Cristina Bustos
I love travelling to see new landscapes and interact with locals and learn their customs. Meditation and yoga and learning are things that take up some of my time too!
Location Barcelona
Activity
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Cristina Bustos replied to Lina Mongs
This is it, managers are (usually) also employees and have their tasks to be accountable for I would assume - hard to understand why they don't behave they way they would like their own manager to behave with them towards their own team. Sometimes managers may be under pressure from their own managers, coupled with an inability to ask for help / or say no...
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Cristina Bustos replied to Kim Jones
Workplaces would benefit from giving a safe space for people to grow in a supportive environment. They could stress what you're good at and help you build what you're weak at by challenging but at the same time supporting employee's development. That means allowing mistakes to be made as part of a new challenge that may look daunting at first. I am lucky to...
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yes, this non-judgment is key. Oftentimes, when you tell about a problem that you can see the person may be experiencing in an obvious non-judging way, they'll open up and feel a bit relieved. For some people, to become aware that others understand what they are going through is a massive relief.
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Once somebody told me that we have to treat ourselves the way we would treat a friend. We would never been harsh on a friend who tells us about a mistake she's made. This was life-changing for me.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Wellbeing at work, apart from many of the ideas presented below by other course members, is going to work without fearing, paniking at the idea of simply going to work because your workplace is too harsh, colleagues unsimpathetic, or there's way too much pressure in an uncooperative environment.
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Cristina Bustos replied to Lili M.
Being listened and I would also add that our complaints are taken into consideration. It's important to feel the organisation or company, not only listens but also responds to our needs as employees.
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Cristina Bustos replied to Jheel Gandhi
I'd add to the "Read a lot" piece of advice "and notice", notice words, expressions, openings and closings, use of punctuation, the impact of puntuation, the richness of action verbs, etc. We can read a lot but if we fail to notice things (sorry for this very general word), we miss out on a big chunk of the reading-to-write-better learning experience.
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Cristina Bustos replied to Carmen Erika Manzano
Not because you can write, you're smart. Yes, undeniably if you can write, get your message across and persuade there is some intelligence, with words, but maybe we should start off with a definition of 'smart' and what professional/employment sector it's framed in.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Recording on top of the article: Crap sound quality - good sound quality should be as essential as good English skills.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Yes, yes, yes, I can't agree more, from my own experience, as a teacher and as an eager learner of languages. That's what my students get told every day. I would also add the term 'openness', being open to all this noticing and accepting differences between their L1 and their target language - forcing their brains to learn these differences.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Hints of an accents, yes, but none is way too far from some form of standard English, or so it sounds to me, a non-native speaker. Don't you think? If they are so harshly judged by their accent, that can be off-putting for educated people with markedly broader accents.
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Don't you find that self-confidence and/or self-perception compared to others play(s) a role in how you express yourself before certain people? We may be more or less eloquent depending on who we are talking to. or..is that just me? ;-)
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Zelenski nowadays is said to have a powerful way to engage and connect with his multicultural audience, he must have a good linguist lending him a hand.
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Personality, schooling, trends, education-jobs, moment in time (2022 vs say 1920s or 1800s). I am sure there must be a way to measure this but the cross section of the population used would have to be huge and the same study should have to be repeated over the course of years /decades in different parts of the globe to prove it's all a myth or fact.
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@AmieH yes! A sociologist male friend often says how visual women are and that shows in the way we give information and explain things- a lot more details. But i guess this is just one tiny aspect of these similarities and/or differences.
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Cristina Bustos replied to Anna I.
@AnnaI. I fully agree with this idea of awareness, that's the basis of my teaching too. Also a TEFL teacher.
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Cristina Bustos replied to Ruth R
Hmm. As long as it dosen't affect their employability or their ability to write to a certain level of accuracy (not necessarily perfect). Have you seen how many writing apps and software there is to make up for this lack of writing skills? languege vs writing skills. that's another issue altogether, though.
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@solomontaiwo even so, we would need to define what is proficiency: succeeding in getting ideas across intelligibly or being accurate a lot o the time, or..something else.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Is the use of social media having a negative effect on the English language? If we see language as static, the answer may be yes, it is but language and its use has always evolved and tweaked to adapt to the changing environments and needs.
Can adults become proficient language learners? so cool question. I guess they can become proficient... -
Cristina Bustos made a comment
Despite the explanation, it still feels rather abstract. I can't wait to look at this in more detail.
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Yeah, same here. It makes me wanna go back to uni and do a course on Linguistics and Applied Linguistics.
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It's often hard to explain some nuances of meaning to TEFL learners, like in the split infinitives or the position of adverbs and the impact this makes on a sentence.
