| Alisha: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to English Topics. My name is Alisha and today I'm joined by a very special guest. |
| Trang: Hi, everyone. I am Trang. I'm from Vietnam. |
| Alisha: She is also the host and a representative today from the very popular elight channel, English Learning channel. |
| Trang: Wow. Thank you, Alisha, for your introduction. |
| Alisha: Yeah. Thank you so much for coming today as well. We really appreciate having you here. |
| Trang: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm so excited to talk about the topic. |
| Alisha: I know, I know. So, today, the topic we're going to discuss is "Strategies for Learning English." So, we've both prepared some strategies from our experience. My strategies are kind of prepared from my experience learning a different language. Trang, how did you choose your strategies? |
| Trang: Yeah. At first, I have to say that my mother language is Vietnamese and I try to learn English as my second language. So, I think, maybe some strategy I bring here can support some of you, but I'm not sure it can be suitable for all of you, but actually, it works for me so I will share with you. So, I have about some here. |
| Alisha: Great. Okay. Fantastic. So, let's get started. I guess I'll go first. I'll choose one first and we can talk about it and then we'll go to one of yours next. |
| Trang: Yes. Perfect. |
| Alisha: I'll start with a simple one. Just a very simple basic introduction is "Study every day!" "Study every day." This is just a small reminder I think for people. When I say, "study every day," I don't mean you have to maybe go to school every day. Well, if you're a, I hope you go to school every day, but, by this, I mean make time to study English every day, a little bit every day. So, in my case, for example, when I was studying another language I would study vocabulary in the morning and at night when I was taking the subway to work. That really helped me to improve little by little every day because the vocabulary words I studied on the train, I saw them at work or in something I was reading. So, I think studying every day, making just a little time to study every day, can be very helpful. Even if you don't see the effects right away, it's really good to do. I think it's a good habit to get into. |
| Trang: Well, I totally agree with you. To know or to learn a new language, we should study every day, yeah. I may say about my strategy. |
| Alisha: Okay. |
| Trang: I have here is "authentic materials." This one. I come up with this idea because one of my experience is I usually watch a lot of movies, listen to English songs and a lot of things like read books, newspaper in English. I can learn about the way native speaker use their language and see that cultural differences and the most important thing is, I know how they truly work in some specific situations. So, authentic materials are very important if you want to speak or write like a native speaker. |
| Alisha: Totally agree with you there too, as well. We've talked about using TV shows you mentioned movies, as well, did you ever listen to English music? |
| Trang: Yes, of course. Actually, I usually watch more TV series. For example, I really love "Friends." I hope you like it. If you don't like it, Google it and you should see it today. One of the very famous, I think is Ellen Show. Do you know Ellen Show? |
| Alisha: No. |
| Trang: Ellen Show, yeah. She's brilliant, she's funny, she's exciting, she's interesting and she gives us funny moment when we study English and we can enjoy everything in life and know more thing about different people all over the world. So, I love Ellen Show a lot. So, two thing you can visit is one is "Friends," one kind of TV series and one is Ellen Show. You just go to YouTube and you can find it immediately. |
| Alisha: Is the Ellen Show, the Ellen DeGeneres, the comedienne, the woman comedian? |
| Trang: Yes, perfect. |
| Alisha: I do know it. Okay, yeah. It's really nice, actually. That's a talk show. |
| Trang: Yes, she's brilliant. It's a talk show. |
| Alisha: Yeah. That's great. That's a really good tip. I never thought of using talk shows. That's a great idea because you get to hear lots of different ways of speaking from the guest, but the host usually is also really good at speaking. That's a good idea, talk shows, nice. |
| Trang: So, we can improve our speaking and listening skills. |
| Alisha: Yeah. That's a really good tip. Okay, nice. I'll go to my next one then. My next one, actually, this is related to what you're just talking about. My next tip was actually just "enjoy studying through media." So, by using media, like you're saying like by using authentic materials, I think you do understand the natural word choices that people make and you hear the natural rhythm of things but also, it's just fun. I find that when I'm listening to music or watching TV in the language I'm studying, I actually enjoy it and it doesn't feel like I'm working or it doesn't feel like I'm studying. So, then I want to do it more, I want to practice more. |
| Trang: So, actually, I share this with you. I think we have the same idea here. |
| Alisha: Okay. What does it say? |
| Trang: I've right here we try to "live, learn and play with English." Why I say this is because if we think that we have to do something and we hate that, so, it's terrible, right? We don't have any motivation to do that. If you don't like something and you don't have any motivation, how can you be good at that? So, I think we can "live" with English or "learn" something in English. For example, when I was about 20 or more, more than 20, 20-something, I need to "learn" how to makeup. Yeah, and I go to YouTube, I saw a lot of videos, kind of makeup tutorials with Michelle Phan. Of course, all the videos are in English. That's how I don't feel that I'm studying English. I think that I'm studying makeup tutorials. Yeah, that's why I use English to "learn" something new. So, I feel very exciting or "play." So, first of all, my hobby is cooking, let's say that. Actually, I don't like cooking. |
