giving and helping everyone feels very good i think that kind of makes me fulfills a little
part of my heart that i'm able to do that and yes youtube can be a career in and of
itself but it's nice that other people that anybody can access that pretty much anybody
can access that so that feels nice too to be able to give
welcome to beyond borders real life english's new talk show today i have a very special
guest joining us from north carolina in the usa vanessa from speak english with vanessa
so vanessa welcome to the show hi thanks for having me i'm so glad to be here
so many learners are bored or confused because they do not know what they should do to take their
english to the next level does this sound like something that you have ever been frustrated with
well in this video vanessa and i go back to our experience as language learners and
teachers help you with five tips to improve your english now first off celebrate your small wins
find a local meetup be resourceful speak with everyone and read in english
so let's get started and if you are new here i want to invite you to join our global community
by hitting the subscribe button and the bell down below that way we can help you to understand fast
speaking natives to be understood by anyone and to connect to the world like zara who told us that
our lessons helped to motivate them to keep going you know in every class that they want to like
feel like they've had a few small wins because i think that that's really what's going to motivate
you to keep going is if just constantly you can be giving yourself small wins so i think it's
always really important to be looking for what those are and whether that's you know using a new
word for the first time or kind of being able to introduce some connected speech into your
your you're speaking like instead of saying what you saying what you or something like that
so that you can just have like these little things that every day you're you're feeling that progress
a little bit to keep motivating you forward yeah yeah that seems really essential i guess humans
we need that little daily wins small wins yeah i think that finding finding a specific time
every week has been something that's helpful for me so yes i did have that year living with
a french family but even before that having once once a week there was a french meetup in my city
and even though i understood nothing i just wanted to kind of surround myself with some other people
who are speaking french hope that they never asked me anything because i never understood
them but just having that specific time and even now every monday around three o'clock
i have a skype conversation for 30 minutes with a french teacher we just talk about whatever's going
on in life and just having that specific time that even if i completely forget anything about french
during the week because life is crazy i know that i have that time and i think after living in
korea when i was in korea i was more focused on um living life there learning some korean if i could
the job there figuring out that that i didn't really do anything with french for almost
two or three years and then coming back realizing oh i have forgotten some i have kind of lost this
and it's something that makes me excited to do like i love to speak in french something about
that maybe for english learners too you feel that that no matter what you're saying or talking about
you just get excited oh i can communicate in this way a different part of my brain gets activated
and i just feel really excited so i wanted to get back into that even though it was a little
more slow going at the beginning kind of dusting some dust off in my brain from french words but
having that specific time is really helpful everyone knows this is the time when mom is
gonna go and uh speak with her french teacher and kind of can organize the week a bit in that way so
that's been really helpful for me i think a lot of learners out there something i i hear a lot it's
a lot of people come from places or backgrounds that they just don't have a lot of money and so
they say you know i can't i can't afford your course or i can't you know afford a teacher but
i think if you're resourceful then it's kind of like you can always find a way you can create your
own sort of course experience by watching a lot of different videos on on youtube or you know you can
be really resourceful about going out there and and finding ways to meet other learners and
practicing together so i think that that's that's just like a quality that will in general always
help you to be successful if you're resourceful and maybe like you said before bullish enough yeah
yeah i think that's a really good point that for english learners even if you do purchase a course
most courses are not the be-all and end-all of everything it's good to supplement find a way
to be able to watch netflix in english even if you have to use a vpn or stream something
finding a way to be able to access the information that you need in our internet internet day and age
that's become a lot easier i know it's not easier for every part of the world but it's
becoming easier easier and easier so yeah using what's available i think that's something that
um maybe a little tangent but it's something that's very fulfilling to me in this job
is knowing that because not everybody can afford my courses or your courses or paying for english
i can still give them something very valuable and very useful for free on youtube and
i think that fulfills that teacher part of me that says oh it's so nice to to give and to help and
yes my courses are giving and helping as well but that giving and helping everyone feels very good
i think that kind of makes me fulfills a little part of my heart that i'm able to do that and
yes youtube can be a career in and of itself but it's nice that other people that anybody
