all right
hello everyone and welcome to our live
jessica is going to give us a link real
quick
so we can share it on some extra
platforms
and then we will get going
yeah we are all set it looks like
let me go and 
Okay I think I've got it
Okay maybe in the meantime you can start
all right so jessica can you give us
the link to share on all of our pages
in the meantime hello everyone
welcome to our live language tips
sharing caring group
so um today
we're talking uh with jessica
joe and simone about how
um how we can learn languages
we're
why do - I why am i hearing myself?
because i use it yes it's freaking me
out
okay guys i dropped the link in the chat
in the in the live
so you can you can 
and i'm finishing the blurb about Simone
so what's happening that's causing it to
echo
i think it's the facebook link
is everybody gonna echo like this what's
happening
yeah i think someone needs to mute
the screen in facebook
okay so i'm still hearing me so it's not me
Who else has it open?
okay there it's better!
all right so let me
um put in the link in the chat here
uh the links to all of our groups guys
if you're watching this live or if
you're watching it later
there will be links to four different
websites
and we'll tell you about those as we go
along
so today let's start
by introducing um
taking a quick second for everybody to
introduce themselves
um jessica can you
start please yes okay so
hello everybody my name is uh jessica
mirai
and i live in in tokyo japan
i'm a japanese teacher and
i'm super excited to be here
that is fabulous and
while we are the rest of us are
introducing ourselves
um we would love to know where you guys
are from
too so if you could um
if you could drop in the comments uh
something telling us where you are from
that would be fabulous! Yeah I'd
like to know where where you're watching
this live
That will be amazing right? wouldn't that be
cool?
so um i am so let's see
uh jo uh you are next
our guest one of our guests for the day
can you introduce yourself? 
i can so i'm jo
i'm here in new zealand far south um
and i am an english language teacher
i'm a little bit of a language learner
but not much
because i did a very terrible job of
that um
not like you lovely ladies um so i'm an
english language teacher and i have a
lovely lovely group
um a speaking group of women who want to
practice speaking english
they're from all around the world and i
can see quite a few of them on here
already it's so nice
lovely new person i think that - i'm not
sure if i'm pronouncing your name
correctly. i'm sure i'll meet you soon
so we have a few lovely ladies here from
india
kurdistan um azerbaijan so
welcome ladies nice to have you oh and
that is so cool
but this is this is something different
for us we usually at this time on a at
this time of the day we're having our um
one of our zoom meetings where the
ladies come and have a chat so
this is something different they can
listen to us chatting!
thank you so much you guys for doing
this it's a really nice idea
yes thank you so um
simone can you tell us about you
yes so my name is simone i am
danish and i grew up both in denmark and
in germany
so i grew up bilingual and then later on
i moved to los angeles
and now i've been living in denmark for
the past
i don't know how many years - decades
though
um well this is more than a decade but
yeah
what if um and yeah so i've been
teaching german for 14 years now
um and i used to correct
um the ninth graders uh exams i was
hired by the state to correct them for
nine years
and i just quit last year um
so yeah so i've been doing this language
game for a long time i've also taught
english
because yeah it's
language like teaching is very similar
and
so i grew up in danish german and
english school so i grew up with all
three languages
so i figured it would make sense to
teach english as well
and i've taught everyone from like
regular schools to um schools for
kids with like autism adhd - some
criminals as well and
i've also taught future ambassadors and
i actually taught the securities former
security guard uh
head of head of security back in the day
that was kind of cool so i've been
teaching very
widely and differently so yeah
yeah and now i moved on to coaching but
i still do a little bit of teaching
every once in a while because
yeah that was really neat
yeah that's really good thank you yeah
thank you for having me this is so much
fun
i guess i should introduce myself i
didn't think about you
didn't it yeah maybe so i'm janet
wall-myers um
i have a youtube channel uh janet's home
for english
i work um as a um
english teacher uh english as a second
language
and um in the past i've done uh
private tutoring um and
i love languages so language teaching
makes sense to me
because um i, like jo
was not successful initially as
a language learner i struggled
and i cried and
i got horrible grades and i was
miserable um
I got good grades!
