this is an all ears English podcast episode 1983. Lindsay's learning Arabic four lessons for busy
professionals on language learning welcome to the all ears English podcast downloaded
more than 200 million times are you feeling stuck with your English we'll show you how
to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection not Perfection with your American
hosts Lindsay McMahon the English Adventurer and Michelle Kaplan the New York radio girl
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Lindsay is learning Arabic from scratch to get ready for a trip to Egypt in this episode Lindsay
shares four key tips on how to take control of your language learning at any level and make
it work with a busy work day as a professional [Music] foreign hey there Michelle how you feeling
today what's going on well you'll notice that my voice isn't quite what it usually is Lindsay I am
getting over being sick yeah yeah it's it's almost back well that's okay you know what I feel like
our listeners really get an Insider perspective on us as human beings because yeah we we publish four
days a week and we never miss that right so you guys really you know you heard my voice go back
last month or two months ago now Michelle's voice is gone we get sick but we are always here for our
listener so guys this is real yes this is real this is real I've been waiting and waiting for
it to come back yes so here we are but I was just saying that uh there's an episode of Friends guys
maybe you know it where Phoebe loses her voice but she ends up really liking how she sounds she
thinks she sounds like circus sexy cool and sexy exactly and she one she like wants to be sick and
like yeah episode about that so I don't I don't feel that way about my voice but I don't feel that
way when I get sick there is kind of like a sexy like low sultry sick voice which I kind of enjoy
it could be it could be fun for a little bit I'm just hoping that it comes back soon because it'll
be back you have a great voice Michelle it'll be back we'll we'll just wait you know our listeners
will be here waiting for it to come back it's coming back we know it it's coming back it's
coming back but you know what I want to know about something more interesting than my voice I want
to know how your Arabic is coming along Lindsay because you got your trip to Egypt very soon oh
my gosh it's a really important question Michelle yeah I kind of put off getting on these lessons
for a few weeks and then I finally got it together I started around early February and I'm leaving in
May so Michelle it is it's been really refreshing and humbling learning a new language but not just
learning it but learning it from scratch I literally have no experience in Arabic and
just in case our listeners missed it I'm taking a trip to Egypt to Cairo and also other well-known
famous historical places in in May so that's why I'm learning Arabic wow that is so cool Lindsay
that is so great that you're jumping into it like that yes and just you know having a fresh fresh
perspective a new language very exciting yeah guys before we get into this more I want to hear
a lot more about this today Lindsay um but guys we want to remind you wherever you are listening to
the ollers English podcast hit follow because you don't want to miss anything from us right
absolutely 100 right especially when you know we're in your shoes guys we're going out there
learning languages we know what it feels like to be you we've done it we've traveled the world
we've worked in other languages and it's not easy but when you know what to focus on which in this
case it's connection you can be a lot more clear and you can prioritize right right right right
right exactly so that's great so make sure you do that yes um so yeah Lindsay I mean I feel like you
have a lot to share a lot of perspective a lot of things that you can share that could help our
listeners as well yes yeah you know I've learned four key things in the last few months on my class
you know in my classes my one-on-one classes that I I chose them because I think our listeners will
really be able to make use of these tips right so I want to share these four key things uh for
our listeners today and this is for busy busy professionals right this is not necessarily if
you're in school you're in college and you're going to a college class and in a language like
English or Arabic or French it's if you're a busy busy professional you're sneaking in your lessons
between this meeting and that meeting right Michelle yeah yes because there's still a way
to do it sometimes I think people can say oh I'm too busy I'm too busy um but so I feel like there
there's a way to do it still and kind of balance on everything out so let's see what are those what
are those four key things well first of all I'll just say a bonus thing first we are so lucky that
we have the internet now right yeah obviously aller's English wouldn't exist if we didn't
have the internet but also language learning platform forms like Babel italki right cambly
these wouldn't exist where it's just so easy to go and find yourself a tutor immediately almost
immediately at your desk so what I can do is I can go from you know meeting with this company
to my lesson in Arabic to a meeting with one of our team members or recording and I'm not moving
that's kind of incredible right we used to have to drive to a school and dedicate a whole evening to
learning this language yeah that's true and you had to like really like if you're gonna go to a
school you have to commit to it yeah every you know like it's like might be a commitment that
you can't make that like you said maybe you start you stop work at five but the class is at 5 15 and
you'd be late every time you know it just um it's just incredible the world is kind of open in that
way now yeah yeah so that's kind of a blessing and a curse in a way but mostly a blessing so
I'm going to go into the first tip Michelle and of course it's all about time right what do they
say I mean time is that thing we can never get back right do you feel that way sometimes is the
only thing we can never get back I feel that way all the time you know me Miss nostalgia
that's true you are so nostalgic Michelle and the memories we can never get back but even just
