Its May time, and if your schedules match what mine used to be, school students would be lazing around for their summer holidays, engineering students would be prepping hard for their summer term exams beginning June, MBA first years must be about to wrap up their internships, and second years enjoying the honeymoon period in their new job. Except for poor engineering students (the less said of them, the better), therefore, its a relatively free time for everyone. We keep receiving positive feedback for our language (I will talk here only about English), and requests to help some of you improve yours. I wish I could sit with all of you personally and talk about it in more detail, but for the time being, here are a few pointers: 1. Read more, and when I say more, I mean MORE: qualitatively as well as in sheer number. Read fiction, read biographies, read poetry, read philosophy, read serious political analysis, read science, read. Read. READ! Some good novels to start you off would be PG Wodehouse, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett. Tough language and full of obscure cultural references. Which leads me to my next pointer: 2. ...and read actively: Highlight what you dont understand. Figure out the grammar, especially of phrasal verbs: why does the author write hate on instead of hate, or put up instead of put on? What is the difference between see, watch and look? Listen and hear? What figures of speech catch your attention? Which again leads to a third pointer: 3. Get a solid grasp of grammar: Learn where to use articles and where to drop them. Use a dictionary (that fat book? You know, Oxford Advanced Learners?) and carefully observe the various ways in which the same word gets used. Why can one not say very unique? What is a simile? A metaphor? An analogy? A parable? Does Alanis Morissettes Ironic really cite anything ironic? 4. Identify your interests: It may be Mughal era coins. It may be abstruse advaita vedanta. It may be latin dances or ladakhi prayer flags or sri lankan cuisine. But develop your passion, and then read about it and talk to others about it 5. ...and write about what you love: It will be easy to write a few paragraphs a day about what consumes your attention. Imagine yourself sitting in The News Hour and defending what you say. Be passionate and uninhibited when you write 6. ...and after some time, write only when you feel like it: I know some friends who write copiously, but there is hardly any soul in it. Write from your heart unless youre a great genius who can bring his mind and heart together to create stunning, moving works of art. 7. ...but edit dispassionately: As someone said, write when drunk, edit when sober. 8. Observe basic style guidelines: No verbiage, no obscure words (especially those that you are not sure of), no needless adjectives or adverbs. Let your words show; leave the tears or laughter to your readers 9. Speaking and listening: Learn to identify and cut through different accents so that you understand whats being said. And try to neutralize your own accent - it helps to identify your own quirks of speaking. 10. Last, pick up a foreign language: Its a good way to start thinking about language and linguistics. Pick up a foreign language, especially German, or French. Pardon me for being unpatriotic, but the way they teach French at Alliance Française (I studied there for more than four years) is way better than how, for example, they teach Hindi or Sanskrit in CBSE schools. The best would be if you learn a language with another script: Kannada, Japanese, Arabic or Russian. Sounds like a nerd? Hey, I never said I wasnt one myself - these days, the rules have changed, and blessed are the nerds, for they shall inherit the earth! But on a serious note, get back to us and let us know if any of this ever comes in handy - were around, as you see every hour :)
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 05:49:21 +0000
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