زبان صحبت و پیشرفت شخصی

120 - Talking Language & Personal Development

Kevin Conwell: You’re listening to episode number 120 of the Feel Good English podcast, an interview with Cara from Leo Listening, part 1. Hello there, Kevin here with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast. How are you? Doing well? Great. Great to hear. [chuckles] Today, I have something a little different. I’m actually going to play an interview someone gave me a while back. I’m going to share this interview. I really liked the conversation and I think you might enjoy it too. It’s about language learning, little bit about my story, what I do, my language learning experience.

Now, if you’ve been with me for a while, you probably have heard some of these stories. If you’re new here, well, it will be new. Either way, it’s always good to put your language learning philosophy in check a little bit, to put it in check. You’ll hear a little bit more check in this episode.

I’m just going to play the interview. Cara Leopold from the website leolistening.com interviewed me. She does something very interesting, very useful. She helps English learners watch English media series, TV, movies without subtitles. How to go from reading subtitles in English to watching something in English without subtitles. That’s what she does.

Very specific, very helpful.

If you want to know more about her and what she does, go to her website Leo Listening. It’s actually leo-listening.com and I’ll put links to the website on my website as well. Enjoy this interview. Sit back, relax or maybe you’re running, so run faster, and listen to Cara and I talking about language learning.

Cara Leopold: Kevin, do you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself and about the podcast to get started?

Kevin: Sure, yes. My name’s Kevin Conwell, I’m American. I currently live in Denver, Colorado. I have been in the English teaching business for more than 10 years, 15 years. I can’t keep track anymore. What I do now is I have a podcast which are online audio lessons that I produce a couple times a month currently. I help intermediate to advanced English learners. I help them get to the next level, become more confident, become better speakers through my podcast and lessons that I provide. Well, that’s what I hope that I do anyway, that’s what the intentions are. I think it works for some. Yes, that’s the very basic intro about me.

Cara: Okay. No, I can say your lessons do– They do work and they work for me as well, actually. I like listening to them just to get– It’s because you do a lot of summaries of books, so I’m like, “That book sounds interesting,” or “What’s this?” Then it’s like, “I don’t have to buy the book because I can just listen to Kevin giving me the top-line summary.” [chuckles]

Kevin: Sure. No, that’s cool. That’s cool that you hear that. I’ve bounced back and forth between providing maybe a general summary of the book versus just choosing one topic or two topics from the book. Lately, I’ve been doing more of one topic from the book, simply based on time.

I like to try to keep the podcast a little shorter, so people can find time in their day to listen to it and also repeat it.

It’s kind of tough sometimes just running one lesson from books that have a lot of ideas. Maybe ones that– just the lessons that are most relevant to me and the listeners. Yes, it’s growing as a library, as a resource of ways to get at least an idea of what a book might be about.

I’m glad you can listen to it as well. Quick question, as an English speaker, as a native English speaker, do you find it too slowed down, or too easy, or–?

Cara: It’s funny. I actually find other people’s teacher voice really relaxing. I really like listening to podcasters, for example, Jen and Dan from English Across the Pond. I really like the way that they speak when they slow down a little bit and I like the way that you speak. I honestly find it relaxes me, so it’s not a problem.

Kevin: Yes, cool.

Cara: I might skip– I know that sometimes you will do a little language point section where you talk about some vocabulary from the book, I might skip that bit. You’ll excuse me for [laughs] skipping that. No, otherwise, I find it really useful for getting that top-line summary of books because I’m very wary– Because obviously, a lot of the books you talk about, they are non-fiction, they’re personal development– it’s the personal development genre, isn’t it? Books about, I don’t know, motivation, overcoming fears, this kind of thing.

There are a lot of books like that out on the market and sometimes I’m like, “Is it really worth buying another book about this topic because so much has already been said?” It’s really helpful to get that summary and to decide, “Okay, that’s enough for me,” or “This summary sounds really interesting. I’m going to go out and find out more and maybe buy the book.”

Kevin: Absolutely. In the general genre would be probably personal development. That’s a very broad term. Sometimes I find too that the books could be more based on psychology in general or human behavior.

Cara: Yes, that’s true.

Kevin: Anyway, very cool to hear. There are some cool apps and websites these days that do what I do as well. Not for English learners but they’ll take books and they’ll summarize them. Blinkist is one that comes to mind which I’ve been using for a long time. It has its value but, yes, good to hear.

Cara: What I really like about the podcast is the way that you’re teaching English but you chose to focus on a particular topic, on something that you’re interested, so psychology, personal development, and all that. Because I’ve heard you say when you were interviewed elsewhere that in fact, language learning, you’re not a natural for language learning and you’ve always approached it from like, “Well, how can I get material that I’m interested in? Then that will motivate me to learn the language.” I think that’s your perspective.

