Hi, Steve Kaufmann here and today I have a special guest Anna
Tyrie of English Like a Native.
And we're gonna talk about learning English, not other exotic
languages that I often talk about.
First of all, remember if you enjoy my videos, uh, please subscribe,
click on the bell for notifications.
And if you follow me on a podcast service, please leave a comment.
Hi Anna.
Hello, Steve.
Nice to meet you.
So, uh, I often talk about learning other languages, you know, right now
it's Persian and Arabic or people are learning Japanese or French but you
teach English, which is the ... probably the language, by far in fact, the
language that most people are learning.
So I'm a native speaker of English, but I'm curious, first of all, I have a number
of questions, question number one...
oh, by the way, we leave a link to english Like a Native in our description
box so people can go there and find you.
And I know a lot of people listen to my videos in order to improve their English.
And so maybe they should, uh, they would benefit in fact, by
going to your YouTube channel.
Now, first question where, where do most of, what are the main sort of countries
of, uh, you know, the nationalities of people who are learning English with you?
Uh, so with me, I mean, as you can imagine, I've got people from all over
the world, but I'd say the majority of my learners, funnily enough, is
UK, US, uh, Italy, India and, and then it really kind of dissipates.
Right.
So you've got Brazil, but that's because, um, a lot of the people who
watch my content are actually living and working in English speaking countries
and so they really have that need and motivation to improve their English.
And so that's why I have this kind of demographic in English speaking countries.
Right.
But, um, outside of the UK and us, it is, uh, Brazil, India,
uh, and Europe across Europe.
Right.
Um, Yeah.
Now, so then that's why I asked sort of the nationality or the, the
ethnicity of, of these learners.
So what would be the main sort of ethnic groups within the UK or the US?
Ah...
what are the native languages?
Yeah.
It's Italian, British, um, Italian Brazilian, um, Indian um, Polish,
Russian, it's it's a real mix.
A real mix.
It is a real mix.
Okay.
Yeah.
You're talking about small percentages.
Right.
Across the globe.
And, and what, what are the major difficulties that people
experience in learning English?
Uh, So, um, across the board, many of them have confidence issues and that
really starts to present itself when it comes to speaking the language.
So many of them get to themselves to an upper intermediate, even at
lower advanced level that still feel unable to communicate vocally
and they kind of hit a wall.
They can't recall the vocabulary.
They they're thinking too much about the grammar and the structure of the sentences
and they just feel really inhibited, um, not wanting to make mistakes, uh, and
worried about pronunciation and things.
So I think one of the things we try and do on English Like a Native is
just to kind of break down that fear.
Um, and also just to encourage them to speak as much as possible, you know?
Um, you know, it's really important to just get going right.
To make mistakes.
I mean, that's not unique to people learning English.
That's common to people learning any language.
Would you say that to some extent, their fear of making mistakes almost
makes them make more mistakes?
I, well, I think it's true in anything you're learning.
If you, if you get scared, if your brain is scared and you get
those stress hormones, your brain doesn't function in the same way
as it would when you're relaxed.
And so yeah I would say you do make more mistakes.
Oh yeah.
And you become it's like, I, I always say to my students to imagine
there's a bus going down the hill and the bus has no brakes and it's
getting faster and faster and faster.
And you can either choose to sit at the back of the bus and cower and let the
nerves just take over and ruin everything or you can jump into the driver's seat
and at least steer those nerves, just and, you know, take control of that energy
and, and change the energy into a positive energy is what I always try and push.
Well, I mean, it is true if we're, if we're at a party somewhere and somebody
walks in and you know, who is that person?
And you try to force yourself to remember the name.
You won't remember the name, the more pressure you put on yourself
to try to remember something the less likely you are to remember it.
So, uh, yeah.
So is, is the concern though, is it more that they feel they,
they have problems with grammar?
Is it that they don't have enough vocabulary or is it
concerns about pronunciation?
So with English pronunciation is tricky because our spellings
do not inform the pronunciation.
Right?
Our spellings are crazy.
And I think American English is easier.
Your system for writing, um, is, is, is much, it makes more sense, right?
For the pronunciation, but the British English spellings do
not make as much sense at all.
Well, I hadn't even focused on that.
