that is ok; even though it is wrong. If you care too much about what others think of your speaking English, your speaking English is not going to improve. When I listened her words, I began brave to talk whatever with my friends and teachers, and I know that it is a process of learning English, even though it is very difficult for me, but I still try to overcome it.
ReplyDeleteLearning a new language is a bit challenging. When I first started to learn English at secondary school, everything was kind of easy since there were all Vietnamese people so their pronunciation was easy to hear. However,when I signed up for English class at an English center, I made myself really embarrassing when speaking English to a foreigner who was my teacher. In the speaking part of a placement test, he asked me to describe the city where I lived and what made me most interested in it. Then, I answered him that: the most interesting thing about the city where I lived was that there was a beautiful beach near my house which we could walking in the afternoon for sight-seeing. Unfortunately, my pronunciation was not good enough; instead of saying "Beach" I said "Bitch". My teacher was like: what??, but he understood after a while and explained to me what I did wrong. I was so embarrassed to realized what I had said. Since then, I have been very careful in the way I pronounce words, but sometimes my pronunciation still confuses others. I become shy and do not communicate with other people due to the fear of making mistake.
ReplyDeleteAlthough learning English is important for me in senior school, but the teaching style is boring. My teachers would read the article which in the text book and teach me grammars and vocabularies. I have no opportunity to communicate with other students. The only thing I have to do is taking notes in class. I was also depressed when I studied English in senior high school. This teaching style made me feel bored; therefore, I could not absorb all information. I spent most of my time to remember what I learned in class, but I forgot everything after the exam. If my teachers could have some interaction or communicate with me, it is helpful for me to learn English. To sum up, the teaching style in Taiwan should be adjusted. My teachers could communicate and interact with me in class. It makes me feel interested in English and memorize knowledge easily.
ReplyDeleteLearning another language is a key to open new horizon. Since I was in my high school, I started learning English as the foreign language. I was very excited about imitating American accent, though I didn’t understand what they said. Once time, I applied for a part time job as Vietnamese tutor for an Italian man who could speak English. He was kind and friendly, he wanted to exchange culture and language with me. Since I was not good at English, sometimes I couldn’t understand what he said. To express my idea, I usually used body language too. He showed me some English books and told me about his country. Besides, he introduced some English club where had a lot of foreigners to practice speaking, listening. It was interesting and inspiring me for learning more. I began to reading more English books and realizing that there was an amazing horizon which I ignored. Thorough being good at English, not only I could make foreign friends but also I could have a good job with high salary. Later, I was offered a job in foreign company and did business with Chinese, Malaysian, Korean company. During that time, I had some presentation, meeting with foreign supplier and I found that I lacked a lot of knowledge. Finally, I planned for studying aboard. It totally changed my life and opened a new horizon to me.
ReplyDeleteIn my first experience learning English language, I had a lot of problems and mistakes pronouncing words because of the silent letters in some words. I heard one of my friends listening to rap music, I liked the song, so I asked him what kind of music is he listening to, he replied by telling me “rap music.” For a whole day I kept wondering what he meant by saying "rap music," at first I thought rap music was a talent where people knew how to multitask by singing and wrapping things at the same time, the next day I saw him and told him what I was wondering about yesterday, he started laughing all day long and told me how to differentiate between rap and wrap and told me about the silent letters.
ReplyDeleteMy early English learning period was when I studied in middle school, which it was 28 years ago. At that time, most middle or high schools did not hire English native speakers to be teachers in my country China. As a result, students learning pronunciation was difficult, shy and making a lot of mistakes. Most Chinese English teachers graduated from university, but they did not have chances to practice speaking skills with any English native speakers during their college life. I was lucky, because I lived in a university where my mother worked. Every summer break, the university provided free English class for all staffs’ children. Sometimes, few international students taught or assisted one class per week. It was so excited for all kids, because we could not imagine that we would talk to a real foreigner. When we were in the first class with an international student, I remembered that speaking the first word was extremely hard for me. I almost spent one minute to speak my first simple sentence that was “hello, my name is Fan Tao”. Moreover, I did not make any eye contact with this English native speaker when I talk to her whose name is Helen. I invariably looked at her shoes to think what can I say. When I finished my entire self-introduction, and then I looked at her face, which she was laughing.
ReplyDeleteEven I learning English early age was 13 years old, but I first time spoke in English that that's my first time came to Los Angeles when I was 18 years old. I didn't know how to use correctly words and my pronunciation is not good, I never practice conversation before the travel. One time, we had Mcdonal at noon and I would like ordered a cone with the shop assistant, and then she just gave me a cup of coke......
ReplyDeleteAfter that, I very hard to study English. This time, I came to Los Angeles for study aboard in language programe. I have been living in homestead that when I came. First week, my listening and speaking not very good yet. I always try to talk with home dad and mom: Ummm...I got many homework this week, I am a "busybody". They just gave me a very confusing face. I very care about their facial expression, so afterward I knew that means is not talk about busy. A lot of people use English as their second language. Learning English that let's talk with many country of people, understand their tranditional, culture, and many interesting things. That's so interesting for that we come from different country but we speak same language understand each other.
I had a lot of funny memories when I was studying a new language. All of these funny moments and mistakes that I made it helped me a lot to improve my English language. For example, one of the funniest mistakes that I made is, when I try to say thought I was pronounce it whit the G, and it was very hard for a lot of people to understand what I am trying to say. When I see their faces I can see that they are trying to control their laugh. But I understand that when the laugh that they are not mean to me. Other mistake is when I want to say home or come I pronoun it with the E, but most of them can understand what I am trying to say. My English was improving because people always was correcting my mistakes after they laugh. My English now is much better than before I thank everyone that helped me and corrected my mistakes.
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