Kevin: Yes and it’s strong. Its a strong aversion to traditional language learning methods that have created this style that I do. From my own language learning experiences, I realized that not only do I really hate sitting in a classroom, learning lists of words, memorizing words, trying to come up with dialogues starting from the beginning. Language learning is already a challenge, and it’s frustrating, and it’s not easy, and most people don’t just love the process of learning a language. I definitely also am someone who doesn’t love that. I never got into that, it never worked well for me, deep memorization, deep pronunciation training, just a classroom setting in general.

I learned Portuguese to fluency and Spanish is all right. I did that through learning. That was just connecting with good content. Of course, there was– in the beginning stages, it’s a little harder, you’re suffering a little more, but still, I was just connecting with people, asking a lot of questions, experimenting with the language that I did know, finding ways to get over the fear to use the language that I did know.

Just putting all these more natural styles of just absorbing the language, learning the language, practicing with the language.

A big part of that was connecting to content that I found interesting. For example, in Portuguese, there was a podcast that I loved called Café Brasil. Once I was able to communicate, I’d say maybe a year or two in to Portuguese learning. I wasn’t doing it intensively, I was taking my time with it. Maybe a low intermediate, intermediate level I started listening to this podcast every day and repeating it and just go deep into that. Having fun learning, they had a lot of music in his podcast, and I love music so that would keep me entertained.

Over a month or two, I really noticed difference in my Portuguese and I felt stronger and I felt that it was actually helping me. I was paying a lot 5 of attention to this because I was teaching English as well. I said, “Wow, this is cool. This works. This is helpful.” Long story short, that’s what made me create my podcast, which is I think interesting for some people, it has music in it. It’s a tool that they can use every day or daily to be better and to naturally improve.

Overall, I think learning a language can be more graceful than a lot of people make it out to be. Graceful by being a smoother process, less stressful, less of a burden on your day. It doesn’t have to interrupt your schedule as much as people think. If you can integrate English into your day gracefully then things become much easier. It’s kind of my philosophy behind the whole thing.

Cara: Wow. You tried it out on yourself and you found a technique that worked. Yes, I like the idea of language learning being graceful. We never really see it described in that way. It seems to be just as hard and you have to memorize everything. Even when you memorize everything, you can’t actually communicate anyway. [chuckles] Kevin: Right, yes. That’s a good point and I’m sure you’ve been there as a teacher. You spend 45 minutes talking about one grammar point with a student and then in the last 10 minutes, you relax and just hang out and talk. This is actually a very interesting thing that I saw that really changed my philosophy as well. You’re teaching a lesson, a very specific grammar point for 45 minutes, then you relax, you talk for the next five to 10 minutes and the student makes all the mistakes on that specific grammar point that they did before the lesson.

It’s not like you teach the lesson, “Okay, now I’m going to speak correctly.” The student learns it and then it’s good to go. That doesn’t really work. There’s not a direct correlation there. What I found is not focusing on very specific points for most students works better and just let them naturally correct their mistakes and just enjoy speaking and learning, with maybe some subtle corrections here and there. Teachers can correct of course but wasting time on just teaching something specific, which doesn’t connect. Because I don’t think it’s just an automatic connection once you learn that grammar rule, it’s more about how you’re used to speaking. You got to change your habits through speaking. Just another reason that I try to avoid certain types of teaching styles.

Cara: Yes. No, true. I don’t think– there is isn’t a direct correlation between teaching and then what this student produces. I was actually saying the other day, I’m working locally with a couple of students who are pre-intermediate level and so they’re a bit overwhelmed by the whole grammar piece. We were talking about the S ending in the present simple, he likes, she likes.

I told them, “This is one of the last things that you acquire automatically because linguists have studied this and there are lists– there’s data to show that that is like even advanced levels, that’s something that’s still shaky. It’s not because you don’t know it. Of course, you know it. People have been telling you this rule for years but it’s just that it’s your shortterm memory that has trouble keeping in mind your verb plus the S ending. That’s why something it just takes a long time to acquire. You can’t get upset about yourself. You just have to know that it’s going to come in time.”

Kevin: Yes. That’s a great point and I think that also comes through experience in teaching and knowing these little intricacies of not spending a week with pre-intermediate students teaching the S, because it can be just a waste of time. In the end, it’s not that big a deal.

If you’re passing a test, yes, you need to learn that. Students will develop that sound of the S, obviously yes, but no one is going to misinterpret what you’re saying because you didn’t add the S on the third person.

Cara: That was their question and I was like, “It’s not going to affect your communication.” In fact, we’re actually working on a podcast together and so I’m sensitizing them to pronunciation and how things sound and I said, “Very often the S ending, you’re either not going to hear it or it’s not going to sound weird because of the following word. In fact, nobody pronounces a perfect Sss, or Zzz at the end of their he, she, third-person form. Just chill, just chill.” [laughs] Kevin: Yes, right. Absolutely. Chill out. Chill out is a big thing. You could just tell your students, “Chill out.”

