Hi there. I am Drew Badger, the English Fluency Guide. And in this video I'm going to talk
about content alignment for language learning. Content alignment. It sounds like a complicated
idea, but it's actually very simple and I'll show you why you should be thinking about
this as you learn. Now, one of the most important things that
I explaine to people, you've probably heard me talk about this lesson many, many times,
is you should be doing basically the opposite of what most people do to learn. And the reason
you do that is because most people don't get fluent. So you should not do what they do.
And you can think specifically about all those different things like how you listen, how
you practice speaking, how you meet people to speak with. But in this video I want to
talk about content alignment specifically for language learning. Here's what that means
and how it works. Often I will meet students who say they want
to have conversations like this, they want to communicate in a certain way. So I'm just
going to label this as HW... Well, actually, no. I don't want to make this too simple,
but basically how they want to speak. We'll putting like that. HS for how they want to
speak. Now, the idea of how they want to speak, it could be many different things, but the
most important ones, this is the way they communicate. So this is the words that they
are using. It's also the pronunciation and the content. So the kinds of topics, which
is really related to words, but we're just going to talk big picture about the kinds
of content they'd like to learn. Now what people will often do is they will
send me emails or if I see them out in Japan where I live, they will ask me questions like,
"How do I learn this? How do I sound more like a native? How do I learn more native
vocabulary?" And I say, "Well, how are you learning right now?" And usually they say,
"Well, I'm reading this." Or, "I'm learning that thing." And I say, "Okay, that's interesting."
So you have an idea or a goal for how you want to speak, but the content that you are
learning with, this could be videos, it could be often maybe some movies or books or something
like that. The content is not aligned with how they want to speak. Now, an obvious example
is children. You see children, they spend time with other kids, they watch little shows
for kids and they start speaking like little kids. It's pretty obvious. But what you see
there, that's content alignment and you understand why children speak the way they do or tell
the jokes that they do because they're watching content specifically for little kids.
Sometimes you will find a child who just likes older people stuff and maybe they watch shows
for adults or other things like that and that changes their vocabulary. It's usually less
of a problem for native speakers, but non-native speakers, as an example, someone wants to
be casual, they want to understand natives in real conversations. They want to be casual
in their speech. They want to blend the sounds of their words together, but they're watching
CNN or they are watching the BBC. Now, there's nothing wrong with the BBC, CNN news programs
like that. If you're interested in that, that's fine. But there is a misalignment here between
formal vocabulary and the goal of casual speech. Does that make sense?
I know this is not supposed to be a profound, amazing idea. It's to remind people, hey,
if you want to be casual and speak casually and understand native speakers who speak casually,
then you shouldn't be looking at a CNN or BBC. Now an example of something you should
read or pay attention to is kind of like tabloid news. All right. [Inaudible 00:04:13] your
tabloid news, T-A-B-L-O-I-D. This is conversational for everyday people, lots of idioms and funny
things and actual conversational speech and less more formal specialized technical vocabulary
that you would see in something like the news. Even me, my focus for learning Japanese is
everyday casual conversations. I can talk with people about all kinds of things and
I can even have conversations with people about education or business or whatever, but
it's usually more in a casual, conversational way, the way people really speak. So I would
have trouble writing an essay in Japanese about something using formal vocabulary because
I just don't know so much of it unless it's a specific thing maybe related to education
or business, but in general, this content alignment here, I will sometimes watch some
TV shows that are, maybe casual or conversational or dramas or something like that. This kind
of information in Japanese. But most of my content is just speaking with Japanese people
and this could be online or in person and most of the time in person, because I live
in Japan, but when I was in America, it was some online and some meeting people.
But anyway, the more casual way to do this is tabloid and so you can look up the National
Enquirer. This is probably the most famous of the tabloid magazines. The kind of information
in here, it's probably not going to help you in daily life the way that CNN and BBC will.
If you've never heard of the National Enquirer, you'll understand when you look at it. But
it's stuff about celebrities or sports stars or other things like that. Lots of drama and
scandals. So it's interesting content. I don't personally read it because I don't care, but
I recommend it for people. Rather than learning with the BBC, pick up a magazine like this,
it's written for an easier audience and it has a lot more casual conversational speech.
So this is just one example. It could be with music as well or movies or
other things, but there should be alignment between the goal you have for how you want
to speak and the kind of content that you're learning with. So if you want to speak like
a native speaker, it's good to watch some videos like mine and learn how to do that
because this is what I call the fluency bridge, where I'm moving you from your current level
to the higher level of where you'd like to be speaking. But you can't spend all of your
time with just English lessons and that's only going to get you halfway to your goal.
You have to spend the rest of your time with the kind of content that's aligned with what
your goals are. Now, if you are a professor or you don't care
about having casual conversations, really you should because even in an academic setting
or a business setting, really the secret to having great conversations is understanding
casual and conversational language. But you can focus more on things like the BBC, but
just remember this idea. A lot of people, they will try to do one thing, they will have
this in mind for their goal and then not move towards that thing because they're doing something
else. So most people, the reason they... For people who are learning a language, this
is how they are taught to learn language. "Hey, today in the English lesson we're going
to listen to a report from the BBC." Okay, that's great, but how is that going to help
me speak in a casual conversation where people are not using that vocabulary? So if you don't
care about this stuff or you are just more interested in having better conversations,
go with the tabloids and the National Enquirer rather than the news. Does that make sense?
Anyway, I won't go too much into this, but this is what content alignment is all about
and this is what I teach. And remember, it's very simple. Begin with your goal and you
work backwards from that. So you don't begin with the content. You begin with the goal.
Where do you want to be and how do you get there? Pretty simple.
All right, well if you have enjoyed this, you can post a comment down below. Let me
know about the kinds of stuff that you learn with and if that's been helpful for you or
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