Les Bons Mots: A Podcast about Language Learning

Are you looking for a new position? Are you going to be interviewed either fully or partially in English? This week Jenni and Britta talk about what kind of questions you can expect to hear in an English-language job interview, and how to answer them. They share advice about answering wildcard questions, which verb tenses to use, key vocabulary to highlight your skills, and how to prepare for success before the interview even starts. This episode is essential listening for job seekers!

This week’s guest host is Jenni Campbell. Jenni has a Human Ecology degree from the University of Manitoba and a language certificate from the University of Laval. She has been with ACA for ten years, and has extensive experience doing curriculum development. She also does hiring and recruiting for ACA here in Quebec and across Canada.

Our phrasal verb of the week is take on - do you know how to use this phrasal verb to talk about employment? Listen and find out!

Visit us at lesbonsmots.ca to check out our blog and language learning videos, or reach out to us at ACA to discuss your language learning needs.

Is it there, their or they’re? Why is the verb tear pronounced differently than the tears we cry? Do I have to pronounce the ‘b’ in doubt? English and French are full of words that sound the same, but have different meanings, words that are written the same, but have different pronunciations, and silent letters! In this week’s episode, Britta and Clémence help you to understand some of the homophones, heteronyms and silent letters that can be challenging for language learners.

This week’s guest host is Clémence Grison. Clémence is part of the teaching team at ACA, and has a bachelor’s degree in english literature along with a master's degree in English studies, and a master's degree in journalism. She’s taught ESL in France and Quebec, and has a deep understanding of the difficulties of mastering pronunciation in a second language.

In this episode:

Clémence recommends a podcast called Word Bomb, which is a deep exploration of a different English word in each episode. The words they choose are important and timely, and they go beyond the dictionary to contextual them.

Britta recommends the highly entertaining book about the English language, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way, by Bill Bryson. If you are curious about how English became the language it is today, a lot of the answers may be found in the history of the language, and this book is anything but dry.

Did you know that the preferred term for policeman is police officer? A postman is now a mail carrier, and a stewardess is a flight attendant. If a fireman is now a firefighter, is a fisherman a fisherfighter? Join Britta and Johnson in the second episode on our series on the evolution of English. They discuss the naming of professions through the ages, and how the names for different jobs are evolving as the workforce changes and becomes more inclusive.

This week, our guest host is Johnson Bresnick. Johnson is the Director of Learning & Development at ACA, and has worked at ACA since 2011. He has also taught ESL and had extensive experience in curriculum development. He has a background in Linguistics and is researching acquisition of grammar in second language learners.

In this episode:

Comedy is a great way to engage with the language you are learning, and this week, Johnson recommends the Baroness von Sketch show. It features four amazing women and comedy which approaches awkward, everyday situations with humour. Here’s a link to one of their sketches so you can give it a try!

Britta recommends the History Chicks podcast, where two women discuss the lives of important women throughout history in an engaging that is anything but dry. They provide a nuanced view of their subjects, correct misconceptions, and do it an entertaining way.

Whenever we learn something new like a language, making mistakes is part of the process. What is the difference between a mistake and an error in language learning? How do language teachers help learners correct their mistakes? Why don’t the people around us correct us when we make a mistake? Join Britta and Kelsey as they discuss these questions, and offer advice and suggestions to help us make the most out of our mistakes. Language teachers may also be interested to learn more about the effectiveness of different types of feedback in the language classroom.

This week, our guest host is Kelsey Ulrich-Verslycken. Kelsey fell in love with teaching English in 2013 when she moved to South Korea to teach English as a Foreign Language. Since then, she has worked as a teacher, a curriculum developer, an editor for EFL textbooks, and an assistant professor of English at a university in Seoul, completed her MA in Applied Linguistics, and is currently working with ACA and pursuing her PhD in Applied Language and Discourse Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa.

In our weekly recommendations,

• Kelsey recommends forgiving yourself for making mistakes in the language you are learning. Try not to listen to your inner critic.
• Britta recommends setting your digital assistant to communicate in the language you are learning. This will help you check your comprehensibility and pronunciation. Hola Siri! Bonjour Alexa!

Come check out our website, at lesbonsmots.ca. You can see our language learning videos, and read our blog posts on news, culture and language learning. We will also have our episode transcript available there. We’d love to hear from you at [email protected].

Here is some of the research we used in preparing the episode, if you want to read more about the research behind error correction:

Li, Shaofeng. (2010). The Effectiveness of Corrective Feedback in SLA: A Meta‐Analysis. Language Learning. 60. 309 - 365.

Lyster, R. and Saito, K. (2010) Interactional feedback as instructional input: A synthesis of classroom SLA research. Language, Interaction and Acquisition, 1(2), 276 - 297

Mai, Zhou. (2009). Cooperative Principle in Oral English Teaching. International Education Studies. 2.

Nassaji, H. Anniversary article Interactional feedback in second language teaching and learning: A synthesis and analysis of current research. Language Teaching Research 20(4)

Sheen, Y. (2006). Exploring the relationship between characteristics of recasts and

learner uptake. Language Teaching Research 10, 361–392.

English and French have thousands of words in common - how can you tell which words have the same meaning in both languages, and which ones are false friends, words which look or sound the same, but have different meanings? Join Britta and Kimberly as they explore some of the similarities, and deceptive differences, between English and French. This week’s episode tackles verb tenses, parts of speech, and some essential business vocabulary!

This week’s guest host is Kimberly Lamontagne. Kimberly studied psychology at Bishop’s University, and is originally from Baie-Comeau. She’s been part of the ACA team for the past three years. Her bilingual background has made her passionate about the topic of false friends.

You can find visuals for this episode on Facebook, linked here.

In this episode:

Kimberly recommends the Great British Baking Show (also called the Great British Bake Off) in order to learn some of the cooking terms which come into English from French.

Britta recommends using the long winter nights to pursue your language learning, either with an evening class, or by pursuing one of your hobbies in the language you’re learning. If you’re interested in taking evening classes with ACA, you can find out more here.

Come check out our website, at lesbonsmots.ca. You can see our language learning videos, and read our blog posts on news, culture and language learning. We will also have our episode transcript available there. We’d love to hear from you at [email protected].