This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 150.
Let go of your grammar obsession and speak English like a native with Idasa Ness.
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.
In today's episode, you'll meet an amazing English teacher, Idausa Ness, who will teach us about his mimic method of learning languages.
If you're learning English to connect with other people in real ways and we know you are you'll love Idausa's tips today.
Listen in to this episode.
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Hey, Aubrey, how's everything going today?
I'm great.
How are you, Lindsay?
I'm awesome.
I'm awesome.
What are we getting into today?
We have an awesome guest voice on the show.
I'm so excited.
Yes, this is going to be really fun.
But first, I want to ask you, when you think of a mime, what do you think of?
Oh, I think of someone just not saying anything but making.
I think of someone using their hands to make.
Yeah, right.
To pretend they're in a box.
That's always what I imagine.
Someone using their hands to make it look like they're in a box that's not really there.
And I love how sometimes people do that as a dance move.
And I'm not sure what that's about.
But once in a while you'll see someone on the dance floor doing like windshield wipers and doing mining actions.
The sprinkler.
Yeah, the sprinkler, the lawnmower.
Yeah, all the stuff, right?
That's in the bag of tricks.
Right.
So this word mime is interesting, right?
It's related to mimic, mimicking, but they are a little bit different.
What do you think as far as the difference between miming and mimicking?
So when I think of miming, I really think of a performer.
Sorry.
Actions, right?
Yeah.
Actions, a performer.
When I think of mimic, I think of more of an act, an activity, something you might do, you know actively, on purpose.
So a little bit different.
I think of it more like copying, whether that's copying the way someone speaks or what they're doing.
It's more like an exact copy, right?
We talk about shadowing and mimicking being to copy someone's pronunciation or accent.
And that's different than miming, which would be more to imitate their actions or some kind of activity.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Mimicking, miming, slightly different, slightly different.
Is this what our guest talks about on today's episode?
Yeah.
We have a special guest today, Idausa Ness from The Mimic Method.
And his YouTube channel has tons of awesome video lessons for free to help you along your fluency journey through sound training.
So we're going to ask him about some mistakes that he sees students making when they learn English.
Yeah, I think the biggest issue people have learning language in general, but especially In English.
We're communicating with sound
And when you do it in writing, we don't really write things the way we sound.
What happens then is people, you know they'll try to learn song lyrics which is through music which is, oh man, like he's saying these words, but he's always saying this many syllables.
He's chopping words up or he's combining them a little.
That is so true.
This is a great way to learn, right?
Through music.
Yeah.
I mean, everyone loves music, right?
Why don't we use material that we really enjoy?
Exactly.
And singers can exaggerate stressed syllables and it's more natural and that can be a great lesson to help students.
For sure.
And then when we think about sounds of consonants and vowel sounds, these can be heard and learned through music.
Yeah.
When you're learning a language, do you do this?
Do you seek for bands?
Do you look for music to help you learn?
Oh, that's a great question.
I remember when I studied in France just for a week as a high schooler, right?
I did the whole study abroad for a week with your school trip.
And I remember loving the disco stuff or the, you know the techno vibe and getting really into that and being interested in the words.
And there are multiple benefits there, right?
You've got the cultural aspect, you've got the lyrics, but it's interesting to think about these specific sounds and when you hear them in music that it might be easier to recognize them right.
Yeah.
Yeah, for example, there's a song from Temple of the Dog, a group from the 90s.
And their most famous song is Hunger Strike.
And they have these lyrics that says, I don't mind eating bread from the mouths of decadence.
And you have both of the examples of weak and strong vowels the T and the D.
So if you're going to listen to that and analyze it, you start seeing how natives pronounce sounds more strongly or more weakly.
Right, right.
And at some point you want to sing along, right?
Because you actually enjoy the song.
Yes.
And then you have that automatic mimicking where it's fun, it's interesting, and you're mimicking these native sounds in a very natural way.
I love it.
So good.
So good.
Oh, my gosh.
OK, so we're going to hear from Midalsa a bit more.
What else are we going to learn from him?
Yes, he speaks Spanish, French, Portuguese and Chinese.
So let's learn how he studied these.
Yeah, to a different degree for each one.
The more recent ones, a lot more.
What I've always done is I've always focused on mimics, for example.
I always wanted to sound just like the people.
And through that process of really listening and getting all the details, it allowed me to learn everything else in the language much faster because I was able to interact.