the time in our day we you know we can always make more money we can always get more things
um acquire a new property but we can never get the time back especially if we think about in our work
day so here's what I mean by time we're not kids in school guys we are professionals learning a
language and we're putting it in the middle of our work day so my realization my big Epiphany
was that I should I recommend this actually for professionals and this is what I change
to instead of a 45 minute lesson do a 30 minute lesson it makes all the difference Michelle it's
incredible incredible yeah why yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah how do you feel about for 30 minutes do you
feel like it flies by do you like well it really depends on the level you're at but here's why I
prefer I started off my lessons with one teacher and I'm still working with that teacher one let's
say for 45 minutes but then I ended up getting a new teacher and I'll explain why by later and that
one is 30 minutes and that was a conscious Choice here's the reason why 30 minutes works better for
a professional than 45 when you book a 30-minute slot you can easily book your next work meeting
let's say I have 12 to 12 30. my work meeting starts at 12 30. but if I book a 45 minute slot
it's 12 to 12 45. so actually I'm losing an hour but I'm not getting an hour of work and because
I'm a beginner in Arabic I I don't need more than half an hour it's too much to do 45 minutes or an
hour I get bored I get distracted is too much input okay and that that I think is a key point
and we've talked about that before you know on the show of like it it can be so tempting to be like
oh I want to do an hour because I want to learn it faster right yes like yes but sometimes it's
just like a little bit at a time it can actually be better a hundred percent so for so many reasons
to maintain your motivation to make sure you don't have too many things to learn as homework
to make make sure you're go back going back and reviewing things and to make sure that it fits
nicely cleanly crisply into your workday do the 30 minute lesson not the 45 minute lesson yeah 100
all right all right what's another thing what's another key well here's the next key so this is
more of a beginner intermediate tip but I think it also applies to Advanced listeners for our
students if you if you're learning new vocabulary or really any new part of the language it's okay
to look at your notes so let's I so as I said I changed my teachers I now have two teachers I
have teacher one teacher two when I first started with teacher one there was a method going on that
I didn't completely agree with right my teacher was showing me the the language the vocabulary
and the teacher was saying okay now study please study and the teacher would give me five minutes
to study and I would have to memorize and all of a sudden when she said memorize I said oh my God I
froze up right away memorize okay and then I would come back on supposedly I've memorized these words
and now I had to remember them immediately and when you have no context for the language that
doesn't work it doesn't work at all it might work better for an advanced student but doesn't work
for a beginner so what I recommend instead teacher 2 has actually really done a good job of this is
we have our notes in front of us the whole time as we're practicing these role plays you know
how are you where are you from I'm reading the notes and we're going to keep doing that
until I'm ready we're going to gradually pull the notes away uh okay I like that until you're ready
that's until everything that you just said yeah because the problem with memory that's uh style
one is that it makes it a very academic exercise about memorization and that's getting away from
connection right right right right right exactly you're focusing more on just being perfect and
having everything memorized than what the real purpose of learning the languages yeah exactly
so there's no shame in having notes looking at notes through the beginner level through
the intermediate level and then you do have the responsibility your teacher should do this or
you should do it if your teacher's not doing is pulling back the notes gradually it's all gradual
we want to get away from that I don't know about you Michelle but I spent a lot of time in high
school memorizing dates and names and locations of History rights history and then you don't
remember any of it right exactly because you put all your energy into I gotta cram my brain full
of these facts and then as soon as I take the test I'm gonna go dump it all out that's right
learning a language right right so I think this is really really important Lindsay I like it
um and Lindsay that kind of leads us into number three a little bit yeah you know I'm gonna make
a quick analogy here so last night I wanted to do a yoga class right and I went to my yoga.com
my you know my website where I was supposed to schedule it and I thought oh there are no seven
o'clock classes I guess I can't do yoga tonight my partner went to me and my partner said you
can go to another Studio there are five studios in our neighborhood I was like oh right there's
that other studio and they do have a seven o'clock class so here's the instruction for our listeners
guys if you don't like your teacher style change teachers right okay yeah there's nothing wrong
with that some people are going to click with one style and some people are gonna click with
another one and you know don't stick with it just you know you can there's lots of options a hundred
percent I think we get locked into the sense of loyalty or the sense of wow this was my choice I
have to keep going and I have to work with this teacher no right so what I ended up doing was I
added a new teacher and so now I'm staggering my lessons I'm working with both teacher one has a
more academic approach and this teacher's helping me actually learn the alphabet to read and write
which is pretty cool the more fundamental academic aspects of it but teacher two is much more hyper
focused on travel travel Arabic which is what I need too so I could great so we'll see in the last
month of prep um this episode is coming out much closer to my trip but we're doing this a little
