Welcome to Mountain Sky English Perspectives!

My name is Susan Hannah. I love traveling and learning about different cultures. I learned a lot about many countries from my father who had the opportunity to go to five of the seven continents. I remember seeing pictures and items from around the world. My dad and I both liked learning languages and perhaps this was partly due to his parents being immigrants. Even though my father was first generation American, his English wasn't always the best. He was fluent but had some challenges with pronunciation of some words and the meaning of others. I was the first in my family to go to college and graduate. Even though I studied psychology first, I never lost my love of culture and language. I have studied several Romance languages and two Slavic ones. I understand the difficulty of learning a language very different from my own. It feels confusing to me in several ways but I enjoy the differences and similarities among all languages.

Blog purpose

I will be sharing some little tips and tricks for improving your English abilities in my upcoming blogs. It seems that this language has many rules and almost as many exceptions. English has an interesting history and, like many languages, continues to add new words and leave older words behind.

English among the Americans

Because the United States is such a large country, there are regional differences in the way Americans speak. I remember living in the state of Georgia and hearing a gentleman pronounce a word that I had never heard. I was hearing "wyer" and it was a word that I did not know in that form. In my part of the US, I had learned the word as "wire". It wasn't until he picked up a piece of it that I could understand what he meant.

I'm from the Northeastern part of the country and in my area, the word "water" is pronounced as "wudder". It's usually very easy to understand where someone is from when you hear the word pronounced this way. When I moved to the Southwest, I heard people pronounce the word as "wawter". I admit that I still prefer to say it the way I learned as a child, but every now and then I am able to say "wawter" just like so many others out here.

My approach to teaching

One last thing is that many people who have never studied another language think that learning English is easy because it's all they have ever known. English is a very challenging language and because it is used in so many different types of work, it is becoming more and more necessary to learn. Everyone learns in their own way and at their own pace. I meet people where they are. If you need help practicing your English, then we can do that. If you need to improve your writing for business or university, then that can be our focus. My work with students is to help them reach their goals. Many of us, myself included, do only what we need. There's nothing wrong with that. Learning a new language can be very scary. I know what it's like to want to say the right word and not be sure exactly what to say. I understand what a risk it is and I want to empower people to communicate as they want.

I am very grateful to have met my wonderful students. My work allows me to learn about culture and language from all around the world. My grandmother once said: "Education is something that no one can every take away." As I do this work, I honor her words and help people get the gift of empowerment with English. I invite you to schedule a lesson and move forward on your journey to improve your English or leave a comment.