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Yes, middle class band singing as a working class band. Subversion in the 60s-70s, time of social change. If you have education you can play with language, you know what's grammatical, you use the ungrammatical but widely used among lower social classes to create subversion. It doesn't happen the other way round. Working classes may not (may) have the...
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
A double negative and a split infinitive.
What we think is grammatical or ungrammatical may be strongly tied to our education and influence our schooling, for example, has had on us. Language and how we use language is fluid, it changes, it is a representation of the speakers' backgrounds and the variety of registers and purposes (subversion) and objectives.... -
Cristina Bustos made a comment
aren't you trying to show off as the intelligent one filling in for the other arguer?
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
This has led me to the idea of what sustains us as living human beings as opposed to dead human beings, other than a heart beat and functioning organs.
And could it be that believing in God may be the remnants (not sure it's the right word) of another life and the now-lost-knowledge that live came with? -
Yes, the idea that each type has a place and a role in our society: court of justice and scientists. That one does not exclude the other, if that makes sense.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
My very simple in-very/too-GENERAL lines contribution:
p1 council has a duty to preserve old trees
p2 environment struggles to survive
p3 developers are greedy
p4 people want to preserve the treesC
so council shouldn't fell the old trees. -
Cristina Bustos replied to JANET PRICE
can there be arguments behind explanations?
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Cristina Bustos replied to Rhett Morson
is it all in the wording?
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
About "I’m not a winner" example:
Why not "I am a loser" and as a conclusion? Could this be an example where a conclusion (if this was a conclusion) is not supported by the premises? -
Cristina Bustos replied to Robert C
Yes, I was also going to give the example of person who has been in bad relationships and shuts himself/herself off to other future potential relationships, assuming they'll be bad as well. More than a fallacy, is this a confirmation bias?
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Cristina Bustos replied to Bron D
Same here - I need to strengthen my arguments.
I am good at identifying the fallacies when i hear them (not the type, though) - I think that, often, we may fall into the trap of fallacies unaware of the role the language and wording plays in an argument- specially when using a foreign language at low or intermediate level (I teach foreign languages) -
Cristina Bustos made a comment
in the few comments I've read nor in the examples has anyone mentioned the likelihood of accidents when speeding and the huge impact (and delay) this would entail.
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and we tend to think that speeding will save us time but not necessarily the correctation between speed and time saved.
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Cristina Bustos replied to John Clary
@MaureenMew and instagrammers selling their healthy living ideas.
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and speech writers and advisors to politicians themselves. Ever watched Yes, Mininster?
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Cristina Bustos replied to Karl Büchler
This is probably why speeches and statements of politicians and public figures have experts who carefully choose words to influence and steer us where they want us to be.
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Cristina Bustos replied to Bron D
@BronD the use of not surely has an impact here too.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Isn't 72 and 78% for A and B.. is, a FAIRLY consistent choice, is it?
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Cristina Bustos replied to John Acheson
Can scientific resarch be manipulated to serve somebody's agenda? that is, the scientific facts be presented in such a way that leads us to believe whatever some body (institution, lab, etc) wants us to believe despite the "truth" behind science?
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Cristina Bustos replied to Rashed J.
I can see what you're saying but isn't this how the brain learns something new and then questions and goes beyond? the brain needs efficiency too, we need to start somewhere and this might be the starting point...
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Cristina Bustos replied to Carmela Gare
@CarmelaGare yes, and finding the "right" source of info can also be time consuming .
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Cristina Bustos replied to tingting yan
Some people have this trained ability to question and not rely on availability heuristic at all. Some (what a general word! - am I relying on availabiltiy heuristics here?) jobs require this skill.
It's good to have reliable sources of statistics and socialogical studies to confirm and support or debunk our arguments - much as statics are manipulated/able. -
Cristina Bustos replied to JANET PRICE
In my opinion, this trusting "the information to be given to be honest" may be in true to you. It may also have to do with the concept of "uncertainty avoidance".
Corruption scandals, and bias in media for example in some countries should teach us enough not to rely on and trust info given and take it with a pinch of salt and not believe at face value. Much... -
Cristina Bustos replied to Daniela Porto
I agree. Same with me.
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Cristina Bustos replied to Monica V
Yes, it brought to my mind scenes of the 1950s, clark gable. Tenderness and romantic unrequited love kind of images.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
What I thought a slight grunt of an animal is the tap on the right hand side! and what I thought were the swaying of swings, well, the taps turning right and left. Imaginative!
No more background to reveal than this illustration (in motion) of three taps and all the setting the sound had triggered, nothing! -
Cristina Bustos made a comment
there's the sound of the chains of a swing. the swaying pace and rhythm is very telling, don't you think?
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Am I the only one here? Not sure what to think about it.
