Quite, Quite, or Quite?

A podcast for English learners!  Improve your listening skills, practice your pronunciation, learn new vocabulary!     

This episode, I'm chatting with Ulla!   We chatted about memories of English class at school, the different clubs you can join at FinnBrit, and personal aims for improving your English...

Pronunciation tip = how changing the stress on the word 'QUITE' can change its meaning...     


Presenter = Sam  @_emaileng (Twitter, IG), @emaileng (TikTok)        

Music = "Baby Bloodheart" by Mara Carlyle  @MaraCarlyle    www.maracarlyle.bandcamp.com     

Artwork = Penny Rossano  @pennyrossanomusicart (IG)   www.pennyrossanoillustrations.com     

FinnBrit = https://finnbrit.fi/     

Transcript

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EPISODE 15 = QUITE, QUITE, OR QUITE? 

Hello! And welcome to Chat ENG – a podcast where people chat about how they learn and use English. My name is Sam, I’m a CELTA teacher and a performer, and I have a particular interest in pronunciation and expression. 

In each episode, non-native and native speakers will chat about their experiences with English, share their advice and, at the end, I’ll give some pronunciation tips for you to take away and practice. 

So – ready? Let’s get Chat ENG! 

This episode, I’m chatting with Ulla. Ulla is originally from Finland, and works for FinnBrit – a language and culture organisation in Helsinki. We met online, as life is still mostly online ... you may hear one or two notification sounds (like a ‘ping’), that’s because one of us received an email as we were chatting! 

We chatted about memories of English class at school, the different clubs you can join at FinnBrit, and personal aims for improving your English, but I started by asking Ulla to tell me a little about herself... 

INTERVIEW 

U: I am Ulla Pegg, and I currently lead FinnBrit. I’ve been here for two years now, and early in my career I worked in management consulting, doing change programmes, learning and training. I’ve lived in the US and the UK, and perhaps that’s why, for example, my accent I feel is mid-Atlantic. I have a Finnish-British family, and I live here in Helsinki and that’s about it I guess in a nutshell! 

S: In a nutshell! Fantastic! Let’s go to the beginning then, when did you start learning English? Was it just part of school, or was it even before, from a very early age? 

U: I must’ve been about 10, because at that time when I started at school, English started in the third grade, and it must’ve been sort of 10 years old. I liked it; however, I felt it was very easy at the beginning – I remember we were in a sort of gym hall or sports hall, and we had a teacher - a fantastic teacher, by the way! - but she wanted us to sort of queue up and come to her, and she would ask us “what’s your name?”“my name is Ulla”, and then I would ask her “so, what’s your name?” and she would respond! So it was a bit tedious to start off with when we did that round and round again, but it created a memory! 

S: Interesting! Do you think they teach like that now? U: No, probably not! 

S: Excellent! So, when you continued on then, did you continue studying at university as well? 

U: Yes, I mean - English follows you, if you like, through the Finnish school system and through university as well and in the University I went to the Turku Business school, and it was obviously more business English. I did want to work and study abroad I went to the US as part of an AEISEC Exchange Programme (https://aiesec.org/about-us) I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s basically a year abroad, and I spent that year at IBM in New York which was obviously very exciting! I still have good friends from there, and then I went to the UK because I met an Englishman here in Helsinki and we got married and wanted to live in the UK for awhile. 

S: How would you describe your English now, Ulla - is it more UK influenced or US influenced? 

U: I would love to say it’s more UK influence, of course, because of the time that I’ve spent with my husband...and he keeps correcting me if I don’t get it right! 

S: Oh gosh! What sort of things does he correct? 

U: If I say “twenny” instead of “twenty”. I can’t say “liddle”, it has to be “little” et cetera... so yes, but it’s fun! I love the differences, and here at FinnBrit we have a good sort of mixture as well - we have a couple of American teachers and a couple of British teachers and I’m just listening to them... you should take a look at the YouTube “Tony’s Shepherd’s Pie” (actually called ‘Tony and Cynde in the kitchen – shepherd’s pie’) there is one British person and one American person the way they talk about ‘kitchen’ and ‘cooking’, for example, and just the difference in vocabulary... 

S: Absolutely, it can be a real minefield! and it’s like you have to translate from one to the other. 

U: That’s right!
 S: Tell me a little bit more about your work at FinnBrit. 

U: FinnBrit is a fantastic organisation, all of our offerings and activities, the way we work supports our mission and values, and we obviously want to make Finland more welcoming and diverse. We offer English lessons, English language testing, IELTS and Cambridge, and social events, so there is a good mix. 

S: Finland has a good reputation of people who speak a very high level of English, so what type of students do you have - are they just, sort of, high-level advance students, or do you have a mix? 

U: Well, each student is unique, and we also get a lot of non-Finnish students, so from various cultural backgrounds and that was one of the things, I spoke to our teachers about what is hard and what is easy in learning English, and they wanted to stress that I think, you know, students are so unique and each of them gets the individual feedback at FinnBrit that is really the key to learning, so that you know where to improve, how to improve and the feedback is so integrated into the teaching and the way the teacher speaks, that you really 

know to pick up “okay that’s for me, I’ll take that on board next time” type of thing! So, it’s really kind guidance, I would say. 

S: Yes, lovely! What about the social events - what type of things do you offer to people? Is it about learning how we make cakes or something in the UK? 

