How I learned English in Africa

^{Cape of Good Hope}

I have trouble with English. The fact is that I taught him on MS-DOS and Pascal, and then on films. Therefore, I learned to read and translate in our direction well, but to build sentences on the fly for conversation is not. But it is very necessary, because Mosigra has more and more partners in Europe. I think you do not have such problems, but the desire to refuel the tractor sometimes appears - and almost everyone needs real English.


^{My arrival: Switzerland, Emirates, Germany, Canada, France}
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So I went to South Africa without thinking twice. There were three quick visa options with warm weather: Malta (where there are Chinese among students, and the island itself can be avoided in two days), Dublin (with a very interesting accent) and Cape Town (a colony of Great Britain). Therefore - down to the equator, and to the very edge of the inhabited world. To Africa, to the furry elephants and penguins, digging holes.

English

In the city, two well-known schools are EF and EC (mine). The classes went like this: 9:00 - 10:30 reading and writing, 11:00 - 12:30 - talking and listening, 13:30 - 15:00 - specialized classes (for the course “intensive”). After usually a master class or some kind of school activity. I took three weeks. I must say that it is better to take either two weeks (just to dive on Wednesday and search for weak spots), or just a month or more at once. And necessarily - an intensive course, the benefit of the difference in price is only about 2-3 thousand rubles, and there are one and a half times more classes.

Before that, I took a tutor for five classes back in Moscow: they remembered the main times, wrote a pack of business letters, discussed my work and put up some pronunciation. Very helpful in passing the entrance test and orientation in the city.

A meeting

At the place we were met by a specially trained comrade of a bright chocolate color, who, instead of immediately shoving the bus, took me to change money at the airport and buy a SIM card. Very correct and wise. Right on the road, I picked up at first 2G-Internet, then - 3G. Then in the LTE zone they offered to jump on it, but it seemed to me that 10 Mb / s on 3G is just what you need in order to have time to cancel the download of something unnecessary. By the way, the gigabyte in the starting package was given an honest one, in which 1024 megabytes, consisting, in turn, of 1024 kilobytes each. Just a surprise after our telecoms.

By the way, the main condition for the agency that did everything was free fast Wi-Fi at the hotel. Clearly, the agency is completely failed.

The bus driver handed the package with instructions for the first time. They were in English, and some students were playing with dictionaries so well before they realized what was there. Basics - how to call a taxi, where to get water, emergency phone numbers, safety in the city, when to come to school for instruction, basic etiquette, typical mistakes of tourists (in particular, to look in the wrong direction on the right-hand road). Map to school.

The students, who arrived for a month or more, stayed in families (in exchange), but I went to the “residence” - something like a hostel, beaten by numbers of different sizes. There were students from hotels, but those who simply rented apartments in the near suburb were most fortunate. In general, up to a month, the hotel is good for those who more or less speak, the residence is for everyone.

Russian, except for me, was not. But in the assortment came across residents of Switzerland, Brazil, Eastern countries, a couple of Canadians, a couple of Turks and one very cheerful Chinese with three thousand friends on Facebook (How? Does he seem to have closed?). Not very sociable, to be.

Internet and sockets

Wi-Fi seems to be conditionally there, but it is not stupid. Cafe give 50 megabytes per day in a single network (that is, from one to another you do not walk), and in half of the cases, this network does not plow at all. The school has Wi-Fi, but it gave out a stable 300 baud, since the main bands were captured by Skype - and this thing our admin had the properties of gas and occupied the entire available channel in priority. As a result, it remained only to use their own cellular Internet. It is quite expensive - about 1,400 Russian rubles for a 5 gigabyte package. Such a package was enough for 3 weeks for me, by the way - apple devices and the seventh Windows with an antivirus ate traffic into the throats of a photo stream and technical exchange vigorously.


^{Adapters to all phones and sockets in the flea market - most likely, almost all stolen}

In this case, the last time I downloaded only the headers of letters and went without graphics during dial-up times, my consumption rarely exceeded 5 megabytes per day. The reality was somewhat unexpected.

Sockets are not ours, but there are adapters in almost any store. The first day is possible without an adapter with the help of a toothpick and some kind of mother - for my charging from a black and white Nokii, the food was quite suitable.


^{Once again the Cape of Good Hope}

The first day at school

At the entrance to the school they gave us a nipple. In fact, as it turned out, water bottles are the basis for survival in Africa. Almost all of them are always alone. There are no cups anywhere - if you see a tank of water, substitute your bottle. These bottles were very struck in the same department as stationery and canisters: this is what the child definitely needs to go to school.

