Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey, English learners, this is Connor, and you're listening to episode 268 of the Listening Time podcast.
I hope you're doing well and that you're excited to practice your listening comprehension today.
In this episode, I'm gonna talk about why you might not have learned English very well in school.
I'm sure many of you took English classes in high school, maybe earlier than that too, elementary school, middle school, and I'm sure many of you would say that you didn't learn English very well in those classes.
I've talked to many, many, many students who have told me this from all around the world, many different countries.
So today I want to talk about the reasons why
You probably didn't learn English very well in school.
I already did a YouTube video on this topic.
It will probably be out like a couple months before this podcast episode, I think.
But I wanted to do a podcast episode on this topic as well, because not everyone who watches my YouTube videos listens to the podcast and vice versa.
So that's what we'll talk about today.
Remember that it would help me out a lot if you could follow this podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
That really helps the podcast grow.
Also if you want my advanced episodes in which I speak fast, if you want to improve your listening so that you can understand people when they speak fast, make sure to practice with those advanced episodes by becoming a Listening Time family member.
The link to sign up is down below.
Also, check out my U.S.
Conversations podcast in which I talk to different English teachers from around the country about a lot of different topics.
It's great fun and great practice for your listening because you're practicing listening to two people talking and not just one.
So that link is also down below.
Okay, let's talk about
Why you might not have learned English very well in your English classes in school.
So in most countries, students don't have a great experience learning English in public schools.
Of course, there are many private schools
That offer better English instruction.
Obviously, that exists, but most people don't go to private schools.
They go to the public school
That is in their area maybe and many people take English classes most people take English classes in high school at least or maybe even in earlier levels of school but
The vast majority of people don't learn English very well in these classes.
For example, I know that many Brazilian students have told me that
The one sentence they learn to say from all their English classes is the book is on the table.
I've heard that many times.
So, of course, people don't learn to speak very well or to understand very well.
They learn some rules.
Of course, you learn grammar rules in your high school English classes.
You probably learn greetings.
You learn how to greet someone when you first see them or
When you meet them.
But I should also say that everyone basically in almost all the countries that learn English in school, they always learn to say, I'm fine when someone asks you, how are you?
This is not
The American response.
That is more acceptable in the UK or perhaps other dialects of English.
But in the US, when someone asks you, how are you?
You don't respond with fine and you.
I'm saying that because I've heard that hundreds of times, hundreds and hundreds of times with all of the students that I talk to.
They always are honest.
Many times they respond to my question, how are you, with fine and you.
Obviously, that's grammatically correct, but in the US, when you say you're fine,
Fine it actually has the feeling of you're not very good and you don't want to talk about it okay so i wanted to mention that because
I was talking about the fact that you learn greetings in your classes.
And when people finish their high school English classes, of course, most people do not have any confidence
In English.
They have no confidence in their ability to understand and interact in English.
That's the story that I hear again and again.
So let's talk about some of the issues with English classes in school.
Of course, these are just my opinions.
Other people might disagree with me.
I'm giving you my opinions.
So one really big issue is that the people who design language classes in public schools usually don't know how foreign languages are learned.
Okay.
They don't actually know the process of language acquisition.
Language is not math, okay?
In math, you can learn the rules one by one, memorize them, and you learn all of these different rules and formulas and how
How to use the formulas, and then you can solve different types of problems, different equations.
That's how math works.
You learn rules, you practice with them, you learn the formulas, and then you can solve problems.
That is not how English is learned.
You don't just learn rules one by one and then you know all the rules and then you can say everything and understand everything.
Is absolutely not how English is learned.
However, many times it feels like that is how English is taught in school.
I'm sure many of you have had experiences like this where you go over rule after rule and it's expected that you learn the rule and then you know it and then you learn the next one.
And then you know that and then you're expected to be able to use all of these rules to speak and to understand well.
But unfortunately, that's not what happens typically.
So that's a big issue.
Is that these English classes are designed in a way that's more like math or another subject.
So English is learned differently and classes should be different than these other subjects, of course.
Another issue is the reliance on the English textbook.
There's nothing wrong with English textbooks, English grammar books, practice books.
There's nothing wrong with them.
Oftentimes they're very helpful, so don't get me wrong.
I'm just saying that in classes, there is often a strong dependence, reliance on this textbook that the students are using.
And there's the idea that this textbook is going to give you the knowledge of English that you need in order to interact in English.
However, I don't think that textbooks give you your abilities, your skills in English.
