Businesses make mistakes. All of them, on occasion, will get something wrong. Maybe a restaurant will mess up your order; perhaps a computer supplier will sell you the wrong software for your application, or maybe a piece of heavy engineering will be delivered late for a contract. Sometimes it’s a human error, sometimes a series of systems mistakes.

Good businesses look at the reasons for their mistakes, and install changes to try and make sure that the mistake won’t happen again. Sometimes they are very good at this, and develop a reputation for fault-free operation.

Great businesses do something else as well. To illustrate what I mean, here’s a trivial anecdote. I went into a snack restaurant in a UK city. They had great fresh sandwiches, and terrific soups. It was a cold day, and I bought a soup and a sandwich. When I got to a table I found that the soup wasn’t hot; just warm, so I took it back and complained. The woman running the restaurant apologised, replaced my soup with a hot one, figured out what had happened and then did the great thing. She gave me a free coffee. (I told you this was a trivial story!).

The point of the story is that I now remember the free coffee, not the cold soup. I went in again some weeks later, with absolute confidence that if everything were not perfect they would sort the problem out and leave me feeling happy. I associate the place with excellent service, as well as great snacks.

So here’s a general thought; how a business deals with complaints and problems is terribly important. At best, the right response to a problem can leave your customer reinforced in their good feelings about your business. At worst, a wrong response to the same complaint can lose you a customer, and all their friends and family as well, forever!

I think the reason for this is clear; we all know that even good businesses can make mistakes. But we judge the fundamental quality of a business by how it deals with its mistakes. Their reaction to problems tells us a great deal about the underlying attitudes of the business, and about how the management expects its employees to behave towards its customers.

There have been some terrible examples of bad responses to complaints. Probably the most publicised in recent years, and certainly the funniest customer revenge, concerned United Airlines. Here’s a link to a song and video on You Tube. If you haven’t seen “United Breaks Guitars”, please turn on your sound and click on the link! It’s a Master Class in how not to deal with problems, and it’s what I remember about United. This video has been viewed more than 7 million times; what a nightmare for the airline!

But. if you are lucky enough to live in Jakarta, and are interested in being taught English (or Bahasa Indonesia) by the team at Aim, you can be absolutely certain of three things. First, Aim’s people will all work hard to make sure your course runs perfectly, and that you meet your objectives as a result. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, if you are ever dissatisfied with anything, they’ll work even harder to put things right.

Thirdly, and finally, they will never, ever, ever break your guitar! That’s a guarantee.

Not all work problems are “survivable”; there is, for example, not much you can do if your employer decides that a whole division or speciality has to go, and you are part of it! No matter how good you were, you’re going to lose your job like everyone else. Your only option is to get the best deal you can, and immediately start out searching for your next opportunity.

But there are some issues that might get you fired, or might not. It’s really how you respond to the situation that counts. And your response may count for you, or against you.

Let’s start with mistakes.

Everybody makes mistakes from time to time. Some are serious, some not, and some get found out, while others don’t. The first, most basic, rule is:

1.Don’t ever assume that you won’t get found out!

If you have made a mistake, tell your direct boss. Paradoxically, the bigger the mistake, the more important it is to tell your boss. The essential thing is that your boss finds out from you, and no one else.  It’s not essential to go trotting into your boss’s office with trivial things, of course. Just the issues that would cause your boss to get a hard time himself or herself.

The second rule is:

2.Don’t make the same mistake twice.

Learn from your mistakes. It’s even better if you can learn from the mistakes that others make. That involves having an open relationship with your work colleagues so that you all profit from hearing each other discussing the things that you could have done better. That’s not always an easy relationship to create, but it’s worth trying. Either way, write down the thing you want to learn. Put it in your daily diary or “to do” list.

There is one more rule. It’s this:

3.Listen to criticism.

