چه میکنی؟ مکالمه با دو لهجه ی بریتیش و استرالیایی

Hello everyone welcome back to English with Lucy.

I’m with Emma from English. Yes you are. Yes I am.

Today we’re going to have a conversation. So, we’re going to have a chat and hopefully it will help you with your English listening skills. I’d like to ask Emma a few questions about how she became a teacher. her experiences. I think it’s going to be really interesting.

Because I’m genuinely interested in how you got started on YouTube and how you started teaching. I recommend that you listen to this video once without subtitles and then you watch it again with subtitles to see how much you understood. We also filmed another video about introductions which is on Emma’s channel.

So, make sure you watch that as well. the link will be in the description box. Alright, let’s get started. Okay, so Emma what do you do?

Well Lucy I’m a teacher, I teach. Yeah. I teach English online. Um, so I do that through YouTube or through my website and Facebook groups and that kind of thing. So, I have lots of students online and how did you get into teaching?

Because you originally did something different yes I did I’ve been teaching for about five years now okay but before that I was a landscape architect.

A landscape architect. Yeah, so it was a design degree that I did at university. But, you know of course I wanted to travel when I wanted to live in other countries and experience other cultures and things like that.

So, I decided to train to be a teacher and so, did you teach in an Academy, or did you do private lessons? I taught in an Academy, there, okay, yeah. I’ve never had any Vietnamese students. I mainly teach Spanish students. Okay, in person, but, I have a whole rainbow of students on my own line and for moment.

Oh that’s the great thing about teacher and run. what do you think is the biggest challenge for Vietnamese students when learning English for the Yemenis students. Yeah, well I think a lot of it is to do with pronunciation.

Because we have a lot of very different sounds in English that are not really present in their pronunciation. when there’s a lot of the enemies. So, a lot of consonant sounds especially when they’re at the end of words the teenage down I get a lot of comments about the the TA.

Yeah, you know, Spaniards actually for Spanish speakers and the biggest problem is the pronunciation of the vowels.

Mm-hmm, because we’re in English we have 12 vowel sounds and seven diphthongs and they just have five about sounds that I probably difficult as well and I think it’s even, even more difficult because actually the script that alphabet is the same so the confusion between the letters and then the pronunciation is it’s crazy and of course with English being not being phonetic, is in Spanish, it is exactly you can. Yeah I remember meeting and as it is.

Yeah, I remember seen children read really really long words in Spanish and I thought, oh my god, you guys I was really cheesy and then I realize that actually no. you just read it section by section of the letters and the accents tell you exactly how to pronounce it.

But in English it just isn’t like that yeah how it’s written is absolutely not how it’s pronounced yeah and even if it’s written like that it can be in different words, it can be pronounced completely differently.

Even if it’s the same. so, what do you think is that, is the best way for students to learn, how to how to pronounce words in English?

I think I’m a really big fan of imitating other native speakers in Italy and I think that’s great for pronunciation practice.

But, also for you know learning the intonation and the rhythm of English. because you’ll you know students will listen to us when we speak and hear that our voices are kind of going up and down and up and down. And that’s so important.

Yeah there’s so much meaning in that for English. You know the same sentence in a couple of different ways with different tones or and it means something completely different your chance it.

Yeah and I can really be confusing for students. Well it can be confusing when you’re trying to speak and get your message across. But, when you’re listening you know you miss so much information if you don’t understand that. So, it’s really important.

Another thing for me is the set phrases like the the expressions. but this is the same for learning any language I remember when I was learning Spanish hearing really weird phrases and you either know that we don’t you know you can’t just guess.

Yeah, so, you mean like idioms or you know with radiators and yeah. yeah, you very words a huge it’s like insider knowledge. Yeah, you really have to work on it, so, what about Spanish learners? What you’ve talked about some of the pronunciation problems they have, but, what other kinds of problems do they have with English one of the big ones in my opinion is word order.

You can’t just translate sentences literally because we really change things around yeah so one sentence in Spanish you can’t directly translate it into English it’s we’re not going to understand you.

Or we’re going to have a tough time not having you that’s a big one. Also they really struggle with phrasal verbs and I think the confusing thing in English is some phrasal verbs have multiple meanings or yes and some can be separable other than that. Yeah, really, hmm before.

And, so, what about your teaching experience? What? How did you get into teaching? when I was by accident really that was the best accident I ever had and I was working in marketing in Madrid in like I was doing a sandwich course at university which is where you do two years University, one year in industry and then one last year at university.

okay, normally courses in England are three years. If you do a sandwich course therefore. so, I was going to do my year in industry in Madrid and then the company closed. so, I found myself chocolates.

So, I did my teaching qualification just to fill that year in Madrid I did it in Seville. actually, I moved back really my ex-boyfriend and fell in love teaching I worked an academy for a while, and then I was, I was finishing my degree.

I ran a couple of English groups and yes, then I started YouTube and everything change. yes, yeah, because it’s a game changer for sure. So, what is it that you really love at that teaching I love that you can really make a difference, and you can see it and I like building people’s confidence.

So, I know that after a one-hour session with someone I will be able to see a real marked difference in their and the quality of their work. Yeah, what are you? That’s a good question. It’s um it’s definitely like if I think about what I was doing before and I was working in an office in a team that was great.

But, what I love about teaching is how instantly you can help people and you know really help them to change what they’re doing. Understand something and start using the language differently.

so, I think that that’s one of the really lovely things about teaching, is you can really help people and make a difference. Yeah, and you can open so many. you can help them to open so many doors because having an extra language can completely change your life. Yeah, if I didn’t know Spanish I wouldn’t be it missing it a lot from English.

So, thank you so much for answering my questions. Not very low in to talk video is lovely chatting and lovely catching up with you here in London. Yes, in Great Neck see you again ah, come and visit me.

No, but, so if you enjoyed this video make sure you head over to Emma’s channel. the link to her video another video we did together just having a chat what about introductions. Yeah introductions. And small talk with our first video. yeah that’s in the description box. So, click on that and go and see what we spoke about on Emma’s channel.