Daily Dose of English 11
Language Learning
Daily Dose of English 11
Intermediate
Hey, everyone. My name is Ben and you're listening to A Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about language learning because we're still in the first couple dozen episodes. I think this is actually episode 11 of the podcast. And so it makes sense to talk about language learning pretty early here to share some of my thoughts and things that I've learned over the past couple years of thinking about language learning and doing language learning literally every single day. And so I think I have a couple of thoughts and learnings and things to share with you that will be really helpful for you on your English learning journey. So let's get into it. One of the last things that I really realized is how important your mindset is. Let me go into that a little bit more. So mindset is the way that you think about something, the way that you perceive it. And so you can have lots of different kinds of mindsets. And your mindset for language learning is strangely important. It's really important to have a good mindset and a mindset that is going to set you up to succeed, to be successful. And especially with English learners, I've worked with lots of English learners over the years, and their mindset is often a little bit off, let's say. Why do I say that? Because English is the most learned language in the world. Billions of people, literally billions of people in the world want to learn English. It's become a bit of a lingua franca or the world language. A lingua franca, by the way, I think it's an old term because that franca part comes from the word French when French was sort of used as a default language between countries. And now English has become that default language kind of in the world. Even if two people want to communicate with each other and they're from totally different countries like, let's say, Austria and Mexico, they're probably going to speak in English, not in one of their native languages because it's much, much, much, much less likely that they know a bit of each other's language. It's pretty much only language learning enthusiasts who actually go out of their way to learn a different language or somebody with a very specific reason. But English is a default for pretty much everybody that lives in a country that has like international relations. English is the default language to learn. And so because of that, there are so many people learning English for reasons that are more important than the language itself. For example, trying to improve your work or to travel more or anything like that aren't inherently things that you want to do because of English, English just helps you to do them. I don't know if that necessarily makes sense, but I hope that you get what I'm trying to say where you probably have an external reason why English would be helpful that isn't strictly because you want to watch Hollywood movies or something. And so there's a lot of people with very interesting, let's say, mindsets when they're learning English. And this can make the process really, really hard because I learned this about my Spanish. There were several years that I was trying, I put that in quotes because it's not really true, I was trying to learn Spanish. But I was actually just pretending to try to learn Spanish. I wanted to be trying to learn Spanish, but I wasn't actually really doing anything. I didn't really study. I didn't even try anything. I wasn't even doing Duolingo or any, like not even really pretending to. My brain was saying, oh, yeah, you're learning Spanish, right? But I really wasn't. And I see that often with English learners. They'll book like one italki session, let's say, per week, and they won't do anything else in English the entire week. And then in their mind, they are learning English. But they really aren't. They're not exposing themselves to the language, they're not even studying. They're not doing anything. But they feel like they are. And then they might be discouraged or unhappy with their progress because they're not making any progress. They're not going to get any better if they're not actually spending time with the language. And so that's something that I learned fairly late into my language learning, my language learning journey, I guess we can say is that your mindset is so important. And I think the best way to do this mindset thing is to think about your identity as a language learner. If you think of yourself as somebody who learns, let's say you're an English learner, right? That's who you are. Think of yourself as an English learner and then do what English learners will want to do or do do. Don't think of yourself as somebody who wants to be an English speaker or who will be an English user or something like that in the future. Think of yourself as an English learner now. If you're listening to this podcast, you are an English learner. And so you can act the part. You probably know what you should be doing more of. And so you can do more of that. You can feel like that's the thing that you do, right? I don't know if you have any friends or maybe you have a certain role that you play in maybe your family. For example, I have the role of the tech person. If my parents or grandparents have a problem with tech, they're going to ask me because in their minds and in my mind, I am the tech helper, right? And so same thing actually for language learning. If they have a question about languages or something, they're going to come to me, obviously. And so think of yourself as an English learner. If somebody has a question about learning English, who should they ask? You ideally. You maybe still have things to learn, but that's okay. I still have plenty of things to learn about language learning. I still have things to learn about technology, about tons of things, but I can already still think of myself as becoming that thing or being that thing and it's really helpful. And so that's a big thing for language learning because your motivation and the fact that you come back and you actually put in the work every day is really important to make progress. And the other thing that I learned, the other big lesson that helps me to actually become fluent in Spanish is that spending good time with the language isn't necessarily studying it and spending that time is the most important thing. And so watching TV shows and spending time enjoying stuff in English isn't being lazy. It is helping you. It's not taking time away from grammar study, which isn't helping you, by the way, or other things that don't actually improve your abilities, but they feel maybe more gratifying or satisfying. Spending the time with the language and putting that work and that time is really what's going to help you. This podcast is only 10 minutes per day, but there are tons and tons of TV shows and YouTube videos out there that you can watch that aren't even for English learners. They're for people like me, for native speakers, but that just makes it perfect material for you to learn English. One thing that all of the really, really good English learners that I've ever met have in common is the fact that they've spent thousands of thousands of hours using, or not even using, being in English, listening to things in English, reading things in English, and that is the common factor. And so spending time with your language, in this case English, is absolutely critical for language learning. Right now I'm learning Czech. I think I've mentioned that in past episodes, but most of that time is just doing things in Czech. I listen to audiobooks and read along, I watch TV shows, I watch YouTube videos, I do a little bit of vocabulary study, I study some new words, but not very much. That's like 10 minutes a day at most, and I do over two hours every single day. That is really, really important, spending that time. And that last thing, that every single day bit, is my last, I guess, tip here. Consistency is critical. You need to be doing this regularly, every day if possible, in order to make progress. If you struggle to do things every day, that's fine. You don't necessarily need to be 100% amazingly perfectly efficient. You don't need to do exactly two and a half hours every single day like I do, but you do need to use English a little bit every single day, engage your brain in English. And that's one of the main reasons I wanted to do this podcast every day, is because if you at least do this every day, then you are doing a daily bit of English, your daily dose of English, if you will. And then you can do more after that. You can maybe go read a book or watch a TV show or do a little bit of study, whatever works for you. But I do recommend doing more time on things like YouTube and TV shows, because that's where you're really going to experience the language. And plus, there's so many good YouTube videos and TV shows in English that it would be so easy just to accidentally watch two seasons of a whole show and go, oops, I just spent eight hours learning English, oh no. And so I definitely recommend you do things like that. Not when you're supposed to be doing something else, obviously. Take care of your family and yourself, but spend time with English. Anyways, I want to start to wrap it up here. I think this is a very important topic, and I'll probably come back to it in other times and talk about other language learning tips and things like that. But for now, I'm going to leave you with that. Spend time with English every single day. Spend lots of time, as much as you can, and enjoy it. And change your mentality if you don't think of yourself as an English learner, because you are. You're here. You hang out every single day. And so if you want, tell me down in the comments that I am an English learner. I learn English. That's my thing. So anyways, that's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. I hope that you enjoy the episode, and I'll see you again tomorrow for that consistent English practice. Bye bye.
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