can access that pretty much anybody can access that so that feels nice too to be able to give
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so i'm kind of curious like what's your opinion or what have you observed in general with that of you
know learners learning with other learners because i think most learners have in their head like
i want to speak with a native how do i meet natives and everything how do i meet an
american or a brit or whatever's the case yeah yeah i think there's definitely a benefit to
meeting with someone who speaks english as their native language i think a lot of that benefit too
is for your personal as the learner your like ego like oh i did it i talked with an american like
you feel good about yourself but it doesn't necessarily mean that that is like the best
option because i found that for my students in my course the fearless fluency club a lot of students
are part of our private facebook group and i don't actually have a very organized system for all
right here's your level here's your time zone meet up together i don't have something like that we
have a system where people join the facebook group from the course they introduce themselves share
some information and people below that comment hey i'm in this time zone let's meet up and
really it's very student-led and i think in that way though the people who feel that determination
i'm going to do this they make it happen so there's individuals who meet up together but
there's also a couple students this blows me away every day there's a couple students who have just
taken it upon themselves to host weekly sometimes two or three times a week group meetups completely
of their own volition is amazing to me and they say okay every saturday like for example one of my
wonderful students alex he just had his four year anniversary of every saturday hosting a meet-up
with people in the course is shocking and amazing to me and those those group of people that group
of people has become you know his friends from all around the world and every saturday
they meet up and he um for him he has like a topic that he just thinks of like oh this week
someone asked me to uh uh help them with their lawn let's talk about your yard or gardening or
nature some kind of topic related to life but then other people in the course have created meetups
where they ask questions based on the lesson material i give a bunch of questions based on like
the material we're learning and they have a more focused or like organized learning style meetup
so there's a lot of different options for students who want to make it happen and to feel accepted by
other students too and from talking with the students who participate in these it seems like
the fear at the beginning of speaking is very high oh i can't believe i'm about to just talk
with somebody i don't even know on the internet i'm speaking in english there's a lot of multiple
fears there on the internet someone i don't know another language what are we gonna talk about
just all of those types of things i don't like to see myself in the video everything is piled up but
then when they speak together you just get each other you understand each other because both of
you are coming from that same place both of you are learning english both of you have overcome
or trying to overcome that hesitation and fear of speaking with someone else so i think really
being on an equal playing field if you can use that expression with somebody else can help you to
take great leaps in your english learning i found this for myself as well in france a lot
of my friends were other nannies or other au pairs but they were from non-english speaking countries
in fact some of them could actually speak english really well but i never knew it because we always
spoke in french they were german or austrian or swedish and when we were speaking together because
we were all french learners we could understand like 80 most of what they were saying and there's
an occasional new word that would come in but if i were speaking with a french native speaker
i probably would have only understood 10 it would have been very overwhelming i probably would
have stopped doing that so having somebody who understands me and i can actually understand them
but we understand each other's situation um of being a language learner i think that that can be
extremely motivating and helpful in getting rid of that fear of speaking that initial fear
so at least that seems to be the case for a lot of my students who have spoken with each other
and i think it's also an economical way to do that because you might need to pay a lot for a native
english speaker teacher or just any professional teacher you're gonna need to pay a lot but to
speak with someone else who is also learning and is both both people are benefiting from
the situation then that can be a really great way to learn for a cheaper price possibly even free
but just to be able to speak together is a great starting point okay i think i talked
for long enough about that but i feel very excited about that because it's it's definitely true i've
experienced that myself speaking with another language learner can help you a lot as you've
seen here in our language learning journeys both vanessa and i found it really important to put
ourselves outside of our comfort zones and speak whether with natives or other learners who were
on the journey with us but so many english learners tell me their biggest frustration
is that they have no one to speak with well that is exactly why we built the real life app at the
touch of a button you can connect to other english learners from around the world and practice your
speaking while discovering other cultures in fun and dynamic short conversations it is like your
virtual passport to the world and in addition to that you can improve your comprehension with
