Improve faster AND have fun (Benny's Master Real American English story)

So, hello everyone, today I'm here with Benny,

who has just recently finished

the Master Real American English program, for three months.

Benny, thank you so much for taking some time

to share your experience with us, I really appreciate that.

To start, maybe just to give us a little bit of context,

can you tell us a little bit about you,

about where you live,

and maybe why you wanted to improve your English?

So, I'm Peruvian, I live in Panama City.

I work for a company that manufacture products in the U.S.,

so I have to constantly write emails

or talk with my colleagues in the U.S.

And we also buy and sell products

from other parts of the world,

so there are a lot of communications involved.

Our manuals are in English,

so for me is very, very important to do it right.

And to speak and write with people

and feel comfortable every time I do it.

Right, yeah, because it sounds like you use English

pretty much every day in your work, is that correct?

Yes, every day.

Okay right, everyday, yeah.

Even on weekends.

Even on weekends, it never stops, right?

Yeah. (chuckles)

Right, sure.

So you've got that opportunity to use your English everyday,

so what was it that you felt,

when you joined the program, what was the feeling,

or the frustration, or the block, that you had

that made you decide to start Master Real American English?

Okay, so I realized that it's not enough

just hiding the closed captioning

when you see videos on the Internet,

or maybe I sometimes struggle

trying to say what I have in my mind,

so I want to one and for all master that.

So I was

in a meeting,

and the guy leading the meeting asked questions,

and I already have my answer in my mind,

but I

struggled trying to do what I want to,

sorry, to say what I want to say,

and I, at the end, say one or two words,

and then I got out of the meeting

feeling frustrated not to sharing that, and yup.

Okay yeah, it's like you were in these kinds of situations

where you understood what they said,

you knew what you wanted to respond,

you had even formulated it in your head,

but then it just didn't come out, basically.

Yes, I remember feeling ready to say what I want to say,

and when I tried to say it out loud,

my voice sound weird and I feel shy,

so I think nobody understood me,

and I wanted to take the bull from the horns, right,

and master that and feeling comfortable doing it.

Okay, yeah, I have this problem,

like you said, take the bull by the horns,

good expression there, and fix the situation.

Yeah, so that was when you started, or before you started

the Master Real American English program.

And after the three months in the program,

what has changed for you

in terms of speaking English and using English.

So, definitely feeling more comfortable

talking to strange people or people I never met before,

Faster Fluency Club was very good at that point,

so I feel that my hearing is more trained

to get new accents right.

Yeah, 'cause in the Fluency Club

you have people from all over the world

and you have to get used to hearing their different accents

and their different ways of speaking English,

and I think that's kind of like in the real world,

because you can work with native speakers

or people of other nationalities,

and you have to learn to communicate with them, yeah.

Yes, it is.

What else, pronunciation,

I have to speak in our sessions,

we have to talk more frequently,

finding new words also.

Yeah, are you talking about the group coaching sessions?

Yeah, the group coaching sessions, yeah.

And the private sessions too.

Mm, yeah.

And I know I even noticed

that when I'm listening a song in English,

I understand more quickly the lyrics.

Okay, good.

That wasn't something I wanted to do, but.

That wasn't your main objective,

but it's a nice result, yeah. Yes yes, aha.

And I finally said, "Hey, this works."

This works, right.

You know, I'm kind of the same way,

I like to learn languages,

but whenever I'm listening to a song,

if I can catch an expression, I'm like,

"Hey, I got that."

And then I like to sing it,

because I know what they're saying,

and I get very excited about that.

Okay, fantastic, fantastic.

Now, before you joined the program,

if you can remember back three months ago,

where there any questions or hesitations

that you had about the program?

I think the big questions was,

is my level of English enough for joining the program,

and the whole feeling comfortable,

and am I going to really, really use it,

or is it going to be good for me.

If I feel my level of English is not good enough.

And I think that it doesn't matter,

it doesn't matter at all, you have to just do it.

Sure, you have to work a lot, do the homework,

or prepare yourself before the sessions and everything,

but that's normal, right,

you have to do it. Yeah, exactly.

It's like everything, if you wanna make a change,

or you wanna make some sort of improvement,

you can have all the motivation in the world,

but if you don't do it, nothing is gonna change.

And I think that's, I don't know,

and you can tell me what you think as a student,

but when we put the program together, we were like,

what can we create that's going to give the students

lots of opportunities to practice, to prepare things,

to do homework, so that it's quite structured in fact,

and that you get enough different opportunities

to really focus on the things that you wanna focus on,

or to come with your questions and that kind of thing, yeah.

Oh yes, so the program have different parts.

Yeah,

and you feel that it is designed

to face different kind of situations,

and altogether it's going to improve your English.

Yeah, 'cause English is a lot of things,

it's grammar, it's vocabulary, it's pronunciation,

it's communication skills,

and you gotta do all of it, so yeah.

And it's never going to end,

it's not like you are going to, or at least for me,

I know that I have to keep studying English,

and practicing, forever, right.

Yeah, it's not one of those things where it's like,

okay, I'm finished.

You can always, and then I mean even native speakers,

they take training on how to be good at presentations,

or how to be good at networking,

and it's just a never ending cycle of learning,

but that's why it's fun.

So I guess one final question

is, for a student who is maybe looking at the program,

and maybe who has the same questions as you had,

is there anything that you would say to that student?

To help them to make their decision.

I think it's for everybody,

I think that you will have to work hard to make it work.

I think

it's fun because you meet people

from around the world, you face different situations,

you can even find new friends,

and it's going to help you in different aspects of English,

from pronunciation, new words, expressions, idioms,

but it's going to do it in real life,

it's going to prepare you for a real situations.

Yeah, 'cause it's real interaction,

real situations, and things like that, right.

Okay, great!

Well Benny, I just wanna, again, say congratulations

for finishing the program,

and thanks a lot for sharing your experience with us.

Anytime (chuckles).