Things to Know for Hanging Out with People Who Learned English as Adults

This post is about people who learned the language as adults, and generally function fine in English in most workplace and social situations. But I have learned:

1. A lot of the time they can't hear shit.
English skills that are perfectly good most of the time can vanish when there's background noise, cross-talk, mumbling, or any other degradation, which a native speaker can intuitively filter out thanks to the redundancy in the signal. It's very similar to having hearing loss.

2. Sometimes they are fake laughing
If they're with a group of us, it's easy to miss the point of a joke that everyone is laughing at - either because of cultural differences, or because they missed a critical word. Maybe when they set out they only wanted to laugh honestly, but after a while many will go ahead and laugh along, to not be the odd one out.

3. If there are more than three of us, we forget they exist.
Even if we know they speak ok English, there's still that little bit of friction of not being sure if things will be understood the first time, and if there will have to be some awkward conversational repair. For most of us, that friction is enough to unconsciously drive us to interact more with everyone else. After a while we even are not making much eye contact.

4. Often, they don't know what the fuck is going on.
Lacking the ability to fully engage with the rapid-fire discussions and negotiations that go into group decisions, they often don't have an influence, and many times don't even know what the group is going to be doing next. If you can, it's nice to see if they have any needs or concerns to make part of the decision making, even though it takes extra time. But a minimal thing you can do is to keep them updated about what the group is doing.

5. Sometimes they just tune out.
If a person who learned English as an adult is staring into space while other people are talking, there's a good chance their language ability has checked out, at least for a moment. Being distracted or tired can shut off even very competent language users, and speaking English for hours can be exhausting, especially under challenging conditions such as background noise, so there may be a "Cinderella pumpkin" moment where their English just leaves for the night.

6. Jokes about their English mistakes are never as funny to them as they are to us.
It's very simple: jokes are less funny when they have to be explained.

7. Sometimes they want to have their English corrected, and sometimes not.
This varies a lot by personality and by situation. It's just important to remember that when you correct someone, for that moment you are placing yourself above them: you are the teacher and they are the student. And it can derail the conversation for a bit, especially if they are working on communicating something earnest. It's probably best to start off not explicitly teaching people but just focusing on communicating until you get a feel for what that person wants as far as teaching. (for some people repeating a sentence back the way you would say it, and then smoothly going on with what you were saying, could be helpful without being intrusive)

8. We don't know what their real personality is.
Maybe he tells long winded stories full of bragging. Maybe she's a bit of a thoughtful philosopher. Maybe he's a chatterbox gossip. Maybe she continually says terrible puns, even after everyone begs her to stop. We don't know, because these things don't come across when every sentence has to be carefully constructed. In fact, if you are not fluent there are only two personalities you can adopt that consistently work: quiet pleasant person, or highly physical extravert/comedian.

9. We are constantly sending unconscious signals of belonging.
Way beyond basic language competence, people from a shared culture have a rich body of shared references, turns of phrase, assumptions, and body language. So by definition, a newcomer to the language and culture doesn't know how to do that. Even when all the words they're saying are correct, the other signals they're sending may be off. If the person has even a touch of social anxiousness, it can make them very withdrawn. This is especially important to remember for people trying to use humour in a mixed group, such as a scientific lecture: if being immersed in your own culture is like sinking into a warm bath, being an outsider due to references can feel like an icy wind on the nipples. I just watched Deadpool, and it referenced Ferris Bueller, Rent, Bernadette Peters, and Regina, Saskatchewan, all just right and affirming for a 36 year old canadian dude like me - and all of which would be meaningless to practically everyone I met in Europe in the last two years. So the flipside of the cultural references that can connect people together is that they might be leaving folks out.

In case you haven't guessed, this is really me grumbling about my experiences trying to function in Italian. Actually it was the most wonderful gift and privilege to get to hang out in groups of Italian speakers, and everyone was super nice and helpful, even at the beginning when my speech was very primitive and a pain in the ass for all. After two years of learning and growth, though, I was painfully conscious of the decade or more it would take me to go from communicating basic stuff under ideal conditions, to being fluent and comfortable in the language and culture.

I waited to write this until I left, so people wouldn't think I'm trying to be treated differently. But I wanted to share the concrete tips, and little bit of compassion, I gained from being on the other side for once!

Favourite Bits of Deep Work by Cal Newport

I'm so excited about this book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World  by Cal Newport. I've already made a lot of changes in my practices inspired by it, and it's solved problems that have plagued me for years. I think that his view of the work that's core to my kind of job is essentially the right one:

Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

or

1. The ability to quickly master hard things. 2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

 Why should you listen to him?

In the ten-year period following my college graduation, I published four books, earned a PhD, wrote peer-reviewed academic papers at a high rate, and was hired as a tenure-track professor at Georgetown University. I maintained this voluminous production while rarely working past five or six p.m. during the workweek.

Why you shouldn't check your email inbox every 10 minutes (he says that the practice of leaving it open in the background was "a straw man", which was sure sobering!):

the habit of frequently checking inboxes ensures that these issues remain at the forefront of their attention. Gallagher teaches us that this is a foolhardy way to go about your day, as it ensures that your mind will construct an understanding of your working life that’s dominated by stress, irritation, frustration, and triviality. The world represented by your inbox, in other words, isn’t a pleasant world to inhabit.

Why you should schedule your "free time" too:

Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.

