ارتباط با دنیا از طریق انگلیسی با گبی والاس

019 - Gabby Wallace - Connecting the World Through English

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Hello there, Kevin here with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast. Today is a Ted talk Tuesday episode and today I am going to talk about an inspirational talk from a fellow English teacher, an online English teacher by the name of Gabrielle Wallace.

You might have heard of her, she runs the website Go Natural English, she has a great YouTube channel with tons of English lessons on YouTube under Go Natural English and I’m going to talk about a talk that she did on Ted where she talks about her journey through college and English teaching and traveling the world and where she’s been and what she’s done to create this big community of online English learners. And what she finds is important and connects people around the world, no matter where they are from; what makes people similar.

And I’m going to go through it, discuss the talk and also talk about some of the vocabulary and expressions Gabby uses to help you understand it better. So you can watch this great talk and learn some English while you’re doing that so you can learn not only from this podcast but also going to YouTube and watching the video and using that as an English lesson for you. I think the best English lessons are the ones where we are using real content in English, content that’s inspiring, that’s entertaining, that’s fun, that’s educational, using that to improve our English.

If you want transcripts to this episode and other episodes on the Feel Good podcast, go to feelgoodenglish.com where you’ll find information on how to get transcripts for free if you become a feel-good member. So I’ll see you there and let’s get into the show.

So, in the beginning of Gabby’s talk, she talks about when she was in her early twenties, she was an idealist. Now an idealist is somebody who dreams big, possibly impractically, meaning, dreams that are so big it would be very difficult to achieve them .

In her case, in her early twenties, meaning when she was twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, she single-handedly wanted to achieve world peace, a great expression here. At one minute and twenty seconds of her talk she says she “single-handedly” coming from the word “hand”, “singlehandedly wanted to achieve world peace”. Meaning by herself travelling the world she was going to achieve world peace.

That’s a pretty big idea, that’s pretty hard to do and that is why she calls herself an idealist. So anyway, Gabby through her education and her experience in college becomes an English teacher and decides to move to Japan where she can teach English in Tokyo, probably a great place, I haven’t been to Japan, but I would sure like to.

Anyway she has a very interesting point, she says that because of her schedule in Japan of teaching English, she would teach in the mornings, should also teach in the evenings. So she had this large amount of free time during the day, she said it felt like a void, at three minutes and thirty seconds, she said it felt like a “void” V-O-I-D.

A void is a hole or an empty space where there is nothing. Where there is a void, there is nothing there. So she felt like in her day there was a void because he didn’t have anything to do.

Here in the US, it seems like we are always trying to fill that void with something to do, we always need something to do, somewhere to go, always trying to fill those voids; personally I think this is not the best way to live. It creates anxiety and pressure and always feeling that we need to be busy, so I really like this idea of Gabby’s saying that in Japan they use the negative space as something positive.

Japanese gardens use a lot of negative space, she talks about when Japanese people are having a conversation, they use the space between words, very interesting. You ever find that sometimes you just keep talking and talking and nobody ever wants there to be any silence between speakers? Almost unnecessarily and you end up saying things that aren’t even necessary.

So moving along here, after talking about the videos that she was producing and a few people were watching them and she really wanted to help her English learners in some way that she could, but she was not really sure, not really confident with the videos that she was producing.

She started to doubt whether this was all worth it.

This expression “to be worth it” is often misused. And probably because at the end of the sentence you say “it” “worth it”. What is “it”? Well, “it” is a situation. So pay attention to this phrase. She was doubting whether this was all worth it. Whether if, if this was all worth it, just throw that it at the end of the sentence, that’s what it is.

So it means was the time she was putting in on this, was it creating value, was it going to benefit her and others in the end? Was it worth the time?

Was it compensating? Is there compensation for this? Is there going to be compensation for this?

So, moving down the line and then here is when she really started to see things happening in her life and she talks about it eight minutes and ten seconds, “Going all in”, this is a great expression, to go all in, three words.