i did not - but i couldn't speak a word
great grades my grammar fantastic
vocabulary very good i just couldn't
speak
i couldn't really do anything
so you were i would say you were ahead
of me um
but that's that's what we're talking
about today is
um tips for learning languages
um so that maybe um
through our struggles you will have an
easier time
yeah that's what i do um so we're gonna
talk and give us
we're gonna give you some tips that
we've learned along the way
um and then at the end we've received a
couple of questions that we're going to
talk about
as a group okay so
um jessica can you start us out
and give us some of your tips
yes of course girl and
well in okay maybe this one
okay well as you know i'm here in japan
obviously i'm a japanese
guide - i like to call me like a
guide coach because more than a teacher
and it's because of all these uh
paddlebeasts all the time that i have
been following
in order to be able to live in japan
because i'm not japanese
so it took me a long time -
a lot a lot of years to master
the language and then to be able to
find a job and to be here so
um in order to do that
as i as you said like the the learning
language could be very frustrating to
tell you the truth
in my case my mother tongue is spanish
so if you compare it with the japanese
that have pictograms
in order to to be able to write and to
read this was
like awful awful but what
helped me - that this is my tip number one
is align my hobbies with my
language learning why because
when you're studying a language okay
there's some points in your life when
you think
you are going to give up
you are going to give up but if
if in some way you make your hobbies
to be together in your language you're learning
that will motivate you that that will
motivate you in the future
for example for me is the anime the
anime all
animal stuff was my like
my it's my hobby and it was my
motivation
to learn japanese but to tell you the
truth guys
if er like usually and for the japanese
students
let me tell you if there are japanese
students that don't like anime
it doesn't need to be anime it could be
anything
it could be golf it could be tennis it
could be soccer
everything that you are have a hobby at
you have the same thing
in japanese and you can start learning
the language looking at your hobbies in
the language
in the target language that you want to
learn right
number one tip number two guys
i have a question everybody's always
asking me
how long did it take you to learn
japanese and i always say the same thing
it depends on the person
it depends on how how uh how uh
your ability to learn your language many
things
you cannot compare with any other person
so don't compare yourself with any other
person when you're
learning a language plus you need to
understand which
type of a language method do you have
it's useful for you to learn
for example for me in japan in japan
there's a
learning method or the teachers have a
teaching method that is very specific
and usually in my home country they were
using that same method
but for me i'm a visual person and this
world was
useless to tell you the truth
to me it took me like
many years to realize that i'm visual
person
and in order to learn the kanjis i
even though i like to write candies the
kanjis
were not the like writing the kanjis
a thousand times it was not the best
idea
to learn it in fact what i look for
there are
visual cards in which it has all the
kanjis
and i i wrote one kanji in my pocket
every day to learn the kanjis and every
day i was taking out and
checking the kanji what's the meaning
useful a
sentence for it that way until i
learned that i was a visual person and i
focus all my learning methods to that
specific
method then i started to learn and it
was like
wow it was a game changer guys
so i mean people need to understand that
they have different
learning methods and they need to
incorporate that
into their daily learning studies like
methods and jessica you you made
a youtube video about that yes yes yes i
do that
yeah a video in my in my in my youtube
channel at the japaneta
if you are if you want to learn japanese
maybe you can
uh take a look at my channel
so um definitely make sure you post the
link
yeah um i will drop the link in the in
the comment section
and and also another
thing that i want to mention is
about the learning environment i think
that every student needs to create their
own learning environment thankfully
now in in nowadays the technology
is super useful so we can create our
environment through joining groups in
facebook
also one thing for the people that are
learning japanese
please look for twitter in japanese
don't
use facebook to connect to interact
you need to go to twitter
that's a very interesting point i don't
know a joke
because we are all in different
countries
in each country they use different
platforms to communicate
right like like it might like people
usually think that it's facebook but no
usually you need to look in the target
language
of the country that you want to learn
that the language
what platform what social media they are
using to communicate between each other
right exactly if you want to connect
with the japanese
then i highly recommend that you go to
twitter
and make a twitter account and start
writing in japanese even in hiragana
i would never have thought about that
yeah yeah
it's super interesting so they always
tell me like
which facebook group can i join so i can
talk with the japanese no they are not
in facebook they are in sweden
wow cool
i've noticed i've noticed that chinese
um
speakers for learning chinese they are
also not on facebook
if you want to find them and you go to
wechat very scary
yeah yeah yeah
yeah i don't think we have anybody from
japan in our and our women's group
we've got 600 and something people in
the group and i don't think
i'm not aware of any from japan that
have come