If your boss or anyone else, including colleagues, customers or your subordinates takes the trouble to criticise something you’ve done, thank them! Feedback is always valuable, and the negative stuff is priceless. Write it down. Learn from it. If you think later that you’ve cracked the problem, find out if that’s true. Go back to the person who criticised you and check if they’ve noticed an improvement. If they haven’t, keep trying. Be positive about negative feedback.

Moving on from mistakes, which are decisions you make where you really should have known not to do what you did, there are situations where you are entirely out of your depth. You really don’t know what to do, maybe through lack of experience, or lack of training. This is where you have to call for help. If there is genuinely no time to do that, and you have to react quickly, make your decision then immediately take the time to find out if you did the right thing.  As with serious mistakes, it’s much better for your boss to hear it from you rather than from an irate customer, or an article in a newspaper!

One final category of problems which can be career threatening is to do with culture. Some companies have strong corporate cultures that demand certain kinds of behaviour. Perhaps you are expected to “demonstrate your commitment” by working very long hours, or “show your management potential” by treating your subordinates callously. If you find yourself in a corporate culture that really does not suit you, you can either try to change your basic values, or take steps to get out. In the long run you’ll be much better off in a culture that you find compatible. In the short run maybe you have to compromise your values to keep an income rolling in.

A complication in the “culture” category comes from issues of language or national identity. Do you work for a company whose working language is English, but your mother tongue was not? Or is your boss an expatriate from another culture? These are situations almost guaranteed to cause confusion and stress. Different national cultures are likely to emphasise different aspect of problem solving. For example, I have worked for Dutch and German and British companies. My belief is that faced with a similar business issue:

A British boss would want you to solve a problem, then go to him/her and tell them what the problem was, and what you did.
A Dutch boss would want you to consult lots of people in the organisation, and do what the majority advised, then tell him/her what you had done.
A German boss would want you to get lots of advice, then present a summary of the advice to him/her, for them to decide.

All this “culture” stuff, compounded by language and the meanings of different words and phrases can be very confusing. If you are fortunate enough to live in Jakarta and you need personal advice on corporate culture and the use of the English language, the Aim team is there to help you.

One myth and eight tips from the real world.

The myth

Most training courses in negotiation will advise you that the “win/win” result is always what you should aim for. That’s when both parties feel they have done well out of the deal, and both want the other to do well, too. It’s a myth because only if both parties want it, is it possible to achieve a result that satisfies them both.

Tip one- watch out for “animals”

All too often, in my experience, the other side’s version of “win/win” is that they win twice! So my first tip in this article is to try and work out what kind of negotiator you are facing. If they are genuinely seeking a mutually satisfactory result, then work towards one. But if they are the kind of negotiator that only feels satisfied if they have “won” and you’ve been destroyed, then defend yourself and fight for your life! And if you are facing one of the “animals” of the business world, and you need the negotiations to result in a long term partnership of some kind, you’ve got a problem. It may well be best to walk away before the negotiations start, because the two parties will never be happy together!

Tip 2- think about the power balance

As part of your preparations you need to think about where the power lies. If you are “buying”, how eager will the other side be to make a sale? Do you have alternative possible suppliers who might be more eager? If you are “selling”, try and work out whether you have genuine competition for the deal, or whether you have some competitive advantage that will push the prospective customer towards you. Your analysis won’t be perfect, but this sort of thinking will help you evaluate the negotiating process as you go through it.

Tip 3- get the legal advice early

If you are about to negotiate a contract that will, in the end, have to be vetted by a lawyer before being signed, you will find that it’s best to get legal guidance before the negotiations, rather than after. You will present yourself as much more authoritative if you know ahead of time what the lawyer will expect to see in the agreement you negotiate, and this will add to your power in the actual negotiating process.

Tip 4- define your objectives, and your absolute minimum result, in advance

Before you start negotiating, you should always be clear in your own mind what a satisfactory result would be. You need to be clear on your minimum; below this level you don’t do business. Check out with your co-decision-makers, and your boss if the deal is a big one, where they think the line should be drawn. Stick to it; keep it at the forefront of your thinking during the negotiations, but never on any account let the opposition know where your limit is, because that would inevitably become their maximum!