This is interesting to see that he's focused a lot on mimicking right.
But not only listening, right?
Interacting.
And he notes that he consciously incorporated these details into his own Spanish.
Did you do a lot of mimicking when you were learning languages?
Oh my gosh, 100%.
Especially Spanish, you know, traveling.
I was pretty immersed when I learned.
I traveled all over South America and backpacked and lived with locals and worked in the language.
I mean, all sorts of things.
So I had to.
And we've talked a lot in recent episodes about mimicking in your head, right?
Just kind of repeating the words right in your head.
So you can always have that kind of laboratory.
Yes.
And what's interesting?
Because, of course, being able to actually do this in a country where people speak English is the easiest.
But we don't always have that option, right?
We know that all of you listening out there, not all of you are surrounded by English.
So this is going to be really great here, because Iroase is going to let us know about how you can do this from home.
Yeah, I mean TV.
I mean you use music specifically as a tool to get into the very details of the sound, because a lot you know.
You can slow down music.
Go and listen to the different sounds individually, practice it over and over again.
But that just builds your foundation.
Ultimately, mimicking is through listening to that in a travel setting best ways you know.
Consume as much media as possible, whether it's television movies, and that's just one end for understanding.
The other end is actually speaking with people as different kind of meetups in your hometown as well.
But yeah, I mean, ultimately it's all about maximizing the amount of sound you're creating and sound you're hearing.
That's really beautiful, right?
That thought about maximizing the amount of sound you're hearing and the amount of sound you're creating.
Oh, I love that idea.
Maximize.
That is a great verb.
Yes, to get the most out of it, we think about maximizing.
And what a great motto to think about doing this as much as possible and creating this balance between input and output.
Because I think a lot of us get in that habit of bringing in a lot of output and not focusing on any input.
We're not taking those opportunities to speak.
And it really needs to be a balance.
Yeah, I think a lot of us feel that we have to be ready to speak, right?
Where someone is going to tap us on the shoulder and say, you are officially ready.
Yes, right.
And we sometimes will think well, to do any output, I have to have another person there to communicate.
But like you said, that's not always possible.
You can do this in your own mind or out loud, mimicking by yourself.
That's still possible. output.
Yes, 100%.
Guys, don't forget that there are ways, you know.
There are ways we have to take responsibility for our own learning.
It's easy to say, I can't find a native speaker, so I can't practice.
No, that is not the thing to say.
Right, Aubrey?
Yes, exactly.
Okay, so what do teachers say, though?
Yeah, some teachers will say that students should take in a lot of English before they ever start speaking.
I think that is where this sort of myth comes from that we feel like we need to be fluent before we should start speaking.
I disagree with that very, very strongly.
If you're spending all this time bringing an output without speaking, you will get demotivated because you don't see the results.
You're not having that excitement of communicating with someone in another language.
You can't treat it like every other subject.
Yeah.
And also you want to have ownership of the language.
And the only way you're going to start to take ownership of it is by using it.
Right.
As you said, the excitement of seeing yourself actually have a real connection.
You guys come back to connection.
That's what it is.
Get a connection with someone.
Right.
And then that's the motivation to keep going.
But if you don't participate, you're just not going to feel motivated to keep going.
Yes, exactly.
So true.
So here's our next question for you, Dawsa.
When should students start using the language out loud?
There's a misconception.
It's a false idea that if you practice something wrong in the beginning, you're going to build a habit.
That's not true.
Like anything you learn.
The only thing you have to worry about is that you have to keep your ears open so that when you make mistakes or you say things wrong, you can hear yourself doing it wrong and then adjust.
If you don't adjust, then that's a problem.
Right.
So that's like a meta skill being able to see yourself make that mistake and make that change immediately.
Yeah, it's more kind of like, once again, it's based on how much sound you're putting in.
For example, if I'm in a place and I say something a certain way, or I hear someone say something a certain way, I can say oh, I don't usually speak that way, but now I will.
I'll mimic it under my breath and then I make that quick change.
Oh, I think that's so true.
You just have to keep your ears open, right?
Be able to hear yourself make a mistake.
Yeah, I love this.
And it sounds.
It's important that he said that.
You know if he hears someone say something in a certain way, he makes the sound right.
He knows he's doing it wrong, had been doing it wrong previously.
Then he goes and he mimics it under his breath.
So it's really about looking out for those opportunities, guys.
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Yes.
Right.