differently yeah it's it's definitely
unusual but now you know twitter
is their place japanese
and and sorry my last tip is about the
your best hours of studying
oh that is a great tip that was my
favorite from your video
it's about your vaginal biological clock
i mean have you ever seen like whenever
you woke up
and there are some times that you put
your alarm your clock
your in the morning and sometimes you
don't you wake up
even if you don't put your uh clog like
your
your body is already used to that right
to wake up at the same time and you're
like
even one second before the alarm is it
starts to ring like you're
you're awake so the same thing
it's called like when you are learning a
language
there are some times in the day in which
you are more efficient
learning and you can realize because
sometimes you are just like
so for example for me my my
my more efficient hours to learn is in
the morning time like right now
if i were to learn a language i will
wake up really early
and start reading a book or whatever i
do to learn
so if i try to do this at 12
maybe after the launch i will be
laughing
that's what would happen if i would try
in the morning
yeah okay is it hard like night people
like i cannot at night also i cannot i
cannot
but at six six pm in the in the evening
maybe it's okay but mornings for me is
that so
you need to check at which time of the
day you're more efficient
to learn most definitely yeah that's it
girls
so exactly so everybody post in the
comments and let us know
which you are are you a morning person
are you a night owl when do you learn
best
and i'm curious um so jessica's a
morning
i'm a knight so joe
simone what are you late night
nights lately and girls in my group know
this i've been burning the candle at
both ends
so that means you're working early and
late
but jessica
uh right now it's 5 22 a.m in japan
yeah she's a real morning
yeah like it's it's amazing how we are
from different
countries yeah in the part of the world
actually different dates for us as well
yeah for you it's september and for us
it's still august
that's why she has such great tips
so yeah here in new zealand it's the
first day of spring today
wow really first yeah
oh my goodness here it's starting to
feel a little bit more like fall
is it yeah here too
so so joe what tips do you have for us
no i don't i was thinking about this
because
i've been really focused on um speaking
lately i'm just
really got very very interested in the
idea of how to help people to speak
i've been teaching english for ages ages
ages like 20 something years
and i studied all about teaching english
and got
qualified a long time ago and the thing
that made me
really excited going right i've got to
do something about this was last year
and this is so embarrassed
you know i as i said to you i'm not a
very good language learner so i got good
grades i studied french and high school
i studied italian at university
i've studied a little bit of spanish
just like using apps and things like
that
and listening because i had some
colombian students
beautiful colombian students here in new
zealand
and so i used to listen to them a lot
and i could understand them a little bit
and gave them a few frights when i was
listening to their conversations
so i knew a bit of spanish and i can
speak a little bit of thai
because i lived in thailand when i was
young
but i've never really
like for french italian and spanish i've
never had the opportunity to speak
so i know quite a lot of french i can
read french a little bit and i can
understand quite a bit
and same with spanish i can you know if
i'm watching a movie or
reading reading a book or reading signs
and menus i'm like oh yeah i'm not too
bad i'm
you know low intermediate kind of level
probably
but then last year trip of a lifetime it
was so exciting my husband and i
went to spain for a holiday we were
visiting some friends and we went to
spain for a little holiday
and we went to paris for just for a
weekend it was so
so beautiful but it was so
terrible i couldn't speak a word i could
you know my pronunciation was quite good
so i could sort of say hello and you
know
and then they'd ask me a question i got
oh
i don't know you know i would try to i
couldn't do anything it was just
terrible and i was so
embarrassed and the worst thing was
terrible that i was so busy
trying to remember like the correct verb
to use and oh
what what verb ending do i need here and
i was thinking like that
my brain was going like this and my
husband's going
you can't even speak english at the
moment what's wrong with you
he thought it was really funny so just
like your meltdown
yeah absolutely my whole my brain just
was going
crazy and i was trying to remember the
correct word
and trying to remember the grammar and
make it perfect and make sure i was
pronouncing everything right and
i just couldn't speak at all and it was
just really embarrassing for a language
teacher i just thought oh my goodness
so after that and i it made me think
because i had
quite a few students who really
struggled with speaking
in new zealand they were they would come
and you knew they could understand but
they would just be
quite silent and there actually is a
very very well documented stage
and language learning it's the silent
phase that you just listen
and you read and you listen and you read
and you listen and then finally you're
ready for speaking
so i was thinking about that going well
how can i help
people get out of that silence because
it's so
it feels awful you feel like i don't
know
like you're in a coma or there's
something wrong with you you know that
because
the world's going on and you can't you
can't contribute you can't interact and
so i really that was when i decided
right i want to
focus on speaking and focus on helping
people who have some language already
to be able to speak because lots of
people have studied english for