Then we filled out a couple of pieces of paper, had breakfast and talked for 5 minutes with the future teachers. They evaluate conversational skills and just get to know each other. The surprise was that for “I shall” they draw one and a half points, for “I will” one, and only “I'll” will be correct in colloquial speech. At this stage, the most important was the question: "Why do you need a language." On this depends on the distribution of the afternoon classes. There are all sorts of "Cultural differences", "Epic", "Etiquette" and so on. The most difficult is business English, but it is at the Advanced level. I precisely aimed at him, although I always considered myself intermediate.

Then - the test. First, the grammar (times, general knowledge of the structure of sentences, all sorts of must / should, used to, gerund, use of Present Progressive and Simple to describe future events, Past Simple to express desires in the present, and so on). I stupidly did not understand half of this, but it turned out to be quite easy to guess, since almost all the examples were found in books or rules of games.

The second part is the dialogues for which you need to answer questions. They are challenging for beginners. Here's an example: a woman can grovel for about three minutes about her new Ferrari, how her engine rumbled, how awesome it was to go shopping for her, and then say, “Well, I taxed half a day, and my leg got sick, look?”. And I must say with whom she says: a friend, a technician or a doctor. The second part is a long text that should be fixed on the facts. We had a psychological study of likes on Facebook with a lot of numbers.

The third part is reading . It is necessary to read the text and answer questions about it. The questions were with a trick, the correct answer a couple of times was "I do not know" - consider. As the tinkering in the dough after the test showed, the compilers were not always friends with logic: if “almost everyone does this” in the text, then choosing “some do not do it” and “do it all”, you had to take the second one.

Final - Essay . There are 2-3 topics to choose from: “you went on a plane and you do not know where it is going” or “tell me about your favorite place”, or “how would you celebrate your birthday”. Since I was firmly confident only in perfect knowledge of Present Simple, I chose about my favorite place. As it turned out later, they did not evaluate the grammar, but the breadth of the dictionary, the ability to build complex sentences, the imagery of the language and the style of presentation for the situation. If you are not sure, it is better to write shortly - the number of jambs is considered, and not their percentage ratio to the volume of the text.

They have tests with a true random number generator in the answers. That is, for example, in a group of 10 questions with 3 options for each there may not be a single correct answer B.

An hour later I was given the highest score in the stream. Not enough 3% to Advanced. And immediately began a lesson in business English.

Business English

This is something crazy and cool. You break into the course already underway and just pick up on the fly what everyone else is doing. The teacher is an elderly man Yang. Stubborn as an old university professor, impatient, grumbling in places.

The group included two Germans with an MBA in finance (Chris Timlid from HTC and Christina from Lufthansa, a process outsourcing expert); bearded Persian Ibrahim, IT specialist from telecom; cunning Arab Almadin, engineer; the beautiful Nadine-Marie (Italian, who lives in Germany from the Leika techsport) and Marianna (from Brazil, an intern at the call center of the telecom).

The lessons went wild. As a rule, first we were given the rules of the language: for example, how to correctly ask direct and indirect questions, how to build a question so as to get as much information from the interlocutor as possible, how to give the necessary emotional coloring to the question. For example, I did not know that "Could you, please ..." and "Please, could you ..." are two big differences. After the theory, we practiced in a letter (most often - we collected text from pieces or supplemented sentences in the right way). Then they listened to some guru on this issue with a radio interview (for example, on negotiations - the CEO of Coca-Cola, on service - the head of a network of expensive boutiques, and so on). They answered questions on the text. Then they negotiated. Jan could beat us into teams, giving introductory business cases (like, fixing a problem with pirated discs on the Titan network - one team for journalists, another for a PR team), conduct HR-interviews with employees or so on. In one of the classes, he brought 10 letters to Samsung support and gave three calls to listen to, plus one message on the answering machine — you had to prioritize each incident and draw remedial measures in a limited budget. What pleased, all situations of life, albeit a decade ago. Mostly from the IT industry.


^{Nadine-Marie is trying to explain something to Ibrahim}

We immediately somehow did not work out with cultural differences. The Arabs together pressed customers aloud, like, paid - walk, not our problems. Nadine-Marie, because of professional European deformations, believed that the client should be reassured, but nothing practical should be done. Marianna did not understand half of the cases, because she could not distinguish between speech because of the accent. We stood with the Germans for good service. As a result, we played democracy, dragging Nadine-Marie to our side, or simply exhausted Ibrahim and Almadin to the limit with a bunch of demands, after which they made concessions. By the end of the second week, the Germans went to an individual teacher, and I learned to use the weakness of the “you, I tell you” position, re-read “Modern Diplomacy” and at the same time carried my colleagues to the head that if a client had something wrong with the goods - this is not his problem, but ours, because it depends on it whether or not he buys the next one. Ian was glad that instead of “No way” this Russian had learned to say something like “It's too difficult to us”.

