"Excuse Me" in Writing and Speaking

I've mentioned before that I advertise for new ESL students on craigslist.org. I never put my phone number in the advertisement, just my email address. If potential students want to contact me for English lessons, they have to email me first.

I received an email inquiry today with an interesting greeting. The writer wrote, "Excuse me" as his greeting. I've received hundreds of email from English language learners and this was the first time I've read this introduction.

Of course, a more appropriate email opening is something like "hi" or "hello" or "good day" (although emails with "good day" are usually from scammers), etc.

I was thinking about this "excuse me" email greeting and although it's not conventional, it really does seem to a polite way to begin an email. I receive so many emails from potential students, people who have viewed my websites, friends, family, businesses, and on and on. I get a little overwhelmed with all the email sometimes.

So "excuse me" just seems like a fair greeting. (Of course, I am not recommending this greeting in emails. It's more appropriate for speaking situations. And if I end up working with this person, it will be something we discuss.) It just seemed right today.

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Using CL to Teach Vocabulary

Craigslist.org is very popular in the area in which I live and teach. In fact, I do all my advertising for new ESL students there (it's free!). You can find anything you want there.

For an ESL teacher/tutor in an area in which Craigslist.org is popular, it's also a great resource to teach life skills (how to find a job or an apartment) and especially useful for teaching acronyms and abbreviations and other vocabulary. I stumbled across this fact last week when a student asked me what "420" meant. He was looking for an apartment and found the phrase "420 friendly" in several advertisements. This isn't the sort of thing taught in most ESL classes!

In addition to developing lesson plans to deliver in class, ESL teachers and tutors can also ask students to bring back new words or expressions they find in some of the ads. However, you need to be careful that all students have internet access before giving such an assignment.

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Americans Saying Thank You

A couple of ESL students with whom I've worked over the years have mentioned to me the fact that Americans say "thank you" a lot. Since I've heard this from English language learners from more than one part of the world, I tend to think that this could be a true generalization about us.

I'm reminded about this as I'm watching my all-time favorite reality show, "Amazing Race." Every one of the teams consistently says thank you to the cabbies (taxi cab drivers) and other people who help them.

I think that it's true that "thank you" does go a long way in the U.S., as well as "please." So these are two expressions I always be sure to teach the use of to my ESL students. They are useful "survival words."

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"I Don't Drink" for ESL Students

Since I'm an ESL teacher, I probably pay more attention to the everyday use of the English language than other people. My ears are continually perking up to phrases, expression, idioms, and "strange" uses of English. Even when I walk to my English lessons, I hear or see things that I know my ESL students most likely will not know. In only a five minute walk, I encounter at least a couple of things that would be new to English language learners. If it's something useful or interesting, my next ESL student will benefit from my observation.

I caught a part of "The View" on TV this morning and Whoopi Goldberg said, "I don't drink." It made me think of how an English language learner would interpret this sentence. Of course, it means, "I don't drink alcoholic beverages," but you'd never hear this longer sentence from a native English speaker. All native speakers will know that "I don't drink" means "I don't drink alcoholic beverages."

I think this is a useful English phrase for ESL or EFL students to understand and to use, if needed.

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ESL, Mobile, and Cell Phones

Is it a cell phone or a mobile phone? Here's another one of those American versus British vocabulary differences. The majority of Americans say "cell phone," although some are starting to say "mobile."

I think that for English language learners, the best vocabulary to teach is the one that is used in the culture where they'll be living/visiting/studying. Although, the American English versus British English differences are useful for students to know.

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ESL and Telling the Time

One basic thing that English language learners need to know is how to tell the time.

I was talking to one of my ESL students today. We were practicing prepositions of time (in/at/on). I asked what time he left for work. He said, "I left at 8:05." However, when he said "8:05," he said, "eight-five." He left out the "oh."

It's actually a little strange to pronounce the "O" in 8:05 as the letter "oh." One might expect it to be "eight-zero-five" since the "0" is a number. However, native English speakers say the time from one minute after the hour through nine minutes after the hour with "oh" instead of zero.

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Amazing ESL Survival Skills

I met with a potential new ESL student yesterday. I can usually tell a little bit about the level of potential students based on the email exchanges we have before our first meeting. Even when I get emails from very advanced level ESL students with absolute perfect grammar, I can still tell that they are English language learners. I've had a couple of students who are native English speakers but want to improve their writing skills. With this most recent potential student, I really wasn't sure what to expect.