years they studied all the way through
school they studied it at university
but they can't speak and i just thought
yeah it's a horrible feeling to have
all of that lovely knowledge and then
you can't speak so
that's my real passion is trying to help
people to speak
and my big tip for you is that you
cannot speak
without you cannot learn to speak unless
you speak
that's why i can't speak english i can't
speak italian
and tiny a little bit i went to italy a
long time ago
for 10 days and after 10 days i was
starting to speak
but three nights in paris is not going
to get you speaking french you have to
speak you need to move your mouth
and actually physically form those words
you can't just kind of read it and think
it it's got to come out of your mouth
so that's my big tip so you can practice
speaking by yourself definitely
um and practice reading aloud it's a
good thing to do
definitely um especially because
sometimes we're practicing we're
focusing on something like um some
grammar tip or something or
pronunciation
and nobody wants to listen to you when
you're
practicing saying all the words you can
think of that start with th
nobody wants to listen to that you gotta
practice that alone
you also need people to practice you
need a combination practice with
the grammar practice practice all the
forms of you know how many sentences in
the passive voice or oh i want to
practice using
present perfect tense or something
practice that by yourself
but then you need people to talk to
really talking and it's what jessica was
saying something interesting to talk
about so that's a great idea jessica of
talking about your hobbies what are you
interested in so you need
people to talk to and you need something
to talk about
and that's what we try to do in our in
our speaking group and we
you know the women who come we have zoom
meetings and the women who come and lots
of them are here and
yeah thank you very much for listening
ladies it's so lovely that you're here
um so that's that's my big thing find
people to talk to
move your mouth if you want to speak
then you better speak
because it's not going to happen any
other way what are you
not that's true like like for me always
like when i was learning a language also
in my in my
classroom uh we didn't speak japanese we
were speaking spanish
and that was not that helpful so i think
this is so it's a key point right to
talk
when we nowadays we have a lot of
opportunities to talk
with people outside our country so use
those
tools right use the tools to talk about
what you like
in the language that you want to learn
amazing amazing
and i know from personal experience
because i have a few languages that i
can't use it
it's so true it is
it really is so simone what
what about you what tips do you have yes
well for me i want to add on to what you
just said
because it's so true for me i always
kind of compare it to
if you want to go to the gym and you
want to work for a marathon or an iron
man or you want abs like that
pop off you can't go to the gym once and
expect it to work out
like learning a language is like working
towards a marathon or something like
that
you need to do it a couple of times a
week and you need to keep
at it if as soon as you like stop or
just do it once a week
it's not gonna work you need to stick
with it like so whenever people reach
out to me like yeah i want
one hour a week or half an hour a week
i'm like
you're not serious i'm not gonna work
with you i'm sorry like that that's not
gonna work
like you're not gonna learn a language
by speaking it one hour a week
um so think of it as
you need to be dedicated otherwise it's
not going to happen so think of it like
with a marathon or gym or something if
you don't go to the gym
you're not getting the abs like it's as
simple as that so
if you want to do it stick with it find
a routine that works for you
like you said what time of day works for
you do you have some friends you can
talk to facebook groups
whatever works um so that's definitely
my first recommendation
um then to add on a little bit to
jessica's
um the learner types it's so important
for me as a teacher like especially
because
i work with children with special needs
like with
autism and adhd and that kind of stuff
some of them were super visual and
others i had to take for a walk because
they had to move while learning
so find your learner type do you listen
do you speak do you read do you need
colors do you need
something to play with you need to move
while learning
what is your learner type figure that
out and integrate that into your
learning
um when i have new students i try and go
through most of it
to kind of figure it out and then
also there's like this old thing about
right and left side of the brain
so if you need to learn something by
heart you need to like do cross
movements
while repeating it to yourself so the
brain parts connect
and you remember it better yeah i had
latin for five years
yeah so we would always have to like do
these weird things while saying the um
all of these like grammatical stuff um
oh that's also a really good example of
you need to stick with it
i had latin for five years like and back
then i was amazing at it
and i actually understood quite a bit of
italian i had italian boyfriends so
good motivation
have a
don't get me wrong that was amazing and
their parents didn't always like they
often only spoke italian
at home so it was really helpful for me
to have that
but latin is quite literally a dead
language
we had it in school we would read it we
were translated but we never spoke it
and because we never spoke it i can't
remember a word today i remember some of
the grammar
but i don't remember any of it today
because again i didn't use it and i
didn't speak it
so so it's really important that you
don't just learn but you also speak as
well
which kind of brings me to my next tip
what i do with my students
is i have these colored uh cards