Morning classes

They were simpler after business English. In my case, the solution is banal - morning classes went to the Upper Intermediate-level (because I wrote and said sucks), and business classes went to Advanced.

Learning was easy. I had three problems - the inability to use the times according to the situation, constant mistakes with articles and curves prepositions. With the articles we decided immediately after they explained to me who such a noun was - since I did not pass the theory, this was a breakthrough. With pretexts, I continue to mow, but less - they need to be taught. With times it went slower. I already knew the Simple group and was able to, then there were two classes about Differences Perfect from Simple with concrete examples with quizzes and writing stories - I was lucky. And then it turned out to be very simple. A little work with pronunciation, and everything became type-top. After correcting “the” for the correct soft, the taxi drivers began to take me for a local, so I immediately felt the benefit of English.

Then I went at the level of "three nines." The vigorous African Tamir caught up with me and still the same beautiful Nadine-Marie (when I passed the exit test, she switched to the Advanced level). The rest of the group studied without much initiative. Namely, it depended on how quickly knowledge is applied. That is, if you go - you need to literally gnaw knowledge, it dramatically increases efficiency.

What did you do in class? Sometimes they analyzed how to write letters, then they read examples, then they wrote letters to each other and answered them on various given topics describing the situation. For example: “You parked near a tree, a sign was not visible. Returned - a fine under the janitor. Write a letter to the board about the fact that they have fined you completely in vain. ” Or: "Here's a cousin sent you a letter with an attachment, answer her in the same style." And they gave a letter and attach.

The study went fast.

The teachers were great. The first class led Mateus Gerhardus Bosman. Dude first seemed rustic, but the way he coolly resolved different situations made me look and think. In fact, he was very cool in terms of knowledge transfer. The second class was led by the battle British grandmother Linda, who was distinguished by sincere good nature, an iron character, and precocious knowledge of IT and jargon. “Would you write a tweet like that?” Not. Write just4u, even though it pisses me off! ”


<sup>Hardy teaches us to tell stories


Boi-grandma Linda</sup>

A week later, young Amy was put in her place - she generally worked as an unfinished trainee. If Hardy and Linda could keep an audience of 100 people calmly, Amy would “blown away” at a dozen. What happened, actually. She was replaced by Warren - a lively dude with a monstrously quick speech, able to sit in Turkish right on the table. He immediately threw out the textbook and began to give us real English from all sorts of newspaper clippings, ask difficult questions and generally make us think and communicate.


^{Warren "as is"}

Electives

First, you can always go to the center of speech. There are tape recorders, books and CDs with audio recordings. You take the Oliver Twist, insert the disc, catch the headphones and listen. As you might guess, it is equally available in Russia using movies or audiobooks, and can be one of the best ways to learn a language.

Class for listening and books in it:




Secondly, there were master classes, but they turned out to be mainly for the pre-intermediate, that is, slightly boring. I had enough emotions in business English. Instead of a master class one could go anywhere or participate in an event from the school.

Third, the activity of the school. I went on a walk around the city (the practice of listening to the guide is at the level: “Do you speak badly? Try to sit here in this bar. I had one student who took two beers and began to speak fluently. Aah, do you drink? Well then our student from France: you will talk as pretty! ”). The second was a tour of the city by bus - we were given a colored dude with a monstrous accent, whose speech had to be further disassembled. He spoke slowly, in simple words and complained that he was being used as a teaching aid for the second generation of students.


^{Internet center of the school}

There was a lot more, but then I just fit into groups with British tourists in the center of tourism in Cape Town, which solved a lot of questions at once. There is nothing more terrible than a curious British grandmother who firmly decided to instruct the young man in her divine language during the 8-hour trip. And there is nothing cooler than an old oil engineer from Canada, who, suddenly, read my grandfather's book - and with which we found a lot of things to discuss.

Once every three weeks there is a re-certification - this is the same entrance test, but this time you can write it better and get a level-up. For this you will be transferred to an older group, where you will have to memorize the names of everyone in the class again. You can leave the group below only on the condition that you do not understand what is happening at all - but this will happen long before the test. But even if you do not pass it, you will still be poured a couple of newbies, because the new set. You can be raised earlier as well - there can be no less than 4 students in a class, so if there is a shortfall somewhere, you are temporarily elevated with a pair of points that are not reaching the required level. Catch the cycle - approx.