Tip 5- take your time

You don’t need to rush. If you ever start to feel that the other side is rushing, maybe pushing deadlines at you, then be very careful in case this is a tactic to “bounce” you into a deal that you might live to regret! If you need time to think, or make calculations, or consult others, then take it. Call a “time-out”, go off into another room, and do what you need to do, in your own time. It’s particularly important if there are several of you  in a negotiating team to take regular breaks, so that you can consult and agree future tactics.

Tip 6- keep the whole deal in view

Try to remember all the possible elements of the deal, and make sure that both parties agree them all. It’s humiliating, and sometimes catastrophic, if you agree a deal but find you have to re-start the negotiations because some element of the deal got lost along the way. If you are a seller, keep summarising the negotiation, mentioning all the elements of the proposal you are trying to sell. If you are a buyer, try to get as much as possible free, included without extra charge in  the overall deal.

Tip 7- keep notes

When something is agreed, write it down. After the meeting write to the other party to confirm the agreements made. Remember the old saying; “If it’s not written down, it didn’t happen.”

Tip 8- take care with language

And finally,when you are re-reading a contract just before signing it, remember that words matter, especially in contracts where lawyers are involved. Many legal words have unusual or unexpected meanings. Reading a lawyer’s contract can seem  quite like reading a foreign language.

If your contract is written in English, as so many international agreements are, and English is not your mother tongue, you need to be especially careful. English is a really flexible language, and is capable of both great precision and great vagueness!

But please remember that if you are in contact with the Aim team you can always get advice from them on any important document. If your company is in Jakarta, Aim can also incorporate negotiating skills into your tailor-made language training programme.

Does it sometimes seem to you that half the business world is always “in a meeting”? And since at least 20% of the time we spend at meetings is wasted time, do you ever wonder who is actually running businesses these days?

Meetings are paradoxical. Simultaneously the biggest source of frustration in the working world, and also the best opportunity to get things done. The most common and at the same time the least understood business activity.

So what’s the point of internal company meetings? There are several, but all stem from the benefits to be gained by getting people together. Some meetings are designed to ensure that everybody present shares the same information. Some are intended to get everyone to participate in making a decision. Some aim at both these objectives, plus coordination of the activities decided at the meeting.

Whatever the reason for having the meeting, there are 5 golden rules for making sure that the meeting achieves its aims.

1.Make sure that everybody invited to the meeting knows when and where it will be held, what is to be discussed, that they have all relevant information before the meeting, and that they know when it will end.

If the purpose of the meeting is simply to communicate information, now’s the time to consider not having a meeting at all. We read much faster than we speak, so if the information can be released before the meeting, why meet at all?

And it’s at this stage that the number of people at the meeting needs to be settled. My experience is that more than seven people cannot “decide” anything; they can only be informed of events, and perhaps exercise a veto.

2.Start on time. No delays, no waiting. Most meetings do not start promptly, which throws the schedule off course before a word is spoken. Over the course of a few meetings people develop the attitude that they do not need to be on time, “because someone’s always late”. And please note that “on time” means sitting in your place, papers set out in front of you, mobile phone switched off, before the scheduled start time.

I used to work for a German company, and that’s how meetings would go. Everyone in place, chatting, until the chairman/boss/facilitator tapped his water glass and started the meeting. Maybe by coincidence, those were the most productive meetings I can recall.

3.Cover each item on the agenda in the depth it requires. Often it’s helpful to make an estimate of how much time each item will take, and set the times out on the agenda. Otherwise make sure that the highest priority matters are covered early on in the meeting. That way, if the meeting runs short of time the important matters won’t be skimped in the rush at the end of the session.

4.Make notes. Some meetings need formal records of who said what. This is a skilled and demanding task, and whoever does it will most likely not be able to be a full participant in the meeting. Other meetings require no more than a list of the actions agreed. Any participant can make this level of record, and in this case it’s a good idea to rotate the job of record keeping around the group, so that everyone gets a chance to try it.