where i printed out the
10 to 50 most common verbs adjectives
and nouns
in the language they're learning and
then we kind of do it a bit like memory
kind of style so they draw three
one from each and then they have to
build a sentence from that
so one card may say chair one may say
walk and one may say tall
and then you have to create a sentence
which would be i'm tall and i'm walking
to the chair to sit down
um and the further they are the longer
the sentences
will be and the more complex it will be
but this is a really great way to help
them
speak because often they're scared what
should i say
what should i do and like so giving them
a few key words
that they can then piece together into a
sentence has really helped my students
quite a lot
so i really enjoy using that also it
gives it kind of like a gamey feel and
you add the colors for the visual
learner and
yeah so that's a really great one for me
it's awesome yeah thank you i love that
and then finally i i want to say that
the fear the fear is one of the things
that most students like have
when they are learning another language
right like
here is what stop us to to be
doing things right and definitely what
do you think
that's a great idea like you don't think
you can't be paralyzed
by the fear of you not being able to
speak or something like that
right like find a way because
it's our role as a teacher to give them
this comfort zone to make them feel
comfortable
and that everything here is safe and
okay for them to say
like yeah don't be scared um like for a
long time
like people would ask if i would come
and teach at their home and i said no
because i wanted them to come to my home
because then it's a different setting
and a different place
and as soon as they walk into my
apartment they know this is a safe zone
this is where they can speak german or
english and make as many mistakes as
they want to
um yeah so that that really
is key absolutely yeah
i think that's one of my first things
always like when i was teaching in a
classroom it's like what's the most
important thing is like
making everyone feel really welcome
really safe and that this is an okay
place to make mistakes and no one's
allowed to laugh if you
you know sometimes we laugh together
when we make mistakes because we do make
lots of mistakes when we're trying a new
language
and it's funny as well
yeah they're great you can't laugh at
somebody that's not okay
yeah you know that's why i love my my
sister's
sister's group because everyone that's
just
such fabulous people because every
single person is welcoming and helpful
and if someone's a beginner then other
people practice with them and help them
out and it's just beautiful it
sounds great so important awesome
yeah that's so cool yeah
yeah my final tip is what i call the
comfort zones within learning
is that the language that you use in
your everyday life
is the easiest to learn first and then
you need in the new language
because it's so close to your everyday
life so let's say
i play soccer my free time i don't i
used to be a soccer coach but
yeah i don't play soccer anymore or i
never actually did i'm not sure
but let's say the guy i'm teaching right
now plays soccer that's why i'm thinking
of it so everything around
soccer will be a lot easier for him to
talk about because
in danish it's already a vocabulary that
he's very comfortable with
if we talk german history with like
world war
ii and the berlin wall that's when it
gets super difficult because it's so far
out of his everyday life so
i kind of think of it as comfort zone so
you have your
your food your daily routines your
hobbies and the inner comfort zone
then there's maybe what you do for work
and something and then you move out a
little bit further then there's like
politics
what you saw on tv like something like
that and then to like literature
and the further out you get the more
difficult it gets
so you want to start in the narrow
circle which is
the words you use in your everyday life
so start learning those
because that's going to be a lot easier
for you and a lot of those
often have a bit like depending on where
you're from
if it's european languages there's often
a lot of similarities
um english as well like i mean
in danish it's called stol in german
it's called
stool it's about that far apart it's a
chair
but yeah so english is very different
but in danish in germany we have a
variety because we have still live
stream
so it's always like if you're in doubt
you can always kind of try and go with
the
native word you have and kind of add the
rest on
and see if people will understand and
help correct you but stay
start in your comfort zone and then
slowly move out
don't start with the history and the
weird novels
and like yeah get overwhelmed
and yeah yeah
that can't go well no so yeah but those
are my tips on how that's awesome
thank you so much
so my turn for tips um
so going along um with the theme of
speaking um
i my first tip
would be to do the thing you're afraid
of
and get it done if you're most afraid of
speaking
speak speak the minute
you get done watching this video speak
if that's what you're afraid of if you
are
afraid of reading when you're done with
this video
pick up an easy book read
it right now in spanish i'm reading
um the magic tree house series that's
made for
like seven-year-olds um
because i i was a little i
i've been very intimidated honestly by
reading
so my tip number one is
do the thing you're afraid of
so you won't have to be afraid anymore
my first time that i tried to speak
spanish
on an app which our next video
our next video like this is going to be
um talking about
language learning apps but i tried on
one
um and somebody sent me an audio
chat and i was like oh my god
oh my god oh my god oh my god
and i was absolutely terrified like i
took a video
of how me like i was so proud that i was
gonna do it
that i took a video of myself making my
