Looking for hearty, patient person!

[Ralph66]

Hi all!
I'm here to ask you for a very..hard and strange aid. I'm new here - in UK and also, in Worksop. I'm from Poland and I love English language. I've often watch English movies with English subtitles, reading the books in English..and it goes good! Maybe not excellent, but mostly I can understand the meanings of about 85% sentences without any dictionary. As I wrote, I think my reading, listening is not excellent, but it's not very bad I think. My writing is not good but It's not the most important for me at this moment (in future I'll try to improve my writing skills). What It's my problem I've seen when I came here. It's speaking.
I have not a real opportunity in my entire life to speak in English with anyone. I have been here since sunday so..I moved to some shops, I made an bank account, I've got a job, I arranged an national insurance appointment..I managed all of this but my English was very bad in every talk. When you write something or read - you have a little time to think. In conversation you have not to think, just say "automatically". Maybe this sounds hilarious but it looks like that for me. When I have to talk with someone I have something like "language blockade" - all my grammar knowledge, many words in english and many many more - just disappear. My talk is chaotic and full of mistakes.
And here is my ask for aid. I'm looking very patient, hearty person who can find time (I have time everyday..) and help me to improve my speaking skills. How? With just talking..your religion, gender, race and all other stuff doesn't matter for me. I just looking for a conversation partner who's English is a national language.
I can even pay you about 2-3 pounds per hour for this..
Why I'm so determined? In Poland I was a teacher in kindergarten with special needs kids. Then I worked in hospital with elderly people. Unluckily, this is very hard to live on your own in Poland from those jobs. My dream is to help people here, but if I want a care taker job I have to improve my English..now I'm looking for any work, only to survive but I hope, sooner or later I can change this to something what will be positive.
Something about me: My name is Ralph Sparrow (this is the best English translation for my name), my hobbies and interest is: guitar, trips, history, martial arts, meditation, international politics, philosophy, movies (Tarantino, Lars von Trier and Lynch are my favorites directors) and many more. I like to listen blues, jazz, classical music, some genres of electronic stuff (like new CD's of Ulver or Infected Mushroom), most types of metal, and soundtracks from movies. I'm a very talkative person BUT in my own language. I'm sure that if my English will be better, I can talk all day about many interesting things and topics..but for now,maybe I can talk about some hobbies or stuff which I wrote, but I'm sure I will do that in very boring and hard to understand way.
If you will help me - I promise you will get something more then "thank you". As I wrote, I can even pay for it.
Contact to me - rwrobel1990@gmail. com (without empty beetwen gmail and com - I can't write this correctly on this forum because of warning "Your account does not have permission to post links or domain/page references.") I check e-mail every day and I'll respond to any mail.
Cheers.

 

[cambournepete]

Your written English is better than that of many English people.
Your spoken English will improve because you are determined it will. It will become automatic, as did my school French many years ago.
I hope you find someone or some way to help you, but please don't try and change your name because that is who you are.

I'd love to help, but I'm in New Zealand...

 

[Limey Lurker]

Welcome to Britain, Ralph! I hope you find happiness here!
Many language schools give FREE lessons speakers of languages other than English, so that trainee
TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) teachers can be trained. Also, some Local Authorities
give free English lessons for new arrivals. Ask at a Public Library.
I wish you every success!

 

[John51]

Hi Ralph, google 'couchsurfing'. Most areas have couchsurfing meet ups once a week or so and you will be exposed to many languages including English.

You could also try a free ad on your local Gumtree, 'My Polish for your English'.

I really like English for it's lack on reliance on precision. In French, I can't tell the difference between the words for son and daughter plus many others. English, among other things, was built on understanding people who are not fluent and it can be mangled but still understood.

From friends that came here with basic English, I'd say between 3 and 5 years of basic interaction gets you near enough fluent.

The only Polish word I know is 'bimber'.

 

[Baldhead]

Ralph

Sorry I can't help as we live too far apart, are there any clubs in Worksop you could join, that way you could socialise and practice/learn English.

BH

 

[Ralph66]

Thanks for all responds!