5.Do the actions! Don’t wait until the day before the next meeting! Put the actions you were allocated onto your “to do” list, do them as soon as possible, and report completion to the rest of the group.

Good meetings are powerful tools. A group of people share common information, and work towards a common goal. Bad meetings are corrosive. They destroy cohesion, damage working relationships, and set up tensions within the group. But it’s wrong to heap all the blame onto the person chairing the meeting if it does not go well. All the participants have a role to play as well. They need to be prepared for the discussion topics, they must observe proper courtesy, only speak when appropriate, and when they speak they must be brief and to-the-point.

Generally the language used in meetings is more “formal” than what we use in everyday conversation. I have been in meetings where every participant was addressed not by name but by job title. And in other meetings the participants could only speak “through the chair”, never directly to each other. Meetings where the business language is not your mother tongue can be difficult for you, although I have been the “outsider”, and marvelled at the ease with which my Dutch or German colleagues did business in my mother tongue, not theirs! Occasionally I would have to leave one of these meetings, and discover on my return that my colleagues had not bothered to switch back to Dutch or German.

If preparation for a meeting to be held in a language other than your mother tongue is a problem for you, and you are lucky enough to live in Jakarta, the Aim team is there to help you.

JAKARTA’S TRAFFIC IS terrible, isn’t it? I’m typing this, sitting in the back of a taxi, wondering just how much of our own time and  productivity we all waste because of traffic jams. Fortunately I won’t be late for my next meeting. We all lose a lot of credibility if we can’t keep appointments on time. And ‘jam karet’ (rubber time) is no excuse for wasting somebody else’s time.

At Aim for English, we know it’s important to be on time, even in Jakarta. And we prove that we can do it every single day. Here are 5 simple tips to help you do the same.

• Assume the traffic will be bad. Get to know the time needed to reach different parts of the city at different times of day. If it’s raining, double your estimation.

• Aim to arrive half an hour early and have a coffee nearby. This way, you’ll arrive at the client’s office right on time, and you’ll be relaxed and ready to work. Remember, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”, and being on time is a huge part of making a good one.

• Don’t schedule meetings before 10AM or after 4PM. This will cut the time you waste sitting in slow-moving traffic, and free you up to do more important things.

• Get to know Jakarta’s roads, and use the backstreets. Going somewhere new? Print out a map from free sites such as streetdirectory.co.id

• Check the traffic before you leave. There are traffic reports on the radio or, even better, there are live web-cams of all Jakarta’s major roads and intersections at macetlagi.com. Check before you leave, and plan an alternative route or allow more time if the traffic looks bad.

Every day, Aim for English’s business English teachers follow these simple tips. That’s   why we have a 96% on-time record for training sessions held outside our Manggarai HQ, and that’s also why our teachers always arrive at our clients’ offices relaxed and ready to teach.

English can be a cold, precise, “black and white” language, if that’s what you need.

You can use it with great precision, to say exactly what you want to say. Not only lawyers and scientists, who have their own special jargon, but also laymen can say what they want to say with complete accuracy.

Most English language textbooks are focused on clarity. After all, who would want to invest time and money learning a language, only to find that their meaning was unclear to someone else?

But the real joy of English is more than just the precision it offers. The thing that gets me interested is its flexibility. It is capable of great poetry, sidesplitting humour, uplifting exciting prose, and much more.

But you need to know a bit about the origins of the English language, to see where its flexibility comes from, so please glance at a map of the world.

England is basically the southern half of the bigger of two small islands off the north west coast of the European mainland. It has always been open to invasion and migration. In pre-historic times it saw successive migrations of various ethnic groups from Europe, arriving and blending their languages together.

The Romans arrived around 2000 years ago, and stayed for around 400 years, adding Mediterranean Latin to the linguistic mix. Then came a succession of Germanic tribes, and the Vikings from Scandinavia.