first audio
um to a person and now i'm not afraid
and i do it
all through the day i use the language
learning apps
and i'm always talking to somebody in
generally spanish my arabic and my
chinese are not high enough
to benefit much from those apps yet um
but in spanish i'm doing that all
through the day because now
that i've done the hard thing the scary
thing
it's it's not scary anymore and i'm free
and that was a big one for me because
i've been trying to learn spanish for
over 20 years
and most of that time i was
stuck um the person that i learned
spanish with
um i had to move away from her and
so um so i didn't have my practice
partner
i didn't have the opportunities to speak
like um like you guys talked
about and the places that i
did try to speak weren't safe
places they were um
like i maybe i would try at the mexican
restaurant well they're
they're not people who are learning
english they don't they're
like you're super vulnerable because
you're talking to them
they're not vulnerable at all talking to
you
so it's not really a safe place for an
exchange necessarily
um but a few
maybe like four months ago i started
doing language
exchanges where people who are learning
english partner with people people
learning
another language and so you're you're
equal
so it's safe you can't they don't want
to laugh at you because you might laugh
back at them so so
it's so there they understand what
you're feeling and they're not going to
do that
um that may be one reason why joe's
group is so successful
because there's a lot of people learning
together so it's that gives a comfort
um a comfort zone yeah and it's that
thing of
people knowing exactly what it's like to
be at that beginning phase
everyone remembers that when they kind
of support each other yeah yeah
um so my second tip um
goes along a little bit with the um
knowing what style of learner you are
um because i tried in traditional
classrooms to learn languages
using memorization
grammar the traditional
all the traditional things i
at this point uh now that i'm this far
into the process
i just have to accept that's not how i
learn
um so my advice would be
for example if i am teaching you
this word pen if i just tell you
this is a pin your chances of
remembering it are super low
if if i just tell you the word in for
example spanish and then in english
very low if i show it to you
those chances raise a little if
i have you physically write
with the pin as you're saying pen it
goes up a little more
if i have you do
if i make you laugh while i'm doing
something with the pin it raises
even more if there was a way you could
taste it
you can try um feeling it
every every sense that you involve
in learning boosts your chances of
remembering it
so um the videos that i have on youtube
i try to take you with me as i do
things so that it's like you're
experiencing them
because i don't know that that sitting
and memorizing a list of words
works for anybody um
and i i highly
yeah nothing but i think
if you can the more senses you use
touch sound smell
um and the more experiences
you can use you know if you're if you're
learning a verb
it's best to learn the verb doing the
verb
so if the verb is writing then write
as you're learning the word um if you're
watching cooking videos
do the things with the person right now
that's my big project i'm trying to
um learn improve my spanish by watching
spanish cooking videos
so if i if i chop the vegetables
as they say the words for chopping that
increases my chances
of learning of learning and of
remembering that word
um the theory you actually need to hear
a word between 5 and 16 times before you
can remember and
know and understand it so yeah getting
it in as much as
possible in as many different ways as
possible
yeah and traditional classrooms do not
in any way do that
you you look at a word on a page
they don't do that and you know looking
back
i came back i'm amazed that people
anybody can learn from those
classes like
you have to be super gifted to actually
get a benefit
from high school language classes those
things are terrible
yeah really there's something like that
in germany it was bad
it was really bad like yeah it was
so bad here i i just remember i just
thought i was stupid
i thought i just could not learn um
because i i mean i i tried to practice
so hard at learning the french words and
i i used computer programs
probably that i got illegally to
try and memorize the words
and all this work i put into it and no
benefit um yes and it was
it was amazing when i started learning
spanish i learned
with a friend and her family and i was
in their house
cooking as they taught me the words for
food and cooking
nice and i still
remember those we can ask a question
about that
when you were learning in school were
you learning for life
or for a test i
i wanted to learn i wanted both
um because i wasn't the first how was
the classes
set up well the classes were set up for
the test
yes and when you were cooking with your
friend
it was set up so that you would learn
for life
so after using it exactly and that's a
really big difference that
a lot of teachers don't actually
understand they teach
for the test instead of for life um
and that's really dumb i'm so okay i
used to correct
all these exams and i was done so i'm
not supposed to say that
but you're supposed to teach students
how to live their life in this language
or whatever subject you teach i also
taught biology and that kind of stuff so
for me it was very important that they
walked away something that they could
use for the rest of their life
um and then they're afraid it's just a
momentary
like test it shows how good are you
right now under these circumstances and
most people are
like scared of their minds so
it very much depends on how are you
tackling this are you learning this for
your sake
and is this is it all set up to support
you on this journey or is it set up to
