How Romina learned to understand native speakers

- [Christina] Okay, hello everyone.

This is Christina from Speak English with Christina,

and I'm here today with Romina,

who has just finished up

the Master Real American English program.

She's going to be continuing a second edition of it,

which we're very excited about, and,

Romina, first I just wanna say thanks for

taking a few minutes to share your experience.

To start, maybe, can you just introduce yourself,

so that the people watching this video

can know a little bit about who you are

and why you are improving your English.

- [Romina] Hi, everyone. I'm Romina.

I come from Italy, but now I live in Belgium.

And, I decided to join the Master Real American English as,

since I moved abroad, I need to improve my English

because I use English for work, and,

so the idea was to find a course

that could give me the opportunity

to follow lessons, and to learn things,

in moment which I had availability

because we both work a lot.

- Yeah.

- And, it's not enough to do everything.

- Yeah.

- And, the idea of following a course online

was very interesting for me.

- Had you ever done any courses online in the past?

Or was this the first time?

- Never, this is the first time.

- Okay, oh great. (Romina laughs)

- Oh, wow!

Okay, so I'm very honored about that.

- Just with a simple research on internet,

I found your website.

- And I read... - Yeah.

- I watched some of the contents that you was published

and I found out that they were very interesting,

so I decided to join the course.

- Okay, well thank you very much.

And actually, that's actually a very good point

because I think sometimes, like you, students...

maybe this would be their very first online course.

Did you have any kind of, like, hesitations

or worries about doing an online course?

- Yes, but my main worry was...

it's very important to feel people who are speaking with you

not to be just a face on a screen.

- Yeah.

- And I was worried about having not to getting empathy.

- Yeah.

- Not be able of getting empathy with the people

following the course.

- Yeah.

- But must admit that it was a very interesting experience.

Above all, it was online.

I had the opportunity to speak with people

coming all around the world.

They're from different countries

and different time, and share, also, personal experiences.

It was funny and stimulating.

- Yeah, okay.

Yeah, that's right because you were in a group with,

let's see, there was Isabelle who was from France.

- Yes.

- Anthony who was from France, but he lives in the USA.

- Exactly.

Aisha, who lives in the...

- Lives in the US

but she's from Turkey, I think, originally.

- Yeah. - Yeah, right.

- Yeah, it's true.

I guess, one of the advantages of an online course

is you get people from different cultures,

and languages, and experiences that you can interact with.

Yeah, okay. Great, great.

I'm glad you had a really good

first experience of an online course.

Now, let's see, you did the program for three months.

- Yes.

- And, how did you feel before you joined?

Like, what was the problem that you were trying to solve,

before you joined?

- Acquiring more confidence in order to join

some important job meetings...

- Right.

- Without having fear to open mouth.

(Romina laughs)

- Yeah, yeah.

Because they can be very intimidating, sometimes.

- Exactly.

- Yeah, right.

And so, maybe, how do you feel now that you've finished

those three months in the program?

- I'm not so scared as I was at the beginning.

- Now if I have to have a call

I think I'm able to do it.

- Yeah.

- And if I need to call someone for work,

I'm not so scared about

if my English is sufficient enough...

- Yeah.

- To perform well in English.

So, it was a good achievement for me.

- Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Because it's, I think...

Just sort of realizing that you can do it,

and then going and doing it,

and then seeing, hey, I can do this.

- Exactly.

- That is a big step

because then you feel better in the future,

and you do it more, and then you get better, and so, yeah.

- Yes, I think that this...

There was a turning point in which

I realized that I can do it.

- All right! Fantastic, yeah.

So now it's...

- I think that now I'm also much more able to understand.

- Yeah. A lot, like, native speakers,

or non-native speakers or both?

- Exactly, both. - Okay, yeah.

- Of course, it depends on accents

but I think that, also, it's easier for me

to understand native speakers.

I think that for me, it's easier,

but I think for most people,

it's easier to understand non-native speakers

apart from when they have a terrible accent, or...

- Yeah, or they speak really fast, or, yeah.

- But in generally, it's easier to understand

the non-native speakers.

Now I think that I'm able to understand

native speakers more than before...

- Okay, alright.

- And this is another good point.

- Yeah, because often, a lot of times, people complain,

Americans, they speak fast or they eat their words.

- They eat their words.

- Yeah, right, yeah.

- Okay.

- I also have understood that the most important things

is to catch the general meaning,

because it's normal, when you speak very fast.

In Italian, it's the same.

We do a lot of inferences to fill the gap

of our conversation, and the same is in English.

So it's not to important to understand each singular word.

- Exactly.

- It's important to understand the general meaning

and there is nothing wrong in asking,

"Sorry, can you repeat please."

(Romina laughs) - Yeah, exactly.

- Often, a lot of times, what I tell students is like,

if you, let's say you go through your life

in your native language in one day,

and you just notice these things.

Like you said, maybe you're speaking to your Italian friend,

you don't catch, you don't focus on every single word.

- Exactly.

- And sometimes you say to your friend,

"Wait, what did you say?"

Or "Say that again."

And it's totally natural and it's the same in English.

(Romina laughs)

- Yeah, it's true. - Exactly!

- But I think, like you said earlier,

it's like sometimes when it's your second language

you have higher expectations of yourself

or you're more self-conscious.

But, yeah.

Okay, and then final question.

Is there anything that you would want to share

with a student who is, maybe,

thinking about joining this program or they're hesitating or

they're just curious to know something about it?

- I think that it works to try.

Just because I think that hesitation is normal.

- Yeah, oh, totally.

- Don't everything can work for everybody.

- Exactly.

(Romina stammers)

- I hesitated as well in the beginning, before joining.

But I think that it's a new experience.

It is a new modality of following an English course.

It's something different.

- Yeah, exactly.

- A reason why to deserves to try.

- Yeah, exactly.

And you're right.

Like you said, "Oh, I had hesitations."

I'm the same way.

Before I buy anything, I'm comparing and I'm looking,

and I'm kinda like, I don't know if this works.

- It's something different but you can find everything...

I mean, you have the online interactions,

but you also have the grammatical parts, if you want.

There are a lot of contents,

in terms of grammatics, topics, et cetera.

So you have also the possibility to do a more normal course.

(Romina stammers)

To add the value of the fact that you can join

the online lessons from wherever you are.

- Exactly.

It's like you get what you need out of the course.

- All right, well thank you very much, Romina,

for sharing your story and your experience,

and looking forward to seeing you in the next edition.

- Okay, okay. - In the future.

- Yeah, thanks. - Bye, Christina.

- Bye. - Thanks, you too.