ANNOUNCER:
It's time for English Makeover from BBC World Service.
In this series, learners of English from around the world tell us their language problems. And
there's advice for them and you, from experienced teacher of English, Karen Adams.
Clip: Karen Adams
Hi, I’m Karen Adams and I’m an English language teacher and teacher trainer. The English
Makeover learners will be telling me about their problems and well…I’ll see what I can do to help.
ANNOUNCER:
Our learner today is Mohammed Ibrahim [bad word] from Afghanistan, and lives in the UK.
Presenter Vicki Sullivan went to meet him at work, to find out how we could help him to
improve his English.
Clip: Mohammed Ibrahim
My name is Mohammed Ibrahim. My surname is Gafari. I’m from Afghanistan. I have been
living in the United Kingdom for the last three years.
I go to college and have a job of taxi driver. I go to college in the days in the morning. In the
evening at 6 o clock I begin my work as a taxi driver.
Vicki: Ibrahim is at college in London where he studies economics. But in the
evenings he works as a taxi driver. I visited him at the taxi rank.
Clip: Vicki interviews Mohammed Ibrahim about his English language skills
VICKI: Obviously you’re driving around, picking up people, taking them places and you do
this job, presumably, just as a way to earn some money?
IBRAHIM: Yes, the main thing is that I don't want to depend on social welfare. As a young
man I have the energy and power to work and earn money and support myself and my family.
VICKI: When you first came here and first started working and studying here, did you find it
difficult using English all of the time? Did you think that your English wasn't good enough?
IBRAHIM: When I entered in this business I must say that it's the [bad word] job for
foreigners. Some problems for finding the place [bad word] with different people,
different background. The majority of our customers are English people. [bad word] in
English.
VICKI: How long have you been learning English? Did you learn English before you came to
Britain or only when you came?
IBRAHIM: I've had some English knowledge in my country, in Afghanistan, just the basic
things. But when I came here I started learning from the beginning because the accent and the
procedure of learning English in my country was too much different.
VICKI: Ok, so you really started to learn properly and to improve when you came here. Do
you think you have any specific problems with your English that you would like help with?
IBRAHIM: As far as I know my written and reading English is, I don’t feel, any sort of
problem. But my spoken English is a bit poor. Maybe that because I never socialised with
English people, but with customers during my work almost all the time they use slang words
which is very difficult for a foreigner to understand. They don’t pronounce fully a word so the
majority of people they use different terminology. And the other thing is they use
abbreviations, they don’t use the full word, which is very hard for a foreigner to understand the
meaning. Sometime if you just repeat it or frequently ask the same thing they get annoyed and
they disappointed.
VICKI: OK. So you have a problem with understanding people when they use informal
language, slang language and maybe when they speak very fast if they speak informally. And
what about your own speaking? Do you think you have enough knowledge of slang to speak
informally? Or would you like to increase your knowledge of that?
IBRAHIM; Well honestly I want to improve it much more than the stage which I am at right
now.
Vicki: You’ve just heard Mohammed Ibrahim from Afghanistan talking about his
problems with English slang and abbreviations. Time to consult expert teacher, Karen Adams.
..
Группа Learning English. Продолжение транскрипта:  [bad word] /downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/webcast/makeover_prog7.pdf