support a test
i feel like that's a huge difference
because one will get you to actually
learn the language
the other one will just give you a grade
and yeah i'm not sure then you're done
with high school and you don't speak the
language anymore and then
sure that's like what have you gotten
yeah
like having the objective in mind then
you all can also be
like it motivates you and also you can
be like you can choose like
i need because i want to work using for
example japanese
i need to to speak uh maybe faster and
maybe you can target more in
this in this speaking area of the
language
so i think that having an objective as
you say simone
is a mutual advantage a huge helper
that's essential
yeah yeah and the whole thing i mean to
me language is for communication that's
what it's for
it's all about communication and getting
a message getting your thoughts to
somebody else's whether it's through
a written form or through speaking and
or receiving that message from reading
or listening and
it's got to be about communication and
if you so learning for
some sort of purpose that is related to
communication
that's that's what it's about if you're
just learning it so you can pass a test
that i mean that's what i did all the
way through high school you don't you
don't
get anything from that um it's exactly
it does nothing for you you're gonna
forget it and i remember teaching
at university i taught a university
academic preparation
course and the students there same thing
and these are very clever students
and their you know i did some research
around this they're choosing
they chose their own words to say and
they're still
choosing words and go oh but it's okay
because i've got a good mark on the test
and then you test them on those words
three or four weeks later they've
forgotten them again
oh choose words there and this is
actually relates to one of the questions
we had do you
need to know how many words you need to
know so
that's the thing you don't need to know
all the words you need to know the words
that you need for communicating what you
want to communicate
that's what you need right and there are
people
who can communicate more with 10 words
than other people who know thousands
because if you have depends
right that is true
exactly but really
with ten words that are useful versus a
thousand
that you don't that you've never used
that you've never spoken
ten words and pointing is gonna be more
effective
yeah probably yeah exactly
so guys um we have some questions that
have come in
joe i think you had i think you had a
question
come from your group what
but well that was one of them so troy
was asking do you need to know all of
the kids to be able to speak
well and try no absolutely you do not
um there are some fantastic lists around
well for english and i'm sure
in other languages too that show you the
most important words that we use in
speaking
focus on those ones get to know them
really well
you need to know those words inside out
so you can use them
and and just focus on that small number
and once you've got those really well
mastered
you're going to learn the words you need
from because of course if your
hobbies and your interests are different
you're going to need different words
from what i need
so focus on those beginning ones and
then
you can actually google the 50 most used
nouns and verbs and such
that's what i did for the german
students which is a really great idea
because
then you know okay these are the most
common words
so these are the ones we'll need to
learn first because they get it before
they start
absolutely ladies
exactly like that exactly that link so
there's a fantastic vocabulary learning
um exercises awesome exactly the useful
ones really useful ones
yeah yeah that was that was one question
from pro
i think her questions too
um i don't think i've got a few the only
one i got
was about um dialects
um when you're learning a language that
has
a lot of dialects um
how do you handle that like um for
example spanish and arabic
both have a lot of um in arabic
they're very distinctive dialects and
spanish
they're distinctive but other than no
offense to the argentineans
argentinians the people from argentina
but theirs seems to me to be the most
distinctive
because there are a couple of letters
they they say really differently
um but i'm curious um how
for me the way i handle it is i
i pick i pick a place
and act as if i'm from there and so when
i'm learning i try to learn
like for me in spanish it's mexico i
learned spanish starting initially from
a mexican family
so i try and ask
um like when they say oh you say this
word differently in a bunch of countries
i say how do you say it in mexico
and i try i try to just do that in
arabic i haven't chosen i haven't chosen
a country yet
um so i'm still working on that but
that's that's my advice but what do you
guys think
yeah i think it's a really great idea
because i mean in english in europe
at least we have the same thing because
there's american there's british
there's scottish and then there's irish
and that's a huge difference i mean
and new zealand exactly in australia
yeah so there's a lot of different ways
to go about that
and that's true the place you live in
or the one that you will have the most
connection with
that is the one i would choose and stick
with um
so for you mexico mexico is the closest
spanish-speaking country and that's
where i guess most of your
spanish-speaking friends are from as
well
so variety actually but
yeah yeah okay yeah so i mean but that
just makes a lot of sense
also that's where you would are most
likely to go to actually like physically
right
yeah because it's closer yeah just in
logistics
i think it is as well as when we need to
remember that those
those dialects like people sort of like
british english or
american english but within both of
those countries
the range of accents and vocabulary that