How are they different?
So for example, um, example is, uh, flavor or color.
So...
oh yeah.
so colour American English is C O L O R, but in British
English, we have a U in there.
So it's C O L O U R.
But we have that in Canada, too.
We have that in Canada, too.
Okay.
But the...
never really thought of it as a problem, but the bigger issues are like, uh,
although and bough and through and cough and rough are all written with O U G
H and they're pronounced differently.
And that's true on both sides of the Atlantic.
So yeah, English spelling is a problem.
And you think then the pronunciation, the difficulties people have in
English with English, pronunciation comes from the spelling, or
that's just one of the factors.
It's, it's one of the factors.
Um and that there aren't...
the rules aren't very consistent either with pronunciation so that's
tricky, but also one of the biggest issues for learning English is the
idiomatic language and the phrasal verbs because there's no blanket rule.
Again, you have to learn on a case by case basis.
And we use so many phrase of herbs and so many idioms in just day to day speaking
that you can know the vocabulary, but not know the phrases and so that's tricky and
that just like just requires exposure.
You just have to keep exposing yourself to that kind of
language, um, to native speakers.
And, and this is so the name of my, my channel English Like a Native is it's
a little bit of, um, people see it as a negative thing sometimes in the industry
to, to do something like a native, you'll never be a native of that language.
So why should you try to be like a native.
Right.
That was, that was never the point of my brand name.
The brand name is more about acquiring and learning like a native does, so
not stressing about grammar rules and spending more time just listening and
enjoying language in a, in the same way you would your target language.
So watching films in, in your target language and, um, hanging out with
friends and speaking in your target language, in a relaxed environment,
and just trying to enjoy it rather than sit and study and study the rules.
To be honest, most natives do not know their own language in
the way that a non-native would.
We don't know the grammar rules.
We, we never study them.
We just acquire them.
We just understand that something sounds right or something sounds wrong.
And sometimes we make mistakes.
As a set...
as a standard thing across the UK, you know, in the north, in the north,
there'll be, um, grammar, mistakes that are just an accepted way of speaking.
It's just what we say.
Well, we have that everywhere now.
I mean, in North America, you hear people say I would've went, I would've went.
Right.
Okay.
You know, that's, it's becoming more and more common.
It's just, it sounds so bad to me, but a lot of people say that.
So um, yeah, I agree with you.
You know, I think the native is the model, you can't get away from that.
The native is the model.
Uh, even though we're not gonna sound like a native, but that's in fact we wanna
get as close as possible to the native.
It's a bit of a problem in English because even within a country like
the UK, there's so many regional accents, so which native are you going?
You know, which, which form of the language, which type of pronunciation is,
is the most popular with your learners?
Who do they wanna sound like?
Well, I, I, on my channel, I cover a number of regional
accents, regional British accents.
And, um, I do also cover a lot of differences between American
English and British English because people are interested.
American English is more globally studied.
Um...
oh really?
Okay.
Yeah.
And in, and it's the same in America.
Of course, there's lots of variations of American accents
that are wildly different.
Um, but what I always, I teach RP, which in fact, there aren't, there are not many
people in the UK who actually use RP...
Now, just to explain to my audience, what is RP?
RP.
RP is received pronunciation and it's the standard, people don't like this word,
natives don't like this word, but it's the standard accent of, of British, because
it's, what's written in the dictionaries.
It's the, the...
it's non regional.
It doesn't belong to a region.
It was introduced many, many years ago as a way of speaking, if you were
educated and this is why it has a bad, a bad reputation in the UK, because if
you speak like this with a, an RP, then people assume that you are very wealthy
and, and snobby, posh, well educated.
And that you look down on the lower classes.
Which is crazy now, because that's not, is, it is what it is.
I don't wanna open that can of worms.
Right.
But.
What's important.
I think if you are learning, if you want to learn British English
or any variation of English, I don't think it really matters.
It has to be something you want to learn, like what you feel passionate about,
because I can understand anyone speaking English, what, whatever variation it
is, there might be few little regional differences, dialect that's different.
