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The KEY to Learning English: Speak English with Vanessa

Kevin: Hey there, Kevin here with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast. How you doing out there? Are you smiling? And speaking of smiling, today I have an interview with Vanessa the English teacher who has a wonderful smile, she is an experienced American English teacher, and today we’re gonna talk a little bit about why she got into English teaching. I asked her the difference between teaching Americans that are in high school versus teaching foreigners learning English Hey everybody I’m here with Vanessa from speak English with Vanessa. How are you?

Vanessa: Oh I’m doing great, thanks Kevin.

Kevin: Thanks for being here with us and telling your story to the feel good English members. So let’s start there Vanessa, Who are you? Where are you? Why do you do what you do? Let’s talk about that kind of stuff.

Vanessa: Who are you? This is already a difficult question, and well I’m Vanessa at the moment I live in North Carolina at the East Coast of the US and I’m an English teacher but I think The KEY to Learning

English: Speak English

with Vanessa

–> Listen to the audio <–

beyond that too, just a culture lover, interested in travelling and meeting people who have different lifestyles than me. But my job and my passion now is to teach online and help people around the world, similar to what you’re doing. Just helping people to improve their English, their confidence and the ability to communicate.

Kevin: Awesome, and so tell me how you get into that field?

What brought you into the English teaching field?

Vanessa: I think it started a long time ago, probably in high school because I used to be friends with every exchange student who was at my school and I realize why am I always friends with the exchange students and it was because I just felt it was really interested in helping someone who didn’t know anything about the basics that I was used too. Like how to get to your next class, how to communicate with people? How to deal with different aspects of American culture and that was really interesting to me to learn about their culture. So I think that interest started pretty young but I started officially teaching English about 6 or 7 years ago in the US to English, native English speakers. I taught middle school and high school English at a small town in Pennsylvania and decided I wanted go more internationally so I move to France and lived with a family help their kids speak English and then move to Korea and taught there for 3 years and now I’m back here in the US.

Kevin: So very interesting and for our listeners might be curious so tell me the difference between teaching middle school, high school to native English speakers so let say maybe 13,14 year old, 15, 16 year old in the US and American versus teaching students to other countries where are the same age. So tell me the difference between those types of classes.

Vanessa: Yeah! Yeah! So when I taught in the US it was a general English class. So we focus on reading, analyzing what you are reading. Kinda like what you are doing in this podcast with books, writing presentation skills. Personally I didn’t really wanna push the more grammatical side of it, diagramming sentences and really stressing about spelling those kind of things they wanted to integrate the more natural approach. The school wasn’t always please with that. I think the student love being able to do projects and presentations instead of just multiple choice test. So I try be a little more natural in that way but those students obviously could speak English naturally was their native language. But when I taught that similar age high school, elementary schools even adults in Korea their main thing was perfecting as much as possible the language itself. I would have loved to talk about books and extra material that we could learn English through but most of those students were not at that level yet. I had one student who is actually in elementary school, I think she was only 11 years old and we read Harry Potter together and that was incredibly fun. Just to see her, her eyes light up as we read different parts and be able to learn something that not just grammar or vocabulary but learn through the book.

So that was fun but it generally wasn’t just focus on extra materials and in my opinion, I think that was more the school’s decision in those other countries. If it were to me I would have love to create that kind of material for them and bring in some, some more natural level of appropriate things so kind of a negative part about learning in a school. You’re having to follow what the administrators think, but there some differences. Yeah.

Kevin: And I think even at you, even your having that experience of teachings Americans, you know. Literature those, and those types of English lessons. At least you have that background too and you could go around the world and teach other people. Kind of having that desire to, to make English more real and kind of make English come to life to them even if you couldn’t focus on that. I’m sure your students could feel that from you.

Vanessa: Yeah definitely, that just passion, I think it comes through they can pick it up.

Kevin: Into you Vanessa with all of these experience, when it comes to teaching foreign students, what do you think is the most important for them to know? And what do you think is the most important for you to do with them so that they would become a confident, competent English speaker.

