S04 - 2 Languages

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Native English speakers answer questions about languages.

We have speakers from the US, the UK, Ireland, Australia and from Spain, all answering questions about learning languages. We have some great vocabulary, expressions and, in particular, phrasal verbs.

For classes with Trevor - https://realexamenglish.com/classes/

For transcripts - https://realexamenglish.com/podcast/

For the Real Exam English app - https://studio.com/realexamenglish

Music: Wholesome by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5050-wholesome
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Thanks to all of the contributors, including Matt, Leah Ann, Stephanie, Loli and Leanne from the Beach Travel Wine podcast.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the real exam English podcast, this episode is about languages. So, all of you lovely listeners are, I presume, learning English and this is a really common topic in English exams. They often ask about how long you have been studying English, what you find most difficult and how you will use English in the future.  Now, of course, I couldn´t ask these questions to today’s contributors, as they already speak English, but make sure to have a think about how you would answer them. I did, however, ask plenty of more language questions and we have some great vocabulary, expressions and, in particular, phrasal verbs, which I suspect is the aspect of English a lot of you find most difficult, along with pronunciation maybe. 

Anyway, we have a nice variety of accents today, and some fascinating opinions and tips too, so let’s crack on with the questions.

Some people say that learning a foreign language is easier when you’re a child. What’s your opinion?

Learning a foreign language is definitely easier when you're a child, when you can be learning your first and second or third language at the same time. I learned my second language in my 20s. It was harder then, but doable if you're emerged, sorry, immersed in that culture and language. 

Short and sweet answer to start off, from the USA. Just to point out her way of correcting herself when she made a mistake, emerged, sorry, immersed. It´s totally ok if you make a mistake like this in an exam and correct yourself, just keep it simple like she did here, sorry, immersed. This word immersed does indeed relate to language learning and if you are immersed in a culture then it is likely that you are living in that country and interacting with locals regularly.

Just an interesting observation about immersion, by the way. I’ve taught many students over the years who have gone to live in an English-speaking country for a period of time and have come back really confident speakers but with loads of ingrained errors. When they try to prepare for an exam they realise that their grammar isn´t nearly as good as their speaking skills and it can be frustrating. And those speaking errors that have become ingrained are very difficult to change as that is how they´ve been speaking for months or years already. 

So, my advice, if you are living in an English speaking country, or planning to move to one, and especially if you have the intention of taking an English exam some day, then try to keep up a bit of English grammar and vocabulary study because if you start off making mistakes nobody is going to correct you and it could end up being frustrating for you at exam time. 

Do you think it is important to learn a foreign language?

I think it's very important to learn a foreign language because not only does it help you with communication, communication with other people, it also… there is, there's been a lot of research that said people who talk more than one language find it easier to learn other subjects and other things, and it opens your mind a lot more to different cultures, to how people are and stuff like that and learning a language, English, I'm afraid to say, is fundamental that people learn English, because if you go, wherever you go, whatever part of the world you know, if you go to Germany, you can't speak German, you know, half of the Germans speak English. If you go to South America, anywhere you go, somebody will be able to talk to you in English as and it's the international language of business. 

Some people say that learning a foreign language is easier when you’re a child. What’s your opinion?

I agree. Yeah, it is because when you are older, I mean. There's been research on this as well. When you're older, you're more set in your ways and you find it more difficult to learn to pronounce when you're a child. And that's why I think it's fundamental and you know, as a teacher I….anybody who has small children, I say to them, please put the…put the cartoons in English and get them to watch it. You know, Spanish children. Get them to watch the cartoons in English and they'll say to you but I don't wanna watch the cartoons in English. I don't understand it. And they'll say that the first time, and they'll say that the second time and you'll say to them, listen, you can either watch the cartoons in English or you don't watch the cartoons at all. And in the end, they say, OK, I'll watch the cartoons in English and they…it's sort of like learning, but in the background, you know, they don't realize they listen to English sounds and. What happens with that? Not only are they watching it and listening to English, then when they do English at school, they've heard those sounds, and when it's their turn to actually speak those words, they don't feel, they feel more confident and they don't feel embarrassed about it. They don't care, but when you're an adult and you can see that, you're not saying it properly, you're not pronouncing properly and you're intonation is all wrong, then you feel more embarrassed about it and it sets you back. Yeah, so. So super important to learn to try, and I'm not saying that you can't learn as you get older. I'm saying that it's easier to learn when you're a child because you don't have any of those problems that you that you get as you get older and you know about being conscious about how you're doing it incorrectly or whatever, children don't care. 

