It's been a LONG while since I was last able to participate in Yoyo meetings (and outings!
), and I truly miss them. As I promised before I left that I'd do some kind of Skype activity from this part of the world, here's what I've come up with: a chat hour where we do all sorts of verbal practice to help with listening and speaking – which Skype is perfect for! The first practice I'd like to try is error correction. In normal meetings and conversations we are not usually inclined to correct each other on "language errors". To do so can be taken as being disrespectful or even snobby. As a result we fossilize our mistakes and miss out on opportunities to improve. So this is our opportunity! We'll even make a game out of it so nobody will feel too uncomfortable doing this.
I'm calling it: “Correct me if I'm wrong!”
(I'm playing on the words here. This expression is typically used before you make a statement that you're not entirely sure of but feel that you have to make, especially if it runs contrary to what has just been said, or what most people think is the case. Sometimes you are certain that you are right, but you want to sound polite anyway. E.g.: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they have a new figure now, and it's a lot higher than this.
Here I use the expression literally, since it's perfect for what we're trying to do.
)This is what you need to do to join us: download Skype for free if you don't have it already, add Kat as a contact by searching “moreopenmind” (New York), and send me a message: “Kat's Skype Hour” around 7:55 pm (Taipei Time). I'll conference call everyone that has done so, at 8 pm. If you're late, I can still add you into the conference at any point, so don't be shy.
What we will do is discuss an article, and as we talk we try to catch mistakes others make – grammatical or otherwise – and earn points! What's fun is that we also get points if we make mistakes and get 'caught', because those mistakes represent new things we may have learned and improvements we can make. Sound like fun? Let's give it a try!
For our first article I'd like to talk about this fun one from The Economist: Asia's Lonely Hearts. I'll do a Q&A on the article first for any questions you may have.
We'll try out this Skype Hour idea and make adjustments accordingly. Wish I could be there for actual Yoyo events, but this will have to do for now. Hope to see you there!
Just send me a message and I'll call everybody. Talk to you soon!