is different and different
geographical it's huge yeah there's a
lot of brains so
to me i think as a language learner it's
quite good to try and
find something that's quite a fairly
common one
so really sort of stay a very
standardized common
dot not really really high class or not
one particular area or one particular
ethnic group that speaks that way and
try and find something that's fairly
common commonly used and then it will be
understandable for
people from nearly any country you know
most people
like whether it's an australian accent
or a new zealand accent or canadian
accent or us
or british unless it's a very very
strong regional accent
it's pretty understandable so i don't
think it matters too much
but i wouldn't go choosing like you know
janet's idea of oh
where do you want to come from i
wouldn't go choosing some tiny little
little
village somewhere like in the north of
england or something oh i'm going to
learn that accent i love it
and i know people from there because
like the northern irish
so yeah i think that's my advice
i've noticed in a language in a lot of
language groups they
they talk about like oh how do you say
this word differently um and i usually
don't put my learning energy
toward those conversations um
if it's something important to me then
yeah i will
like my passion is cooking so if it's
about cooking
i'm gonna learn it and probably all the
variations
but unless it's cooking or something
very important to me
i usually just let those conversations
go past me
i don't try to put any energy into
learning
those the ones that are said differently
in a specific place
like how how often am i going to use
the word for skateboard in
the chilean dialect like i'm not
all the time i don't even skateboard you
just you know
you take it up
sure sure dating with janet i can see
the title
i'll be that that'll be my next uh my
next youtube video
you know my last one i made i did hiking
and i twisted
both of my ankles making the video
so that that video is going up tomorrow
that's the vacation can you imagine that
i get a skate recording
i would be hospitalized for a
skateboarding video
it would be terrible
so joe um what about
what about one other um question from
your
question let me see what have we got so
um is asking about the most effective
way to learn vocabulary but i think we
kind of covered that we sort of
talked about choosing the right words to
learn choosing words that are
interesting to you
finding your best way of life for me
it was also a huge help um because
well i moved to germany when i was two
and then i learned german in english and
then
when i was six we moved back to denmark
then i forgot my german
and then when i was 12 we moved back to
germany so i still remember
like key words like fork play chair
but i couldn't build a sentence um and
that was like
that was right after it was like 2002
2001
um so obviously it was a lot different
we didn't have youtube we didn't have
facebook we didn't have all these things
so i watched the manny non-stop in
german
because i knew all the episodes from
hilarious
it was amazing i love friend fine friend
dresser or whatever like oh my gosh
she's amazing oh my gosh
so i recorded a lot of the episodes and
watched it again and again and again
because i had already seen the episodes
a million times in english but with
daniel's subtitles
so i knew what it was all about and that
way a lot of the words that i didn't
know
helped kind of like build and form
because i would hear it and see it
and like yeah so find some kind of like
tv show
that you know in your native language
and watch it in a language that you're
learning
like but find an easy tv show don't go
watching
some documentary
physical is good i recommend phineas and
ferb
a lot to students because there's so
much that you can
see i always know what they're doing
true very people seem to really like
learning english from friends yeah
friends i've got some people in my group
they just watch friends all the time
it's great
it's really funny
hey if we've i've got a few more
questions but i think what i might do
um from the ladies in my group what i
might do is i'll jump in live
later on some some later on this week
and i'll answer those questions for you
because i know we're running out of time
a wee bit
it's um it's it's morning for jesus
christ so she'll be
busy
yeah it's like 11 p.m yeah
well i know that some of the women in my
group is probably about 1am for you
thank you for watching ladies thank you
so what we'll do is we will absolutely
you know vote for my ladies i'll jump in
later and i'll answer some of your
questions
like or if you want us to answer if they
want to listen
uh other uh ideas maybe also in the next
life
maybe absolutely we can we can do it
next time
yeah yeah um so our next
our next live like this will be on
september the 28th um
same time and we will be talking about
language apps
so if you have any questions about that
um make sure you let us know um
so that we um oh we got a tip from
mellie
on here i didn't see that mellie said
kids shows
are the best to learn a new language
great
tip millie thank you
um so um we're going to talk about
language learning apps if you have
questions about that
um absolutely send us your questions so
that we can be
um we can be working toward that um
but this was awesome thank you so much
everybody for participating
thank you guys for watching
us thanks everybody for sending us
smileys and hearts and comments
and texts that was awesome
very very nice i know it was fun thank
you so much for organizing this ladies
it was really really
yeah very cool looking forward to the
next one it'd be lovely
yeah so um jessica do you just
do you just take us off the live is that
how this
have never ended a live before yeah okay
guys thank you everybody for being here
thank you very much for your comments
and see you until the next time bye