real-life native conversations you will understand 100 and never forget the most important vocabulary
i bet this all sounds like a dream right well now with the real life app it is a dream come true
the best part it is absolutely free so download it now by clicking the link down in the description
or just search for the real life english app in the apple app store or google play store i look
forward to seeing you there when your students ask you or learners in your community ask you like
vanessa is there like a really great book that i should read is there one that you tend to
recommend if you've never read a book in english um i recommend reading something that's meant for
like upper elementary it's not too childish but it's not too complex with lots of descriptions so
a good example of that might be um the curious incident of the dog in the night time have you
ever read this book i started it i never finished that one okay well maybe it's not a good option
it's about like a an autistic kid is the one who's
telling the story but there's a couple pictures the way that he describes things is um i think
easy to grasp there's not too many complex words um or a book like holes this is meant for
um like upper elementary age kids but if you want to look at a whole list of that below
every youtube video that i have there's an amazon link to all of those books so you can just see
like all of the top beginner books because um yeah that can be a really good way to
boost your confidence too like i finished a whole book in english and i liked it that's
great now that can be a good way to to learn but also kind of feel good about your english skills
yeah i totally agree i think that reading too it's like the best way to pick up vocabulary and to
like really for me like i found that when i read i just my grammar naturally gets better when i
speak because it's like you kind of are seeing how everything's supposed to be laid out and somehow i
mean our brains are pretty amazing somehow that gets absorbed so um we can definitely grab that
link from you or from one of your videos and stick that into the show notes so if anyone is wanting
to go get some book inspiration from you then they can go do that and uh maybe even start with
the one you mentioned with the curious incident of the dog in the night time that's the title
right yes if i can give a little quick tip about reading is i would say for english learners don't
don't stop at every single word you don't know if there's a word that you don't know that you
see a lot so for example i was reading the chronicles of narnia in french
and they kept saying one word what is fba i don't know that keeps saying it and then i looked it up
and it's sword so they were they were talking about swords so if a word comes up again look
it up but don't feel too scared if you see 20 30 new words on a page try to get through like
10 pages and get the general idea of the story if you need to look up some stuff that's fine
but i think looking up every new word will really kind of be a downer it won't help that
motivation so just try to push through a bit to get the context and then you'll really get
immersed in the book and you'll be able to skim over words that you don't know or you'll be
able to guess based on the context so yeah don't feel too stressed if there's a lot of new words
um yeah just try to get the context first totally the first book i ever read in german that's i did
exactly what you said that you're not supposed to do and i was like i got like two pages in and
i'm like this is so boring like i i don't even remember what has happened in these two pages
and i think once i started just like okay i'm just gonna go for it and i would like underline words
and then like you know later i'd finish the chapter i knew everything that happened from like
the context and everything then i go like look it up but uh i think just like looking up every
word it's like you're gonna kill yourself so yeah yeah or if it's a book you've already read in your
native language like harry potter super that's like a movie you know if you already watched a
movie in your native language watch it in english it makes it so much easier and you can just yeah
immerse yourself in it a little bit better this has been absolutely lovely where can people
find out more about you if they if they don't already follow you on youtube
where can they find that and if they want to learn anything else where should they look yeah you can
search for speak english with vanessa on youtube or you can look at speak english with vanessa.com
that's another thing often people say that don't know my business they say oh what's the business
name and i say speak english with vanessa every time without a fail people go oh well that's easy
so speak english with vanessa pretty clear i hope you have had a ball with vanessa and me i want to
remind you that today's lesson is just an excerpt from our new beyond borders talk show now in each
episode i guide you outside of the classroom and into the real world with insights from some of the
world's best teachers language learners innovators and global citizens just like vanessa helping you
to reach your highest potential in your english and in your life does this sound like something
that you want to do then download the full interview with vanessa for free in the description
down below and now it's time to go beyond the classroom and leave your english ah yeah i know
exactly what it's like to know all the grammar and rules but still be nervous when words that i know
i've learned just don't come to me and although this may sound like a far off dream for you
i want to invite you to imagine yourself speaking english confidently and naturally automatically
connecting your thoughts in a fluid rhythm that anybody can understand what is that like