By around a thousand years ago the language known as Anglo-Saxon had begun to settle down, but then the Normans invaded from France. They were themselves of Scandinavian origin, by the way, but used an ancestor of modern French as their language.

Small wonder, after all these languages had been blended together, that English can be baffling!

Take the Normans, for example. After defeating King Harold (at the battle of Hastings, in 1066), who was anyway basically a Viking from Scandinavia, they set themselves up at the top of the social pyramid and became the ruling class. In their castles they spoke Norman French, while the people in the villages spoke Anglo-Saxon English. That’s why we find “cows” and “cattle” in a farmer’s field, but we eat “beef”. “Cow” comes from the Anglo-Saxon root of English, and “beef” is from Norman French.

It took centuries for the mixing of the two major languages to settle down into one spoken tongue, but they eventually did. By the time of England’s greatest writer (William Shakespeare, 1564 to 1616) the language was pretty well set up as it is today. An English schoolchild has little difficulty reading and understanding Shakespeare, but anything written even a century earlier is very hard to puzzle out.

Shakespeare was obviously an exceptional user of the language, but he was also probably the most important creator of it. His works are absolutely full of words (nearly 3000 of them!) and phrases that simply did not exist, or at least had never been written down, before he wrote them.

It is very hard to demonstrate the debt that English owes to Shakespeare, without boring the reader with hundreds of examples. But I’ll give you just three phrases that Shakespeare gave us.

First, here’s a phrase that should be prominent in every sporting event, because we all want to see “fair play”. Shakespeare created it in one of his less popular plays (King John), but the phrase has become universal in the English-speaking world.

Secondly, we have a phrase that means “all at once”. We say, for example, “The police captured the gang in “one fell swoop””. We mean that they grabbed them suddenly, and all together. Few native English speakers would recognise that the phrase refers to the practise of falconry, or that the meaning of “fell” is not the past tense of “fall”, but is in fact an old descriptive term meaning “deadly”. So- the sudden deadly swoop of a falcon onto its prey. But most native speakers would happily use the phrase, never imagining that Shakespeare created it!

And finally, here’s a phrase you often hear, created by Shakespeare, but no one remembers that! When, say, an unpopular boss is fired, or a poor government is voted out of office, we say it’s “a good riddance”. Actually, the word “riddance” doesn’t exist any more, but we have no difficulty using this non-existent “riddance” in a handy phrase to express satisfaction that something or someone has gone away, maybe forever.

For me, the joy of English is that its various ethnic sources, and the efforts of some genius writers, have given it “colour”. They’ve provided ways of being funny, sad, and uplifting- all in one sentence if you want! They allow you to be spontaneous and to use unusual words to achieve an effect.

Good use of the variety in English can make it wonderfully entertaining to hear or to read. And English does not have to be your mother tongue for you to use it colourfully. Anyone learning English as an additional language can learn to put some colour into it. It’s just a matter of good instruction and some hard work, as always.

Fortunately, if you live in Jakarta, the professionals at Aim can help you put colour into your English, at the same time as they help lift your overall confidence in using it.

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, business theorists thought that their work was all about efficiency, and not at all about politics. They thought that outsourcing was a really good idea, because businesses could focus on what they were really good at, (or maybe thought they were good at!), and pay someone else to do the stuff that has to be done, but isn’t at the heart of the business. They pointed to advertising, almost always contracted out to specialists. Also to cleaning, running canteens and organising travel.

In the here-and-now, in the US and Europe, outsourcing is seen in some quarters as an invention of the Devil, designed by greedy capitalists to cut jobs out of corporations, and -horror of horrors – to export them to undeserving foreign countries. Unions fight against it. Even the US government, which really knows better, goes along with the populist rhetoric that seeks to preserve “American jobs for American people”.

The truth is that the theorists were right all along, and the Western populist view is misguided, and the example set by the nations of Asia proves it.

