How I learned English so I can communicate in my new culture
English, my second language, is very different from my mother tongue, Mandarin. Yet, it’s an essential tool for thriving in American culture. Learning it effectively requires strategic choices. In my opinion, the best way to learn a new language is by watching sitcoms and movies that match your learning level. Well-chosen shows not only teach practical applications but also offer insights into the culture and vibrant people who speak the language. If you’re new to American life, start with light-hearted sitcoms filled with dramatized small talk and “mini life stories.” Friends (1994-2004) is a perfect entry point. Once you grasp about 80% of its dialogue, you can explore shows like The Big Bang Theory for a glimpse into the life of Ph.D. brainiacs. Other excellent choices include Seinfeld, Two and a Half Men, and How I Met Your Mother, all rich in articulate English and relatable scenarios. Short, 20-30-minute episodes are ideal, as they provide daily learning without a hefty time commitment.
For first-gen immigrants transitioning from languages with different structures, like Mandarin or Arabic, watching articulate actors is invaluable. Longer sitcoms such as Sex and the City, Modern Family, and Ugly Betty also enrich your understanding of American culture.
Don’t overlook American films. While Friends teaches effective dialogue, classics like It’s a Wonderful Life and The Godfather impart lasting lessons about American philosophy and values. With platforms like Netflix offering a wealth of high-quality films, continuous cultural education is at our fingertips.
Ultimately, practice is key. I often subconsciously pick up new words and phrases from the shows I watch and use them in daily conversations, helping internalize the language and its nuances. Just remember to enjoy the process without over-dramatizing the expressions of emotions! Mastering your new language is crucial; it unlocks the wonders of your new life and reflects America’s strength in embracing diverse cultural identities.
How can you tell if you’ve truly learned a new language? One fascinating indicator lies in our dreams, which remain largely a mystery despite our slowly but surely understanding of the brain. An unconventional yet effective way to gauge your language proficiency is by observing your dreams. Typically, we dream in our most familiar language, but when you immerse yourself in a new culture, like moving from China to the U.S., you eventually begin dreaming in that language. I learned this from a brilliant Irish professor at Marquette University. After rapidly learning German to pass her Ph.D. exams, she experienced her first dream in German and realized her brain had accepted it nearly on par with her mother tongue. “You’ll know you’ve learned English when you start dreaming in it!” she advised. If you aim to master a new language, put in the effort during your waking hours, and soon that dream will come to you.
Tailor your messaging and delivery to your audience every time you speak
There’s an old Chinese saying: “Play the Qin (a beautiful-sounding Chinese instrument) to a cow.” This emphasizes the futility of offering something valuable to someone who doesn’t appreciate it, thus wasting your time and effort. Too often, we, as parents, educators, marketers, team leaders, and media professionals, unidirectionally broadcast our messages to an imagined “ideal” audience that isn’t there to listen. This doesn’t mean the audience is ignorant or uneducated; we are part of that audience, too. The real issue is that our messaging often fails to connect with those we want and need to reach.
If our target audience doesn’t understand what we’re trying to communicate, how can we expect them to buy into our ideas? This disconnect contributes to the rising costs of media advertising for organizations with something to offer. While we may be captivated by the vast reach of today’s digital capabilities, we increasingly lose the ability to communicate meaningfully with individuals who matter.
To achieve impactful results, you don’t need a million people casually interested in your message; you may only need a small group truly engaged in listening. Invest time in understanding who these listeners are and how they prefer to communicate. Build supportive relationships with them, just as you would with a new friend.
Use insights from these conversations to craft your messaging and delivery. Then, test it with individuals representing your target persona. Discard messages and delivery methods that don’t resonate and focus on the top one to three strategies that work.
I learned this lesson the hard way over many years, so please don’t repeat my mistakes. Make your communication easy to follow, understand, remember, and take to heart—every single time.
Avoid death by meeting
Effectively communicating is a true art, and I’m still learning how to optimize my approach. While everyone can communicate in various ways, we often overlook the core purpose of our conversations. Instead of engaging in meaningful dialogue, we find ourselves endlessly talking without direction. As a leader, if you’re the captain of your team, you must know where you’re taking your group of valuable individuals. Treat each team communication with the seriousness it deserves.
Meetings can take various forms: unidirectional (one talks, others listen), bi-directional (both talk, both listen), one-to-many, one-on-one, and around-the-table discussions. Some meetings aim to inform, while others are for daily task updates, brainstorming new ideas, or building rapport in a growing team.
Study the anatomy of effective communication and develop your approach for one-on-one and group meetings, always maintaining clear objectives. Design your overall communication strategy with your culture and leadership style in mind. Create guidelines for common business meeting categories while allowing teams to adapt meetings based on their specific functions. Provide the tools and technology to support your organization’s communication needs—don’t let technology dictate how you meet. Some discussions may require no technology at all; human-to-human conversations with a pen and notepad can stimulate deep collaboration.
After years of study on how to master meetings rather than being enslaved by them, here are my notes for your consideration. I typically maintain four types of team meetings:
- Daily Standup Sessions: For functions requiring frequent check-ins, such as product marketing or software development, we hold 15-minute meetings first thing in the morning. Encouraging team members to stand speeds up the process.
- Weekly All-Team Meetings: We strive to keep these meetings to one hour, allowing all functions to share work progress and discuss roadblocks needing assistance.
- Monthly Executive Review and Solutioning Meetings: Best conducted in person, these sessions provide clarity on the team’s roadmap and allow for in-depth brainstorming and solution development for upcoming work cycles.
- Quarterly Team Retreat Meetings: These outings, away from the office, offer new perspectives on work and strengthen team bonds among daily or remotely connected members.
Each meeting type should have a consistent structure that your team can document and adapt. While it may seem overwhelming, these efforts are worthwhile investments that yield significant returns when managed well. Meetings consume a substantial amount of our work time, and without an effective system, they can become inefficient, tiring, and even “dead.”
If any of this resonates with your past experiences, it might be time to reimagine how you meet, communicate, and collaborate.
