Please help. I'm about to conduct a 5 minute mini class as part of a CELTA interview, and have decided to teach the other interviewees Polish (even tho my Polish very limited). I want to be able to say 'Listen please' or 'please listen' (to me) but which is the right one to say?
Also, POWTARZAĆ or REPETOWAĆ? for please repeat ....
"Przesłuchiwać się" means, I believe, to interrogate. Naturally, I might well be wrong, but many years ago, one of my favorite Polish films came out, entitled "Przesłuchanie", translated as "The Interrogation"!
"Słuchać" means "to listen" and "słychać" means "to hear", as in the greeting "Co słychać?" (What's up?), literally, "What is heard?"
One more thing ... when I say 'proszę' do I leave out the emphasis on the ę sound (like prosz - eoung/ or just prosze?). I'm never sure of this as I've heard it both ways - and so worried in case one of the interviewees is Polish!
While grammatically correct, and conceivably usable (listen to one's self) the word is used mostly in its no reflexive incarnation and that's when it means "to interrogate (among others)
przesłuchiwać - to interrogate; to listen through (a record, a recording and similar); also to interview someone as for an acting role and similar;
przysłuchiwać always comes with się
przysłuchiwać się rozmowie - to listen to a conversation (not taking part in it) ( suggests focusing on the conversation)
both verbs come from słuchać/słuchiwać - one is formed by adding przez preposition the other by adding przy preposition the most important meaning of przez is through while przy suggests nearness, following and similar - they can be translated differently into English as is often the case with prepositions
przez pięć lat nie spadła tu kropla deszczu - a single raindrop hasn't fallen here for five years
This reminded me of the great dialogue from the movie 'Psy':
Dziadek:Wam to dobrze, wy młodzi jesteście. A ja co, na bruk? A gdzie ja teraz robotę znajdę, jak tylko przesłuchiwać umię?
Franz: W polskich nagraniach, idź tam Dziadek na łowcę talentów.
Dziadek, the former interroragor/UBek (internal security officer): It's good for you, you are young, and what about me? Unemployed? Where will I find work, while I can only przesluchiwac?
One more thing ... when I say 'proszę' do I leave out the emphasis on the ę sound (like prosz - eoung/ or just prosze?). I'm never sure of this as I've heard it both ways - and so worried in case one of the interviewees is Polish!
It's your choice, you can pronounce the ę in proszę as a normal e as well.
This is very strange. I was never asked to teach antother language other than English for my CELTA, although i could have taught them Welsh. Its like the blind leading the blind really, and pointless. Where are u doing ur CELTA?
As part of the interview to get into the course, I was asked to do a 5 minute mini teaching exercise. It didn't have to be a language lesson, but if it was then obviously it would have to be a language other than English as we are all English natives - so I chose Polish.
The CELTA course is at Dundee College .... and I've just found out that I've been accepted woo hoo! so the Polish lesson must have paid off!
Well, I am presently teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) at a junior college near where I live here in the States and I've encountered the phenomenon of teachers from various European countries such as Albania, Poland and Russia teaching other foreign students English, although often the teacher's pronunciation, even grammar, sounds as faulty as those whom they're supposed to be teaching:-)))))!!! LOL
Ha Ha! Well there's hope for me yet! Maybe I will come to the States for a teaching post - although with my Scottish accent I may be confused with a non native ....
At least ENGLISH, Scots or otherwise, is your first and primary language. Come to think of it though, I've heard supposedly "educated" native-English speaking Jamaicans, as well as others from the West Indies, saying things such as 'Where I suppose to go, man?" and miscellaneous atrocities. LOL
Trust you see my point though. How'd you feel if, say a Russian, German etc. "corrected" either your native pronunciation or even your usage??? Rather the pot calling the kettle black, I'd think!
Trust you see my point though. How'd you feel if, say a Russian, German etc. "corrected" either your native pronunciation or even your usage??? Rather the pot calling the kettle black, I'd think!
I think I would hang my head in shame ...
But can they teach with an English accent?? I may try to get a sideline going, 'speaking with style' in which speaking the lingo with a Brummy (or other accent) earns you extra points. Having the right accent often goes further than being grammatically correct. I mean who of us actually speaks correctly all of the time :)
The Queen has people writing for her all the time, and I'm sure even she fluffs up her lines on occasions. Besides, I would like to see the Queen attempt Grammar Awareness module ... What is a Gerund?? although it looks of German origin so she could ask her hubby .....
...and then again, just maybe you'd give them the finger in a fit of pique:-)--:)!! Come on now, people!! Don't you see the cruel irony of such almost Orwellian arrogance, whereby the wrong somehow becomes right and the right?? Oh, hang correctness; "communication"'s the thing anyway, isn't it??
Please, don't make me barf. LOL Folks are plain scared to stand up against the mediocrity bullies out there and tell them what they really are: a bunch of arrogant, wrong-headed lazy bones, who've gradually usurped the English mother tongue right out from under our noses, while we were asleep at the switch!!!!
