Tag: English

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Creative writing as a method to improve your language skills

If you look into a textbook for some language, you will most certainly find some made up dialogues and texts. The authors of the book used creative writing to provide you some (maybe even interesting) material to work with your chosen language. If you learn how to say your name, your job and your address, it might get a bit boring to say the same thing every time. Creative writing is a nice way to make things more interesting. If you are bored by talking about yourself all the time, try to think about what a vampire from London or a werewolf from New York would say. 

Improving your skills in a certain area of language

 There is the possibility that you want to improve your language skills in a certain area, lets say neopronouns. Maybe you don’t use neopronouns for yourself and no one you communicate on a regular basis with has people use neopronouns for them. Creative writing can help you to get into situations where neopronouns are needed. You could create a character or even several if not all who uses neopronouns. Our imagination is a great tool to get into situations that aren’t our reality to train certain things, like the use of neopronouns in this case. 

Another scenario: Lets imagine your hobby is chess and you wanted to improve your chess-related language. Besides talking and writing about your hobby in your chosen language, you could also make up some story playing in the world of chess. This way, you could make up scenarios that fit with your chess language aim. You could do the same for business language and other topics!

Use it for the Job Language Challenge 2025?

If you’ve reached this blog article, there is a good chance that you have reached or will reach the articles about the Job Language Challenge 2025 as well. If not, feel free to click on the link! Anyways, this language challenge includes tasks where you can write or talk about yourself. How about writing about a made up character instead? How would a CV from a vampire from London look like? How would an online job interview for a werewolf during full moon go? Or what would a person completely different to you write into a motivation letter to get the job of your dreams?

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Job Language Challenge 2025: Task 1 – How does one write a CV in the language you are currently working with?

Month 1, Week 1

Hello and welcome to the Job Language Challenge 2025! The entry article for the first month has been published, now I want to talk to you about the task for the first week within the first month. In this article, I want to talk to you about the motivation for writing a CV in your chosen language and what to do when you have finished the task.

Some background for the CV task

If you are looking for a job at a company using the language you are learning, it’s clear why you wanted to know how to write a CV in that language. But is that all? The first time, I learnt writing a CV in any language was in middle school. We were learning how to create a CV in German, our native language. After that, English was the next one. Knowing how to write a CV in English helps for a lot of working contexts. I had to write English CVs for companies and freelance gigs even based in Germany for international work contexts. I have never stepped a foot in a country with English as official (or generally main) language, but an English CV still helped me to get into online programs that were based e.g. in Canada. 

Maybe you are working at a company or institution, or you own your own business. It’s possible that you don’t have to write any CVs for yourself right now, but you have to deal with CVs from other people at some point. Maybe you search through different websites to look at CVs of other people or you get some of them sent to your company or department. Wouldn’t it help to know the standards of a CV in different regions, especially the ones linked to the language(s) you are currently working with? Let’s look at an example: Imagine we knew a French linguistics professor who has just recently moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The professor is looking for a research assistant and opens the application process, allowing for applications in, e.g. Spanish, French and English. Wouldn’t it be helpful for the professor to check for typical CVs that are used in Argentina to see what’s the standard in the new area? 

At the end of the day, you can decide for yourself if you need to know how to write a CV in the language you are learning. Maybe this is just one task of a lot that are part of your study program even though you don’t see an immediate use of it, or you have a goal that includes writing a CV this week anyway. Finding out how to write a CV in your language might just be a way to improve your overall language skills and that’s fine, too!

Step-by-step process

Here is the step-by-step process for the first week:

  • Step 1: Check CVs in that language 
  • Step 2: Check for important terms used on a CV to describe the (professional) life of a person
  • Step 3: Write a CV in your language using adequate terms

When learning a language, it’s a good idea to do a little every day (or every few days) instead of a big bunch of tasks one day a week or a month and then forget about it forever. Depending on your time and how much language learning you do, you could split the week task in smaller portions and do a little day by day. You could start on Monday with step 1 and do step 2 on Tuesday and Wednesday and finish the task on Friday. Of course, you could also do everything at the same day. It’s your choice really! I would recommend you thinking about it and actively choose one of the ways and stick to it, but I also know how difficult life can get and that not sticking to one way might provide the flexibility needed to stick to a challenge like this at all. Whatever you choose, go for it!

What to do with the results?