All what you wrote is very helpful, I'll try to follow of these advices.
I registered in my local college to speaking lessons but I think this will take very long time until I will be able to talk in English as good as it is necessary to be a care assistant. I know that I want to do this in my life (In poland we have hospitals in extremely horrible conditions..I was a care assistant in one of these, I helped people who have decubitus so deep to see his down part of spine, people who cried for death..and many others).
So, I'd like to find other ways then college to learn English. I know, this require patience. I always said - "everything which have a TRUE value in this world, needs hard work and patience". In my opinion, language in my "hands" will be a very valuable in lives of many people. I'm trying to be a good speaker not because I'm not patient. It's because I have many good things in my mind which I'd like to realize in future - charity, voluntary..there is too many. Money doesn't worth much for me , as I wrote - I can even pay for talking. I was always enjoying to helping others. This makes me happy. As long as I can't do this in my life, I'll feel emptiness. This is the reason why I'm looking for ways to learn how to speak properly in English faster. I'll be as patient as it will be needed.

P.S - I can give you a guitar lessons for free, or in other words just for request which I please in this post - just talk I have 10 years experience, maybe I'm not solo master but I truly understand how to play beautiful melodies with feel and how to improvise various melodies. I can teach you how to play on classic, acoustic or electric guitar (I'll soon bring here my guitars from Poland, you can even try to play on these if you want to spent some time with me. It's Jackson RR3 from Japan with rare seymour duncans and acoustic Ibanez).

Cheers for everyone!

 

[deserter]

Hi Ralph, my home town was Worksop, and if I still lived there I would gladly help you out, in actual fact it could of been beneficial to both of us, as I have always wanted to play guitar.
Anyway I moved away so am now too far away to help, however a few bits which may help, North Notts College is a fantastic place to study, and they regularly have foreign students so are used to helping people learn the language, I'm certain you'll get on we'll their.
Gateford Hill Nursing home, is a really friendly place to work if you can get in there, my sister worked there got several years and only left when she also moved out of the area. However you will never find a more talkative bunch of people in England than the elderly, so working somewhere like this will help you learn faster.
There is also a training centre at the top of Worksop, I forget its name, but its vaguely opposite the white pub, which used to be called the 'top house' or 'old lion tap house' at the bottom of sparken hill. Which if you are unsure of is near to the new cinema I think. Anyway they used to offer the type of language courses others have mentioned, with the aim of training you to teach English as a foreign language.

Good luck, and if nothing else enjoy Worksop, it has some really nice places to visit around it.


~Nil carborundum illegitemi~

 

[DrPhill]

I admire your determination and goals, Ralph. I do not live anywhere near you, so cannot be of direct help. However I can suggest a couple of things you may try. They are less obvious, and possibly will be less successful than the suggestions made by others here but you may think them worth a try.

(1) Try and find a 'skills exchange' group in you area - somebody may be looking to learn guitar and happy to speak english. You could even try offering and asking on your local 'freecycle'/'clutterbusters'/'trash nothing' site.

(2) Can you play/do you like 'irish' music? You may well find local 'sessions' in pubs, where people regularly play together on an informal basis. Your music will be welcome and you will get plenty of conversation. You could share some music from your part of the world, learn some english and meet some new friends.

Good luck, and let us know how you get on

 

[AES]

Hullo Ralph66,

Like others here I too admire your courage and determination. I've been in a similar (but reversed) situation. English is my mother tongue but moving here to Switzerland some 25+ years ago I found great difficulties with the language (German - but even worse, the Swiss "own version" of German, not "proper, real" German).

You obviously have the determination so I can promise you that if your experience is anything like mine, your conversational English WILL get better (I often remember, right at the start, carefully working out in my head the exact and correct way to ask someone a question, which I then asked, really perfectly - only to find that I couldn't properly understand the answer!) Dohhhhhh .........

That will pass off quite quickly though and I suggest that although your idea of finding some sort of training or a "teacher" is of course OK, the real key is simply to live and work and most important, to play, in England.

For example although my wife is Swiss and helped me a lot at the beginning, I had more success as soon as I "branched out" on my own. By that I mean just sitting down and trying to chat with people at work over the lunch table, and most particularly, do try joining some kind of local club. In my case it was model aeroplanes but for you it can be anything you like - you say you play guitar so look for a club (formal or informal) who gather together to play and learn. It doesn't have to be one on one, in fact a small group is probably better. The very act of "interacting" with other people who have similar interests to your own will, in my experience, teach you normal everyday spoken English much quicker than any course (though some kind of formal training will later on reinforce and "regularise" what you're already learning from your colleagues in the club.