The key to national economic success turns out to be the success of a nation’s businesses. Look what has happened in India, China and Vietnam over the past couple of decades, once their respective governments cut back on central controls and set their businesses free. Next, business success turns out to depend on productivity. Even where labour is cheap, the most successful companies are the most productive ones. Finally, the most productive companies are the most international ones. They are the businesses most open to new ideas in technology or management. And they are the businesses most likely to be taking part in the chains of international production that are such a feature of the Asian economies. They are the masters of outsourcing!

In its simplest form, the old business motto of “focus on what you are good at” really does work in the here-and-now world, so long as the business also works hard to raise its productivity, Training is one of the resource factors that plays a key role in lifting productivity in technology, business practices, or communications. It’s also an area where outsourcing can pay huge returns. Especially in the area of language training, there’s a world of difference in the way a specialist works, and in the results they can obtain.

In Jakarta there is one English Language school that has, over the past 5 years, established itself as by far the leading outsourced provider of English training for businesses. It’s been trusted by leading private and state-owned businesses, by government departments, and by NGOs to deliver the highest possible quality of training, and to get the best possible results. AIM for English is an Indonesian success story in outsourcing.

Sometimes it’s known as an “annual review”, sometimes it’s called a “performance review”. Whatever the name it’s given, it is a structured conversation between boss and subordinate about how the subordinate does his or her job. It’s a really important conversation, because it gives a poorly performing employee a chance to improve, and it confirms to high-achievers that they are well regarded for what they do. Above all, it lets the employee know exactly where they stand in the organisation’s estimation.

Annual reviews have part of standard business practice for so long that it is really surprising how seldom they are done well, and how often they are not done at all.

Part of the problem is that the appraisal requires both parties to take time out of what is often a busy and stressful working life to think about the subordinate’s performance. Then they must find time to prepare for the interview, carry it out, write-up the substance of what was said, and check the document to make sure it reflects the memories of both parties. Small wonder that reviews are often postponed, forgotten, or done in an ill-prepared rush. And the more subordinates a manager has, the more likely that that the whole review process will be a wasted opportunity.

Another big part of the appraisal problem is that managers are often not trained at all in how to carry out reviews. It is all too easy for a manager to hold back on criticism, for fear of provoking conflict. Or even to be too critical and confrontational for fear of seeming weak. It’s quite hard to achieve the middle ground of giving constructive criticism that enables an employee to see what they have been doing wrong, and how they can do it better.

So how can we do better appraisals? If you’re a manager, this brief article won’t solve all your problems, but maybe the tips that follow will give you something to think about.

Tip 1 Think well ahead of time about each appraisal you have to do. Don’t leave the thinking to the 30 minutes before the appraisee comes to see you! Make notes by all means, but don’t write the appraisal report before you’ve had the meeting! It’s meant to be two-way conversation, after all.

Tip 2 When you need to be critical, be specific. Don’t make general remarks without having several concrete examples of the behaviour you want to criticise. Make your criticisms in a neutral, unemotional way, and don’t get caught up in any emotion displayed by the appraisee. Suggest ways of helping the appraisee to make the behaviour changes you want to see.

Tip 3 Follow up on the appraisal. Make sure that you take any action you agree to do. Make sure that you monitor the appraisee to see that he or she changes their behaviour the way you suggest. When you see positive changes, reinforce them by praising the employee.

Tip 4 Appraisals may be a once-per-year event, but the comments made by a manager should never come as a complete surprise to the employee. It’s at the heart of good management practice that any leader should make sure that his or her subordinates are continuously aware of their manager’s scrutiny, and his or her evaluation of their work. The appraisal should only confirm what the subordinate already knew.

And finally, if your manager and you have different mother tongues, and your appraisal is going to be conducted in a language you didn’t grow up with, be very careful! Especially if the language to be used is English, remember that it’s a slippery language, full of shades of meaning.  Your appraisal is an important conversation, and you need to find and use the right words.

Fortunately, if you live in Jakarta, the AIM team has native English-speaking professionals who can help you prepare for your appraisal and make sure that you are fully familiar with the words you may need to use.

