Don't Watch This Video If You're Learning English

A very common question that I get

when I'm doing my live English lessons

goes something like this,

someone will say, "I can read in English.

I can understand you when you talk,

but when I try to have an English conversation,

I don't know how to speak in English.

I don't know how to put words and sentences together

so that I can have an English conversation."

And then I usually talk a little bit about how,

in my opinion, when you are studying a language,

you should be doing some reading practice,

listening practice.

You should be doing some writing.

You should be having conversations

and maybe learn a little bit of grammar

and vocabulary along the way,

because I firmly believe you get good at what you practice.

Now, if that sounds familiar,

it's possible that you watched Christian's video

over on Canguro English yesterday, or earlier today.

It's a great video.

And that's why I called this video,

"Don't watch this video if you want to learn English."

Go and watch Christian's video.

Just hit pause right now.

Go and watch Christian's video.

I think he explains it in a very concise and clear way.

He talks about the myth of input

when learning the English language.

It's a great video.

So you can pause this video and go watch his.

You don't have to come back, but if you wanna come back,

I will talk a little bit more about this subject myself.

But certainly, if you do one thing today,

if you have to choose between Christian's video and mine,

go watch Christian's.

I really liked it.

He's a cool guy, by the way.

So what did I wanna talk about? Practice.

When you practice something, you get good at it.

Musicians know this.

A musician would never say this,

"I'm gonna watch some YouTube videos

of someone playing a guitar,

and I'm going to learn to read music,

and then I will be a great guitarist.

I will be amazing."

Musicians understand that when you practice something,

you get good at it.

And the same is true when you are learning a language.

Jen makes bouquets of flowers.

And when Jen first started making bouquets,

I thought they were beautiful,

but Jen thought they could use improvement.

So over the years,

as she has continued to practice the art of making bouquets,

she has started to become very, very good at it.

She is starting to master the art of bouquet making.

And I think the same is true for a language.

I think you want to approach it

with the desire to master it,

and to master all aspects of it.

So again, in my opinion,

you get good at what you practice.

Again, taken from Christian's video.

It's a great theory.

This is true, even in my own teaching.

Students get better at writing stories

when they write lots of stories

and get some good feedback on it.

For myself, here's a little story

that I'll give you about my own life,

I went and I took the French B1 test.

As a French language learner,

I wanted to take the B1 test

and to see what score I would get.

I scored really well on reading.

I scored really well on listening.

I didn't do so good on writing,

and I did a little bit poorly on the speaking component,

but I did okay enough to pass.

So I wanted to take the next test a year later, the B2 test.

What do you think I practiced the most

between the first test and the second test?

It certainly wasn't my reading and my listening.

I continued to do that, of course,

because I think it's important,

But I spent the most amount of time,

when I was practicing English,

in conversation with an English tutor

that I met with online.

I also spent a lot of time writing.

We did some writing back and forth via email,

but I probably spent most of my time practicing

the speaking portion of learning the French language,

because I wanted to improve that specific aspect of it.

When I took the B2 test, I did really well.

I was really happy,

because my scores in all four areas were almost equal.

Whereas, as I mentioned the first time around,

my reading and my listening scores were great,

and my writing and speaking scores were a bit lower.

But the second time around,

I scored really well on all four.

It also reminds me of something that I saw on TV

when I was a kid.

There was a news story

and they were investigating how football players,

American football players,

trained to be better football players.

And they were showing the players running through the tires.

And they interviewed one player afterwards and they said,

"Does running through the tires make you

a better football player?"

And he said, you know, "It's good for endurance

and leg strength and things like that,

but mostly it just makes me really good

at running through tires.

I'm the fastest player on the team when we do that drill."

And so you can kind of see how this relates

to learning English as well.

Certainly, listening is important.

Certainly, reading is important.

The methods of practicing your English,

where you are practicing your input is very important,

but if you're not writing and if you're not speaking,

there's certainly something missing in all of it.

And I'll leave you with this one final thought.

You will realize that language is a living thing

the first time you make someone smile,

or you make someone laugh

when you're speaking their language.

I have a clear memory

of the first time I made someone smile

when I was speaking French to them.

You probably have a very clear memory

of the first time you made someone smile or laugh

when you were speaking English to them.

It's just, in that moment,

you realize that a language is not a written thing.

It's not a recorded thing.

Language is a life thing.

It's something to be experienced,

and the best way to experience it

is to make sure you practice all the aspects

of learning the language.

And I'll leave you with another final thought.

We have a phrase in English, "Practice makes perfect,"

and that's probably very appropriate in this situation.

If you want to get as close to perfection as possible,

and it's going to be hard work, with your English,

with your ability to read, write, listen, and speak,

the more you practice, the more perfect it will become.

So practice makes perfect.

Anyways, Bob the Canadian here.

I'm not sure if you came back

after watching Christian's video,

called "The myth of input" over on his channel.

I'll put a link in the description as well to that video.

I just think it was a great little reflection

on the theories and the philosophies

of how languages are learned and why we learn them.

Anyways, Bob the Canadian here,

I hope you're having a great day,

and I hope you have a great week.

Bye.

(gentle music)