TEN TOP TIPS for Learning English (Introdaction) (2)

That came up just last week. And so, you know, celebrated the wedding anniversary with my wife, that was lovely. I can't believe it's been one year since we got married. A whole year has passed, and it's gone really really fast. It's amazing how time flies when you're having fun. So, anyway, here we are. I'm back on the podcast then.

This episode is about top tips for learning English. And I decided to do this just to kind of, you know, re-establish the main focus of this podcast, as I said earlier. And the things I'm going to say to you on this episode are just some ideas that have occurred to me in the last couple of weeks at teaching at school. Teaching English intensively means that all my thoughts have been focused on helping my students improve their English as quickly and as effectively as possible. I've had groups of adult students, mainly French, but, you know, also some mixed nationalities in there too. And they come to the British Council and they spend 30 hours in the classroom. And they just got one week, and it's like ‘Mission English', you know. ‘Let's then try and improve our English in just 30 hours!' And so, a lot that is about motivation, giving them plenty of speaking practice, lots and lots of feedback on their English, lots of remedial correction. You don't necessary have so much time to go deep into the grammatical rules of the language. Because, frankly, that takes quite a lot of time and energy. And ultimately it's more useful to just give the students the opportunity to work with the language, practise speaking, push them a little bit out of their comfort zone, give them challenges and give them encouragement and some feedback as well and the usual bits of input as well.

So, anyway, while teaching all of this stuff, I've been thinking a lot about learning English, okay? And I'd quickly put down about ten tips. And I'm going to go through them in this episode. These should be really important and really useful things to remember. And I hope this episode will be a big motivational boost for you as a learner of English, okay?

When I finish this, I'm also going to talk to you about some recent news. Because two weeks without talking on the Podcast means that lots of things have built up inside my head. I've got lots of things to talk about. Lots of things have been going on. I mean, some things quite fun and light-hearted like football and the fact that there is a new Pokemon game which is sweeping all the way around the world. Everyone is talking about this new Pokemon game, and I want to talk about it too. So some fun light-hearted things like that. But also some more serious things like, you know, still plenty of things going on in the UK after the Brexit, the EU referendum and all that stuff, and how the UK government has changed.

We've got a new Prime Minister in the UK. So, that's that. And also the very serious business of what happened, in fact, what happened yesterday night in Nice, which is a city in France. And you may have seen in the news that there was a horrendous event in Nice. And it's very serious and tragic, and everyone is shocked and angry about what happened. Essentially, what happened there is that, you know, some crazy person, I don't even know if the person was crazy, but someone asshole decided to drive a truck through a crowd of people, and it was horrible. So, that's just incredibly sad. And, you know, my thoughts and feelings of course go out to the people affected. I received some messages on the website from concerned listeners of this podcast saying things like: ‘I heard the news about what happened in France and I'm shocked and I just wanted to check, Luke, that you're okay.' Well, I am thankful. Obviously, I'm okay, and everyone else I know is okay. No one I know was involved in what happened. And just like everyone else, I'm shocked and angry about that.

Now, I just want to say that, I just want to mention it: it's not necessarily my job to deal with things like that in full depth. This is a learning English podcast. But I just want to mention: thank you for your messages of concern. I'm fine. I live in France, so people know that I'm here. So thanks for your messages of concern. I wasn't involved, but I did see the story on the television when it broke in the middle of the night last night, and it's horrible. Okay? Right.

So, anyway, what can you say? Let's just keep calm and carry on. It's always horrible when these things happen in the news. And I talk about things that happen that are close to me. Obviously, living in France means that when something like this happens in France, I'm going to talk about it. But there are plenty of these terrible things happening in many places, too. So, any of the violence and the, you know, the suffering that happens as a result of people with stupid ideas is just a tragedy and, you know. It's a bit messed up, isn't it, the world at this moment? Yes, it is. So, I will talk a little bit about news and some recent stuff, some light-hearted stuff and some serious stuff after I've gone through some top tips for learning English, okay?

So, I tell you what. How about this: let's learn English, let's improve our English, so that we can communicate, so that we can try to raise, you know, let's try to make the world a better place. I think we can do that using communication. Yeah. Alright. Let's… you could try and be positive.

So, how is your English, ladies and gentlemen? How is your English these days? How is it going? I hope it's doing alright. So, I was talking about the lessons I've been teaching at the British Council recently. And I've had some really great students. I've had some lovely students and some really good classes. It's been hard work teaching six hours a day, every day. It's really exhausting, actually. The energy that is required, not just for me as the teacher but the energy that the students need to use up, like studying, practising, learning and producing English for six hours a day is exhausting. So everyone's, you know, working hard. But my students have been great, they've been lovely. And that makes all the difference as a teacher. When you've got motivated students who are positive, it makes a massive difference. It's so much more effective when the students have got the right attitude and the right kind of behaviour. Because, ultimately, you know, a classroom situation is not all about the teacher. It has got to be about 50 % teacher, 50 % students. Right? I mean, what I mean there is that the students hold about 50 % of the responsibility for the success of a class, and the teacher holds the other 50 %. It's something like that. So, I think that my students have been great. And it's just made me think. So, here are a few thoughts, one of them is: remember that you should always be responsible for your own learning, okay?

If you are learning English, it is in your hands. Nobody can learn English for you. And that all relates to the classroom. If you are learning English in a classroom situation, or if you are learning from a teacher, then just be aware of falling into a particular trap. And that trap is that you give the responsibility of learning English to someone else. Like you go to the language school and you enroll in classes and you go into the classroom and you then give the teacher all of the responsibility for your learning. Watch out for that, because that's not going to help you. You need to be in charge of your own learning. Because nobody else can learn English for you. So, you know, watch out for that! Don't assume that just being in a room is enough. It's all about establishing habits for improving your English, being mindful of your English, taking control and keeping up those good habits. So, let's go through some top tips then.

So top tip number 1 is a bit of a cliché, to be honest. It's the kind of thing that everybody says, you know? You know, you might meet someone who has got really good English and you say to them: ‘How on earth did you improve your English? ', like that. And they always say: ‘Well, I just watched lots of movies and TV in English.' So, it's a bit of a cliché, but that is my number 1 tip. And this list, by the way, is in no particular order.