Did you know that spaghetti grows on trees?
Well, that’s what the British television programme Panorama broadcast on 1st April, 1957.
After watching this short video, you could easily believe what you hear and see!
Do you have a daily routine?
My day normally starts with my fitness programme. So you’ll either find me on the terrace, or walking through the woods or over the fields early in the morning.
When I’ve finished, I’m ready for my breakfast smoothie.
From there my calendar dictates my day.
Questlove, according to Wikipedia, is “an American musician, songwriter, disc jockey, author, music journalist, and film director”.
Listen to him in this YouTube video as he takes us through everything he does in a day—and find out how he makes time to listen to 100 new song every single day.
Remember to watch with subtitles if you need a little help.
Do you have a specific daily routine?
“I think I speak for the rest of us when I say, sorry—sorry we left you our mess of a planet.”
This is how Prince Ea—the stage name of American activist and spoken word artist, Richard Williams—begins his moving apology to future generations.
In his short video, Prince Ea urges us to take immediate action to stop climate change.
We all know that we desperately need to tackle climate change while we still can!
I feel I’ve learnt more over the past two years than in the last ten. Do you feel the same?
Here are just a few of my learnings:
I’m not afraid to try.
I’ll get better as I go along.
People don’t pay for interesting, they pay for valuable.
It’s not about me.
I’m not afraid to fail.
Simple is more successful than complicated.
I need to emphasise the benefits and not the features.
Clarity is the most valuable thing I can have.
I’ll never know if something can work until I put it into the world.
I’m not selling something to people, I’m offering them an opportunity.
And what about you? What have you learnt over the past few years?
(My list was inspired by an article written by Josh Spector.)
Every language has its own idioms and expressions.
But I believe they are not as important as you might think.
Instead of taking the time to learn them, spend more time on learning grammar or vocabulary, or working on your fluency skills. Especially if you want to be understood by everyone.
Why is that? Because so many idioms are regional. The idioms I use might not be understood in other parts of the world. And vice versa. I often come across idioms I’ve never heard before.
On top of that, if you don’t use idioms correctly, they sound unnatural.
Learn the most common ones if you like. But try to avoid them when you’re working with an international audience. Focus more on communicating in plain and simple language.
Talking about idioms, here’s a German one I often used: “Abwarten und Tee trinken.” In English? “Wait and see!”
Do you have a favourite English idiom?
According to 19th-century French author Guy de Maupassant, it’s: “A Mystery! It’s the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.
How do we define this lively darting about with words, of hitting them back and forth, this sort of brief smile of ideas which should be conversation?”
What a lovely way to see conversation—as a “sort of brief smile of ideas”!
Without conversations we can’t build effective relationships. But conversation is like a muscle. It grows stronger when we exercise it and stays weak when we don’t.
Just knowing the words and grammatical rules in a language isn’t enough. If we want to be able to hold a conversation in a second language, we need to develop our communicative competence in that language. And the easiest way to practise this is just by having conversations in that language.
If you’d like to maintain or improve your level of English, work on your pronunciation or learn new words, having “Colourful Conversations” in a pleasant and relaxed atmosphere might be exactly what you’ve been looking for.
Conversations can change us in more ways than we can think of.
I’d love to welcome you.