Vanessa: One of the most important things is realizing the purpose of language and the purposes to communicate with other people so at a minimum. If the other person can understand you, you’re doing a great job. Even if you just used gestures and you say simple words like hungry, food. Of course a lot of people listen, these can say more than that. If you can communicate that’s the basis of language. So I think a lot of English learners really get stress about being perfect and remember all the rules and anything polite or rude and anything that they learned in school but really coming back to the basics of communication is gonna help build confidence and just have fun. When you can communicate that’s way more fun than reading something that’s just grammar rules.

Kevin: And that’s great and I think it also simplifies for the students because they don’t have to focus on all of these rules and speaking correctly. They can focus more on building their, their skills, and building the ability to communicate through using certain words, using their bodies, you know. Developing those skills of communication more than focusing on the real specific details and all of those rules that can frustrate a lot of learners.

Vanessa: Yeah, and it’s good to get to those as you become more of an intermediate learner, advanced learner but I think feeling confident that I can communicate with someone else that’s the best thing and when you feel confident and that. Okay great and you can tackle more difficult details in the future. Learn little new ones and what not and if you can’t communicate be satisfied with yourself that’s a great point to be at.

Kevin: Going into what we do here on the feel good English podcasts. You brought in mind something you’re gonna talk about a book that you want to talk about today. I really, I read a lot. And I really think lessons learn reading what other people have to say and how others have used their life experiences to, to become more of who they want to be and can really help us to do the same. And so Vanessa, what book are you going to talk with the audience today about.

Vanessa: I wanted to talk about the book probably most people heard about. I’m not sure if everyone’s read it but it’s called “The Diary of a Young Girl” and it’s by Anne Frank. So, maybe some people have read Anne Frank’s Diary but I think this is such an incredible book that people know about. But do we really know the details of what she’s talking about and how we can learn through her youthful, innocent voice. There’s so much in there.

Kevin: So Diary of Anne Frank. Can you just give us a little bit of background about the book and then give us an examples of valuable insights that you think this book brings.

Vanessa: Sure. So in general Anne Frank is a teenage girl, she was thirteen, I think she was thirteen years old when her dad gave her a diary and feel like most people have part of her. But if you haven’t this is not a fictional character, she was real, she’s a real person and her dad gave her a diary and she just started writing.

And as she was writing, she wrote about what was happening to them. They were hiding from the Nazi’s at that time because they were Jewish family living in a Jewish and non-Jewish area but they were in hiding and so these are some of her really raw and sincere thoughts about what was happening in, in her life.

And she knew that she wanted to publish her diary which is really interesting, I didn’t realize that at first but she wrote it and then and she re-wrote it and she edited things and so we’ve got all different versions in the Imprint museums to be able to see the process that she went through as a fifteen, sixteen-year-old girl deciding what do I want the world to know. So that’s something to keep in mind too. This is not just her diary. This is her revised ideas about what she wanted to share with the world. But eventually her family was found out. Someone said there are some Jews hiding in the attic here so they got taken away and eventually they died in a concentration camp. So that I think built her images well because it’s just a tragic story but there’s a whole lot we can learn from it as well.

Kevin: So can you give me one or two examples from the book that you can share with the audience.

Vanessa: Yah, yah I got some quotes here because I think that’s the best way to hear it. It just through her voice and this is a translation that she’s, she didn’t write it in English but I think that we can still learn from it. This is one that I, I wanted to mention about how we can accomplish so much and so she says, remember she’s only wrote it when she was thirteen to fifteen or sixteen years old. So she was a young teenager living in a really challenging life. So this is not from a mature 40 year old woman with a life experience, it just a child becoming a woman. So she said “everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be, how much you can love, what you can accomplish and what your potential is”. Wonderful, so clear and straight forward.

Kevin: Right and which I think is the benefits of her being so young at that time. So that’s, talking about the quote, the good news inside of us.

Vanessa: Yeah

Kevin: So, she was saying that we don’t really know our potential is that right? We don’t really know how good we can be. How, how powerful we all are. That’s what I heard from that. Is that what you gained as well?

Vanessa: Yes, I think sometimes we need to. In our darker times or in our self-doubt in times to realize that we the right motivation, we do have a lot of potential in us. A lot that we can do and I found the quote probably a lot of people have heard this, I think it’s also something that so sync and clear when she says “how wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world”. Today, we can do it now and this are all taken out of a longer story that she wrote. Talking about the day but as you read this book, and you realize that this kind of philosophical points are coming from a young teenager. I think, personally it makes me kind of re-think teenagers. And when we see them especially us people who are not teenagers anymore and we see teenagers we got stereotypes and ideas but really there’s so much more depth that’s there and not just for teenagers but for people who maybe from a different country or different background, re-thinking what we know about them and what we think we know.

