9: Tips for learning English

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 9 of Intermediate English. So far during the series we've talked about lots of different subjects but something that we haven't talked about too much is how to learn a language. We talked about this a bit in episode 1 why you should learn English but I wanted to go back to this idea and develop it. Try to go a bit deeper into the reasons why different techniques work better than others and also to share some ideas about the best way to do this. First there are lots of different approaches to learning a language and languages used to be taught and learned in a very different way from the way that they are today or the ways that they are today. That's true in the UK and I think it's also true around the world. The way of teaching languages that was popular until really the middle of the 20th century is called the Grammar Translation Method. This method comes from the way that ancient languages were taught specifically ancient Greek and Latin to languages that were really important in Europe for the past couple of thousand years allowing people from different backgrounds to communicate with each other. Russian was a language that was used by scholars to communicate with each other to write letters to each other and all of the great texts of the ancient world were written in either ancient Greek or Latin. In a way Latin was the original global language before English and it played a sort of role that English plays now for example in universities. So the way that languages were taught for much of the past thousand years was based on the way that ancient Greek and Latin were taught and for understanding those well firstly they were primarily written languages they weren't spoken languages or at least they weren't spoken for the past millennium and a half. The way that they were taught really influenced the way that other foreign languages were taught. So Grammar was the method by which languages were learnt and translation was the ultimate goal of learning the language to be able to translate from the foreign language into your own so that's why it was called the Grammar Translation Method. First you would learn a grammatical feature then you would use that grammatical feature to practice translation into English or into your native language and finally you could show off your skills by reversing that and translating from your native language into the foreign language which is also called the target language. And this was a popular method well into the 20th century in fact it's still taught today around the world and it really influences the way that foreign languages are taught. Let me explain why I think that this is not the best way to teach a foreign language. The issue is that it focuses entirely on written texts and mainly on the skill of reading and not even that much on writing. That just isn't a realistic way to learn a language and then use a language. For example it doesn't really help you when you travel to another country if you're just an expert in translating written texts. It doesn't help you to speak to people and it doesn't help you to express yourself. It also changes the way that you think about the language. For example it means that you categorize the foreign language according to grammar not according to the things that you want to express. I'll explain a little bit more about what I mean by that. I think that the best approach is one which is based on communication and that means using all four skills, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. And instead of organising the language in your brain according to grammar you should organise it according to realistic communicative goals. For example at the more basic end you could organise your study around going to a restaurant or describing what you did yesterday for example those would be topics you could learn and a more advanced topic could be presenting your view on global warming, environmental challenges or perhaps explaining your religious beliefs. These are all things that might happen in everyday life when you're communicating with someone in English. That doesn't mean that grammar isn't important. It just means that you should learn grammar as a way of achieving these goals. Rather than organising your entire learning of English around grammatical features. So if you're going to organise your learning around communication here are a few tips for how you can improve your learning. The first one is that you should try to immerse yourself in English. That means practising every day for a short period. That's a lot more successful than doing one long session of English once a week. So 30 minutes a day would be a lot better than 5 hours every Saturday for example. The thing that counts is the regularity with which you speak English rather than doing it for a very long time. And that also helps because it mirrors the way that English is really spoken. If you live here for example you're not going to speak it for 6 hours at a time or if you do that's going to be a pretty unusual situation. What's more likely is that you will speak a bit of English every day in various different scenarios in different situations. Another way of immersing yourself in English if you can afford it is to visit an English speaking country. And while you're there, put yourself in situations where you need to use your English. These take opportunities to respond to people and develop and extend conversations with them. Don't just give one word answers but express an opinion and ask a question. You should also try to take advantage of any social circles you have with English speakers in them. When I say social circles I mean groups of friends and people that you know. So if you know any English speakers take the opportunity to work on your English with them. My second suggestion for you is that you find a way of learning English that you enjoy, one that matches up with your interest, one that fits your interests. The cultures of English speakers, anglophone cultures are so broad that whatever your interests you can certainly find a parallel in the English language. I think it's really important to engage with something that interests you because this makes the work effortless. You don't really notice that you're working on the language. If you're not aware that you're learning then you might actually be learning really well. This is an approach to language that's often called content-based. That means it's focused on the content, on the material. And it means that you're using the language to find out about other things rather than directly studying the language which can be pretty dull. My third suggestion is that you vary the kind of learning that you do. So that means that you do it in lots of different ways. You combine different resources or you listen to different people, watch different programs, speak with different people, whatever it is, find variety in the way that you're learning English. My fourth suggestion is that you speak as much as you can. I think a lot of language learning is quite focused on reading and listening. And actually when you speak you are using so many different parts of the language at once. There are applications you could use like tandem. When you sign up to this you say which language or languages you speak and which languages you want to learn. With the app you can message or call native English speakers and chat with them. It's great for speaking the language but it's also great for meeting new people and finding out about their experiences. So yeah, speaking is really, really important and it also gets you to think about other things like what kind of register you should be using. That's something we talked a bit about in the episode on politeness, whether you are speaking formally or informally, whether you're talking to your boss or you're talking to your friends. You have to use a different type of English. Well when you're listening or reading then you probably are not having to worry too much about whether you are using the right register or not but when you speak you get lots of practice in using the right register. One thing I'd say about speaking is it's normal that you want to build up a bit of confidence in the language before you start speaking which is great. Wait a little bit until you have heard and read enough English to feel that you would know what to say in a conversation but equally you should be pushing yourself and you should try to engage with other people and at one point it's just the right moment to try to speak. And remember that other people, English speakers, when they listen to you they will be understanding that this isn't your first language, it isn't your native language and that you might make mistakes. Well making mistakes is something that we all do, it's a really important part of learning a language and it's completely fine. I mean it's something that is just expected when you learn a new language, nobody learns a language and then speaks it perfectly. We all make mistakes so don't worry at all about that. My final suggestion is that you should make sure that the language input is at the right level, what input means is the language that you are reading or listening to. This means two things, firstly it should be at the right level in terms of something that you find engaging and not to childish or to patronising. For this reason children's books might not be the best thing to start with. Secondly, you should make sure that the input is at the right linguistic level. So that means that if you're struggling to understand anything then it's probably too complex for you. Equally if you understand everything then it might be too easy for you and it's time for you to move on to a different resource which is going to challenge you more. But the more complex versions of English aren't always the more formal versions. In fact often the hardest thing can be understanding someone who is speaking colloquially or perhaps with a strong accent that you aren't familiar with. So that means if you're trying to challenge yourself you could do things like watching comedians or different kinds of films or series in English. That's because comedy can be something that's quite challenging to appreciate in another language. So if you're able to get your head around English comedy, British comedy. When we say get your head around it means to understand. If you're able to get your head around British comedy or American or English speaking comedy then you're really grasping the language and speaking it and understanding it at a high level. And I think that's a really important step to go through to become an advanced English speaker. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you did, don't forget to let us know or give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. We'd really love to hear from you and we really enjoy receiving your comments and your feedback so keep it up. If there's a topic that you'd like us to explore then let us know and we'll try and make it happen. So have a great week and we'll speak to you soon. [Music]