Piano Tuning and English Learning - Kenneth | Learn English at EnglishCafe

Today I have my piano tuner at my house. He's tuning the piano as I write this blog post. Here's a short audio of his work:

It's a job that requires quite a bit of patience! He has to make sure that each note is in harmony with the rest of the notes on the piano. Here he is playing thirds to make sure to check the work he's done so far:

There are 88 keys, so that's a lot of tuning to do. My piano tuner, Chris, comes once a year to tune my piano. The piano has been used quite a bit this year, and it's a more difficult job this time. In fact, he's been working for the past ninety minutes and still hasn't finished!  

I really enjoy playing the piano, but it takes a lot of practice. I guess that makes playing the piano just like learning English. The more you practice and play, the better you become and the wider range of emotions you can express with your piano (or language skills).  

Here are a few hints on how you can tune-up your English.  

Making Sure the Notes are in Tune

Notes on the piano are like the words you use when speaking. In order to keep your vocabulary in tune, you'll need to brush up on some vocabulary. Start with the basics (here's a link of the top 1000 words) and then build up your vocabulary by learning words in related groups (here's a related blog post on learning vocabulary in groups).  

On the piano it's important to be able to play scales. Collocations (words that go together) are much like scales. Learn which words go together. Here's a list of a number of posts I've created focusing on various collocations.

 Collocations Explained

 Collocations Listening: Monsters

 Do, Play or Go?  

Getting the Harmony Right

Chris plays chords to make sure that my piano is in tune. Verb usage is very much like chords. You need to make sure you line up verbs in the correct order, keep in the same tense and order them correctly. By using the correct tenses the harmony (the way your language fits together) will be in tune. Here's a quick overview of verb tenses to help out.

Getting the Rhythm Right

Once the piano has been tuned, and it's ready to be played you need to add rhythm to the notes to make the melody interesting. Rhythm in English is the way you stress certain words in a sentence. This post provides information on using rhythm to improve your pronunciation skills.  

I find it really helps to imagine language as music. I hope this comparison between tuning and playing the piano and speaking using English help you think about English in a more musical fashion.