Kevin: What’s amazing about this is conditions that she was in while writing this words and I ‘am, for me it’s almost I’m trying to think of how she was able to have this insights on life. This big life ideas while being so oppressed and scared and basically hiding to save her life.

Vanessa: Yeah. Yeah I think a lot of those things too, are based on just human ability to adapt to different situations. She was still with her family and she was also pretty much a child so she knew what was happening but I think especially that time period they didn’t know the extent to what was actually happening. But they knew they had to hide but being able to adapt to different situations for humans, it’s pretty incredible or at least tolerate, tolerate them.

Kevin: And maybe because too, she was just such an isolated environment. Her, her world was extremely simplified. Maybe she was able to see things in people that she couldn’t have seen and wouldn’t have seen just in a normal setting being out of a world when there’s so much going on. So maybe that was, that’s where she have this, this visions of, of just seeing how people reacted with each other when they only have each other.

Vanessa: Exactly, exactly I mean the people they lived with. They lived with other family and another guy as well in their small attic home. So she wasn’t exposed to 200 Facebook friends or people out of work. She was just expose to these small group and really could study their interactions and become a better version of herself because she was learning with people around her. So I think as humans, as English learners we can do that study other people and try to become better.

Kevin: Yeah awesome, very, very cool. So definitely sounds like a great book for English learner to read as well. Would you agree?

Vanessa: Yeah. Yes I think, especially the level of this book for intermediate learner I would say they could definitely, definitely read it. And if they have a Kindle or any kind of E-reader, usually they’ve got built in dictionaries. So you can just scan over a word that you don’t know and it’ll tell you what it is. Which is really cool feature of reading an E-book.

Kevin: Very true and you can save, save the words that you, you have to look up and keep that in your own little dictionary right?

Vanessa: Yeah.

Kevin: So great and it’s really cool that you have been an English teacher. You’ve read so much and you’ve taught students about books and just hearing you talked about this book and bringing it to life and sharing, sharing the lessons from this is so fun and so I think you should doing that.

Vanessa. Yes. Oh my pleasure. Thanks for your great questions.

Kevin: So what we do here, you know what we do here in the Feel Good English podcast is that we try to like you said a few minutes ago to become a better versions of ourselves. And when I look at books I see them as problem solvers, like when I’m dealing with this. Who else have this problems and who else struggle with this and what, what have they done to, to get through it. Is there anything that’s happening in your life now that’s, Am that you’re struggling with?

Vanessa: I would say something that happens not just today but every day is just focusing on small problems instead of looking at the big picture. My, the next five years of my life, the next ten years of my life. And I think it’s easy for me to get stuck in those little details. Today I have this to-do list and thinking about the big picture is got to keep up the motivation up and to connect it to this book I think she does an excellent job of this. She had her daily life could have seem so boring. Her life situation could have just seem tragic but she kept thinking about the picture of humanity, or humans, or what’s gonna happen in the future. So keeping an eye on the bigger picture is something that I constantly have to remind myself of why am ‘I doing this. What’s my motivation? So mine was something that probably a lot of people struggling with but definitely for me.

Kevin: Definitely connect with that. And even as English speakers, I think sometimes students they lose the bigger picture of what they’re doing you know. Day to day studying or having problems trying to communicate in English. They always will face little problems, and maybe they’ll get frustrated, and stressed and bored, discouraged but what will be the big why behind what they’re doing with why they’re doing what they’re doing in you know. In a few years from now they just keep that big picture in mind as long as they’re doing something they will get there. And they will become an English speaker and they’ll be able to have a conversation with English speakers all around the world and connect with people online. And these days we got distracted so much by the little things and we do have such big dreams and going online and see other people’s lives and almost getting envious sometimes. What they have, where not there now, and we only see the good things often as well. Behind that are stories of people I think day to day. Dealing with small problems every day for months and years and eventually getting into a place where they will post a pictures of themselves on a beach with a computer saying “look at my life”. There’s a story behind this, it’s the path to get there.