Learning lots of new vocabulary is central to becoming great at communicating in English but, as most of you are probably aware, it can also be a rather boring experience. This article explores ways to make learning new words a bit more fun, and will hopefully help you master the language faster.

Every person is unique, and people learn in different ways. Try some of the methods below, and stick to the ones which you find most fun or effective. Or use a variety of methods to help keep boredom away!

Before we begin, it’s worth noting that students can learn vocabulary in two ways:
1. “Incidentally”. This means learning either consciously or unconsciously, using ‘context clues’ when we are reading or listening to a language
2. “Direct Study”. This refers to deliberate attempts to learn new words.
This article will focus on direct study, which is by far the most effective of the two.

Which words to learn?

You can’t learn every word you hear or read every day. So, which ones are important?

• learn the words that are important to the subject you are studying, or the industry in which you’re working.
• learn those words that you keep reading or hearing again and again.
• don’t learn too many words that are uncommon or not useful.

Top 4 Learning methods:

1. Look, Cover, Guess, Check

This is how most children are taught to learn vocabulary. You could try to make it less tedious by using different colours. For example make up a page like this, using alternating coloured lines down the page to make sure each line stands out:
meja    =  table
kulkas  =  fridge
mobil   =  car
pohon   =  tree
Then cover up all of the English words with a piece of paper. Slide the paper down the page as you translate each word. Now repeat, but this time covering the Indonesian side of the page.

2. Sticky notes (Post-Its)

Find as many words or phrases as possible that you would like to learn. Write each one on a sticky note, and also try to draw a picture if you can (which helps to create visual associations in your brain). Stick your notes around your house or office, in places that you’ll see very regularly (on doors, near light-switches, on the telephone, next to your computer, or even on the cookie jar). Every time you see one of your notes, say it out loud. Every time. Then after a few days change all the notes. This can be an amazingly effective learning strategy for some people.

3. Flash Cards

A favourite among many language learners, these small blank coloured cards are sometimes held together on a ring. You write the English word on one side of each card, and the Indonesian word on the other. Make a pile of hundreds of words and phrases if you like. There are lots of ways of using the cards, including this strategy:

1. Make a pile of around fifteen cards, with the English words facing upwards
2. Pick up the first card and guess its Indonesian meaning.
3. Check if you are correct. If you get it right, put it in one pile (the correct pile). If you are wrong, put it back at the bottom of the main pile.
4. Keep going until all of your cards are in the ‘correct pile’.

This is a very positive way to learn words.  You are either correct, or you keep trying again until you are correct. You are never wrong!

4. Record Yourself

With audio recorders on almost every computer and mobile phone, this has become a very easy and convenient way of learning new vocabulary. Just record yourself saying the new English words, followed by the Indonesian meaning. You can use these like ‘audio flash cards’; press pause after each word to give yourself time to guess the meaning.

What you should know about the words you learn

Learning the meaning of a new word is only the first step. You should also think about:

• spelling
• pronunciation
• inflection (the different noun, verb, adjective and adverb forms of the word)
• collocation (i.e. what other words are often used with it)
• formal or informal (style and register)

Native speakers learn these things about words by listening to them and reading them over and over again. You should do the same!

One final Tip – Learn words at least twice!

If you sit down one day and learn ten new words, the chances are that you will have forgotten most of them after one week. That’s because the word was only stored in your short-term memory. Try re-learning the words after around a week. This should be faster than the first time around, and will mean the words are stored in your long-term memory and we be available for you to use for years to come.

Many students at Aim ask us “how can I improve my pronunciation quickly?”. As always, there’s no substitute for practice, practice, and more practice. This article will explore a few strategies that will ensure that your practice time is as productive as possible.

