Language to Connect

English for work and business

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  • Look beyond language

    Watching the Olympic Games is an exciting intercultural activity, even if only on TV.

    Recently one of the journalists shared a conversation with the hotel staff in Beijing. He ran out of tea in his hotel room. As he was self-isolating and had no chance to talk to anyone in person, he called the hotel reception asking to renew his supplies. As a result, he got a tiny bottle of a cold drink which didn’t look like tea at all.

    The way he saw it on the day was that the staff had poor English and didn’t understand him. What happened the next day made him wonder even more. Two of the staff reps brought him identical selections of tea within a couple of hours. Did that help him understand the situation? Well, at least not at the moment of his hotel room stream. He was lost for words.

    What was the reason for this misunderstanding? Was it the language level? I honestly doubt that language had anything to do with it. To me it looked more like a case of ‘saving face’ and not being able to say that the staff had no chance of replenishing his tea box at that time. And they compensated with the drink available and brought twice as much tea as soon as they had it.

    Who knows if that’s the right interpretation? What’s definite is that in case of misunderstandings we have to look beyond the language.

    Stay safe,

    Oksana

  • Celebrate your language

    If you’ve ever read at least one of my posts here, you know they are all about international communication in English. Today, let me make an exception and dedicate this one to Ukrainian, my native language.

    In Ukraine we have a holiday of Ukrainian Writing and Language, which is celebrated annually on 9 November. The biggest event of this day is the All-Ukrainian Dictation of National Unity when speakers of Ukrainian from all over the world tune their radios and other modern gadgets to write the dictation. It’s often someone famous preparing the text and reading it and the genres vary from year to year.

    Some say they see no point in checking how accurately you can recreate a piece of writing, while others argue it helps you improve as a language user. To me, it’s a wonderful illustration of how much effort and practice we need to learn and understand each other.

    While listening to the reader, you have to pay very close attention to every pause to get your spelling and punctuation correct. Isn’t that similar to what we do when we communicate internationally? We focus not only on primary meaning but what’s written between the lines and what’s communicated through intonation and body language. And most of all on how we build bridges across hearts and minds using the language.

    How do you celebrate your language?

    Yours,

    Oksana

  • Together

    I have to admit I’ve been extremely inspired by the recent Olympic and Paralympic Games. With all the determination and grit that athletes have demonstrated, it made me think once again about the contribution of every single person behind their performance.

    As many people have noticed, even the Olympic motto has changed: it was completed with the word ‘together’.

    What would this mean for those who lead and train? And what would this mean for those who need to be trained and who follow their leaders?

    This is something to explore. Where would you start?

  • Job interviews: listen vs hear

    Recently I’ve been helping some of my clients to prepare for job interviews. What I’ve noticed is that we often listen to questions and then try to answer them. While we are trying to, the interviewer loses their focus and never hears what we want to say.

    So what to do? Try to get to the point where you answer the question as soon as you can.

    If you need some thinking time, take a couple of seconds to reflect or introduce the context and then get straight to the point.

    We all want our stories to be heard and we have to make sure our audience is still with us.

    Good luck with your next interview!

    Oksana