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look tatit looked de ci didit decided it ... past tense is something people often really struggle with.
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I think it's a matter of just memorising it the way it is.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Hmmm, I tend to associate ch to the church sound but judging from the list in the video, there seems to be more ch as chemistry.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Clear l is a clear (as in easy to identify as an L) whereas dark l is like it's diluted...would that make an ok attempt a defining the two L sounds?
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Cristina Bustos replied to Maria-Anna Papadaki
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Cristina Bustos replied to Geidys Villalaz
How do you know you make both sounds correctly? I am not sure if I do.
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The other way round for me.
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I don't think it's a matter of one being better than the other. It's just the way it is. Personal preference maybe?
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@AmritaDas Hello Amrita, yes, it's more in line with this - Spanish doesn't have the schwa sound (unless we learned French or Catalan or other schwa-having languages as children I'd say) even the /æ/ sound is a bit too open for the a openness here. Yes, I would stick to /ʌ/ when there is an a in spelling. Content of the course is fantastic. I didn't mean to...
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https://www.speakpipe.com/voice-recorder/msg/1wms1y1cuu1c83u1 I forgot to post it here when I recorded it.
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@AdamGregorics Are you doing this for pleasure?
Yes, I have noticed this in English too. Scottish pronuncation is fascinating. I wikipediaed it and saw the different symbols for a general Scottish accent.
I watched a few minutes of the Great Vowel shift video that Alonso Poblete shared here and it made me wonder if the GVS didn't affect Scots variety as... -
Many Spanish speakers tend to replace the nurse vowel sound for whatever other vowel they see. Curse, they make a u sound because they see a u letter, for example.
The bbc pronunciation tips has videos where you can see an English lady pronouncing the sound, you can see the openness of her mouth, how she rounds or not her lips etc. Some of my students found... -
and also acceptance. Accepting that these words with different spelling (ir, er, ur or ear) have the same sound.
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@AlonsoPoblete Interesting. I was told that the long i sound as in tea, team was the smiling i - the trick to produce it long enough. This is the trick a speech therapist friend of mine uses.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Is it me or when the speaker says the word trap the a sound is more like trup than trap? unline when the sound is contrasted with other words, which seems to be more open.
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Yes, ch in anchored sounded like a g too.
I struggled with a couple of words too. -
@PhilipDuerdoth That's right. Length is length. What varies is quality, or a diphtong (which is already long being combiantion of two (vowel)sounds) lengthened into a long vowel - Scots down /duːn/ instead of /daʊn/. @AlonsoPoblete do you know the fonetiks.org website? there you can find a comparison of the sounds you're after. It's very old, interface is not...
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and howjsay.com
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But Spanish from the south of Spain or rural areas has some tricky pronunciations. Consonants undergo all sort of strange things. Fluent and accurate foreign speakers of Spanish (Latam or Standard Spanish so to speak) would struggle, as do some other natives! :-) anyone from Spain here? vien-né for viernes pul-lé for puzzle pis-sa for pizza. gua -sa for...
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@PhilipDuerdoth I agree with Philip. My addition is to get really good at English as a language, whatever variety you choose or are exposed to. Understanding other varieties will just become much easier if you have a good command of the language (in general terms).
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Once a learner asked me if there where phonetic sounds for Scots vowels and I was lost for words for a moment but I said there must be. Different sound, different phoneme. It'd be interesting to find out what you do @AdamGregorics
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Yes, I think it's a matter of when phonological systems "settle" and it's at quite a young age. After that, apparently, it can be hard to learn to produce sounds different to the ones we've been exposed to very early on in life. It's practice as @HenryDuran says. Like for Chinese pronouncing the r or Spanish speakers producing the g in gem sound or the schwa...
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@PhilipDuerdoth Yes, Philip, languages change all the time, English in particular where most new (redundant words?) inventions are named in English first (is this really true?).
I can't agree more with the "my bad" - strongly dislike it. This is off topic but interesting.
Steering the conversation back to pronunciation, has anyone watched this video?... -
It's like a teacher adapting its language to lower levels. Many youtube videos for learning English for lower levels teachers use natural pronunciation, of course, but simplify their language and slowed down a bit. Easy.
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Yes, very true Katrin. When students hear this are often relieved a bit of their self-consciousness, their own strong-accented pronunciations.
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Would EU MP's English qualify as international English? probably. it's be a matter of checking their use of phrasl verbs and idioms they use. (that applies even for the interpreters). This is a pronunciation course. I'd bettet not steer this thread away from pronunciation.
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@FionaJones communication is a two street so it's great native speakers begin to take this steps towards making it easier. however, this raises a question: simplify it or just speak more slowly without chanings its nature? part of the success of non-natives is having been exposed to real life English. So assuming English gets adapted for non-natives, how far...