There are several things you can do with your result, i.e. the written CV. For one, you can safe it and use it if you need a CV anyways. If you have a language teacher or a friend who knows that language can helps you out with it every now and then, you could also let them check your CV. Maybe they could give you some feedback or correct some mistakes? Another possible step is sharing your result on Social Media to connect with other people interested in a language challenge like the Job Language Challenge 2025. Maybe you don’t want to share your CV online but you could create a fantasy CV to share it on Social Media? How would a CV of a vampire living in London looking for a job as a barista at a local coffee shop look like?

What we can learn from challenges like the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

Have you ever heard about the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? The NaNoWriMo is a creative writing challenge. The aim is to write approximately 50.000 words in a month for a story, so basically writing a whole novel in just a month. It’s not about editing or making sure it’s the perfect story at that point. It’s just about writing enough every day to get to quite a lot of material at the end of the month. It can be a good idea for you to handle the Job Language Challenge in a similar way. If you getting to use your language on a regular basis is your first goal for now, you might not want to strive to perfectionism just yet. See for yourself if getting corrections immediately helps you or demotivates you. It’s often good to get feedback at least at some point. You want to improve your language skills, right? But sometimes having to ask for feedback (and getting it) is the thing that hinders you of trying to use your chosen language on a regular basis.

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Job Language Challenge 2025

If you know LangTwitter (langtwt) or some language Instagram spaces or polyglot communities, you have most definitely heard of some kind of language challenge. Back at school, this was basically just homework. On social media, however, and with similarly inspired language learners, this is more of a tool to motivate yourself to get to work on the language you are currently learning. But before I take all the glamour off language challenges, lets get going!

Depending on the learning aims, there are different kinds of language challenges that are useful. For a beginner, answering little questions everyday might be a great start. Day 1: What’s your name? Day 2: Where do you live? etc. … In this case, we talk about weekly tasks that are a bit bigger than responding to small short questions. These tasks fit best for intermediary or advanced learners of a language.

Job related language learning

As you can already read from the headline, this language challenge is about job and work related language. I remember sitting in a French business class at university thinking “Why didn’t I have any classes like this for Portuguese, English or Spanish?” Eventually, we did some of the topics in my other classes as well, but a class specialized for business language is not exactly easy to come by. So, to take matters in our own hands, let’s do some research on business language/work language/job language, however you want to call it, for the language(s) that you are currently working with.

How does this language challenge work?

On the job language challenge sheet, you find a task with several steps for every week. The idea is that you do a task with all its steps every week. There are going to be new job language challenge sheets but for now, we will start with one sheet for your first month. You can write your texts for the challenges on some device, on some sheets of papers or in a journal. In addition, you are free to post about it on social media. From where I’m standing, one of the bigger differences between boring homework at school and a fancy language challenge that I’d found on social media, was the community effect (and not being forced to do anything, big factor, too!). So, if you find some friends with whom you can do the job language challenge together, this might help you, too, to stay motivated and to keep learning.

Let’s connect!

Feel free to use the Hashtag #JobLanguageChallenge2025 and #JobLangChallenge25 on whatever platform that you are using when you post about this challenge or your results. Also feel free to link back to this website so that people can choose to stay up to date on the challenge and/or link back to one of my social media profiles in case you find one on the platform of your choice!

Challenge sheets for download

Job Language Challenge Sheet Month 1 – English versionDownload

Thank you for participating in the Job Language Challenge 2025 and also thank you for connecting within bigger language learning related communities!

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A bit of a puzzle: Chess notation meets language nerd and openings

If you want to passively enjoy some content, this article is not exactly for you. I want to make you work a little! Let’s call this article a little asynchronous workshop!

Algebraic notation in chess

In chess, we notate our and our opponent’s moves to be able to reconstruct the whole match. The international practice is to use a system to give every row and column on the chess board a number/letter, so that every square gets a code, similar how squares on maps work. For the chess notation, one notes down the first letter of the piece that moves and the name of the square where the piece moves to. We would add some other information to the notation, but this is the basis of the whole thing. 

In another chess article (“Chess notation puzzle – Algebraic notation in several languages”) about the algebraic notation, I have already explained how the first letter of a piece changes depending on the language that is used. I also added some puzzles about finding out what piece moves where in a notated game and about trying to find out what language was used for this. 

The chess language puzzle: It’s time to become active!

