Exercise and General Purpose Gripping Aids

There are video reviews on active hands products here: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHiEN9jrDvPrT0I1tOZkbCDhSd50RPA_ . Seeing the products in use may be helpful to some. Not sure if the reviewer is a member here but he has a bunch of other videos as well.

Yes, but it's not all just about pronunciation. I'm trying to think back about idioms that put foreigners on a completely wrong track. For example,..."Head over to Arlington tomorrow". ""Head over" might as well be a dog barking, because it's an idiomatic expression that no foreigners use. Or, "buckle down", or "laid out a plan", or "spin the story". After a year and a half in nursing homes with almost 100% foreigners, my English had become quite colorless.

For my foreign-language friends, I do the same as what you described. Previously though, I was talking about the personnel in the nursing homes. They mostly tried to get through the day with as little communication with me as possible. Any misunderstanding resulted in my own loss. Attempts on my part to clear anything up was not appreciated. They weren't there to improve their English. So, I spoke as simply as possible.

I so agree, Gareth. I went even beyond that concept when I had the opportunity. While living in south america, many Koreans moved into any available house or apartment in my neighborhood. For the last year that I lived in that neighborhood, I learned as much of their language as I could, even learning to write Korean and use their dictionary -- written in the Korean alphabet. Later, back in the US, I got a job working for a Korean insurance agency. I was hired mainly because I could set up appointments in Korean, when the caller didn't speak English. My other job was to file correspondence from customers,.. the files being kept in alphabetical order, but the order of the Korean alphabet (hangul), since the customers wrote their names in Korean on the envelopes when they sent in their payments.

Soooo I lost all my log in details and had to create a new account, doh!