What to do without a teacher (Video Lesson)
Good Morning, afternoon, or evening where ever you are kickass English learner!
Let’s start this lesson with a quick exercise, shall we?
It’s very easy, I just want you to shut your eyes and think of something (other than English) that you are good at or that you are currently learning. Let me give you some examples:
- Guitar
- Football/Soccer
- Dancing
- Knitting
- Brazilian Ju Jitsu
All right, now close your eyes and think for a moment! Have you thought of something?
Ok, you’re probably asking, “Ethan, what’s the point of this exercise? What does it have to do with learning English?”
Trust me, I have a point.
See, learning, no matter what it is, has the same fundamentals. So, if you have learned anything, you can be great at learning English (I talk a lot more about this here).
The reason we tend to think of learning a language differently than for example, learning to dance or play soccer, is because we already speak a language fluently. We compare our struggles learning the new language (like English) to how easily we speak our native language. But this is a big mistake!
You’re going to get more ideas in this short video, but I want you to start thinking about how you can compare learning English to other things you have learned–whether it’s art, a sport, an instrument, whatever!
Now enjoy this quick lesson, and remember that you can turn on subtitles (press the CC button) or reference the transcript below:
What to Do Without a Teacher
Transcript:
Yo yo RealLifers, what’s going on? Ethan here, Mr. V and I just wanted to like share an idea with you guys real quick that I just had.
I was just at an acroyoga class. It’s something that I started doing since I’ve been here in Brazil. And acroyoga it’s a very new sport, so for those of you that haven’t heard of it, that’s pretty normal, I’m going to share a link below to something that will like give you an idea of what it is.
But as you can kind of tell from the name, it’s a mix between Acrobatics and Yoga. So I just started doing that a few months ago and I’m completely in love with it. It’s really fun. but I was just thinking about how does this actually, how could I relate this to learning English or to learning another language, and I think it actually goes together really well, so. I have class just once a week and because I’m so passionate about it, I really want to accelerate my learning. I want to learn faster. So what I did was, after the first couple weeks of class I asked the teacher, “What can I do to kind of practice at home.” Because the thing about acroyoga is that it’s something that you do in pairs of two or three. You usually have a person who’s a base, a person who’s flying, which means that they’re on top. And then you have like what they call an angel, which is the person that makes sure you don’t fall. They kind of like protect you.
So how does this relate to English learning? So I asked my teacher, “What can I do at home to improve my skills?” And what she told me is that I can do push ups, I can do headstands and handstands which is basically when you are using your, when you’re doing something introverted with your head on the ground and your arms on the ground and you feet in the air. And so I started doing this a few times a week and I’ve seen and my teacher has given me this feedback that I just have improved much faster. And she was very impressed that I actually took it into my own hands to improve in this way. So how does this relate to your English learning?
Well, as you can see, I just got back from there. I ran back. That’s why I’m all in this and my hair’s a mess, and I’m kind of sweaty. But I had to share this idea with you. So maybe with your English learning you take classes or you have an exchange partner or friends that you practice with. It’s just like acroyoga that when I go to class each week I am practicing with another person, and I need those other people because it’s a sport that you practice in pairs, but if I want to improve my skills, if I want to accelerate what I’m able to learn in class and improve faster, then I have to do some work on my own. So it’s just like learning English, it’s really important that you have some time to actually use the language, to practice. And you need another person to do this right? You can’t really practice your conversation without feedback. But there are a lot of things that you can take into your own hands and do at home, for acroyoga for me it’s doing some regular yoga positions, it’s doing push ups, it’s doing headstands and different things like this. And for you, learning English, what can you do? You can listen to podcasts, you can watch videos like this one, you can watch tv shows. So you do a lot of things to be improving on your own, to be taking in new vocabulary, to be learning new colloquialisms, expressions, things like this. and then, when you actually have the opportunity to practice, your learning is going to be accelerated because you’ve done a lot of investment on yourself.
So that’s basically it. I’m going to start doing more videos like this, just sharing ideas that I have with you guys.because I really want to help you guys out, I have ideas like this all the time but I don’t write them down or share them with you and I think by video is a great way to do this. I would love your feedback. And if you guys like this I will certainly be doing more videos like this. All right, have a great day. Later!
Aww Yeah! Thanks again for watching guys! I just wanted to say, before you go, we have got some really cool stuff for those of you that like learning with TV shows. So if you ever have had problems understanding TV series in English, I want you to click here and you can go to our other channel, which is “Learn English with TV,” and there we are going to help you understand 100% of some clips from your very favorite TV series like Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, and the best TV series ever, Friends. So go there now, check it out. You are going to love, absolutely LOVE these new lessons we’ve got for you! All right guys, see you later.
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