یادگرفتن یادگیری - داستان من

025 - Learning How to Learn - My Story

Hello there! Kevin here. With another episode of The Feel Good English Podcast.

So I didn’t receive a question this week from anyone. That’s OK.

You can send me your questions at anytime. But instead of not making an episode, I decided to make an episode about a little story, about my life, to give you an idea about myself and also to give you some insight into language learning.

And the big “eye opening” experience I had. The thing that lead me to totally change my philosophy on language learning.

So I’ll get into that story in a minute. First I’d like to thank you listeners out there who became members this week. And those people are Maurizio, Will, Alessandro, Marcus, Stefano, Luis and Juan. So thank you guys for signing up, becoming members. Now you get transcripts. Looking forward to connect with you more in the future.

If you want to become a member go to feelgoodenglish.com.

So let’s get into the story.

So when I was around 23, I decided that I wanted to study in a different country. I was studying psychology here in the U.S, in Colorado, but I really wanted to travel and do something different and experience different culture, another language, and I thought doing that in school would be a good idea. Not only, one, because I could stay there longer, and you know what but also, because it was cheaper, I would have to pay less money if I was studying there than if I just went on a long trip backpacking.

I decided to go to Prague, which is in the Czech Republic. I knew nothing about Prague at that time. Somebody recommended it, and I was gonna study for 3 months, that actually turned out to be 6 months and i stayed in Prague for 10 months. So turned out to be a long, very wonderful experience.

So when I went there, I actually studied Economics. They didn’t have a Psychology program. So I took a year off from that and started studying business. And I also took Czech language. Czech Republic has their own language, it’s called Czech. It’s one of those languages that sounds like “Woocschhh ooogshzzzz oggshhhh wuddush gggshhh”. Very rough, a lot of consonant letters in their words. Very difficult language, definitely a very tricky language to learn. But of course I was gonna try to learn the language while I was there.

So I signed up for their class at the university and started. It was your typical class. Probably around 20 students, and a teacher, and your book. Basic verbs, pronouns, learning small things. And then you start connecting them a little bit. And then you have a test or a quiz on what you’re learning, and there are some, a few words there. And as usual just like when I started learning Spanish as a child in a classroom, I didn’t do very well. It wasn’t working very well for me.

If you’ve read about me in the past before or heard from me. I studied Spanish growing up but I just never had a good result.

And now, a lot being older, 23, studying Czech in the Czech Republic, at a school, I started to feeling the same way. It was getting a little discouraging. I was trying but i wasn’t getting anywhere in the first month or so.

About a couple of months into my experience there, I started hanging out with this girl. She was Czech whhooooooh… and she spoke English. But her friends didn’t. At the time I was a DJ, i used to dj and play in clubs and be kind of in that atmosphere. So I would meet her and her friends and we’d go out and talk and party and have fun. And her friends, like I said, most of them didn’t speak in English, so I had to try to communicate with them in Czech.

Obviously at that time I couldn’t speak much, but I was ready to try. After a few weeks of trying to communicate with her, this girl I was hanging out with, seeing, and her friends, I started to build a vocabulary of phrases. Some words and phrases that they were using a lot. Very basic communication phrases, ones that I needed to use in order to communicate with somebody.

After a few weeks of this, I went back to the Czech class and the teacher was asking questions about something and she wanted to get an answer from students, and of course in the classroom usually they’re looking for one answer. It’s like the correct answer to her question.

But whatever she asked me, I don’t remember whatever it was, I gave a different answer. And it was correct, it was just not from the book. It was just something that I learned in the streets. But it worked. It was communication and I answered her question. And she looked at me surprised like, “Wow! Where did you learn that?”. And I was “Oh, I learned it from some Czech friends.” And she was a little, I don’t know, disappointed, or surprised, or whatever.

But for me, I realized, “wait a minute.. I don’t.. there’s more than one way to be learning Czech here.” I could be sitting in a classroom looking for that one right answer, and if I don’t have that one right answer, I feel stupid. Or I could go out and just start communicating with people, writing things down, asking a lot of questions; these questions are very relevant to the moment, so they’re very real, and I could learn that way. At that moment I thought, “well, this is what’s been going on. This is why I’ve never been able to learn a language in a classroom.” It doesn’t work for me. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t exciting. It wasn’t useful. It wasn’t current.

A lot of times we’re learning English or a language and we, we’re learning things that aren’t used that often. We spent time on a book that was maybe made 20 years ago, or 10 years ago. And it’s very generic language. So, I realized, why don’t I just learn the real Czech doing it out with friends and doing it over some beers at 4 AM in a dark club.. you can learn a lot in that situation instead of worrying about getting the right answer in class.

So, anyway I continued with the class. I had to finish the semester.

I did okay. And I’m sure I learned some things. Its nice to have a little mix sometimes. I learned some things. But, I continued seeing this girl, continued practicing outside of class, and you know what, I progressed faster than most of the other students in the classroom. They would use me when we’d go out and walk around the streets and go get a coffee or something, they’d usually tell me to go up and order something. Or to at the train station, I would go buy the tickets.

And you know what, this confirmed for me that this approach is better, especially for me. This approach isn’t for everybody. But for me it’s much better. It’s much more entertaining and real and authentic. I think it’s important to express yourself through language. And learning this way helps you do that.

This totally transformed the way that I learn languages, and that I teach language. Implementing these ideas after many years of teaching English, I developed a style of using these techniques of helping people naturally build their English skills. Connect them to things that make them happy. Don’t study English, study things that make you happy that are interesting. Build your life around English.

And let the English come second, and learning come first. So you’re learning things in English, but the content you’re learning should be priority.

So now I want you to decide for yourself. Which kind of english path or journey are you going to take? And either one is valid. If you like learning in a school, if you like learning from books, if you really like making sure your grammar is really good, then you can do that. It takes a little longer. You also have to enjoy studying language, because it’s a language, and a lot of people don’t. But that is a path you can take, that is one journey that you can take.

The other one is diving deep into the language from the beginning, and using the language that you’re learning to learn about other things, to communicate with people through that language. To improve your life using that language, reading about and listening to subjects in that language, that can help you become better, more fulfilled, happier. This is a method that works. Sometimes people don’t have faith. They’re taught from an early age that they need to learn very formally, in a very structured way. But I can promise you, and I have seen students do this, that ones that get excited about English, they find topics to learn about and to study and to follow and they do it by using the English language, and they don’t stress about how many times they listen to the audio, or if they memorize all of the words in the audio. They don’t worry about that. They just worry about enjoying it.

Just put time into it, have patience and you will come out a fluent speaker. I know that. That’s how I learned Portuguese. 100%. I didn’t like classes, so I learned in the streets, asking a lot of questions, being curious.

You have to have courage when you use the language. And that’s just part of it.

So that’s the story for today, I hope you enjoyed it! And if you have any questions send them to me kevin@feelgoodenglish.com.

I’m here for you, all the time. I will talk to you soon with another lesson. Until then….

Smile. Be happy. Enjoy the process of learning about life and English.

Bubye!