Tips for self study: George meets Taehyun

Hello, everyone.

My name’s George,

and I'm currently in Korea teaching English.

I have a guest today.

His name is Taehyun, he’s a friend of mine.

And he’s from Korea but studying in Germany at the moment.

The purpose of this interview is to talk about the challenges

of learning English,

particularly in the current lockdown situation.

I know that a lot

of you will be in a similar situation to Taehyun,

in which you are currently in lockdown,

so there are not a lot of opportunities to practice

English and to study with other people.

So, I'm going to be talking a lot

about English Grammar and Use.

And how you can use it to help you study English independently.

What was the most effective way to study English for you?

In my experience,

I think it is quite important to put yourself in a circumstance

where you have to speak English.

For me, working with people

who speak English helped me a lot.

I, personally, think

that not translating from English to Korean,

and Korean to English is quite important.

Because of the huge differences between English and Korean.

So, if you translate it from your language to English,

some people might misunderstand

what you are really wanting to say.

How long have you been in lockdown for?

I think it’s been around three months.

Okay, so it must have been a long time

since you hung out with a group of friends.

Yes, I think so, yes.

Yes.

In order to prepare you for hanging out

with your friends again and speaking in English,

I’d recommend using English Grammar in Use.

It focuses on conversational skills

and it’s a great way to prepare you for social situations.

It’s a simple grammar explanation,

followed by practice exercises, with answers in the back.

So, you can use it to study anywhere,

in your own time.

What difficulties did you encounter

whilst learning English?

I've got a lot to talk about,

but one of them would have been Word Order.

So, Word Order in English is completely opposite

to order in Korean.

For example,

if you want to say in Korean, I want to go to the cinema.

You have to say I the cinema go to want to.

It’s not really possible to translate directly.

So, let’s see which activities could help you

in English Grammar in Use.

On page 205, there's a whole activity,

which talks about Word Order.

For example, here, I got up at six this morning.

Get up early usually so don’t.

So, you have to put the words in brackets

in the correct order.

So, this is a really nice way to practice

what you find difficult.

What do you still find difficult

and still feel you need to study?

I found hard to use Articles appropriately really difficult.

And I still find it difficult.

I think that is

because in Korean we just have one Article for the most part.

But as far as I know,

there are three articles in English, right?

Yes.

So that is why I found it difficult

and I'm still struggling to use it properly.

Yes, I think that this is a problem

that students all

over the world have a problem with when studying English.

And in English Grammar in Use,

starting from page 144, there are several pages

devoted to teaching you all about Articles.

For example, here at the top of page 144,

Joe says I had a sandwich and an apple for lunch.

So, he uses A and An because it’s the first time

that he’s talking about the sandwich

and the apple.

And in the second sentence he says,

the sandwich wasn’t very good, but the apple was nice.

Because he’s already talked about the sandwich

and the apple,

he’s now referring to them as The sandwich and The apple.

So, there are lots of useful tips like this

in the following pages to help you understand

how to use The and A.

And there are also exercises on the opposite page.

So, it must be quite difficult to think of

what to study, right?

Yes, that's absolutely true.

Fortunately, in English Grammar in Use,

there's a study guide at the back of the book.

And it has lots of questions about various grammar points.

And you can find out what your strengths

and what your weaknesses are.

And then, following on from that,

you can choose a section in English Grammar

in Use to study.

What do you find difficult?

The study guide will help you find the units

that will help you to improve.

Thank you for taking the time to chat with me, Taehyun.

Yes, thanks for having me, it was a pleasure.

And if you enjoyed watching this video,

don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and to hit

the Like button.

Okay, so it’s bye from me.

Bye-bye.

Bye.