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C.S.Lewis

by agapeolive Jun 14. 2018

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Power English Intro Dictation

Language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.

- Kato Lomb



Language is not the thing that is either wrong or right. There's only diversity and creation when it comes to language. I guess. :)    

- Sanghyo Ryu


                     




K: and I’m kinda sad that May is almost over because of all the holidays we had I know a lot of people took vacations but now we have summer to look forward to 


B: this is very true and I’m hoping maybe in the summer, there will be less dust and stuff like that, but that might not be wishful thinking. And You know actually I have something I wanted to talk about a little bit. 

I read some stories over the past years or so, about in China how there are some companies they’re sort of like this new like industry, it’s like a nitch profession for foreigners generally speaking Caucasians who are in China, they get hired to pretend to be like the president of a company. So maybe there’s like they’re gonna do some big presentation in front of a crowd or something like, you know how like… what was the name of the guy …Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs used to do launching of a product, right? knows like a really big deal. And so they’re hiring these companies are hiring foreigners to act like the president of the company or their representative of the company just to make the company look more global or sophisticated or (K: really?) things like that. And I… When I first saw that I thought “Oh that’s just crazy. That’s just silly” but then I realized actually that I sort of do the same thing in some of my work, I’ve noticed that I’ve been starting to get more requests to do these sorts of things where you know Korean company has, you know, meeting with a foreign client or they have to take a you know business trip to meet with a client or customer or you know potential investor or whatever. And so I get calls every once in a while to say “well, can go along and translate” but I never actually end up just going just to be a translator. What usually happens is they’ll make a card for me, they’ll say like you’re like the director of PR, or you’re the director of international outreach or something like that. (K: interesting) I think the reason is twofold. Basically I think one is that the English saying is obviously an issue but generally speaking these companies always have at least one employee whose English is fine, who could do basically what I did, ahm.. it wouldn’t be perfect, it wouldn’t be native, but it’ll be just fine. They can communicate the same ideas. Ah.. you know but I think secondly because I’ve done a lot of broadcasting because I’ve done a lot of public speaking and things like that, I think they, you know, they like this kind of an image, but it seems to be happening more and more often. So I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing but yeah. I’ve been noticing especially now these days as more and more companies here in Korea they’re starting to work internationally to deal with go global that there’s more demand of this thing, and I would say you know something I say to any student that I have, you know when I’m teaching at the학원. I’m always saying this to new students, is that most Koreans have all the tools they have the foundation, they have all the basic stuff but they need to communicate in English. It’s almost always an issue of confidence and an issue of just not worrying about making mistakes and things like that. So if you can communicate you ideas, that’s the most important thing. It’s not the grammar, it’s not the pronunciation, it’s not any of that stuff. It’s just being able to understand what the person is saying or at least most of what they’re saying and to communicate what you’re thinking. 


K: I think that’s a great advice. I think it’s something that we should all just not forget. 


B: absolutely, you don’t need to hire somebody like me. 


K: You know just don’t leave power English though Brian. I mean you can do your side thing but just stay with us.  


B: if you’ve got a company, don’t waste it on someone like me, unless you got a lot of money and then in which case, call me. 

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