(Original post from 2011)\u00a0 This is what I heard today over the phone from a potential client.\u00a0 She does not have a thick accent but she does has one.\u00a0 She sounds fairly confident and certainly intelligent.\u00a0 She has a couple of degrees and valid work experience.\u00a0 So what’s the problem, right?<\/p>\n
She sometimes feels shy when she is in a group of Canadians.\u00a0 She is not sure what to say and if she says something is it appropriate or not.\u00a0 She is not as confident as she would like to be.<\/p>\n
Like many she starts to think it is because of her accent, but as we chat longer over the phone she begins to understand that her level of formal English, both academic and professional,\u00a0 have taken her so far, but not far enough to truly mingle stress-free with the native Canadians.\u00a0 What does she need?<\/p>\n
After admitting that she doesn’t have any native English-speaking friends to hang out with (she spends time only with people from her community – the exact community is not important for this story<\/i>) I tell her that she needs to study, learn and integrate pop culture and idioms more to help increase her comfort.<\/p>\n
It almost sounds too easy and so she resists, but it will not do her any good.\u00a0 Language, any language, not just English, is a reflection of the culture.\u00a0 Textbook English starts you off but to improve fluency you need to be able to speak about current affairs, get pop culture references and retort back to idioms.<\/p>\n
Reducing your accent will benefit you if you have a thick accent, and there is nothing wrong with spending time to work on it even if it’s pretty good already, if you so choose.\u00a0 But please do not neglect the amount of fluency that comes from informal chit-chat, especially through idioms, slang, colloquialisms, and pop-culture references like movies, comics, heroes, books, etc.<\/p>\n
Pop Quiz<\/span><\/b>: I could go on but for now if you can answer these questions easily then you are not living with your head in the sand, and you probably enjoy North American culture.\u00a0 If you are having problems answering my questions, then you probably have difficulty with small talk and in social situations in general with native English speakers, especially us North Americans.\u00a0 Borrow some books, rent some dvds or go online to YouTube or a steaming service, and watch some more content.\u00a0 If you have friends to join you – all the better.\u00a0 Create a study group and have fun while you learn.\u00a0 It’s worth the investment of time to learn some pop culture, and who knows, you might actually have fun learning it!\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Original post from 2011)\u00a0 This is what I heard today over the phone from a potential client.\u00a0 She does not have a thick accent but she does has one.\u00a0 She sounds fairly confident and certainly intelligent.\u00a0 She has a couple of degrees and valid work experience.\u00a0 So what’s the problem, right? She sometimes feels shy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[538,535,537],"tags":[583,655],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-confidence","category-esl-cultural-communications","category-speak-english-better","tag-idioms","tag-pop-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1474,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/1474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWho is Princess Leigh?
\nWhat is a Hobbit?
\nWhere does ‘Gotham city’ come from?
\nName a friend of Harry Potter.
\nWhat’s the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Name a few main characters from Friends, Seinfeld, and The Simpsons.<\/p>\n