Good day Sheilas and Blokes! You might be familiar with today's guests, so I had a
marvelous interview with Emma from mmmEnglish .And today's lesson is an excerpt from that interview
that I think could help you a lot on your English learning journey. And after you finish it be sure
to check out the full interview with Emma for free by clicking the link down in the description.
Emma, a warm welcome to Beyond Borders! - Hey! It's awesome to be here thanks for inviting me.
And for you newcomers this real lifer bellow from Argentina says that our lessons have helped them
to overcome their fear of speaking. We are excited to join you on your English learning journey too
and help you every week to understand fast native speech,
to be understood by anyone, and to even connect to the world. But we can only do
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Using english as the tool that connects us
it is about understanding the world, understanding different perspectives, understanding and learning
truths about different cultures and different people. I think we we have been
you know, for a long time fed information from certain, you know, generic sources like the news or
you know, through politics and that kind of thing and we come to our own conclusions often
ingrained in us since we were very young about different people, different cultures, different
ways of life and I think that the more that we genuinely and deeply connect with each other
and obviously language is a powerful, the power most powerful way of doing that, we get to
re-imagine or re-experience the world on our own terms and, you know, often that's quite eye-opening.
Yeah, definitely it's a big goal that we have as well is that through connecting people from
different places you're able to come to your own conclusions about what's true and what's
in some sense a stereotype or what is something that you've been lied to about,
or maybe lie is kind of a strong word but at the very least that maybe you've been misinformed
about. So, I think that can be so powerful when you're using your English as a vehicle as
you've said to start connecting with other people and discovering kind of the truth about different
parts of the world and using that to inform your own ideas about the world and your world view.
I was curious what does real world English fluency mean for you? - It's really like, the question now is
what is real world English? Because 75% of the world who speaks English are non-native speakers.
And so when we talk about real world English we aren't just talking about standard American,
standard British, Australian English at all, we're talking about this incredible diverse mix
of people and experience and accent and cultures you know, it really starts to filter
into something that's so much bigger than just a language for me. And so real world English is
continually expanding I think, and becoming more open, more accepting and more perhaps curious
about the other types of English speakers in the world, and I think that's a really exciting thing
for English learners. - That is exciting, I think especially because so many learners
when they think about using their English they tend to think about, "I'm going to speak to an
American or I'm going to speak to a person from the UK or from Australia" or whatever the case is.
But nowadays, obviously depending where you work, but if you're working in any international company
it's much more likely that you're going to be using your English with someone from Germany or
from Japan or from Thailand or wherever that isn't going to actually be a native speaker,
and it might actually become more the minority of speaking your English it's going to be with those
native speakers, so that's very exciting I like that you say it that way, but it's almost...
you need to be training yourself as well to not just be able to understand one type of English or
not just saying English as American or British, but being able to see it as a global language
in some sense and needing to prepare yourself, right, for that reality of the language.
- Yeah! Absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more. Even the idea of just
obsessing over or focusing on a particular accent locks you in, you know, to a certain
way of life, a certain experience, a certain limited or finite set of opportunities where by exposing
yourself to a much richer or diverse range of accents and English speakers your opportunity to
interact, engage with, connect with people, you know, all around the world is so much greater than
by restricting yourself to just one, or prioritizing one. - Yeah, I imagine in some sense at some point
it's going to be, it's going to become more that we native speakers like in order to
participate on a global scale, we're going to have to be like developing these skills even
more so than the people coming from non-native speaking countries that have, you know, along the
way of learning the language have had to also deal with these cross-cultural sort of challenges.
- Absolutely. - That's really important is that we're able to bring that back to the native population.
Now remember that this is just a small taste of the full interview with Emma .
you can listen to it absolutely free anywhere that you enjoy podcasts. However, what I would recommend
is that you download our RealLife App and listen to it there. It is the only place where you can
listen to all of our podcasts with the full transcripts so you don't miss anything. Plus ,
you get definitions for all the most important vocabulary. That's not all! On the RealLife App at
the touch of a button, you can connect to another learner in a different part of the world for a
fun and dynamic conversation. And this is all 100% free! So, improve your real world listening
and speaking now by downloading the App! Just search for Real Life English in the Apple App or
Google Play Store, or simply click the link up here or down in the description below. See you there!
When you're speaking with another non-native English speaker you still have that opportunity to
ask that question and if neither of you know you have the opportunity to
find out together and you get to create an experience around learning that thing,
you don't get given the thing you have to find it yourself and in terms of retention, in terms of
you know, really helping that piece of information to stay with you
by creating that experience around the learning really helps with that, helps to facilitate that.
- Yeah, I think also beyond just the retention thing it helps you to build the, to get the resources you
need and to kind of build that mentality that when there's a challenge that you overcome it
in a sense, so you're building because any, we're talking about real world English, so if you're
using your English in the real world maybe you're in a situation where there's not even
a teacher around, you're having a business meeting, or you're having a, you're helping out a tourist
on the street or whatever the case is where, you know, you're not going to know some word and so
you need to figure out, you need to be able to kind of like put the pieces together in a sense
to figure out how can I still communicate my message and I think that's really what fluency
is, in some sense, is when you're able to kind of have those resources of I've, I don't know the
exact word but I can explain it another way or I can figure out some way to communicate
this to you, so that the message is not lost. - Yeah it's about empowering our students or
empowering yourself to be able to solve those problems, you know, when you need to, because by only
relying on having a teacher there to answer your problem or answer your questions. Obviously that
isn't a real experience, unless that person happens to be, you know, there are a few of us who
have a partner who might speak the language that we're trying to learn and in that case maybe that
person is often with you, but for the majority you know, we have to find ways of overcoming this
and solving that problem ourselves. And I think that the experience of engaging in a language
is made so much richer when you step outside of the classroom or the teacher-student environment.
