I teach English as a foreign language and if any of my students wrote the same way you do I'd cry with joy. You have no problems with accuracy but if you're having trouble speaking then it's fluency you need a hand with. Conversation classes would be a good place to start or as someone mentioned just chatting to someone over the phone or zoom.

Also if you really want to expand your vocabulary, try learning lists of phrasal verbs. Even my most advanced students find them difficult, but native speakers use them all the time so it helps with understanding and will make your English sound more natural.

Thanks for these!

You know it's funny, I live in a place with no extreme temperatures but that's really wet and I've realised that we don't have shoes to match our climate at all. Lots of people have recommended boots to me (which is a great shout, don't get me wrong!) but I already have a lovely pair of waterproof winter boots that I have already gotten resoled once by a brilliant cobbler. I'm specifically looking for sneakers that are waterproof because boots are too warm and life's too short to hang around all day in a pair of wet canvas shoes (remember it doesn't have to be raining for feet to get wet - one step in long grass or a puddle will do it).

It's why I love my eccos and have bought so many pairs (now on my fifth). It just seems so wasteful to drop them in the bin when the stitching goes on them.

These are great! Thanks superkret :)

Browse tumblr. Haven't found my niche yet on lemmy. I'm also learning a new language on Duolingo and am halfway through Ulysses!

Not only that but they seem to be the last place considered for tech updates which would make the system faster and better at helping people.

Once I visited their office where I told them my name and they looked me up on a printed out Excel spreadsheet while sitting in front of a computer 😭 like girl, that list is on a searchable database right in front of you. Why are you looking for my name with a pencil.

Not exactly as a customer, but trying to access welfare when I was off work long term sick was a fucking nightmare. I don't mind filling in forms but dealing with the people in that government department was the most demoralising experience of my life. I cried on the phone once because of how rude one of the agents was to me. They're being rude and unhelpful to people who are sick and out of work. What a way to kick the most vulnerable people in society when they're down.

I finally got what I was owed and I've delayed filing a complaint about them because I just never wanted to deal with them again but it's about time I bring out my inner Karen because they're probably still traumatising people that need financial help.

Thanks for your detailed answer, I really liked it. Apologies if this question was offensive to you, I had this discussion recently and it made me think a lot about how much time I spend using my literacy skills vs getting around. Then it got me thinking about how accessible lots of buildings where I live are. A friend of mine had a family member come to visit in a wheelchair recently and pointed out that lots of places that tourists usually visit are exempt from accessibility requirements because they're situated in older buildings. One of my biggest shames in one of my previous jobs was being told I had to turn down a group of students coming to take a course in the school I was working in because we couldn't accommodate one of their classmates in a wheelchair. Like, my gut tells me that's straight up illegal 🫤 but maybe where I live it's not. I left that job not long after so I don't know if there were any repercussions.

There's a big push to revitalise the city I live in at the moment regarding opening up public spaces and making them more attractive to citizens and this is something that I haven't seen discussed openly in relation to that yet so I will keep an eye out for it!

Would you, in your situation currently, survive financially if you woke up tomorrow without the ability to read or write?

This pizza place opened in an area that is flush with well established takeaway spots. We ordered from it once and it was BAD. The bases were frozen and the meat was clearly sandwich meat from a supermarket. Whenever we pass it by, it's open but there are NEVER any customers.

The online reviews are bizarre, they're either one star reviews with detailed explanations of how shitty the food is or 5 star reviews with no comments.

Yet somehow this place is STILL open despite being surrounded by superior competition and always being empty. There is absolutely no way it's not a front for something.

Drive!!! What a gorgeous film. I was about to comment that it's my most rewatched too.

For context, NCBI is the National Council for the Blind of Ireland. It's an NGO.

Oh god this is depressing. I used to immediately go on reddit to see if anyone else had read it and read what they thought 🤣

Apart from that I wear the ear off my partner about the writing and the themes and the cultural context and how reading it in the 21st century changes the text. I rarely write down what I thought of a book, but that actually sounds like quite a nice thing to do.