But generally it doesn't matter which version you go for, but if
you are going to move to an English speaking country, I'd always
say, perhaps it's interesting...
it would be good for you to learn or become familiar with that particular
regional accent or at least the dialect, because for example,
scousers in Liverpool, in the north of England have a very different
way of talking than, than I do.
And if you learn from me and never exposed yourself to a scouse accent, or any of
their dialect, you'd arrive there and not have a clue what anyone was saying.
Right.
So I think, um, it depends on your situation and also what
you are passionate about.
Yeah.
I mean, I agree.
And I think that it's true to a large extent with any language.
Uh, when I was learning Portuguese or Spanish, uh, I would listen to
Portuguese from Europe, Portuguese from Brazil, because my goal is
comprehension but then if I'm...
I find that when we are learning another language, we're very easily influenced.
Like our own, our accent in our own language is not gonna change.
I can live in the UK for 20 years, I'll still speak the way I speak now.
But if I'm in France, if I'm in Southern France, if I'm in Quebec, if
I'm in Brazil, I find that the, these languages that I have learned I'm
easily influenced by the people around me so that okay, my accent will kind
of, you know, adapt to the environment, but, but the key is, is pronunciation.
I agree.
Excuse me, is comprehension.
Uh, we've gotta be able to understand.
So I think people should listen to all kinds of different accents.
Getting back to this phrasal verbs that always comes up.
So do you have a special technique for people or you just say, you know, just
expose yourself to a lot of the language and you'll eventually get used to them?
Yeah.
So I have, I actually have a, a challenge that I run, um, a couple of times a year.
And it's a 30 day challenge where I'll teach 300 phrasal verbs in 30
days, and the method is quite simple.
It's a 30 days of immersing yourself.
So you have to give at least 20 to 30 minutes.
Most of my students who do it, do about an hour a day, and it doesn't
matter if you miss a day, you, it is...
all the material's there.
You can catch up but it's, it, it, the method that I use is to just use the
vocabulary at least four or five times.
So every phrasal verb you'll be introduced to in different
ways, you'll have to write it.
There'll be quizzes with it.
There'll be, um, a number of monologues that you have to listen to, sketches.
Um, I'll...
when I do my live lessons, I'll use those.
I'll use them in emails to my students across the 30 days.
And so they'll see each phrasal verb at least four or five times and what I find,
what I find with the students who do that challenge is they suddenly become...
like they take the blinkers off and they see that language then in the wider world.
And they would come back to me and say, I didn't realize but I was just
having, I was at this lecture and they used this phrasal verb and that
phrasal verb and I was reading this book a second time and I realized, this
is the phrasal verb that means this.
And now I get it.
It means something different.
And so it's just, it's just that repetition, but in a very natural way,
not saying we are going to sit and learn this list, but here's an interesting
story I'm going to tell you, here's some tasks going to do, and by the end
of it, you won't have realized, but you would've learned this many phrasal verbs.
You know, it's very interesting.
And, uh, maybe we'll close on this, like phrasal verbs is just part of
usage uh, in English, part of the usage of the language, normal usage,
we use a lot of phrasal verbs.
Grammar is a form of usage.
I find that, you know, maybe with your students, when they are, they
do this phrasal verb challenge.
In many cases, if they've had a lot of exposure to the language, have done
a lot of listening and reading, they already have heard these phrasal verbs.
And so on the, you know, based on having that experience, you know,
having heard these phrasal verbs, but not really paid enough attention to
them, if they then go and do these deliberate exercises, they're gonna
have a better chance at retaining them.
If you try to introduce frail verbs from scratch to people who have not
had any exposure to the language, I think it's very tough to remember them.
And I think that's, that's kind of the way languages work.
You need that combination of exposure, some deliberate learning,
back to more exposure and gradually things start to stick in your brain.
Absolutely.
Hopefully, hopefully . Anyway, sounds very interesting.
I, I I'm sure we could go on for quite a while here.
I, I think my listeners, uh, those who are learning English
should go off to learn like...
English Like a Native
English Like a Native.
English Like a Native with Anna and work on phrasal verbs
or all of the other things.
I looked at your channel, you have a lot of things on vocabulary, on different
aspects of, of, of English pronunciation.
I think it can be very helpful to them.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for talking with me and hopefully this
is helpful to my viewers.
Thank you for having me.