They are a good source of knowledge.
You can reference them to learn about rules.
Grammar, perhaps vocabulary.
Some of them have good texts, maybe stories to practice your reading.
They have a lot of good things in them.
This is not the source of all your knowledge and abilities in English.
You don't just complete a textbook and then you know the rules and you can interact well.
That doesn't typically happen, right?
So textbooks are fine, but they should not be the big thing that everyone relies on and the thing that is expected to give you your knowledge of how to speak English well.
Another issue is the lack of meaningful, comprehensible input.
What is comprehensible input?
This is a source of input, meaning something you listen to or read.
That is understandable for you.
So if you're at a beginner level and someone hands you a classic novel in English, that is not comprehensible input.
You're not going to be able to understand what is written.
However, if you are at a beginner level and someone gives you a specific text that is designed for lower level learners, then that could be comprehensible input.
You might be able to understand the majority of what you read there.
What we need in classrooms is comprehensible input, whether it's texts or audios where the students can actually understand
The majority of what they're listening to or reading.
And there are also new words and new phrases in there that they learn naturally as they listen and read.
We don't have that much of this in English classes typically.
However, this is what really, really helps people progress in their English.
That's why you are listening to this podcast right now.
This is comprehensible input.
It is designed for people who can't yet understand fast English.
But it's still natural and meaningful authentic right you're learning new things from this i'm speaking naturally except for the fact that i'm speaking slowly and clearly
But my sentences are natural.
I'm not just reading something off of a script.
This is me talking just slowly and clearly.
So the lack of meaningful, comprehensible input is a problem in classes, in my opinion.
Another issue is that oftentimes you're hearing the wrong sounds and you're learning to reproduce those incorrect sounds.
This comes from the fact that the teachers are usually not native speakers and so they do not have the proper pronunciation of many words and phrases and they say things and then the students
View that teacher as the authority, so of course they say the word like the teacher is saying the word.
Right.
They learn incorrect sounds, incorrect pronunciation.
And this is a hard thing to just correct in any classroom because obviously the majority of teachers are not native speakers.
I'm not trying to speak badly about these teachers.
I'm just saying that this is one issue.
If students are learning pronunciation that is incorrect and they assume that it is correct, right?
Another issue is that the speaking practice in these classes is usually not very effective.
There's a lot of role-playing that isn't very interesting, like, okay, let's pretend we're at the supermarket.
You're the cashier and I'm the customer.
It's okay, but this really isn't something very engaging, very useful for people.
It doesn't provide really good feedback.
The students probably aren't retaining a lot of
Of what they learn from this practice.
This is just my opinion.
I don't think the speaking practice is very effective.
And the biggest issue, I already mentioned a handful, but the biggest issue, in my opinion, is that students are not taught how to learn English.
Students have no idea
How to learn English.
They just show up to class and hope they learn.
It would be fantastic if the students in these English classes knew how English is learned and what they can do on their own to learn English.
Outside of the classroom.
This is the biggest issue.
Students in an English class should know more or less how English is acquired, right?
How any language is acquired.
So those are the issues in my opinion.
What would I do to improve the English classes in public schools around the world?
This environment is not my strength.
I don't really have a lot of classroom experience, so I'm not an authority on this.
I just thought of a few ideas perhaps that could help.
One thing regarding what I just mentioned
Is it would be a really, really good thing to help students learn how to learn.
In other words, they learn how to acquire English, learn English on their own.
And not rely on the English class to give them their knowledge and abilities in English because oftentimes that reliance on classes
Ends up being an issue and the students don't progress a lot because they don't realize that the most important work is what they do on their own throughout the week, the practice that they do at home or wherever, right?
So this is probably the most important thing that I think needs to be changed.
Students need to learn how to learn on their own.
Learning how to learn any subject in any sphere of life is an excellent skill.
Once you realize how something is learned and you can follow a specific path to learn that thing,
This changes everything.
Now you're not just hoping that you'll learn, you are actually doing what you need to do to learn, right?
Another thing I would improve is that I would provide students with options for content
That they can use on their own and also perhaps use it in class too.
Maybe not the whole time, but they could use this content in class sometimes and also on their own, showing students that there is an abundance of English content that can be interesting.
That can be meaningful, that they might actually like, and showing them how to use this content to improve their comprehension and eventually their speaking and show them how they can use this at home on their own.
Right.
This would be a great improvement in my opinion, and not just use the boring content that the school provides.
Right.
