Ask HN: How to improve communication (listening, verbal and writing)

[maheshs]

How to improve communication (listening, verbal and writing) when English is not your first language. I live where most of the population are not English speaking. Any actionable advice which I can practice daily which you or your near ones did and helped them.

Few thing I considered like joining Toastmasters but nearest club is too far to my place.

[tucaz]

Disclaimer: I’m not passing judgement.

Whenever I hear someone with a problem and a good solution, like Toastmaster here, but with an “excuse” it points me to question the will to actually solve the problem.

If it’s too far you don’t need to go every week or every day, but how about once a month? That would help a lot even if it’s just once a month.

Another suggestion is to have Grammarly installed because it does catch a bunch of errors. However, be aware that you are sending everything you write to their servers.

The last advice is the most obvious one.

Write a lot and look for errors. Rinse and repeat. Practice makes it perfect.

[notomorrow]

Agree. It smells like an advertisement.

[krageon]

Learn it the way children all over the world learn their English: Watch cartoons, play games and talk shit on the internet. The key to learning a language and learning it well is to not be impatient, because mastery takes time.

[whitenoise23]

If you are looking for English advice for your job. I strongly recommend to follow courses in coursera platform or EdX.

[butteredpopcorn]

Some things you could do from anywhere with internet:

- take Skype lessons

- listen to English-language podcasts

- read Strunk & White

[hluska]

English is my first language so I have no experience trying to learn it as a second language. For what it is worth, it is a very difficult language and if this ask HN is indicative of your writing, you’re doing quite well.

I’m trying to learn French now. The thing that has helped me the most is talking to people who are French-English bilingual and kind enough to tell me that my accent makes me sound a little soft in the head. You may not have access to people like that. I’ve also gained quite a bit from watching parts of the first 8 seasons of The Simpsons in French. I’m of an age where I know the first 8 seasons like the back of my hand, so I can listen to the language and hear how they construct sentences without getting bogged down trying to understand.

If I wanted to improve my writing, I would find a good editor to destroy my writing. Would it be beneficial if I edited this post for you and showed how I would write it?

If I didn’t have access to a good editor, I would start reading as many English books as possible. My French isn’t strong enough to start reading actual French books so I haven’t gone down that path yet with my own learning. You might gain from that path.

Finally, do you work in tech? If so, comment here and get involved in some debates. If you do that though, remember that in English there are a lot of ways to craft one sentence. For example, let’s take a look at your last sentence.

“Few thing I considered like joining Toastmasters but nearest club is too far to my place.”

If I deconstruct that sentence, I get:

“Few” - Few means more than one.

“thing I considered like joining Toastmasters” - thing is singular

“but nearest club is too far to my place.” - this part is fine, though you’re missing a word.

When I add all of that together, I get a meaning like:

“I considered joining Toastmasters but the nearest club is too far from my home.”

In this case, “too far to my place is grammatically correct, but I have an aversion towards forming sentences like that. However, you could also write this and few people will question it:

“I considered joining Toastmasters but the nearest club is too far to my home.”

I don’t think that sounds as good, but that’s my own taste and my own voice.

Or, depending on who I’m writing to, I might balk at using ‘considered’. If I wanted to be a little folkier and conversational, I’d say:

“I have thought about joining Toastmasters but the nearest club is too far from my home.”

That is a small difference but we could also edit it completely differently. If I felt verbose, I might say:

“I have considered a few ways to improve my English. For example, I thought about joining Toastmasters but the nearest club is too far from my place.”

I took your last sentence and expressed it in several ways and I could keep going for hours. I know which one I prefer, but there are many options. If you’re looking for a good way to drill, I would practice there. Start writing a sentence in different ways. How does the feeling change? What feels more pleasant to read? What is more pleasant to speak out loud?

[notomorrow]

Why downvoted? s/he is simply proposing a solution while introducing the problem. Sorry, it is a clear sign of an advertisement.

[hluska]

Except that the vast majority of Toastmasters clubs would be of little benefit to someone who is learning English. A club would have to be managed in a very particular way to be of any benefit. Those particular clubs tend to advertise as such. It doesn’t make business sense for Toastmasters International to go after this crowd. It makes even less business sense for TI to do it in such a sketchy way.