15- How to Bring Native English Speakers to You
Lindsay: Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast. This is Episode 15: Wisdom Wednesday.
Gabby: Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, where you'll finally get real, native English conversation. Now here are your hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the ‘English Adventurer' and Gabby Wallace, the ‘Language Angel,' coming to you from Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Lindsay: In this episode, you'll find out how to stop wishing that you had an opportunity to practice with native English speakers and how to actually bring them to you.
Gabby: In this episode, we have a great tip. I think it's pretty great. (Car outside beeps). The car outside thinks it's pretty great too. So uh, the tip is, you know, to get more interaction with people on the street or, you know, just you're walking around and you wanna (want to) interact with strangers, talk to new people, try wearing something totally different.
Lindsay: Something totally off the wall.
Gabby: Could be like a bright color.
Lindsay: Could be a pair of goggles.
Gabby: So I ride my bicycle a lot and when I run errands like to the grocery store or to the drug store, I often just keep my helmet on when I go inside because I'm just too lazy to lock it up with my bike or carry it. So it's, it's more convenient to keep it on my head, but I'll often get comments from strangers, you know, just in jest, like trying to be funny, like “Hey! Great hat!” and so it works. I mean it really is an easy way to bring more interaction, uh, into your life.
Lindsay: Right and this… that would be a great way to start up a conversation. Um, this is a tip that I think I read on Benny Lewis' blog and his blog is called fluentinthreemonths.com. So he goes around the world and learns a new language every three months. Um, and how does he learn? Well he speaks with native speakers.
Gabby: Right.
Lindsay: And how does he do that? He has to stand out a bit on the street. So sometimes he puts on a weird costume or wears a t-shirt that says something funny, so people stop him and guess what? That's a perfect opportunity to engage in the, in, in just practicing English.
Gabby:
Yeah, so something visual. Um, oh, I know another example is uh, uh, my friend went to uh – he's from Texas, right? I think he went to a UT school – yeah, University of Texas. So he always wears this Longhorn's t-shirt, which is the, I guess it's the symbol of Texas. So people stop him all the time, saying “Hey are you from Texas?” or “Did you go to uh, to University of Texas?” So you know if you wear something like a university name on your t-shirt or um, you know, a popular symbol or something like Boston Red Sox, you know, people might ask, “Hey, uh, do you like the Red Sox?” Lindsay: Yeah.
Gabby: It's a great conversation starter.
Lindsay: For sure. So give it a try. See what happens and get going with the conversations.
Gabby: Great tip! Okay.
Gabby: You listeners know that we've created this awesome podcast for you. But that's not all. We've also created an e-book to help you get the most out of listening to every episode. And the best thing is it's free. It's free for you guys, our listeners. So to get the e-book for free, just come visit us at www.allearsenglish.com/free.
Lindsay: Thanks for listening to the All Ears English Podcast. We're here to help you learn English and you can help us by leaving a five star review on iTunes.
See you next time.