Some super-duper advice there, if you have kids, get them watching English TV, you´ll save a fortune in English lessons in the future. We heard two lovely inversions too, not only does it help you and not only are they watching it. As mentioned before, this “not only” inversion is the most versatile of the inversions and is the easiest one, for sure, to get into your speaking answers, as we just heard. 

Then there was this expression, I´m afraid to say - English, I´m afraid to say, is fundamental. This I´m afraid to say is a politeness marker, a way of telling the person that you are sorry to tell them something they might not want to here. Like, this dinner, I´m afraid to say, is not very tasty. This could be a good expression to use when writing a review, for example, the service in the restaurant, I´m afraid to say, was atrocious.

There were two nice expressions using the verb set, first was when you are older you are set in your ways, meaning you are not willing to change your habits or opinions and the second one was that if you make a mistake it can set you back, meaning if can delay or impede your progress. Like, losing electricity in the house set me back quite a bit as I couldn´t work on my project.

Some people say that learning a foreign language is easier when you’re a child. What’s your opinion?

As someone who is bilingual, not exactly by choice, I would absolutely say that a foreign language is much easier to learn when you're a child. I am originally from Portugal. I was raised in England, where I learned to speak English fluently and then, at age 13 I moved to Luxembourg, where I had to learn French to a pretty high standard and German to somewhat of a standard as well. I found it much easier to pick English up, obviously, because you're immersed in it, and when I was a teenager, I mean, I got through it, but it was it was quite difficult and when I became an adult, I was very grateful that I didn't really have to learn languages anymore. However, I think your attitude changes a bit when you're an adult. I'm now living in Belgium. And I speak one of the two languages, French, fairly fluently. But Dutch is the language that I wanted to learn for a while, and I did classes in it for the first time, and I have been watching Dutch TV and listening to Dutch speaking radio a bit more to improve it. So while the learning definitely isn't going as quickly, the motivation is far better. 

How far do you agree that errors are a natural part of language learning?

Errors are an absolutely natural part of learning languages, and I think if you get too hung up on not making errors, you're not going to be able to proceed properly, especially when you're speaking in a language rather than writing in a language. I speak French fluently, but I say that I speak French bad fluently. Because there's grammatical errors that I always make, and there's vocabulary that I don't have. However, when I speak to people they understand me, and when I watch TV or go to the cinema or do other things where I'm in this in French, I understand almost all of it and if I got too hung up on what I didn't understand or the mistakes that I made when I was speaking, I don't think I would progress as far as I have in learning it.

These answers are great, so much useful vocabulary. In terms of different levels, we heard that she is bilingual in English and Portuguese, fairly fluent in French, or she also said she learned French to a pretty high standard, and German to somewhat of a standard, which means comparatively a bit less than her French. 

She also used a few phrasal verbs that are excellent for speaking about language learning. Firstly, she said it was easier to pick English up, so to pick a language up is to learn it in a natural way by practicing it, rather than by learning it. She said she got through learning the other languages as a teenager, if you get through something you finish doing something difficult or challenging. Like, I love reading but it took me ages to get through Don Quijote, it´s just so long. Lastly, she said it´s important not to get hung up on making errors. If you get hung up on something you get overly bothered by it. For example, I love Guinness and I get hung up on whether it has been poured correctly or not, true story that one.

This is just a reminder that if you are looking for classes where you can pick up some new language that will help you achieve your goals then get in contact by email or on social media or you can check out the website realexamenglish.com

Do you think it is important to learn a foreign language?

It depends on what foreign language and why you're learning it, I suppose. If, you know. I think it's important, you know, it depends what country you're in as well and the reasons for learning languages have changed. I think at the moment, you know, if you're in in the UK, then learning Chinese might be a very good, you know, if you're a child at school, learning Chinese might be a good way to go. There's calls in Germany I read yesterday at the moment for English to become the official second language here for business reasons. But I do wonder sometimes at school, you know, kids at school, when we were at school, you learned 2 languages and, well, three if you include English, but I wonder about, I wonder whether that's a good idea. Of course, the British are notorious for not learning languages and just shouting very slowly in English at a foreign person and hoping they'll understand. But I think learn one language properly rather than two languages. I think there's more important things on a school curriculum than two languages, one certainly. 

How far do you agree that errors are a natural part of language learning?