It turns out that this ESL student was indeed an ESL speaker. She has been living here in the U.S. for several years. Her speaking was excellent. She had an accent, but that was the only thing that let me know she was an ESL speaker. I tried to do my regular Needs Assessment to find out what her weaknesses were. It took quite a while to hear any problems. She answered all my questions very well. I started to hear a couple of problems with verb tenses, but no consistent problems or serious ones.

As I asked various questions using different tenses, I finally heard what her problems were. The amazing thing was that she was able to maneuver around her English skills limitations. She was fluent and thoroughly grammatically correct with what she did say. However, for things she was unsure of, she just didn't use them. I think these are amazing ESL survival skills; to be able to speak so well that even an ESL tutor is slow to figure out the problems.

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Telephone Skills for ESL Students

"I am Jung. I call you to ask ...." This is a typical beginning of a voice mail left for me by many of my students. This sounds strange to any native speaker. We know that we say, "This is Jung." And then we most likely use a Present Progressive follow up.

Identifying oneself is such a basic telephone skill that I often forget to teach this to my ESL students. It's usually not until a get a message like this, or a phone call, from one of my students that I remember to teach this basic telephone skill. And since many ESL speakers feel uncomfortable using the phone, most of my communication with my students is through email.

Identifying oneself and other basic telephone skills should be a part of the basic survival skills we teach our ESL students.

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Introductions and Goodbyes

When I teach beginning ESL students, one of the first lessons I do is on introductions and goodbyes. I usually do this by providing a script to the student. I read the sentences and ask the student to repeat after me. Here's a short sample of an Introduction script for English as a Second Language learners:

A. Hello, Jenny. How are you?
B. Fine, thanks. How are you?
A. I'm fine, thank you.

And a short Goodbye script for ESL learners:

A. Goodbye, Maria. See you tomorrow!
B. Bye bye, James. Have a nice evening.
A. Thanks, you too!
B. Thanks.

It looks pretty basic, but these types of survival scripts can help ESL learners to feel a bit more comfortable in their everyday lives.

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ESL Survival Expressions

A few days ago, I wrote some survival questions for beginning ESL students. I’ve also found that due to cultural differences, it’s a good idea to teach ESL speakers a few expressions. Here are a few things I think speakers of other languages should learn right away when they start studying English in the U.S.

1. “Bless You”

This should be said whenever someone sneezes. It doesn’t matter if you know the person sneezing or not. For example, you are sitting on the bus and a stranger next to you sneezes, you should say, “bless you.” Incidentally, this courtesy (and cultural norm) doesn’t just apply to ESL speakers. Everyone should say this when another person nearby sneezes. Of course, there is that awkward situation that we all have when someone sneezes three, four, five, etc. times. That's something even native-English speakers have trouble with. When someone says “bless you,” the appropriate response is “thank you.”

2. “Thank you”

Culturally, American native-English speakers probably say “thank you” more than any other people on the planet. I’ve been told by some ESL students that we seem disingenuous with all the “thank yous” we say. We can’t help it! For the vast majority of us, we really do mean it! We’ve been brought up to say thank you for everything. And if we don’t say thank you, we seem rude. If another person doesn’t say “thank you” to us, then we tend to feel the other person is rude. “Thank you” can probably never be said too much by ESL speakers if they want to fit in culturally.

3. “Excuse me”

This is an expression that Americans use for all sorts of things. For example, we can say “excuse me” when we accidentally bump into someone on the bus or if we want to get someone’s attention. We can also say “sorry” when we bump into someone.

4. “Sorry” or “I’m sorry”

Not only is “I’m sorry” a very useful expression for ESL speakers to learn, it would also be more helpful if more Americans used this more often.

Please write to me if you think there are other essential survival expressions for beginning ESL students to know.

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Survival Questions for ESL Beginners

When Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), it's very useful to teach the ESL student some "survival questions."

I always teach my beginning students the following questions. They are useful during our one-on-one tutoring sessions, and more importantly, they are useful in the real world.

(1) Can you repeat that please?

(2) Can you please speak slowly, please?

(3) How do you spell __________?

(4) What does __________ mean?

(5) Can you give me an example?

(6) How do you say ___________ in Japanese/Spanish/French/etc. . . .?

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