After doing my shopping today, I was approached by a young couple. They were from Argentina, and were travelling round Ireland as part of their journey across Europe. They were looking for the apartment they were couchsurfing in (I hate giving directions in Galway, as there are too many small, non-parallel streets, and no-one in Galway knows streetnames apart from the best-known ones).

I spoke with them for a bit and was impressed by their level of English. I knew immediately that they were Spanish speakers, but they spoke quite fluently, and were very easy to understand. Of course they made some tiny errors, none of which affected my ability to understand them, and I probably didn’t notice some other errors. That can actually be a drawback to teaching English: you get so used to some of the more common errors that you stop noticing them. Continue reading →