Or it could be a local film appreciation group, woodworkers, anything you like that interests you.

And are you married? If not try to find a girlfriend (not necessarily for anything more than a friendship) because again, interacting with someone else in their own language will automatically teach you spoken language very quickly and thoroughly. I've found female relationships (platonic!) of great help in learning, females often seem to be more patient than males.

Do please remember one very important thing - ask yourself why you can speak Polish so well. Answer: It's only because since birth everyone around you was speaking Polish. If you'd been born in China you'd be useless at Polish and brilliant at Madarin or Cantonese (or whatever). Same with English - if you'd been born in England instead of Poland. It was not until you were about 4 or 5 years old, already having a pretty big vocabularly of Polish words that you started to learn the language as a formal subject at school.

Another point - if your experience is anything like mine you'll make mistakes, and again, if your experience is like mine, sometimes people will laugh at those mistakes. That laughter will sometimes be genuinely funny and if you have anything more than a very thin skin, you'll join in with that laughter (I could give you loads of examples of my own amusing **** ups). It's all part of "quick learning" and actually very helpful (you remember those mistakes forever).

But sometimes that laughter will be rather cruel, trying to make you look silly and ignorant (and make the laugher "clever"). That will especially apply to your mis-pronunciation of words - English is often NOT spoken as it is written, as I'm sure you've noticed already. But as you move on through that you'll find the people who laughed so cruelly are pretty ignorant people themselves - people without much education or common sense - people who you wouldn't anyway want to be friendly with if they were in Poland - and people who most certainly would not have the guts and drive and detemination to do what you're doing.

Finally, again if you're like me, having nothing whatever to do with the local expat English community (in your case Polish of course). Stay away from their clubs and social groups and Internet Forums etc. You'll learn nothing from them - the goal is to learn English not to "relax" back into Polish, tempting though it may be sometimes - learning to speak a foreign language fluently and colloquially is very hard work, especially at the start, but persevere and you'll end up being pretty proud of yourself. Same with listening and watching Polish radio & TV.

The very best of luck mate.

 

[Ralph66]

Thanks for all replies! I didn't expect that many posts, thank you!

Deserter - I found site of "Gateford hill nursing home" - this place looks very friendly and nice! I think I won't have any chance to find there a work in nearest future, I need to learn how to talk properly first. Maybe there will be a little chance in try to find a place there as a volunteer but even this looks too impossible in my eyes.
I tried to find something which you called "top house" but I didn't find anything what can help me too much.

DrPhill - thanks for advices! I sent a posts on freecycle and thrash nothing. I hope there will be someone who would be happy for this "skill exchange"
I can't play Irish music, maybe because I have not listen it too much. I have been playing different gender of metal for 4 years, next 6 years I played usually blues and folk. I think the last one is my favorite which I love to play and improvise (I like sounds similarly to bands like "The national")

AES - Advices about clubs is very helpful. I'm looking for voluntary now but if I can't find any who can accept me with my bad english, I'll try to follow to your advice and find some interesting club.
Yes, I agree with that thing about course. I'm also look at that in this way, college can help me, but the most important thing, In my opinion, is talking with people in life situations, not in classroom. That's why I'm looking for a person who can spend some time with me.
The last thing which you wrote about avoiding polish sites, talking in polish language etc. Yes, I also agree with that. I've realized this long time before I came here. In last half year, I've learned more words, rules and all necessary stuff than in my three years of learning English in school. How? I surrounded myself with everything in English - games in english, books, I wrote on chat via internet in English. I'm still not good in writing but if you had a chance to see my writing skills half year ago, you will see the difference. They have not taught me in school very much..
Thanks for all of your stories about patience and determination to reach the goal. I had hard life and I've taught many lessons but I think we always know too little about life. That's why I write thank you for sharing your experience. Every human lesson, no matter how long you lives and how many things you have seen, is worth more then gold. You can learn something which you can't even imagine, even if you think you know everything about life. This is my opinion.

Cheers guys, you are very helpful, all of you.