Nobody in the country, if you're learning a language, nobody in that country is going to speak that language properly. Nobody at all. When I think when you're teaching English, you can teach English out of a book, and then you can teach English, the English that someone would speak if they're in a bar to how they would speak out of, you know, nobody speaks like they do out of a textbook. So yeah, I think errors are fine. I think as long as you know, as long as you're not training to be a translator or something for businesses, I think error is a natural… language is always evolving anyway. I don't understand anyone under the age of 25 in the UK anymore. And I think as long as the message has got across, the meaning has got across and the intent has got across then I think that's OK. 

Another phrasal verb here, to get a message across, which means to have the message understood. For instance, I try to get across to my kids the importance of washing their hands.

He said the British are notorious for not learning languages, I think this is true of most nationalities who speak English as their mother-tongue. There is just less of an incentive, I´m afraid to say, compared to speakers of other languages. So notorious is used when you are famous for something bad, like the footballer is notorious for diving. 

We heard some nice emphasis in the first answer, I do wonder if it´s a good idea. By using the auxiliary verb do here it emphasizes the fact that he wonders. A good example, would be, I do love you. You can, of course, say I love you, but if you say I do love you then it is more emphatic, although you are probably in a bit of trouble if you have to emphasize the do in this situation. 

Which languages would you like to learn and why?

I ohh, I would like to learn Spanish and I'm toying with it now. I've got a program that I'm learning from Spotify podcasts, just picking up the odd sentence and things. So I'd like to learn Spanish and I think it's a lovely language and it's because we go to Lanzarote quite a lot, and I'd like to be able to have a conversation with the locals in their language. 

So this gentleman is toying with the idea of learning Spanish. If you are toying with an idea it means that you are considering it or thinking about doing it, but not very seriously. Like, I´m toying with the idea of running a marathon, maybe if I can stay injury-free I´ll do it. Once again we heard this phrasal verb to pick up, in this case he said that he picks up the odd sentence. Odd in this respect means occasional. Another example would be I don´t do much exercise these days, although I do go for the odd walk if the weather is nice. 

Which languages would you like to learn and why?

Ooh, uh, probably Spanish and French, and because I enjoy holidaying in both destinations and I hate feeling as if the pressure is on for my friends that are living in other countries to have to speak English because I can't speak their languages. So I think it's very unfair of naturally English-speaking people to expect everybody else to speak English, so I would definitely like to learn more of Spanish and French. 

What memories do you have of your first foreign language lessons?

Oh awful. In Ireland the way they teach foreign languages is not, uhm, conducive to really learning the language. So in school, uh, you would have to learn by verbs, nouns, adjectives, et cetera as opposed to learning through conversation, and we had a lot of exams where you would learn off a full essay in a specific language without actually knowing what the essay was about but you would get, you could get an A or a Gold Star for example, if you're able to reel off that whole essay, even if you didn't, weren't able to use any of that wording in conversation, which is not very good, so my experience learning it in school wasn't great. However, when I then got to go on holidays in different destinations too like Spain or France etcetera, then I got to learn a little bit more of the language through conversation and definitely found it easier. 

The first answer here was with what my examiner trainer calls the sandwich technique. This is where you give an answer at the start, then you explain it in more detail, then you finish with the same idea that you gave at the start. She said she´d like to learn Spanish and French, she explained why, then again repeated she’d definitely learn Spanish and French. To give you another example: for the question do you use English much in your daily life, you could say “yea, I do use English a fair bit. I usually interact with clients at work in English, which is quite a challenge but a fantastic way to pick up new words. Also, I’m big into American TV series so in the evenings I like to chill at home on the sofa and binge-watch a few episodes with my partner, who is English too, by the way. So yea I´d say I get the chance to use plenty of English on a daily basis.” It´s nice that, isn´t it, the sandwich technique.

In the second answer we had a couple of phrasal verbs, to learn off and to reel off. She said that she would learn off a full essay. This means that she would learn every word by memory or to use another expression, she would learn it by heart. An example would be I learned off the words of my favourite Taylor Swift song last week, not true in my case I´m afraid to say! To reel off then means to recite or list something quickly and readily. For instance, I can reel off every winner of the Rugby World Cup since it began, true in my case, that one. 

And that is all we have for todays folks. Some top-notch answers there, really interesting to hear the different viewpoints on language learning from around the English-speaking world. Well, hopefully you picked up a few nice phrasal verbs and expressions yourself to use in your language learning journey. And for copies of the transcript for this and all of the other episodes check out the website realexamenglish.com. Included with the transcripts are a bunch of really useful grammar and vocabulary exercises, especially for anyone preparing for a Cambridge English exam. They can really help you get the most from the podcast and reach your language goal even faster, once again realexamenglish.com

Ok then, thanks a million for listening and see you next time. 

Trevor