This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 118.
Train your brain for English language learning.
Welcome to the All Ears English podcast where you'll finally get real native English conversation and fluency for business and life.
We believe in connection, not perfection, when it comes to learning English.
Now here are your hosts Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, coming to you from Arizona and Boston, USA.
The brain is a powerful machine.
In this episode, Lindsay and Aubrey talk about how the brain builds neural pathways and how you can leverage this insight to learn English faster.
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Lindsay, did you ever think you would be a scientist when you grew up?
A scientist?
Never.
Oh, my God.
Well, I wanted to be a vet when I was really young.
Like I wanted to take care of animals.
So I guess that's a science.
Animal science.
Animal science.
Right.
But when I took my first biology class in college, I realized there was not science in my future.
Oh, my God.
It's not for me.
Bio 101 was really challenging for me.
It was rigorous.
And I was no, I watched my roommate crack the book open the night before she'd get A's.
I would study for three weeks before and get B minuses.
It was incredible.
Wow.
It is crazy how people's brains kind of gravitate to certain things, work better.
I do feel like some people are just so much stronger in math.
Their brain just like grabs those concepts so easily.
Some of us really have to work.
I am not.
No, my math was not a strength for me.
Languages, I'm more left brained.
I mean, that makes sense.
That's why we both work in language now.
And it's kind of like this idea.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because whatever we're strong in, we enjoy more.
And then we want to do more of it.
We get better at it, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
But if you enjoy something, I think you're going to spend more time.
You know, if I enjoyed math, even if it was difficult for me, I think I could have succeeded.
I would have put in the work.
I would have learned what I needed to learn.
But you have to have both.
Right.
You have to have a little bit of skill, a little bit of adeptness at it.
And also the drive, that desire to enjoy it.
Yeah.
But I do think there's some crossover here, because what is smart if we are language learners and we want to learn language?
It's smart to understand how the brain works a little bit right.
How to use the brain.
That is science.
Yes.
But we're using it to achieve another goal that's more interesting to us.
Yes.
And I think, if ever you feel discouraged about your English or if you feel like you're having a really difficult time learning vocabulary, picking up grammar concepts, I think it is helpful to remember to think about how our brain works and how we train our brain to pick up things.
Just like we were saying, we have to be interested in.
We have to be engaged.
If it's drudgery, if we find it miserable, our brain is just not going to hold on to those concepts.
Yeah, it's true.
And this actually reminds me in college, I also took a cognitive psychology or a biocognition class, which was
Really hard to actually.
Yeah, I was I was a psych major.
And so, you know, but you did have to take cognitive psychology and it was challenging.
But, you know, I learned a few things about how the brain works.
And this is common knowledge.
We know that the brain has receptors.
And when we're learning something new, we build a pathway, a new neural pathway.
Right, Aubrey?
Yes, exactly.
It's like a bridge between the receptors in our brain, right?
So I love the visual of imagining two cliffs that are separated, maybe with a river way down below, and you need to build a bridge to bring those two cliffs together.
Right.
Right.
I love that.
I mean, that's why repetition, but the right kind of repetition is so important.
And that's how we know we can learn anything at any age.
I mean, I think they're starting to debunk the myth that, you know, our best learning years are in our younger years.
The brain is very flexible.
And we can change our brain.
That's what we know about meditation, too.
Meditation literally changes the structure of your brain.
So so does learning at the same time or getting discouraged.
Recognize you might need to adjust a little bit what you're doing.
How do you learn best?
What do you enjoy the most?
And make sure, like when you're reading a novel, even natives will give up on a novel after a few pages if it doesn't pull them in, if it's not interesting.
There are millions of books out there.
Make sure you're reading one that pulls you in, one that engages you.
Exactly.
And there are certain things that we have to do.
If we go back to that bridge analogy, we imagine we want to create that bridge.
It's like you are building that neural pathway.
You've got to bring it across the river, bring it across the cliff.
