Having more effective meetings

Recently the subject of meetings has come up often. Many people go to a lot of meetings and wish that these were more effective. I've added a link to a nice website called Effective Meetings, where you can find a lot of simple, practical ways to improve your meetings. Although many of these concepts are basic and may seem obvious, like so many other things, the key is to do them! As always, your feedback is appreciated!

http://www.effectivemeetings.com/

Freedom to comment here

Finally, I've figured out how to enable all comments here without people needing to have a Google account, etc.
Sorry for the delay! If you have any problem trying to leave a comment, please let me know at coultonv@yahoo.com.
Thanks!!!

Communicating in English!

There is no question that learning English, or any language, as an adult is not easy. If you're learning, there is usually some reason, or many reasons, why. It may be for your job, or for your professional development in the future, or because your boyfriend is from Australia! Knowing why you need and want to learn can help you to direct your effort, and also to evaluate your progress.

I would argue that for most people who don't want to work as English teachers or editors, the most important element in learning English is communication. For you in your study, you can ask what you need to communicate, who you need to communicate with, and what the situation is. Some people need to know more formal expressions than others. Some people send a lot of email, for others the phone is more important. Knowing this can help you to target the areas you need to improve in.

Often, people communicate well but feel disappointed because they know they made some mistakes. In my experience, native speakers make mistakes all the time! In writing, on blogs, in speaking, in presentations, so many mistakes! Even in advertising campaigns! I'm not saying you should be happy about mistakes, only that the real measure of your success in English is whether or not you can communicate. You can always improve. But after you talk with someone, maybe you can ask yourself if you communicated with them or not. If the answer is yes, then you succeeded! Next you can think about how to improve for next time.

One of the best practices I see with my students is that they correct themselves in the moment. I think this is difficult, because it means that you are calm enough to do it, but it's an excellent way. Do you have any practices that have helped you? It would be great to hear about them...

On my own, by myself

On my own and by myself both mean "alone." The important thing to notice here is the preposition for each one. Both expressions are often used when we're talking about being independent. The second one comes up a lot with children, for example, "Today Nicholas tied his shoes by himself." This means that he did it without any help. Sometimes we add all to give more emphasis, for example, "Jenny made this cake all by herself!"
On my own is often used with living, to talk about living alone after leaving the family home, or after living with other people or with a partner. For example, "After his divorce, Jim decided to live on his own for a while."
The image here is by Buson, and it's called Landscape with a Solitary Traveler. We could say that the person is traveling by himself. Some people really enjoy traveling on their own, but most seem to prefer to travel with others. What about you?

Walk the talk

My phrasal verb for today is walk the talk, which means to do what you say, or to have coherence between your speech and your actions. We use this a lot in business. We think it's important for people and companies to walk the talk. What do you think?

Call her! Ask her!

One of the most difficult things in English is when to use "to" and when not to use it. With call and ask, for example, we don't put "to" between the verb and the object. We say "I'll call her," not I'll call to her. The same is true for ask. "Let's ask him if he knows the answer." Also, with things like a company, the concept is the same. "She called the restaurant and made a reservation."

Comments? Questions? Suggestions?

Some of my favorite people have said that they would like to post a comment here but it's difficult or impossible because they don't have a blogger or Google account. I'm sorry about that and I don't have a solution to the problem. You could create a gmail account in order to post your comments on blogs (this is what I did in the past), or you could send me an email at coultonv@yahoo.com with your comment or idea. I would love to hear from you! Especially because you may have a question or an idea for a post that would be interesting. Whether you decide to comment, email, or not, thank you so much for visiting thinking in English!