The part that's missing in a standard teacher classroom experience is that
longevity that motivation to keep continually showing up and, you know, it's hard to do that in
a really traditional environment, but if you start pulling the experiences the topics the interests
that you have towards your learning experience it becomes, and of course then you start connecting
with others who are equally as passionate or interested in that thing as you, then it becomes
so much easier to continually show up to then make progress and to be inspired by and supported by
people around you who are doing similar things and I think that, you know, that is one of the the hacks
I think of the 21st century with language learning it's about getting the heck out of a
classroom and around pulling the things that you need to make your experience richer towards you.
Right, yeah, that's such a great insight I think it's really a paradigm shift too because
so many learners when they think about the using the language they're thinking about I
need to find a practice partner or I need to find a native that I can speak with or
even like I need to get a teacher and instead if you're shifting with what you're saying which
I totally agree with is you're shifting your focus instead to connecting with other people who have
the same interest and actually living your interests living your passions
with English as the vehicle to do that, and I think that when you're able to do that
then you know you're kind of transcending English as a language, and you're using it
really as a tool to connect to the world and to live the life that you really want to live.
The worst thing that could happen, you could say something completely wrong and mess it up and
you can look at that and be completely mortified at that situation, but you can also look at that
and think that in that moment in the heat of the moment when you are sweating, when you know
you're shaking, you're really nervous, that is the moment where you're pinning an
experience to your, like it's it's hardwiring into your brain, you make that mistake there
it's unlikely that you will ever make it again, because you'll have this reference point from that
moment on, okay don't do that you know, or you know at least you have the opportunity if you make that
mistake to think about it and know how to get out of, get out of it next time or what to do in
that situation because you've had that experience. And you know, that is what learning is all about ,
it's about building that experience slowly over time if you don't step out there into that
space you don't get to have that experience, you can't you know, you can't watch and observe that
and then know exactly what to do in that situation when you find yourself in it so, you know, to some
extent I'm always telling my students, if you feel that fear, that is the moment to step forward
into that fear rather than stepping back, and that can be really hard to do at times.
It's super hard to do, but doing, so knowing that decision is taking you one step
closer to where you need to go no matter what happens whether it's complete flop,
or nine times out of ten it actually turns out better than you're expecting
you know, then you've taken one step and there are many more to go, but you've
taken one and you're on your way. - Exactly, and that total like reframing of it too if
you get in a conversation and someone laughs or they don't understand you, you can look at that
as like, you know, I'm just gonna close up here and not say anything else or you can say like, why was
that funny or you know, or tried to take if they didn't understand take that as an opportunity to
re-explain and and that's what I tend to do is try to understand, okay why was that funny and
then I can avoid that next time, and a lot of times when that happens to us I end up laughing
at myself it's like, oh yeah that is really funny. - That's a hugely important part of
learning a language and learning to interact with someone else who is different or has had a
different experience in the world, it's not just stereotypes and understanding that our
perspective is just one perspective on a certain situation, but it's also like more practically it's
about learning the tools or having the resources to deal with that in your second language, and
for all of our English learners that's a huge challenge not only is it awkward and uncomfortable
for you and I to deal with disagreements or a different opinion in our own language native
language, but then to be trying to navigate that in a second or third language sometimes it's
not even the fact that there's a disagreement or that there is it's just that it's unclear
or the other person is you know, feeling a little uncomfortable about something because they don't
understand or they don't have the tools that they need in the language to help get themselves out of
that situation comfortably you know, approaching a conversation with curiosity rather than
questioning and... But it's always going to be a challenge because there's you know long-standing
conflict there's you know, racism, there's all sorts of of you know, darker aspects of what it is
to connect as people on our planet and to be different and to experience the world differently ,
So it's really about giving those functional expressions to use in that situation.
- Yeah, that's really cool. I really admire what you are doing there because you said you're not
sweeping those kind of things under the rug, but you're actually saying how can we turn this into a
productive conversation and maybe you won't always see eye to eye, right, but at least that you can
like what you said about being curious before you're being judgmental, and I think
really in order to be a global citizen in a sense to be able to speak real world English it's not
just developing the language skills but in so much it's also just developing the skills to be a good
listener and to ask questions and to put yourself in that other person's shoes before judging them,
and not letting your emotions kind of take hold of you and even just questioning your own place in
the world and you know, how much veracity there is in the beliefs that you have so that's
really fascinating that you've been able to find different tools to do this in in your community.
- Yeah, I mean I think that's a lesson for anyone not just anyone learning English but you know, any
human on the planet, so you know, but hopefully the opportunity of lots of diversity in
English speakers will help to you know, bring some of that out even in the native English speaking population as well.
So remember that you can continue getting inspired with Emma by listening
to the full interview that's linked down below, and while you're at it you might want to check out the
RealLife App so that you can listen with the full transcript for free and speak English with
other learners at the touch of a button. You'll also find that linked in the description below.
And now it's time to go beyond the classroom and live your English. Aww yeah!
differential i couldn't see that as hey you know what i'm different that's actually better