Morning lovely :)

You can read this short letter now or get back to it after you read what I wrote below. I'll leave the choice to you :)

“My wife and I dated only eight months before we got married partly because we were so aligned, and our communication was so seamless and strong.

18 months into our marriage and we were confronted with the sobering reality that our communication was actually not very good. We talk and share all the time, but that’s only part of communication.

What was missing was the understanding on my part that communicating isn’t always, like you said, solving an issue or offering your perspective, rather it is listening and giving space to the person you are communicating with to feel heard and understood.

I had spent the previous ten years thinking I was emotionally evolved and vulnerable, and that I was an excellent communicator. Turns out that I just really loved to talk and thought people were clamoring to hear my perspective.

Over the last two months my wife and I have been able to identify this as an area of need in our relationship and our communication has improved by leaps and bounds.”

This part is from a newsletter I like to read.

Why do I like to read it?

For 2 reasons.

#1 - Mark usually poses very interesting and pondering questions that make me think about how I go about my day, business, teaching, and life and I love that.

#2 - I like to be exposed to the natural English from his letters. Just like this one, from the letter from above. It's a natural language that came from one of his readers and I love to notice new and interesting words, phrases, and structures natives use :).

So, can you notice some interesting stuff about the text above?

Any interesting words...

phrases...

or ways to express an opinion...?

This is what I found interesting :)

• communication was so seamless and strong - I reminded myself that the noun communication goes well with adjectives seamless and strong
• another great collocation (verb + noun) - to offer a perspective
• new word - clamoring; verb - to clamor - to make a loud and confused noise, especially that of people shouting

And now, I'll put these into my language bank and since I'm not in the mood right now, I'll wait for another opportunity to practice them.

That's it.

By noticing and writing it down we are signaling to our brain that it's something important to us and by doing so we are making it more likely for us to remember it.

Next time, I'll just check the examples on Youglish and make some of my own.

Hope this helps you in your learning journey :)

And if you're still reading this, here's a short bonus quiz for sticking with me till the end :)

Take the quiz

Until next week

xoxo