There are certain things that we can do, strategies we can use to get ourselves there, to fully build that neural pathway.
And something that we could help is a mnemonic device.
What is this, Aubrey?
What does this mean?
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Yeah, so this is when you take the sounds of a word to help you remember it.
I remember the word February, February the month, and I would never remember that it was F-E-B-R, because when people say it you don't hear that.
So I sort of did this mnemonic device where I would really emphasize that R to remember, right?
February.
Yes, sure.
So that you associate that sound with something you need to remember.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I think Jessica and I were talking about this on this podcast a little while ago.
She said Wednesday is spelled Wednesday.
And she said that her teacher said, you know, there's a wedding on Wednesday.
And that's how she would remember that.
Um, I remember.
Did you ever have?
I'm not sure if this is technically a mnemonic device, but I remember my teachers used to teach us never eat soggy Wheaties.
Never eat soggy Wheaties for Northeast, Southwest.
Um, so these are little, little crutches.
Yes.
Right.
Because they're just so memorable.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
We use these a lot when you're learning piano to learn the notes on the scale.
You'll always learn like an abbreviation or an acronym right.
So it's the top.
On the top, it's F-A-C-E FACE.
And then the EG, it's every good boy does fine.
EG, BDF, right?
And that's the only way I could remember those notes and a lot of words in order to remember the spelling or in order to remember a certain grammar.
If you can learn a mnemonic device like this, it will be stuck in your brain forever.
Right.
And that's the question that I come to now.
Do you still use these?
Because I still say never eat soggy Wheaties in my head.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
I know people who are playing more often than it's just memorized and you don't need that crutch anymore.
But for me, because I don't have a chance to play as much, I do still.
I'll come back and I'll have to go through that.
Okay.
Oh, that's a B. Okay.
So guys, we're telling you this because this is this could be the way that you build that pathway.
You know, you can see, you can almost envision those neural pathways being created when you learn a new word in English or new phrase or grammar point.
You need something to push it along sometimes.
And that's totally OK.
We all do that.
We use those devices.
Exactly.
Right.
You have to have that bridge.
Whatever works for you to make it interesting, to have something be more memorable.
You have to allow your brain to make this connection.
Yeah.
Otherwise, you'll just forget it.
Think about how many things we learn in a day, especially if we're studying a language or studying for a class that we don't remember a week later.
This is why we have to have assessments, quizzes and tests to help us force ourselves to repeat it and remember it, because a lot of it we just lose from our short-term memory.
Yeah, it's so true.
And the fact that the brain is so flexible makes me think it's so important that we're learning real English, the right English right.
Because you can memorize the wrong things.
You can get really good at knowing the wrong things.
I know in a lot of classrooms and textbooks, they're teaching you very repetitive and not.
Not very relevant English, right, Aubrey?
Yes, exactly.
Especially like business English.
They'll teach you these super formal ways to speak that no one speaks like that.
So imagine the time you can waste memorizing these formal dialogues that you're never actually going to use.
It's so true.
So that's what what we do differently here at all there's english, guys is real english.
We take english from outside in the world.
We bring on this podcast things we actually say in our everyday life and we give it to you here.
So you want to make sure you're learning the right stuff.
I think that pretty much wraps it up.
I think when we understand the brain, we can do so much in the world.
Exactly.
Right.
And then just use it.
Right.
We talk about this all the time.
Use the English you're learning to write and speak.
Find a speaking partner and really think about what you're learning, so that you can use it the next time you speak in English.
It'll be right there at the fingertips of your brain.
How do you say that?
At the tip of your brain.
Right.
Like the tip of your tongue, right?
But the tip of your brain right there, bubbling up, ready to use.
I love it.
So good.
So good.
Well, Aubrey, thanks for hanging out today.
And I can't wait to talk to you on the next episode.
Yes.
All right.
See you later.
All right.
Bye.
Bye.
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