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yeap, break it down into syllables or sounds, then put it all back together. I think the schwa sound is hard for speaker so some language. I often explain the schwa is very similar to the sound they would be they slept with their mouth open and produced a vowel. an "almost effortless" neutral sound.
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@KatrinLichterfeld having said what I said... I lived in Scotland for a number of years, so maybe, here is why! uhm.
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Very true. I myself as aware as I am of the difference don't always pronounce the leave i sound as long as it should be - non-native speaker teachers may have a bit to blame. With adults, from my experience, they enjoy this when taught pronunciation in a light way as to raise their awareness about minimal pairs and similar sounds. However, the details, the...
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@PhilipDuerdoth trying to make it long requiries an awareness and repetition that not everybody is willing to put into it. Many learners can't even discriminate the sound of long and short i sound unless shown very clear examples, one after the other in class activities (not in real life). And..still. Plus, then you have the added difficulty that native...
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Yes, intonation patterns are indeed very hard to learn as an adult; and in English, for example, intonation plays a key role in meaning. How many different intonations can you give to the word "well" and how different is their meaning? I'd say that intonation depends on context, meaning / emphasis and function, briefly put. Any ideas?
I am not sure what... -
Very true but for the non-acquainted there is all this terminology "english as a second language" "english as a foreign language" that can lead to think there is an easier version of English to speak to non-natives. Much as it is a comic sketch ... it's real life unfamiliarity and confusion-leading terms :-) . Super funny!
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Thanks Katrin. I've taken the bbc quiz and apparently I sound like a Yorkshire person and that is far from the truth! fun to do - I am definetely sharing this with my students who want to sound "British".
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There is a little inconsistency, judging from the examples in the article. it says spanish subsitutes the trap /æ/sound for /a/, /e/ or /ʌ/and and that it replaces the strut /ʌ/ sound for the trap /æ/;..so according to this, Spanish speakers can actually produce the /ʌ/ and the /æ/ but misplace it. I am not sure I agree with this.
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Alonso, yes, I was shocked when I found out that accent in the UK changes every 40 kms apparently. No wonder students struggle to understand British people more than any other nationality (regardless of the rhoticity issue).
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Cristina Bustos replied to Rochelle Smith
I got the unicorn wrong according to software but I am fairly confidently I am transcribing it well. British English too.
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Daniel, I agree, the more you teach English and learn about English whether it is through courses or from experience/thinking/comparing/from mistakes and questions of students, our own mistakes, etc the more I see it's a fascinantingly complex language in ways I couldn't have imagined when I was doing my English studies at uni. I am also Spanish.
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I think that answering the title questions requires an understanding of how English works that learners don't necessarily have. Or at least of some features :-).
From my teaching experience I can say the glottal t, reduction of vowels, and the very similar-sounding vowel sounds can be confusing. Like Philip Duerdoth says, most adult learners struggle to... -
The key word as an "adult" learner, native-like accent is very hard and I think two of main problems are vowel discrimination and intonation. Kids with sufficient and the "right" exposure can achieve native accent by living in the country their initially foreign language is spoken.
I think you may duplicate words exactly, quoting Phil, but the overall... -
Yes, days ago I was approached via email by a language school owner who wanted to find out about what makes English hard for non-native speakers. They aim to provide courses to native speakers. I wonder how many will join the course. It is something to keep an eye on.
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Hello, I am from Barcelona and I want to find out what Agile is about because I've heard about it a lot where I work. No experience in product development or the like. So my expectations are to have an understanding of the methods, as general an objective as this. :-)
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
does that remotely mean that just by being exposed to ads and restaurants everywhere the body may be increasing insulin levels?
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
some of the discourse markers used are: in fact, on the other hand, in fact, it is true that, so, and...I think because is a conjunction but would it also be a discourse marker because it introduces the fact that you're going to say the reason why something happened?
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Thanks Richard, that's what I think, but it's more intuition than knowledge here.
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same here but you've made me think about the times I've made hotel reservations online abroad- securing it with c/c, etc, using free wifi...uhmmm!
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Cristina Bustos made a comment
Question: does transferring photos from a camera (with a cable) onto a hard drive through a PC mean that the photos "stay" in the PC in any form / somewhere?
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Cristina Bustos replied to Anne Chevalier
I agree with you. Third week felt a bit like "filling in time". Fascinating and engaging first week, very good second week and less-engaging third for me.
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Cristina Bustos replied to Miriam Pelusi
Beautiful music! thanks for sharing
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Cristina Bustos replied to Darren Pepperell
yes, sometimes you find very different approaches to the same topic.