| Alisha: Oh no, I love it. |
| Trang: Let's say that. |
| Alisha: Sorry. I'm joking. |
| Trang: How could you play with that? I really watch this kind of things related to cooking topics, right. So, currently, I will find any materials, any video, any movie or even some chef related to English and that's why I call that "playing." |
| Alisha: That's a really nice set of ideas. |
| Trang: Yeah, yeah. So, I think that if we think we have to study English every day, each day we pay about four or five hours to study So, it's kind of boring. That's first in our mind. So, I think if we think we can use English to learn new things, to nurture our dream, to make ourselves perfect. So, it's great to follow that dream. |
| Alisha: Yeah, I think that's great. That's really great. Nice tips. |
| Trang: I think it's quite related to your idea, right? |
| Alisha: Right, "studying with media." Yeah, cause then you actually enjoy it. It makes you more inclined like you want to do that more in the future, nice. |
| Trang: Of course, we can use media, we can use newspaper or a lot of things. Nowadays media is very popular. |
| Alisha: Right. It's So, easy to get things for free now too like this is free. |
| Trang: Yeah, this is for free. |
| Alisha: Great. All right. Let's go. I'll go to the last tip that I made. My last tip for this one is just "remember to create in English." So, by this, I mean, don't only input, input, input. |
| Trang: Create an output. |
| Alisha: Exactly, exactly. So, not just, listening is important and watching is important, but we have to actually make words and we have to actually write words. |
| Trang: Try to speak and write it down, right. |
| Alisha: Exactly. I think that that really helps it. At least it did for me when I was studying another language. It really helped me to actually make the sentence myself or to write the words myself. So, I think creating is good like some ways I still do this. I use social media a lot to just to create. So, if I have an idea sometimes I'll just write it in Japanese. Whatever you know. If someone understands it, great, that means I was successful with my communication. |
| Trang: For example, sometimes I write my diary in English. Here I think for "live" one. Yeah, I try to write something in English every day. I don't write a story or something it's not related to my life but I would write something just happened in my life. For example, today I went to English Class 101 and it was so amazing. I met Alisha, I met Mark and a lot of people here. So, I would write it down in English. Yeah, it's for "live." I think we should conduct something in English in both spoken and written form, right. |
| Alisha: Absolutely. I think that's So, helpful because then you get used to it. You get used to making that and then it becomes more natural. |
| Trang: When we can make something with English, we would go, "Wow. We did that." So, that's feeling is kind of amazing. |
| Alisha: Yeah, I agree. It feels good to do that. Yeah, for sure. Okay, great. What's your last tip? |
| Trang: Yeah. I still have the last one. Yeah. "Environment." |
| Alisha: Okay. |
| Trang: I think everyone knows that if we want to do something or we want to learn a new language, we need "environment." For example, we can go study abroad. Yeah, it's very easy but not easy for everyone because studying abroad is quite expensive. It costs a lot of money. We can create our environment. For example, we try to have some foreign friends. Why not? We will ask ourselves to listen, to speak, to write, to read something in English in about two hours or three hours per day. So, we set some rule there, we have to use English. So, let's say, for example, if you were in the US or the UK and there is nobody knows your mother language. So, to survive you have to speak English, right? So, let's think that you are in Vietnam or you are in Japan but you want to improve your English. So, you set your own "environment" surrounded by English. That's the "environment." |
| Alisha: What do you suggest, or some of the questions that we get sometimes about this are for people who live in countries or in small cities where there are no English speakers. So, there's just nothing that they can, they have no language partner even. So, I mean of course there's the Internet. The Internet is a great place to connect with people, but have you had any experiences like that? People who just think they're in such a small town. How do I connect with other people? Do you have any advice for those people? |
| Trang: I think you said it before. Now we have internet and we can make friends, some in the US, some in the UK, even some in Japan and a lot of countries. Of course, we want to speak with them in English about everything in life. So, it's kind of social. I think it's kind of funny and it will help us to improve our English day by day, little by little. |
| Alisha: Yeah, right. Definitely. Awesome. Okay. So, those are a lot of actually pretty good tips about how to improve your English both spoken and near listening skills and reading skills, everything I think you can you take a tip away from something here today. |
| Trang: You know, I myself don't really think that my English is so good. So, I learn English every day. I still apply these strategies, these tips to study English day by day. It works for me so I hope that it can work for you. |
| Alisha: Well, your English is fantastic So, don't worry about that. I think you're right. Even if we feel that we're not making progress, it's important to continue moving forward. alright. So, I hope that that was useful. It was useful for me to review those points for sure. I think I have to get better about my daily studies for sure. I get lazy a lot. Anyway, thank you so much for joining today. It was really great to make this video with you and to hear your tips. Thanks very much for watching this episode of English Topics and we will see you again soon. Bye-bye. |
| Trang: Bye-bye. |
| Alisha: That was awesome. |
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