Cara: Just chill out, yes. I’m going to put you on the spot for a second because I know that you’ve studied the Czech language– [laughs] Kevin: Yes, in 2004 and I’m just telling you when it was because that’s why I don’t remember any of it.

Cara: You don’t remember any of it?

Kevin: I remember two, three. Cara, it’s amazing how much I’ve forgotten. As soon as I started learning– I always maintained Czech for a while. When I lived there, it’s following the same– I’m sorry to jump in, I guess I kind of assumed you’re going to ask me about my Czech speaking. Is that correct?

Cara: Yes. I’m excited because I was like, “I’m going to make him speak Czech.” [laughs]

Kevin: No. 2003, 2004 I lived in Prague and I studied economics there. It was just to get out of the US, to experience another culture. It was my first experience out of the country. Prague’s a beautiful city. Czech is a very challenging language. Not a Latin language based language. It’s very different.

While I was there, and that was actually one of the first discoveries for me of how I hated classroom setting with language. Of course I tried to learn Czech when I was there and I was in the classroom, following the same path of being one of the worst students, being embarrassed, not memorizing words when they were telling me to do things, and just falling behind as the weeks went by.

However, outside of class I was interacting more with Czechs than probably a lot of my peers and so I started creating these friendship, relationships with Czechs. Many of them didn’t speak English or I’d be paying attention to them, trying to communicate, learning phrases, asking the people that did speak English, “What does this mean? What did you just say there?” Learning more of the street Czech or the modern Czech.

Then I would go back to class, and the teacher would ask some questions, and I would answer in ways that she wasn’t expecting. That all the other students had this predetermined set answer for the question and I found something that was not. It was more colloquial, just the way that people would speak. It was correct absolutely and the teacher even said once to me, “Where did you learn that expression?

Where did you learn that?” I said, “From my Czech friends.”

Then I was like, “You know what? There’s another way. I don’t need to be stressed and I don’t have to think that if I’m not learning in the classroom in Czech, that’s it.” I got pretty good. The point is I got pretty good over a year with not heavy studying. I was the one out of my friends, I could go up to Czechs and get information, go to the train station, buy tickets, or at a bar if I wanted to meet somebody, I could have a very simple basic conversation. I felt decent with it. Kept it for a while.

I guess it was two or three– probably around two or three years later, I moved to Brazil and started learning Portuguese. Even at that time I remember I still had some of the Czech in my brain. However, after six months to a year, I realized that 99.9% of the Czech that I knew totally disappeared.

Cara: Had gone.

Kevin: Yes. It’s now I remember, Jak se máš? How are you? Dekuji is thank you. Pivo of course is beer. It’s very, very minimal. I bet it’s in the brain somewhere.

Cara: It must be in there somewhere.

Kevin: Somewhere but I’ve heard Czech again and I didn’t understand a thing but I don’t know.

Cara: The only word I know is Ahoj. Ahoj because– [crosstalk] Kevin: Ahoj, yes, sure. Yes, hi.

Cara: [laughs] We could say Ahoj to– We have at least one person watching or in the community who is Czech and another person who is Slovak. Maybe there’s more. I know for sure there are definitely two people from that part of the world.

Kevin: Also very similar languages I think. The Czech is gone, 100%.

Cara: I think it’s just nice though that you were able to learn it in a way that suited you while you were there because there’s more than one way to learn anything.

Kevin: Absolutely. Good point. Yes, absolutely.

Cara: Even if your teacher tells you otherwise. Okay. [laughs] All right, that’s funny about Czech. I wanted to do a play on words with Czech but I’m not going to do it. [chuckles] You have to check where your Czech is in your brain.

Kevin: [laughs] Yes, sure. One day I will check when I’m there.

Cara: Check for the Czech.

Kevin: I’ll check for the Czech but like I said, probably not until I’m checking into a hotel in the Czech Republic.

[laughter]

Then I’ll check for my Czech when I’m checking into a hotel.

Cara: Then you won’t be able to remember anything and you’ll just be like, “Czech please,” and leave.

Kevin: [laughs] Good. Yes, cool.

Cara: Do I win?

Kevin: You win. Czech mark for you.

Cara: [laughs] Okay. We could do play on words with that all day long.

Sorry, but we’re going to come back to the real focus.

Kevin: I’ll be back soon with part 2 of this interview. I cut it, made it a little shorter because well, it’s hard to find more than 20 minutes to sit down and listen to something. Isn’t it? Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this interview. Thank you Cara for doing it. Go check it out at leolistening.com and become subtitle free. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.