I think some non natives of English who are considered fluent, quite often get so wrapped up in the complexities and structure of the language that they miss out on the culture of the language, i.e. its history, its people, the way we love Slang so much - there is a whole new language within a language!
So even if I do from time to time get the Queens language so utterly wrong - who decides if its wrong? Who gets the final say in this matter? The Queen is a servant, her role is to serve her country ... so the people of her country decide her language!
The only "arbiters" of official English usage are the educated native speakers who set the standard. All others are the 'servants' as you call them of the common standard..... NOT the other way round!
Odd isn't it, a creul joke really, that foreigners can teach English, riddled with errors, yet we must be near native fluency, nearly perfect, to teach French in France, German in Germany or Austria, Spanish in Spain etc......??
yeh but we need to open our minds to English as an International language. People who have learnt English to the level where theyare confident enough to teach it are probably better qualified to help another learn it than a "native" speaker. we need to stop being so provincial in our thinking, ppl dont need idioms and phrasal verbs, they need INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH, the language of Microsoft and air traffic control., etc
Odd isn't it, a creul joke really, that foreigners can teach English, riddled with errors, yet we must be near native fluency, nearly perfect, to teach French in France, German in Germany or Austria, Spanish in Spain etc......??
But then when we study English in UK as a subject - not as a language, we are not studying the same 'English' as non natives (Polish, Germans etc). We learn about our history of the English language, Great Poets and Authors that shaped our reading habits ... Wordsworth, Keats, Shakespeare .....
A while back my Polish friend was explaining how English was taught in her school and how she had learned about Present Perfect, Present Perfect Continuous etc and I was amazed at her level of understanding (if not a little embarrassed) as I had only recently learnt these terms myself! This is why I believe a fluent 'non native' can teach English in England probably better than an 'unqualified' native as their understanding and study of it is completely different to how we were taught it at school.
Several points need to be addressed here. One, who determines whether one is "competent" to teach others a language not his own?? Perhaps this is precisely the problem; too many self-appointed English "experts" in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, peddling their poor English skills to a largely unaware and unssuspecting general public.
The Scandinavians, including the non-Nordic Finns, are maybe the worst examples of such thinking. Having been praised for decades by monolingual Amercans too tongue tied to order a bloody 'smorgaas med snaps' in Stockholm for fear of being politely belittled even for the attempt, by the "fluent" English-speaking Swedes around them, many in the US are so cowed by the emboldened confidence of Europeans' English, they daren't as much as suggest that just possibly the Emporer has no clothes, at least, that they might just need some repair:-)
Instead, the myth is perpetuated that Europeans en masse speak English FAR better than any Yank would/could ever speak their humble tongue, so the latter ought just forget entertaining the delusion he or she will ever rise to the level of a foreigner's so-called "academic" English!!!
Many are therefore, as I posted prior, incurably timid about mentioning to Ingrid, Lars, Hans-Juergen or Tadeusz, that saying "Yeah" rather than "yes" begins to to sound a trifle vulgar after a time, furthermore, that an overuse of vulgarity and slang, punctuated by incessant gum chewing (such as among the 'cool', youthful Dutch jetsetters)starts grating before long until it's unbearable.
Finally, when was the last time a young to middle-aged Pole, German, Swede or Dutchman EVER interspersed their polite English conversation with quotes/witticisms from Hemingway, Dylan Thomas, Auden etc...
interesting....funny about the Scandi's and Dutch!
Finally, when was the last time a young to middle-aged Pole, German, Swede or Dutchman EVER interspersed their polite English conversation with quotes/witticisms from Hemingway, Dylan Thomas, Auden etc...
Ummm...for real? Do you intersperse your conversation with "quotes and witticisms" from DWEMs? Wow.....er...we must meet for coffee some time..:)
My point was more that English for international communication is everybody's and anybody's really. If you want sparkling erudite repartee, go to ......um....not sure really, like Harvard or somewhere...;)
oh, for very real!!!! Only yesterday, a colleague (from Columbia, my alma mater, not Harvard, though-:))))!!!) and I were conversing and the subject of my favorite American poet/poetess came up in our conversation, Emily Dickenson. Which is 'higher', he asked me, poetry or fiction? Recalling Emily, I proceeded
'I dwell in possibility, a fairer house than prose. Superior for windows, more numerous of doors'
And the pity of it is, such is wasted on these Euro-whiz kids, flaunting their English as though all the language were, were the scripted stuff of air traffic and touristy haunts.
flaunting their English as though all the language were, were the scripted stuff of air traffic and touristy haunts.
How paultry indeed!!!!
Yes I do see your point!! Perhaps we could see it as TWO languages?...;) Like Solarino's "TWo headed Janus, facing to east and west" (Merchant of Venice)