In this article, I want to go a step further. If you are a chess player, you know that different chess openings have different names. Many openings have names based on a region where that opening got famously played or based on a player who used that opening. The Italian Opening? Ruy Lopez … or the Spanish? Oh, and the French defense! There are many more. How good is your knowledge about openings named after a region/adjective for a nationality? Can you remember the moves for one of those? 

The task is the following: Find a chess opening named after a region/adjective for a nationality and write the moves of that opening in the algebraic notation of a language spoken in that region (e.g. the language having the same name as the chess opening).  

You got it? Great! Amazing! You get all the imaginary honor that I can give out! Feel free to share your result in an email to me or share it in a Social Media post! You can add a link to this puzzle as well! 

References

Gerdts, Martina (19.07.2024): “Chess notation puzzle – Algebraic notation in several languages”, lichess blog, https://lichess.org/@/MartinaGe/blog/chess-notation-puzzle-algebraic-notation-in-several-languages/2uLIZvvG.

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How learning French changed my life

Some confidence boost in French

You never know which conversations are going to change your life. Some time ago, I had one of those life-changing conversations. I was participating in a French class. My level of French was good enough to say what needed to be said but not a single additional word. By chance, I was the only student in that French class. So, the French teacher and I used that time to have a freer conversation about languages, teaching, and learning. Everything happened in French, I was there to get better at French conversation after all! The French teacher told me about how he got that freelance teaching job and how it was working out for him. We were talking about an amazing company which was the working place of my dreams for years. I was fascinated by that story. Before, I had been afraid to apply for positions like that, but he explained it to me in a way that made me more confident. He encouraged me to try it out myself. After all, I already was a language teacher. I just needed that push, a bit of information about how things were working, and that my skills were enough. Do you know that cliché about the German obsession with certificates? Yeah, I convinced myself before that I wouldn’t have enough certificates to apply for that gig. 

Without my interest in participating in that French class, I wouldn’t have met that amazing teacher. I wouldn’t have that encouraging conversation with him about that job. And stuff like that keeps happening to me. 

Learning business French, why not?

A few years before that conversation, I participated in a business French class. You know, that kind of class that all English learners see promoted everywhere for English. This one was for French, however. I was an undergraduate student in a Portuguese/Spanish program and felt like I had some extra energy to participate in a business French class. The class itself was amazing. We talked about business vocabulary like the important words for paperwork, expressions for meetings, how to write a CV, and lots of other stuff. If you asked me at the time why I was participating in that class, I would have responded “Who knows, maybe I’ll do an internship in France next year”. I did not. But I also didn’t have to do that to make the class worth my while. That business French teacher showed us what was important for language learning in a work and business setting. The teacher made us think about invoices, shipping, meeting minutes, and all those things I wouldn’t have thought about as an undergraduate student working on mastering several languages on an advanced level. I’ve never participated in a business English, business Spanish, or business Portuguese class but thanks to that French class, I know what to look for and what’s important to learn on my own. I’ve never needed to write a motivation letter or a CV for a job in French but better believe me if I say that training sessions for CV writing like in that French class helped me when I had to write my CV in English or Portuguese (or German, for that matter). 

Stories want to be told …

I was revisiting my e-mail inbox and reading old newsletters. There was one newsletter from last year that was talking about “accidental contacts” in a business context. “Accidental contacts” in the sense of contacts that were helpful for the business but not exactly planned like that. The newsletter came from Joana Galvão, the Founder of The Ambitious Creatives. Joana offers amazing content for creative businesspeople to get better at what they are doing. The newsletter content reminded me of the story of the French teacher who gave me the confidence to apply for that language teacher job. Joana’s newsletter always sounds very inviting for replies, so I took a leap of faith and replied, or how I would say it in a more German way: I jumped over my own shadow (“ich bin über meinen Schatten gesprungen”). I told the story about the French lesson that gave me confidence to apply for a job position.  Now, that French lesson gave me some content to talk about, to reply to Joana’s newsletter with a story, and to re-tell the story to you, too. 

… and lives want to be changed.

I am not saying that you need to take French classes to get a job as a language teacher, to be able to write CVs or meeting minutes, or to reply to a newsletter with a story. That would be missing the point. What I am trying to communicate is the following: You never know which conversations will change your life. And in case you are wondering, I got the teaching job that I applied for.