To go all in means to put 100% into something, to stop doing something only 50% of the effort to stop hesitating, to stop resisting and to go all in and to put all of your effort, 100% into what you are doing.

So, she was worried, I don’t know, should I do this, should I not do this, should I continue to try to work online? And she said then she decided to “go all in”. At eight minutes and fifty seconds, she uses a phrasal verb “ramp up”. A ramp is like a hill; like a ramp, it could be something like a hill or an incline. A truck goes up a ramp on to a boat. To ramp up, phrasal verb, is to increase, to increase your production.

She decided to increase her production and go all in. Through this, she started creating an international community, a lot of people started connecting with her and it started to really, really grow through Gabby.

After her community started growing, she started getting a lot more connected with people from around the world and travelling and visiting people and connecting with the people that she would connect with online.

She would connect with them in person. And she started to realise more and more how people around the world in general, have the same goals and desires and dreams as humans.

We all are looking for similar things and the more you travel, I think the more that you can see this. So travelling is so great, it’s to find the similarities of people around the world. Sometimes they seem so strange when they are so far away or you see on television or movies what some other culture is like, but it’s just totally not the way it is.

Gabby has really been able to connect with people around the world. It’s such a great thing. At twelve minutes and thirty seconds, she’s talking about how many views she gets now, how many people have connected to her YouTube Channel Go Natural English, over 100,000 which is pretty amazing.

And she’s not saying this to brag, she’s not saying this to brag, B-R-A-G. I used this in another episode too. “To brag” is to be arrogant, or to talk about the good things in your life to make other people envious, that’s to brag.

She’s not saying this to brag, she’s telling her story to show you how things are possible, how things can be possible if you go all in, if you put in the effort, if you commit to something, these things are possible.

At the end she asks three questions and these are three quick questions to ask yourself. And the first question is, what is it that you want to give?

Something I’ve noticed through all the years of English teaching is how much you can learn for yourself from teaching others certain things.

Giving an example, if you are an intermediate or advanced English speaker, teaching English to

beginners or teaching your language to people that don’t speak your language can help you learn so much about not only your language, but their language and just learning about connection and communication and teaching; not just trying to learn all the time, but also trying to teach and trying to help others and trying to show them new things, gives so much value back to yourself.

Like Gabby, she has put out so many videos and lessons and podcast episodes and given so much and all of that value has come back to her. So, ask yourself what can you give to others? If you’re frustrated with English, how can you help others with their English? And see what happens.

Also too, who is going to be your cheerleader? A cheerleader, like in sports, football, you see the women on the side of the field in their little skirts, cheering people, rooting for them, clapping and giving them support and encouraging them to do something. So, who is your cheerleader, who is helping you do these things? It’s hard to do things on your own. Who is helping you achieve your goals?

And thirdly, are you in or are you out? Going back to going all in, are you committed to what you want? Every day you have to commit, commit to what you want. Are you in or are you out? Are you going to commit to this or are you not going to commit? Are you committed every day to what you want?

And I find personally, the more that you do this, the easier it becomes: because you find out what it takes to commit to your goals. The more often you do it, the more you realize okay, this is important, I need to do this more often; this other thing it not important, I need to stop doing this.

So go all in, baby.

So that’s it for today’s Ted Talk. On Thursday I’ll actually be releasing an episode, an interview I did with Gabrielle. We did an interview a few weeks back, talking about a book that has really changed her life. So in a couple of days that episode will be up, you can listen to that as well.

And again, if you want transcripts to this episode, go to feelgoodenglish.com, or go directly to this episode,

feeelgoodenglish.com/gabby and you will find the episode.

I hope this has been valuable to you, I will see you on another lesson. Until then I hope you find something to go all in on and commit to that. It takes patience and faith, faith in what you’re doing, but have fun while doing it.

That makes it easier.

And your awesome joke for the day; what do you call a pile of kittens? A meowntain.