U: I wish! If we had a proper kitchen here, that’s what we’ve been dreaming about doing! I mean, the events are very diverse obviously the members are diverse, the people who come here are diverse, so we try to cater for many tastes. A lot of the talks centre around English literature and we do have a book club, for example, and they’ve been really popular - the bookclub itself is very popular. We have sports club events, sometimes we do sport ourselves, sometimes we just go and watch a game together, for example cricket or rugby here because they’re not broadcast in Finland, so we gather together and watch those. What else? Musical performances, we have folk club, we have knitting club - knitting is also very popular, once there are like 25 people here and people laughing and chatting and, you know, it’s lovely! 

S: Absolutely! it’s lovely to have a chat while knitting, I think it’s important! U: Yes! 

S: What about your English then, Ulla - what would you improve about your English – vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, punctuation - what would you improve if you could? 

U: I think that I’m trying to focus on three things at the moment: one of them is saying a person’s name more often... it’s a cultural thing, I know. Finns don’t tend to use that, and we almost feel that it’s intimidating if someone keeps repeating our name, but I know that it’s very important when you speak English. And then the other thing would be perhaps using a little bit more colour in my tone of voice, because Finnish is fairly flat language, and I noticed that I was listening into a meeting where there was a male person, a construction person, speaking Finnish but using a lot of tone and rhythm, and it really sounded quite odd 

but in English I know we need to try and remember to do that otherwise we sound like Kimi Räikönnen (famous Finnish F1 driver). 

S: That’s so funny! Why do you think it sounded odd? 

U: It sounded almost too animated, but it’s an interesting... there is a balance that we need to strike in both languages, really but that’s just a difference and I’ve noticed that I speak English fairly flatly, if you like, so.. and then perhaps the third thing is using very simple storytelling techniques like.. words like ‘first’ and ‘then’ and ‘next’, sort of taking the listener with me and I try to, you know, use those now but I’ve only realised it sort of recently, I don’t tend to do that - I’m a Finn and I go straight to the point, and that’s that! So, I think those are my, sort of, key things at the moment! 

S: I think they’re very good ones! Yeah, the idea of storytelling - in Finnish then, is there never an idea of “I’m going to show you the direction of my talk” I’m just going to give you the information? 

U: I mean, it depends on the person of course, but we forget to use words like that. I haven’t analysed it if there is words in Finnish or structures that actually carry the story on without these words but I do need to think about them when I speak English. 

S: I think that’s fascinating, really! Final question then, Ulla - what tips would you give an English learner to help them? 

U: I would say that find your way of learning. Immerse yourself in the language, I mean - I went to Stockholm when I was studying and ... I wanted to learn Swedish. I had a good basing grammar and vocabulary but I was afraid of reacting, didn’t really know what to say - it took me years to construct a sentence.. if somebody asked me “so, what time is it?” and I was all ‘Oh!’ panic... panic at that point, but I went to work with elderly people, because I thought that they wouldn’t speak much English to me, and it did help, it was fantastic. I was on the way to work, I was listening to music and singing along... must’ve looked completely silly (!) but I enjoyed it! My pronunciation got much better, my vocabulary - my active 

vocabulary - got much better and so, find your way of learning - read books, listen to music, singalong... that would be my advice! 

S: I think that’s great advice! Do you still sing along to songs now? U: No, not really!
 S: Ah, why not?
 U: I’m not much of a singer! 

S: That doesn’t matter ... that doesn’t matter at all! Awesome, Ulla, that’s lovely, thank you so much! Is there anything that you would like to add that perhaps we haven’t discussed yet? 

U: Probably not - just enjoy it! I mean, languages give you so much in terms of, you know, in your own thinking... even if you don’t travel anywhere, you stay put, but if you can actually read a book in its original language, or listen to music and understand that, or talk to people... you know, just enjoy it! 

S: I think that’s lush! I think that’s great advice, thank you so much, that’s brilliant! 

(Music) 

I really enjoyed hearing about Ulla’s aims for her own English, it’s good to set yourself goals around grammar, vocabulary and culture! If you are in Finland, check out FinnBrit’s courses and cultural events, joining a knitting club to improve your English is a great idea! FinnBrit: https://finnbrit.fi 

So – following Ulla’s comment about sounding flat when speaking English, this episode’s pronunciation tip is an expression tip. One way to make your English more expressive is to stress the words we call modifiers. Now, modifiers are used to make an adjective stronger 

or weaker... for example, we can say ‘This is good!’‘This is very good!’‘This is so good!’ to make ‘good’ stronger with very and so, or ‘This is difficult’ ‘This is a bit difficult’‘This is fairly difficult’ to make ‘difficult’ weaker with a bit and fairly. 

One modifier we often use is ‘quite’ but did you know that ‘quite’ can have 3 different meanings depending on how you say it? Let me show you how... 

First: What I expected = “This programme is quite interesting.” The stress is the same for every word. I understand that the programme is not the best, but it’s ok. 

Next: Less than I expected = “This programme is quite interesting.” The stress is up for ‘quite’ and down for ‘interesting’. Here, I understand that I expected the programme to be more interesting but, in fact, it was not very interesting and a bit disappointing. 

Finally: More than I expected = “This programme is quite interesting!” The stress this time is down for ‘quite’ and up for ‘interesting’. Now, I understand that we thought the programme would be a bit boring, but it was actually interesting! 

So – three different ways to say ‘quite’. Think of 3 different situations – one expected, one less than expected, and one more than expected – and then create sentences with ‘quite’ so you can use the different stresses – flat, up-down (‘quite interesting’) and down-up (‘quite interesting’). It’s quite fun! 

Over to you to practice! 

So there we are! The transcript of this episode is available to read on the podcast’s webpage, so take a look! 

Join me next time for more pronunciation and grammar tips, more advice and, most importantly, more chatting! 

My thanks again to Ulla and, for her music, a massive thanks to the wonderful Mara Carlyle. Bye for now!