What if I understand everything in English but don't know how to respond?

Hello.

Hi.

Hey.

Hello.

How's it going?

I'm Gabby.

Welcome to Go Natural English.

This is my friend and colleague--

Stephanie.

Stephanie.

Yeah.

Hello.

So just to introduce Stephanie, she

is a wonderful English teacher.

Thank you.

Over 10 years of experience.

So now you have over 20 years of experience--

Yeah.

--between the both of us.

Yep.

And we both have our master's in teaching

English as a second language.

Mhm.

And she also has a master's in African Studies.

Yeah.

So she knows stuff, OK?

I know a lot of stuff.

You know a lot of stuff.

Mhm.

And she has, like, lots of papers and degrees and stuff.

So I wanted to invite her here to Go Natural English to help

out with some questions that you've

had about learning English.

Yeah.

So one really interesting question

that I've gotten lately is, OK, what

if I understand everything I hear,

or like 90% of what I hear, but I don't know how to respond,

I don't have the words to respond.

Yeah.

I've felt the same problem with Portuguese,

because I've been spending a lot of time in Brazil

and I understand a lot, but sometimes I

don't know how to express myself.

Mhm.

So I can totally relate.

Yeah.

And I know you-- you lived in Senegal--

Yeah.

--where they speak French and Wolof.

Right.

Maybe you felt the same way sometimes?

Oh, yeah.

For sure.

Yeah.

Like I think the comprehension skills come first,

and the productive skills-- you know,

it's kind of like the next step.

Yeah.

You feel like, ah, I don't know what to say.

Yeah, I can't find the words.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we're going to give you some tips what

to do if you feel this way.

But first, I want to tell you, if you would like

to try a free sample course--

Yeah.

--from Go Natural English, you can go,

after you watch this episode, go to GoNaturalEnglish.com/7steps.

So the number 7--

Awesome.

S-T-E-P-S.

Yes.

Yes.

Steps.

OK.

So what should we do in this situation

where we can understand what's going on

but can't answer, can't add our opinion?

Yeah.

Gosh.

So for example--

Yeah.

Let's, like, give an example.

Yeah.

So let's say that you are at the beach

and you are trying to tell someone how you-- something

you really enjoy doing at the beach, right.

You're trying to talk about how you enjoy collecting shells.

You know, shells are those little hard things, right--

Yeah.

So--

Pretty little things.

So some advice that I would have is,

OK, so before you go to the beach,

you kind of rehearse your conversation in your mind.

What are some things that you might talk about, right?

Yeah.

So you're at home and you're like,

oh, I remember, I love collecting shells.

Let me look up that word in my dictionary--

In English, yeah.

And practice it, right.

Listen to the pronunciation, practice it,

so that you're prepared.

So you kind of, like, prepare your conversations.

You rehearse them.

Yeah.

And the other thing is like, let's just

say you're in that conversation and you can't

think of the word shell, right.

Yeah.

Well, you start describing it.

So try to get the other person to help you come up

with the word, right.

So you start, OK, it's white--

Yeah.

There's lots of them on the beach--

It's about like this big.

It's this big.

It's beautiful.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Like, try to think of descriptive words--

Yeah.

You know, to come up with a good, you know, way--

I like it.

It's hard.

--for the person to help you.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then you'll find-- at least I've

found with my friends who speak, you know,

Portuguese, for example-- I'm trying to learn Portuguese--

they will offer those words.

Yeah.

They'll so oh, do you mean shell?

Yes.

And then it might click, oh yeah, I mean shell.

Shell.

Yeah.

Like, maybe you've heard the word

before but you just can't remember it.

That happens a lot.

Yeah.

Like when you hear a word, you can recognize it.

But then if you want to use that word

and you haven't heard it in a long time--

Yeah.

--it just doesn't come--

You forget it.

--to mind.

Yeah.

Have you ever felt like that?

I have.

I have, for sure.

Oh, yeah.

Even in English.

Definitely.

Oh my gosh, it's scary when it happens

in your native language.

Yeah, that's so true.

Like, what was I going to say?

Yeah.

So I really like that.

And I think if you want to talk about anything in particular,

like if you are very interested in shells,

you should probably know that word.

Yeah.

You should learn how to talk about it.

If you're interested in something else,

like you love bike riding--

Yeah.

--or you love cooking--

Yeah, exactly.

Make sure that you visualize that conversation--

And come up with, like, a bank of vocabulary words

that are around that context.

Yeah.

You know, learn about that context.

Well like, you've talked about in other episodes about how

when you lived in Senegal, you would go shopping

in an outdoors market--

Yeah.

And you needed the vocabulary for that.

So, like, before you would go--

Yeah.

--you'd think about, what am I going to say.

And I would rehearse it.

I would practice it over and over again

to make sure that I sounded just like the other women

in the marketplace.

Yeah.

And they loved it.

It was--

That's so cool.

--people really were so open to, you know, oh,

there's this American who's trying to--

Yeah.

--negotiate for a carrot.

And it's so awesome because, you know--

She sounds like a native.

Yeah.

That's so cool.

And oftentimes, you know, in the beginning,

I didn't have the words.

But I just forced myself to get through it.

I made tons of mistakes.

But who cares?

Yeah.

You know, eventually I got it.

And I became fluent--

That's awesome.

--in Wolof.

Yeah.

That's so cool.

Yeah.

Well, I hope this was helpful.

Remember that now you can go to GoNaturalEnglish.com/7steps

to try a sample course for--

Yeah.

--free.

So we'll see you there.

All right.

All right.

Bye.

Sounds good.

Bye.