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The Monday Byte
Are you working two FT jobs?
Welcome to the Monday Byte where I send you 5 things each week so you can improve your English and land a remote dev job.
š Word/Phrase - overemployment
I donāt know where I first heard this but itās a trend thatās happening (or been happening) where someone holds two full-time jobs simultaneously. I donāt think this is legal in most cases but some people do it.
Read this article if you want to dive in more.
š¬ Pronunciation - Identify Your Worst Sounds
One thing Iāve been doing to improve my own pronunciation [in Spanish] is figuring out what are my worst sounds. By that, I simply mean the ones Iām saying wrong.
Hereās how Iām doing it:
Find a video you like and get the transcript/subtitles
Record yourself reading it
Listen back and analyze for anything that sounds off
With that list of words, ask ChatGPT to look for patterns
And now that you have the patterns, you can start to isolate what you actually need to practice. For instance, I learned that I was pronouncing diphthongs incorrectly in Spanish.
Then I found a YouTube video ā learned how to do it correctly and fixed my bad habit!
š£ļø Real World Conversation - Learning to Read Error Messages
If I think reading error messages is hard, how hard does it feel for you as a non-native speaker? š±
Remember how I told you weāre recording ourselves at work and having a coach watch and give us feedback? One thing my mentor pointed out was error messages. He said oftentimes I didnāt stop to read them.
And I realizedā¦he was right. I wasnāt reading them because I didnāt understand them š Itās always hard to understand error messages when youāre using a new language. And when English isnāt your first language
So goal is to do some deliberate practice this week and improve my error reading skills. I suggest you do the same! I think itāll help us both level up.
š Content - System Design Interviews
When I was prepping for system design interviews, the Exponent YouTube channel was extremely helpful. Most of their interviews are by native English speakers too. This is a great way to test your technical vocabulary and make sure youāre ready for system design interviews.
Enjoy the week, weāll talk again soon.
- Joe
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