#8 Featured article: Clean cotton

📍 Cotton is a crop (=a plant that people farm) with a troubled past. Whether or not the future is bright also depends on Uzbekistan. Read this article for an international perspective on the cotton issue.

⛓ https://www.economist.com/international/2020/10/25/can-the-stain-of-forced-and-child-labour-be-removed-from-cotton

👉@afandi_english👈 #article #economist

#9 Afandi Quiz: Cultural Misunderstanding

Today’s quiz is about a cultural misunderstanding in the following situation:

▶️ Lena from 🇩🇪Germany recently took up a job at a consulting firm (=a company that gives advice to other companies) in London, 🇬🇧UK. She has compiled a few reports and handed them in to her manager on time. The manager had always seemed satisfied, telling her that her reports were “interesting” and “fine”, but then suddenly she was called to his office and told that her reports weren’t good enough.

👉@afandi_english👈 #culture_quiz

Many but not most of you got that right!

👍 British people are indeed very diplomatic (=dealing with people and their problems in a way that doesn’t upset them), especially in formal situations. By calling the reports “interesting” and “fine”, the manager was trying to say that he is not really impressed – a compliment that Lena took at face value (=understand sth literally without any hidden meaning). Germans tend to be more straightforward and express criticism directly.

👎 No, making friends with the manager is inappropriate (=not the right thing to do) in both British and German business culture. Although Germans have a reputation for being punctual, Britons are not really unpunctual either.

👎 Control-freak (=crazy about controlling people) and capricious (=having a changeable mood) managers can be found anywhere in the world, not only in Britain.

👎 Feedback is appreciated in all Western countries, not only Britain. The manager could be blamed for not giving more timely feedback.

More on that..

#15 Learn how to learn: Learner types

❓ People are different. What works for you may not work for me. So what’s this thing about learner types?

1️⃣ There are different models. The most basic one has 3 types: visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. Others may include verbal, logical, social and solitary.

2️⃣ Visual learners learn best when they see pictures or words, auditory learners when they hear something and kinaesthetic learners when they move or touch something.

3️⃣ Verbal learners need language in speech or writing, logical learners want to be systematic, social learners enjoy learning with others and solitary learners prefer to learn alone.

4️⃣ We’re all mixed. We can all learn by seeing, hearing or touching but some ways will be more efficient than others.

5️⃣ Thinking about your learner type is important as knowing your nature will allow you to choose better strategies.

Use this online test to check your type: vark-learn.com/the-vark-questionnaire/

👉@afandi_english👈 #learn2learn

#45 Our favourite mistakes: Grammar

▶️ Please translate the following sentence:
Afandi gilosni yaxshi ko’radi.

❌ Perhaps you think it is:
Afandi likes cherry.

✅ Well, it should be:
Afandi likes cherries.

❓Why?

❗️ Cherries are perfectly countable. You can eat one cherry and then another one and then another one, so there’s no reason why you should use a singular noun here.

❗️ Some fruit are too big to eat one by one, and for those we would use the singular, i.e. melon, watermelon, pumpkin or pineapple. Like, how many watermelons can you eat?

❗️ “I like cherry” could be a correct sentence if you mean “I like cherry flavour”, e.g. What’s your favourite jam? – I like cherry.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #grammar

#1 Self-study: Tom & Savannah

🆕 Brand new on the channel: Materials for self-study! Learn English with interesting videos. You won’t believe how much English you can extract from a video if you go to the bottom of it. IELTS students – here is your source of 🔥free and natural English🔥!

How does it work?

🎈Print the script (pdf file), if there’s any way you can.

🍅Watch it lots of times while following the script.

🎒Use stop-and-go clarification and imitation.

🏮Do the suggested activities (Tasks 1-8).

🌹If possible, find a partner for some of the activities, perhaps from Afandi Chat?

The material is designed for higher levels (intermediate to advanced).

Today’s video is about world traveller Tom and his dog Savannah. Follow them on their amazing trip and pick up lots of new vocabulary and structures on the way!

👉@afandi_english👈 #self_study