Hint: if something is wrong, you must first politely ask the test to work on the bugs, learn incomprehensible places, and then the next day say that you were sick, drunk and, in general, it was your twin brother, known to all city ​​moron. Plus, he copied another option from the Chinese from the second party. All this should be calmly and thoroughly stated to the course coordinator - then you will be given to retake on the spot, which in 70% of cases leads to an increase in level. Because here love the initiative.

Tips

• In classes, almost all work in pairs. It is therefore very important to understand who is sitting, and sit down either next to the strongest in the language, or next to a beautiful girl. Classes are usually for 6-10 people, the location is a "round table". The mathematical expectation is optimal in positions # 3 and # 4 from the teacher in a clockwise direction. The inhabitants of the East are reading the other way, so do not sit counterclockwise, otherwise you will study instead of a European accent with an Arabic all the way.
• When you take tours - always try to sit right next to the guide. If the road is long-distance (like safari) - he wants to talk, and he will talk with you. Given that the pronunciation here is either pure British or African homemade, it will be a mega useful. On tours ask a maximum of questions, even stupid. The main thing is to practice the language.
• Talk to everyone. Ask the waiters to tell the story of the cafe, the museum staff - tell about this place, ask the taxi drivers about life. But! In a taxi, first say the destination point in perfect English and specify the price, and only then show that you are not local. They have counters, but seeing a foreigner, they can easily turn on the night tariff, for example. Taxi drivers are always accurate to 5% know the price to the destination point on the counter.
• Feel free to say that you are learning English and ask you to repeat the last phrase again. Slow down. In other words. Learn polite phrases for this on the first day. In the city, everyone understands everything and comes to meet you. It is only important not to say this to those with whom you still have to bargain.
• Prepare business cards with mail and your FB-profile. FB here taxis.
• Students are grouped along national lines. There are no Russians there. Optimally, either immediately establish a close relationship with bright individuals (do not confuse them with outsiders), or be friends with the Chinese. The Chinese are almost Russians. Residents of Switzerland do not like each other, so you can communicate with them. However, if you are for two weeks, it is better to spend the first shift on food, and a large one (per hour long) on ​​walks around the city and communication with residents.
• Since this is Africa, it is very important to go on safari through the gardens - this is 5 days in the best case. Make a visa for 5 days more than tuition, hammer to study, tell the coordinator that you are in a safari from Friday to Wednesday - and move towards the adventure. Missed time will be added to the course at the end. If it does not add up with a visa, change it for individual lessons at a rate of 1: 4. And consider the situation with the hotel - to pay for five extra days is not very fun. But to go without 3-4 lessons is also not very good - you need to have time to immerse yourself in the language environment, otherwise you will not understand anything if the guide has at least some emphasis.

^{My morning class}

miscellanea

Food is all and cheap. Crime is high, mostly - robbery at night. At night, it is better to sit at home or walk without a camera. In hotels and other locked rooms do not steal too much. The currency (rand) varies from dollar and euro, but you can pay with a card just about anywhere and anywhere. Bus tickets are RFID cards, cheap and cool. Malaria is 100 kilometers higher; no vaccinations are needed. People are all benevolent, but without unnecessary sentiment.

Result

Completely English environment has done its job. I learned to keep the conversation more or less free, to distinguish even relatively hellish accents in quick speech, I learned an incredible amount of new words from colloquial vocabulary and clarified several nuances of conveying the meaning with different tools. Satisfied, of course. The only minus is that for three more days after the arrival I caught English words like “this is our main point” in Russian. Fortunately, I was able to lime them on the vine rather quickly. Yes, they also gave me a big beautiful piece of paper about my level of English, but I continued it.

KDPV

Beach with penguins. These devils really live in Africa and really dig holes. Such are strange birds:


Table Mountain:


Sudden tree:


Riding elephants:


Lion in the bushes:


Food:

About South Africa and IT people there

Habr cake. After the post about a steampunk coffee house, I met ZatriX there, with whom we suddenly had mutual acquaintances from good old AD & D. And called on Habr. He has been living in Africa for 20 years and can tell everything about IT and local features in general. Starting from a special Cossack regiment, who fought a century ago on the side of the Boers, and ending with the enchanting method of cable theft with the help of an old pickup truck, a wooden coil and a bottle of kerosene. By the way, he finally explained to me who and why needed a stolen twisted pair. UPD: here is this beautiful story.