Hi.
Good morning.
Julian here.
Today, I have a question from Diego.
Diego asked, "Why is it so easy to understand some people and others are so hard?"
Let's talk about that a little bit in today's video.
This is a topic that I have talked about in my videos before, but what it basically comes
down to is the idea or genre.
To explain that concept, simply think of music.
You have different genre of music.
For example, you have rock music.
You have classical music.
You have jazz music.
They are all kinds of music, but they are very, very different kinds of music.
Somebody who is very, very good at playing the rock guitar might not be very good at
playing the piano.
A jazz musician might not know anything about, let's say rock music or yeah.
This really is the same for language.
Not just English, but any language.
There are different genres of English.
For example, the kind of English that will be used in the news, like in the BBC or in
CNN will be very, very different to the English used and say an English lesson on YouTube.
That's because the topics and the subject matter is very, very different.
The topics specific vocabulary is also going to be very different.
Car going past.
It's very warm outside today, so I've actually got the window open for the first time this
year.
If these cars and people in the background, well I'm sorry, but at least it's nice and
cool in here.
What was I talking about?
Yes, the kind of the topics specific vocabulary in the news or something that's going to be
very different to an English lesson.
Not only that, but also the register, that is the kind of the level of formality.
It's also going to be different.
If you think about it, well, the news is going to be quite formal and they don't speak in
a casual way.
They use a lot of vocabulary that is very, very specific to the thing they are talking
about.
Newscasters have to talk in a very objective kind of way as well.
They're not giving their opinions, they're giving objective news.
Whereas in a conversation, it's going to be much more casual and the vocabulary used is
going to be more less specific and more general to an everyday topics.
Conversation is not going to be so objective.
It's going to be more subjective.
You're going to be giving your opinion about this and your opinion about that.
Again, very different to the news.
This is one of the reasons why in my videos, I always talk about the importance of making
very specific goals and really thinking about what kind of situations you want to use English
in.
To use music as a metaphor again, it's no good listening to a lot of rock music if what
you really want to do is become a good pianist.
At the same time, it's no good learning to play the piano if what you really want to
do is be in a heavy metal band.
Much better, is to practice heavy metal music or to listen to the piano or something like
that.
For example, if what you will use English for is business overseas and you're kind of
an engineer, then you're going to need to learn a lot of vocabulary and topics that
are specifics to engineering.
If you're in academia, you're going to need to learn a lot of words and a lot of terms
to do with your academic subject.
If however, what you want to use English for is travel, then learning about engineering
terms and academia is not going to be that helpful.
Instead, you're going to need to learn the kind of words and phrases that you're going
to need in the place where you're going.
That was quite a long answer to this question, but genre, that is why it is different.
That is why it's easy to understand some people in some situations, but not others in other
situations.
By the way, whilst I'm still here.
If you want to learn more about this topic, as well as get other tips for learning English
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