📙 Part 2: Describe a foreigner who can speak your language well

This episode's vocabulary

To mix (verb) - to be with or communicate well with other people.

To get something across (phrasal verb) - to manage to make someone understand or believe something.

Persuasive (adj.) - making you want to do or believe a particular thing.

Commitment (noun) - something that you must do or deal with that takes your time.

Adept (adj.) - having a natural ability to do something that needs skill.

To master (verb) - to learn how to do something well.

Worth the effort (phrase) - if you say that something is worth the effort, you mean that it will justify the energy that you have spent or will spend on it.

Determined (adj.) - wanting to do something very much and not allowing anyone or any difficulties to stop you.

Come/get to grips with something (idiom) - to make an effort to understand and deal with a problem or situation.

Questions and Answers

M: Rory, off you go. Your story.

R: Well, I'm an English teacher. So I know lots of foreign people who can speak English well. But one I get on with in particular is Maria, the co-host of the podcast I work on. I know her from my former workplace. Though we didn't meet each other properly until I was promoted from being a teacher to, well, it's a higher-level management position, I won't bore you with the technical details. And even then, we didn't actually mix much outside of occasional meetings. Despite that, whenever we did meet, she was always great, or she always did a great job. Getting her point across and made lots of persuasive arguments. Well, she also did a good job changing my mind about things, which is how I judge whether people are persuasive or not. And later on, we started work on the podcast, and got a lot closer after that, because of all the work commitments and interests that we shared as a result of doing all of that. It's just a guess. But I imagine the reason she's so adept with English is because she's an English teacher herself, and studied the language for ages beforehand. And talking a lot longer than I have been doing it, or have been doing it explicitly. And rightly so. Since it seems logical that to be an English teacher, you should be able to speak it and use this language in everyday life. I'm not sure how long it took her to master the whole thing. But it seems to have been well worth the effort. And you can see the evidence every day, every time we talk to each other. And I really admire her for how determined she is. And it must have been difficult to get to grips with English, to be honest. So she would definitely have needed that. I wish I could make more of an effort myself were in terms of my own foreign language learning, so it's nice to have something to aspire to. If I hadn't met her, then I'm not sure who I would have spoken about. To be honest with you, while I know lots of people who speak English well, I don't know many people like Maria.

M: And what about your friends and other people? How do they feel about this person?

R: I only ever hear positive things.