Use English as a Native Speaker

Many call center recruiters know that the prospects with the most diplomas and certificates extended by the best English institutes are not always the ones that speak more fluently. This is due to a basic fact: usually, institutes focus more on writing and grammar than on speaking and listening skills, the reason being that most teachers were taught that way, and, as they are not native speakers, they don’t have good speaking skills themselves. This is, of course, the case in general, but there are always exceptions.

Call centers, among many other businesses, need people that know how to speak better than they write. Of course, overall knowledge, as covered in ESL lessons, is preferred, but recruiters know that oral communication is essential in today’s changing world. This means proficiency in verbal and listening skills, and any student that wants to progress with the English language should take this into serious consideration.

One of the biggest barriers English learners will face is their own language. Teachers get tired of repeating the same: “Think in English”. But most students find this impossible: they tend to think in their own language and then translate that into English. This creates, at least, two problems: one, is that the translation is literal (similar to what you would expect from Google Translator, for instance) and two, that the whole process takes double the time than what it would normally take if no translation were necessary.

Another big challenge is vocabulary and grammar. English is a dinamic language, and is expanded every day. Recently, for example, the term “Web 2.0″ was accepted as a new English term. Even if this is a commonly used term and most people know it, there are others that are not so well-known. Native speakers have daily access to words and learn everyday how to use new ones. People that don’t live in English-speaking countries have, however, fewer opportunities in this sense. But the great advantage English has, as opposed to other languages, is that there is a vast variety of audio and video material to get reference from and this way learn to listen and speak fluently. Of course, you should make sure the movies are not dubbed, but subtitled. In some countries, like Spain, movies are distributed officially without subtitles, that is, dubbed in Spanish by Spanish actors. This is meant to preserve their language. But if that’s your case, you can find online lots of movies, music, and videos in English, so that you can learn directly from the source and study different accents and ways of speaking, apart from the use of idioms and expressions of daily use.

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