How to get into deep focus:

 add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration. ... the easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a simple regular habit. ... Your ritual needs to ensure your brain gets the support it needs to keep operating at a high level of depth. For example, the ritual might specify that you start with a cup of good coffee, or make sure you have access to enough food of the right type to maintain energy, or integrate light exercise such as walking to help keep the mind clear. 

Using positivity to help you prioritize deep work:

identify a small number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours. ...  have a specific goal that would return tangible and substantial professional benefits will generate a steadier stream of enthusiasm. ... “If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ‘no’ to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.” ... [L]ead measures turn your attention to improving the behaviors you directly control in the near future that will then have a positive impact on your long-term goals.

Planning idleness is super important:

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets… it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. .... you should follow Kreider’s lead by injecting regular and substantial freedom from professional concerns into your day, providing you with the idleness paradoxically required to get (deep) work done. .... the idea that you can restore your ability to direct your attention if you give this activity a rest.

Walking in nature seems to have a special status as a restoring activity:

attention restoration theory (ART), which claims that spending time in nature can improve your ability to concentrate. ...Walking through nature, by contrast, exposes you to what lead author Marc Berman calls “inherently fascinating stimuli,” using sunsets as an example. These stimuli “invoke attention modestly, allowing focused-attention mechanisms a chance to replenish.”

But other things work for restoring focus too:

Having a casual conversation with a friend, listening to music while making dinner, playing a game with your kids, going for a run—the types of activities that will fill your time in the evening if you enforce a work shutdown—play the same attention-restoring role as walking in nature.

An end-of-day shutdown ritual can help:

this ritual should ensure that every incomplete task, goal, or project has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either (1) you have a plan you trust for its completion, or (2) it’s captured in a place where it will be revisited when the time is right. The process should be an algorithm: a series of steps you always conduct, one after another.....I quickly skim every task in every list, and then look at the next few days on my calendar. These two actions ensure that there’s nothing urgent I’m forgetting or any important deadlines or appointments sneaking up on me. I have, at this point, reviewed everything that’s on my professional plate. To end the ritual, I use this information to make a rough plan for the next day. Once the plan is created, I say, “Shutdown complete,” and my work thoughts are done for the day. 

 Don't give up if this is hard at first:

The ability to concentrate intensely is a skill that must be trained. ... Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, Nass discovered, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate. ... if you’ve scheduled your next Internet block thirty minutes from the current moment, and you’re beginning to feel bored and crave distraction, the next thirty minutes of resistance become a session of concentration calisthenics.  ....give yourself plenty of opportunities throughout your evening to resist switching to these distractions at the slightest hint of boredom.

What is your goal for your relationships, and how well does Facebook (which he describes as only useful for "keeping in frequent lightweight touch") support that? For him his personal goal is:

To maintain close and rewarding friendships with a group of people who are important to me. Key Activities Supporting This Goal: 1. Regularly take the time for meaningful connection with those who are most important to me (e.g., a long talk, a meal, joint activity). 2. Give of myself to those who are most important to me (e.g., making nontrivial sacrifices that improve their lives).

(based on this I have started a practice of more frequent, shorter duration Skype calls with my favourite people overseas, which I think does a much better job of helping with loneliness and homesickness. There's a nice exercise he suggests of going off social media for a month and seeing if anyone notices - I'm not going to actually do it, but just thinking about that was a wakeup call!)




A few more specific recommendations I have taken up:

• Schedule in advance when you’ll use the Internet, and then avoid it altogether outside these times.  ... keep a notepad near your computer at work. On this pad, record the next time you’re allowed to use the Internet. 
• Plan something to do in each half hour block of the day: "When you’re done scheduling your day, every minute should be part of a block."
• And keep refreshing it. "On some days, you might rewrite your schedule half a dozen times. Don’t despair if this happens." "If you give your mind something meaningful to do throughout all your waking hours, you’ll end the day more fulfilled, and begin the next one more relaxed, than if you instead allow your mind to bathe for hours in semiconscious and unstructured Web surfing." "Your goal is not to stick to a given schedule at all costs; it’s instead to maintain, at all times, a thoughtful say in what you’re doing with your time going forward"

All this has turned out to work extremely well with my brain.

The book has many other great ideas and inspiration, plus a lot of context about how real creators have set up their lives for deep work. You can get exposed to a lot of his ideas in this Business Insider blog post - although of course like all websites it's full of intentional fracturing distractions, so I would recommend just buying the book!

How to Send an Email without Seeing Your Inbox

For most of us, including me, seeing our email Inbox tends to blast us with stress and/or temptation. There's a lot of things that can steal away our attention and energy from whatever task we're involved with - and in the worst case, hijack us entirely. Therefore I'm working on habits to be more like the productivity experts say is most effective, and only check a few times a day, in planned fashion.

But what if you just need to send a quick email in the course of doing a task? Well there are ways to send emails without ever seeing your inbox.

With an external mail program: Type "mailto:" into your browser's address bar and press enter. A "send mail" box will pop up, and, at least in my email program of choice, Thunderbird, you don't ever see your inbox. You can also create a bookmark: just create or edit a bookmark, and in the "Location:" field put "mailto:".

With Gmail: Copy and paste the following link into your address bar: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1
You can also bookmark it. Then even after you hit send you won't see your inbox - you can easily and seamlessly get back to your work.