bit we'll see if I end up kind of just focusing on teacher two or what I do but guys there's a
whole world of teachers out there I've been using italki I really love italki you know it's easy to
go on there find a teacher book it right away and jump online so yeah yeah but okay I love it that's
a good one and then you have another one more key for today right Lindsay yeah Michelle Quizlet have
you ever heard of this app before I have heard of it but I don't know much about it but I know the
name oh my God it's amazing I'm loving this app so it's just a flash card app so you load up your
words and their definitions or you could load up on your cards you could say the question and the
answer on the other side to be 100 immersed in the language and it will pull up different games
so I've been trying to get into the habit of doing this before bed in the morning you can do a quiz
you can do a matching game you can just study the flash cards but I think what we need to do
is find a way to especially in the beginning how do we put those new words into our world immerse
ourselves in them as much as we can instead of going to Instagram I'm gonna go to Quizlet
um very cool I like it I'll have to check that one out yeah have you ever used flash cards in
the past to learn a language Michelle yes I have I've done the whole thing where you know
you put them around the apartment you know like on different things the fridge like that that kind of
a thing but I've never done really an app like this yeah I love it yeah we've talked about this
before on the show check out Quizlet I mean you know we're not sponsored by Quizlet or anything
but I'm gonna recommend that organically because I am using it and I'm loving it Michelle yeah great
okay Michelle should we give our listeners a little bonus to Come Away with today what's
the key skill we want our listeners to Come Away with first the four tips we want to remind them
but then what else well we're talking about you know people learning languages so if you want to
have a conversation like I just did with Lindsay yeah you want to learn how to ask someone how it's
going with their language learning journey and that's a huge opportunity for connection exactly
so we're going to teach you guys two key phrases and then we're gonna go into a little role play so
that Michelle can ask me you know how the language is going right or actually I think I'm going to
ask you we'll see we'll see when we get to the role play all right let's do it so the first
phrase guys write this one down how is the Arabic coming along or how is the Swahili coming along
or Icelandic I've always wondered Michelle what Icelandic would be like yes that I wonder as well
um yeah so how is the and then language coming along
um and then the next one is say something in like yeah this is kind of funny it's a little bit like
uh this could be a little annoying sometimes when your friends but your friends will do this right
your native speaking friends will say how's it coming along say something in this language
right because they're just kind of teasing you and they want to hear you speak right so play
along that's a connection skill right right right right right yeah so um those are two really good
phrases that you can use so should we do the role play yep let's do it so in this case you and I
are colleagues and you Michelle you're learning Italian to prepare for a trip to Florence and I
want to see how it's going so we're walking out of a meeting this is after a team meeting and we're
just kind of chatting to each other you know side by side in the hallway okay okay perfect all right
well that meeting was so long yeah it was oh your trip to Florence is coming up isn't it yes I can't
wait I really need a break from The Daily Grind so how's the Italian coming along it's going well
I love my teacher and our lessons motivate me to keep going that's amazing say something in Italian
ciao very good I think our Italian listeners would be impressed Michelle oh yes so what's
a takeaway what do you think Michelle where should we leave our listeners today okay well do we want
to go through the role play oh I forgot oh my gosh yes let's go through the role play let's do it so
um I said I need a break from The Daily Grind and then you said how is the Italian coming
along yeah how is the Italian that you could also say how's Italian I would be a little weird if I
said How's Italian coming along isn't it wouldn't it yeah yeah how's the Italian coming along and
then I said that's amazing say something in Italian and when you say this to someone you
want to be a little jokey right just fun kind of teasing them like come on say something it'll be
fun right right show me what you got show me what you got yeah yeah so I mean I think the takeaway
Michelle for today what I want our listeners to keep in mind is take control of your learning as
an adult as a professional who's probably trying to learn after work during work before work you
take control you decide how long you should study who you should study with and how you should study
right right right exactly so you have taught us four keys today right and this is this is
really really good um for our listeners so guys definitely think about these and
Lindsay is there anything else you want to add yeah I think that I think what it comes down to
is we may have a lot of old habits from when we learned things in school where that teacher was
like the boss right the teacher set the tone the teacher in the classroom of 30 students
told us exactly how it should be done but now that we are professionals learning languages
because we want to we are in control you know so we make our own choices and that will ultimately
determine our success right we'll see how I do on my trip oh you're gonna be great you're gonna be
great I love it I love it thanks for hanging out today and chatting and hopefully this helped our
listeners to keep in mind you know for their English learning or other languages too yeah
awesome all right Lindsay have a good trip soon all right take care Michelle bye [Music]
thanks for listening to all ears English would you like to know your English level take our two
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