Vanessa: That’s really good advice for English learners, they know some, like some of my students, they recently used someone of them from Italy. Met up with or just randomly stumbled across a tourist in her city and they asked her some questions. And usually when we talked together, she speaks fine with that great conversation but in that moment with that tourist. I guess she felt nervous or she felt she didn’t communicate as well as she could have and she seemed really upset about it and frustrated but thinking about the big picture is important even if you’ve got some little disappointments. I wish I’ve said this or I should have said this. Why did I think about this? But then realizing, hey! the next time I’ve already made this mistake, not really a mistake. But I’ve already done this so next time, in the future it’s gonna be better. I’m thinking about the big picture. It’s okay to be upset about something but don’t hold on to it.

Kevin: Right, Yah, Absolutely. And knowing that mistakes are great tools to help us get better right?

Vanessa: Yeah. Good motivation for improving.

Kevin: Yeah sure. So wonderful, thanks you so much for talking about the book. Thanks for much talking about what you do. And people listening to this how can I connect with you Vanessa?

Where can I find you online?

Vanessa: The best place is speakenglishwithvanessa.com, my website. Lots of hopefully useful information for them there.

Kevin: Awesome. And do you have a courses/classes? What do you, what do you do?

Vanessa: Yes, the first thing that I recommend they do is to get a general overview of what I do, my method, very similar to your method. Natural, stress-free is to download the free E-book which is just at the top of the page. And I’ve got courses, YouTube videos, I don’t have a podcast, maybe that will come in the future but there’s a lot of materials there that they use to improve their English and connect with the community ‘cause that is the huge part of English is using it.

Kevin: Yes, absolutely great and speaking of

speakingenglishwithvanessa.com, go there and get her free Ebook. And learn more about how Vanessa can improve your life through English learning. Thanks again Vanessa for being here.

Vanessa: Oh my pleasure, thanks so much for having me Kevin!

Kevin: And well talk to you soon.

Vanessa: Yes, see you later Kevin! Bye!

Kevin: Bye!

At four minutes, and twenty-seven seconds, you hear Vanessa say “if it were up to me”. To be up to me, if it were up to me I would do things differently. If something is up to you, it would make it your decision, if it were up to me; I would never teach grammar, for example, or if it were up to me, I would never go back to that school. If it were up to me meaning, if it was my decision.

Five minutes and twelve seconds, nine minutes and twelve seconds, Vanessa says they were in hiding, Anne Frank and her family were in hiding. It just means they were hiding somewhere, you can say they were hiding in an attic, they were hiding from the Nazi’s or they were in hiding. So when you say they were in hiding, it becomes the adjective form versus they were hiding, it’s a verb so it means the same exact thing, just a different word form.

15 minutes, 15 seconds built in dictionary. If something is built in like in a Kindle, you’re reading a digital book, they have dictionaries built in, that means it’s part of the system, it comes with the system, it’s built into the system. Another example on your phone, it has a built in camera or a built in microphone, it’s built in to the system, it’s built in to the product, you don’t have to add it.

And a nice little expression Vanessa uses a couple of times, my pleasure, when somebody thanks you for doing something, like thanks for being here or thanks for helping me out, thanks for talking about this book with me, you could answer with my pleasure. Meaning it was my pleasure to do this for me, it’s something that made you happy as well, kinda like saying “you’re welcome” but instead of saying “you’re welcome”, you would say “oh, my pleasure” like it was not a problem; I liked doing this.

And there you have it, I hope you enjoyed the interview with Vanessa, as you can see that she’s a very nice, friendly, fun teacher. If you want to know more and connect with her, and possibly even buy a course, or have classes with her, go to speakenglishwithvanessa.com. Again, if you want transcripts of this episode, go to feelgoodenglish.com, if you want to find out how to get a digital version of the book, A Diary of a Young Girl, you can also find that on my website. Until the next episode, stay positive, think of the big picture, don’t get too frustrated, lose focus, know that these day-to-day struggles and difficulties and frustrations are all helping you get closer to the big picture; your big dream in the future. Keep working hard, keep focused, and stay positive, and you will get there.

Thanks for listening, until next time.

Buh-bye!