1. Imitate!

Listen to spoken English as often as possible. Watch  the mouth movements of people when they are speaking, and try to imitate them. Training the muscles in your mouth is the key to good pronunciation. There are lots of places where you can listen to people speaking English:

• Watch television (BBC, CNN, Australia Network, Star World etc). Watch the mouth movements of the speakers and try to copy what they are saying. Also pay attention to rhythm and intonation.
• Watch movies. If you have a choice, switch off the subtitles altogether, so you can focus on the actors’ mouth movements, rather than reading the text
• Download audio books, listen to them in your car, or read along with them at home. Listen to how words are pronounced and try to imitate.
• Use some of the fantastic free resources on the Internet, such as BBC Learning English. Here’s a link to some pronunciation videos, tips, quizzes and more: Click Here

2 Take it slow!

If you slow your speech down, you’ll have more time to make sure you get pronunciation and intonation right, so don’t rush. Remember, it’s all about speaking clearly, not quickly. If you speak too quickly, you might skip some words, or get the pronunciation and intonation wrong. Native speakers might have difficulty understanding what you are saying.
Once you’re confident that you’re getting the pronunciation right, then gradually start to speed up your speech.

3. Learn the phonetic alphabet, & use the dictionary

Every sound in the English language has a symbol. All of these symbols make up the ‘phonetic alphabet’. Once you have learned these symbols, learning pronunciation alone becomes much easier, as you’ll now be able to ‘read’ pronunciation, rather than relying on watching or listening to other people speak.All dictionary definitions (printed and online) include phonetic script, allowing you to quickly know how the word sounds.
Learning the phonetic alphabet is not easy, and may take a while, but the benefits to the development of students’ pronunciation are huge. Well worth the time invested.
To get you started, watch this brilliant introduction to the phonetic alphabet on the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/

4. Get to know your own pronunciation problems.

Keep a notebook with you at all times, and make a note of words you find difficult to pronounce. These might be words you hear, or words you say that people didn’t understand. When you have a list of all your problem words, ask someone who speaks the language well to say them. Then, imitate them. Even better, ask them to record the words on their handphone, so you can listen to them later. Many online dictionaries also now have a “listen” button next to word definitions, which allows you to hear someone saying the word.
One common pronunciation challenge for Indonesians is the ‘S’ and ‘ED’ endings of words. These sounds are very important, as they show that something is plural, or show when something happened (the tense). Make sure you practice these sounds, in particular.

5. Learn the ‘music’ of English.

Every language has its own ‘music’ – the rhythm, intonation and sentence stress patterns of the language. Advanced students of English learn to reproduce the music of English, and stay away from the ‘music’ of their native language when speaking English. So don’t just learn how to pronounce individual words. Listen to the music of the language and try to imitate what you hear.
It’s worth noting that there are hundreds of different English accents all around the world, each with slightly different intonation and sentence stress patterns. You aren’t expected to be able to imitate them all, but having an awareness of where a speaker is from can really help you piece together the ‘pronunciation puzzle’.

6. Read aloud in English for 20 minutes every day, and record yourself

This is all about developing stronger mouth muscles, and also recognising the mistakes you’re making. It takes weeks, maybe months, of daily practice to train your mouth to produce some of the more difficult sounds in English. Make sure the text you are reading is interesting!
Recording your reading can be very beneficial. Yes, we all hate to hear the sound of our own voice, but you’ll be surprised by how easy it is to spot the mistakes in your own pronunciation when you listen to a recording. Have that notebook at the ready to write down any mistakes you hear.

7. Be patient, and try to enjoy the process

Like many other aspects of learning English, you can’t expect amazing improvements in your pronunciation overnight. It’s a gradual process, there are no ‘short-cuts’, and it will need commitment, motivation and time from you.
This doesn’t mean that the process can’t be fun, though. Here at Aim, lessons on pronunciation are some of the most enjoyable and popular among teachers and students alike. There are now also thousands of fantastic interactive web pages to help with your pronunciation; much more fun than using dusty old books. At Aim, we know that people learn English much faster if they’re having fun.

Remember, you don’t need to try to ‘talk like a native speaker’. It’s perfectly fine to have an accent. The important thing is that you are speaking clearly, and that you are not preventing other people from understanding what you’re saying. Best of luck!