Learn faster, speak easier!

Ok, deep breath. Relax your jaw. Relax your shoulders. We are ok. We are taking a break here, and this will be easy, I promise.

Hello everyone. Welcome to the special episode for season 2 of English Airs, the podcast that gives you effortless accuracy. My name is Parya. I teach English, among other things, and I’m talking to you from Tokyo at the moment. This episode is a little different from the other ones: I am going to answer some general questions that people have repeatedly asked me over the years. When that’s done, I’m giving you the beginners’ techniques to get you speaking. Let’s get going!

The first question is “Can I self-study a language?”. The short, general answer is “Yes”. But that depends on so many things. First of all, do you have enough time? Learning a language all on your own is quite exciting and rewarding, but you need to spend time discovering the rules and meanings. Find out about nuances. Come up with strategies to improve your speaking without a partner who can give you feedback. And do research. So if you are looking at it as a hobby, go ahead and enjoy the ride! If, however, you want to learn more in a shorter time, you need a teacher.

The next question is about learning apps, like Duolingo. Are they any good? Well, they might be good as a supplement (if you enjoy using them). I mean, you can add them to your course if you like them. But using them alone will not get you very far.

Now, if you are taking lessons, should you go with group lessons or one-on-one? This depends a lot on your personality of course, but if you are a beginner, I recommend group lessons. In a beginners class, everyone is at the same level and you get to use what you learn with many people. And everyone makes mistakes, right? So you get used to it and it won’t bother you as much. When you pass the elementary level, having one-on-one lessons will be better. Your teacher will help you fix your problems and you will move on at your pace.

The next question is a very important one: what material is good for me? I’ll give you the rule of thumb here. Ah, for those of you who don’t know, “rule of thumb” means a method that helps you judge and decide. It’s not exact, but it’s practical and based on experience. Back to our question. Let’s say you want to buy a storybook to read. Open the book on a random page. If there are more than 5 or 6 new keywords, that book is too difficult for your level. Please put that book aside for now! The material you choose should be a little challenging for you, a bit difficult. You can read it a few times, or listen to it a few times to understand everything. But if it’s too easy, you’ll get bored, won’t you? And will you make any progress? I don’t think so. The same rule words for magazine articles, podcasts, and anything else.

The most common question that almost everyone asks me when they find out I teach English is “How can I improve my speaking?”. We have talked about this quite a few times by now, especially in episode 13 of season 1, and episodes 6 and 7 from season 2. So give those another listen, and give me some feedback!

Now, let’s see what you can do to improve. You want to learn more words, right? Please, please don’t use one of those books that make you memorize 50 random words every day! Unless you are preparing for an exam and you want to forget everything immediately after the test. Do you even enjoy that?! I never did. So here is what you need to do:

First, you need to get comfortable using the words you already know. So, at the first step, set up an alarm for a time when you want to practice. The alarm is very important, but I will talk about that one later.

Second, when the alarm goes off, start naming everything around you: the furniture, the equipment, the people, everything.

When you can easily do this, add one or two adjectives describing those things or people. So it will be something like this: “My favorite mug, the spacious bookcase, the green plants in glass jars”. In this step, if you don’t know a word, go ahead and look it up online. continue doing this until you can smoothly speak.

Next is putting them in a sentence. something like this “The green plants look beautiful in the morning light”, or “My favorite mug was a gift from my best friend.” Keep doing this until you can speak fluently, and look up any words you need to use. You can say the same sentence every day. Don’t worry about making a new one every time.

Each one of these activities takes about one week, and shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes of your time every day. Doable, right? This means at this point, you should be able to talk for about 5 minutes without pausing and looking for words. When you can do that, you are ready for the next step. What is the next step? I will tell you in the next special episode! We need to cover some other points in season 3 first!

The next two weeks English Airs will be on a break, and that gives you three weeks from today to try these techniques. How about it? Take on this three-week challenge and let me know how it went. I would love to hear your ideas, comments, and questions. And please keep introducing this podcast to anyone who might need it or enjoy it. I would love to help as many people as I can, with your help.

Parya out!