Building Successful Careers

Tip Number 3: Read and/or listen to talking books. Use your commute time listening to talking books in English. You can kill two birds with one stone (achieve two objectives with a single effort) by listening to self-help books. If you don’t want to listen to books…find time to read books in English. ---Pat Zimmerman

100 Ways To Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever by Steve Chandler The hardest person to motivate is yourself, if you could keep yourself motivated all time, your life certainly would be changed forever.

Tip Number 2: Volunteer to give presentations at work or for an organization where you are a member. You stretch yourself to grow and develop better language skills while building confidence in speaking before an audience. We retain 20% of what we see, 40% of what we see and hear, 80% of what we see, hear and do and 90% of what we see, hear, do and teach.

Tip Number 1: Speak only English at your workplace. The best thing you can do for yourself when you are learning a new language is to surround yourself with the language. That is exactly why people go to the country where the language they are learning is spoken. Venture out of your comfort zone (where you speak mostly your first language) and find ways to practice English. If you speak a language that others cannot understand, they tend to resent it and think you are talking about them…telling secrets or making fun. The more you speak English, the more self-confidence you gain. Your skills just keep getting better. ---Pat Zimmerman

Many of our readers are immigrants or first-generation Americans and need to improve their English language skills. Why? Actually, you can live your entire life in the United States without speaking, reading or writing English…if you live in the right place. There are Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Spanish doctors, dentists, bankers and grocers. People have many reasons for not improving their English: I do not have time to work on my English; I am busy working and raising a family; my children will learn good English skills in school. You are fooling yourself if you tell yourself these things. You really will never get ahead in this country without speaking, reading and writing English fairly well. Learning the language of the country where you live broadens your world, opens up opportunities, gives you freedom, helps you gain general acceptance of others and makes your children proud of you. By learning the language, you widen your world. You can enjoy movies, television shows, plays...

My two boys started skiing at 4 years old since their parents love the sport. When my older son turned four, we were so excited and took him with us to the mountains. We put him in ski class with tears. One hour later, my husband decided to check on our son. To his surprise, he found my four year old was on the lift all by himself. How dangerous! My husband took him out of class immediately. I asked him if he wanted to ski with Mommy instead of going back to the class. The four year old loved the idea. We put him on the lift with us and jumped off the lift with him. At the top of the hill, I put him in-between my skis, we laughed all the way to the bottom of the hill. He enjoyed it so much, swooping down the slopes while still under the protection of his mother. I lifted him up when we ran into bumps or when we had a sharp turn or a stop. I enjoyed teaching him to ski and still remember how little he was 6 years ago. The second day, I tied a strap around his waist and held him from the...