Another thing I would improve is to give the students a little more freedom.
So like I just mentioned,
The school often provides not the most interesting content and throughout the class, students are just using this content, reading through the textbook, doing the exercises.
This is not fun.
And when it's not fun, it is not beneficial or it's not very beneficial when it comes to language learning, the best type of content to use.
Is content that's actually interesting, that's engaging for the learner.
So giving them more freedom to do different things, use different content,
Not just provide the content for them, even though that was my last point, it is good to provide options for content.
Also, let them seek out their own content.
Give them the freedom to find something that's interesting for them that can be even better for their learning.
So obviously there should be some structure in the classroom, but having some freedom to choose content, this could be great for students.
Another thing I would improve.
Is I would have the students speak in English when they can, but also allow them to speak in their native language when they can't say something in English.
I think this is a good way to transition people into speaking a foreign language.
Don't just force them to only use that language.
Some people like that approach.
I get that it's not like it's a bad approach, but for many people, it's not reasonable.
Students don't like this, that they can't say anything because they can only use
The language they're learning, but they don't know how to say anything in that language, so they just keep quiet.
We want to encourage people to speak
And to say the things that they can say in English but then switch back to their own language and then use English again once they've said that idea that they couldn't say in English.
So, encourage them to
Use English as much as possible in the classroom, but allow them to say a phrase in their own language if they don't know how to say it in English.
I'm a proponent of this, meaning I support this type of speaking.
Other people disagree with me.
I get it.
But this is probably what I would tell them to do.
Also, another thing that could be a useful tool for English classes is music.
Most people love music and music can be a great way to get people interested in the sound of a language, the poetry.
A language even English right for me for example when I listen to certain songs in Spanish or in French it increases my love for the sounds of those languages
Sometimes I'm listening to
A French song, which is not often, and I only know a handful of French songs, but if I listen to a French song, it gives me the desire to produce those same sounds, to be able to say something or sing something beautifully.
French.
That is a feeling a lot of us have when we listen to music in the language that we're learning.
That can be a very powerful motivator to make people want to learn a language, right?
That can be a great thing.
And then one last thing I would improve is no more random role-playing for speaking exercises, right?
No more just, okay, we're at the supermarket.
You're the cashier.
I'm the customer.
Sure, this can be useful to teach very specific phrases and vocabulary for certain situations.
I get that.
But in general, our useful speaking practice often comes from speaking about things that are relevant to us and that are interesting to us.
Things that we want to talk about.
When I speak in other languages that I'm learning, I often focus a lot of my speech in the earlier stages on language learning and perhaps
Online content creation, which is what I do.
I learn languages and I make content for people learning English.
These are things that are very interesting for me that are very relevant for me.
So they are great topics to start talking about because I can talk a lot about them and this can give me
A lot of great repetition where I'm saying new words again and again after I learn them, new phrases again and again.
It helps us start to build a foundation for speaking.
In that language.
When you talk about things that are important to you or interesting to you or relevant to you, this often makes a greater impact on you and your brain than just talking about random things like random role-playing.
I think that the speaking practice should be focused on things relevant, important, interesting for each student, right?
So those are some of the things I would improve.
Again, the classroom environment is not my area of expertise.
I have experience teaching one on one, but I think that these ideas could be helpful.
Right.
So overall, it's important to remember that the most important learning happens outside the classroom.
So the classroom should serve to equip students, meaning
Give them the necessary tools and the necessary techniques and encourage students to learn on their own.
Right.
The classroom should equip and encourage students to learn on their own.
Teach them how to learn on their own.
And the classroom itself, that experience of going to an English class can give them feedback and it allows for structured practice and interaction and also kind of like coaching, like helping them learn.
With their learning process that they're going through on their own.
The classroom can be a great tool, but
I think that it should serve more as a way to help students learn on their own where most of the learning occurs.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Remember that if you like this podcast, if it's helpful for you, I would appreciate it if you could follow it.
Press the follow button.
I would also appreciate it if you could support me by signing up for my membership.
It's very affordable.
And if you want my advanced podcast episodes, you can become a Listening Time family member, sign up for that tier specifically, and you'll get all of my advanced episodes.
I've recorded like a hundred of them already, so you'll get all of those and two new advanced episodes every month.
In which i speak fast so the link to sign up for that is down below and the link for the us conversations podcast in which i talk to different english teachers from around the country that link is also down below as well so check those out
Thank you all for listening and i'll talk to you on the next episode of listening time