Focusing on observing and self-correction and then also being willing to really hear how others sound what they're saying and how it's different from the sounds that we're producing right.
Recognizing we're going to say stuff wrong at first.
Everybody does.
And that's okay.
And, as he said, it doesn't mean we're going to make that mistake forever, as long as we have like, our ears open and our eyes wide open to these corrections, these moments, these opportunities.
It's not about being in the classroom.
It's not like you walk into a classroom, now's the time to fix my English.
No, it's out in the world.
And I think it's such a mistake to think of one accent as being the perfect accent to strive for right.
Yeah.
There are so many accents in English.
The accent you have in English is beautiful.
You want to strive to be understood and make connections, not always necessarily to have and maintain a specific accent.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I totally agree.
All right.
What else do we need to know from Idowsa?
Yes.
Let's hear this next clip.
A good thing about the mimicry approach is that um um, when you focus too much and maybe we don't really focus much on learning grammar rules or anything it just once again just mimicking.
You get it wrong.
Most of the time, eventually you get it right.
But if you focus more on uh, constructing sentences by conjugating in your head, it restricts your ability to uh.
Oh, this is amazing.
It's so true that you can't force yourself to communicate, like you learned in a textbook, when people don't actually talk like that.
It's so true.
It's just not how language works.
Yes, exactly.
Right.
He gave this example that if you're talking to a guy in Boston and refuse to communicate the way he does because of a rule maybe that you learned in a textbook in your head that will get in the way of connection.
Or I can see this if you hear someone use incorrect grammar and you're wanting to correct them.
It gets in the way of that connection.
Oh, my gosh.
Totally.
Why are we here?
Are we here in the world to be correct or are we here to be connected?
I would rather be connected.
I know.
Right.
Exactly.
Like for both of us studying Spanish, we've seen things like this, for example, vosotros.
Right.
If we learn about that with Spanish, Spanish, Spain.
The Spanish they speak in Spain.
And then we go to Mexico and they don't use it.
And it might sort of stop our conversation if we're concerned about that or should I use it or not.
We end up maybe thinking too much about the grammar instead of just having a conversation.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I love that.
So important.
Oh, man.
And I think every language probably has certain habits where they will make mistakes on purpose.
You know what I mean?
In certain regions.
To be more informal or something like that.
Yeah, we do that all the time in English or we let it go.
Like we've talked about this on the podcast before with grammar, with the conditional.
You know, we make mistakes on purpose, sometimes because it would sound weird to always say it correctly.
A really good example of this is ending sentences with a preposition.
Teachers will teach you not to do this, to not do this in writing.
But it is so much more formal.
Like, for example, we say, who are you going to the party with?
You know, we would never say, with whom are you going to the party?
It's so formal and awkward sounding.
Another great episode idea.
Right.
You have all your ideas.
Fantastic.
Actually, I don't think we've talked about that before on the podcast.
Guys, make sure you hit follow on this show, by the way.
We have been coming out with some fantastic episodes.
You want to get in on this.
So hit follow wherever you listen to this show.
Yes, for sure.
And this is so vital that you don't want to be following grammar rules that...
Somebody wrote in a textbook that people don't really use or they just sound strange if they use right.
Because it's about communicating, connecting.
And that's what Idasa says.
And we definitely agree.
Oh, 100%.
Do we have any more clips from Idowsa or where are we going here?
Yes.
We want to talk about people who are taking IELTS or TOEFL.
If people do need to learn more formal English, what about that, right?
Let's hear what Idowsa says about that.
Good question.
Yeah. or any other language, and then from there, learn the standardized academic.
Oh, that's a really good point, right?
Yes.
So the idea of, you know, it is easier to learn that English on the street then, right?
Yes, exactly.
That's how we learned, you and I, right?
We learned on the playground and we learned formal stuff in class.
But yeah, if you are trying to learn a language and really want to make connections using that textbook, English is not the way to do it.
Yeah.
And you know, at some point when we start with a base of the street English, then we can add on the more formal English.
You know, the IELTS has certain sections where you do want to be a little bit more formal.
Right, Aubrey?
I mean, you are an expert in IELTS.
Are there sections like speaking part three?
What do you think?
Yeah, speaking part three, you're a little more formal and especially on your writing, your essays.
You are going to use those more formal grammar structures, more formal vocabulary.
You don't use slang and idioms.
And you know a lot of the way we would speak spoken English.
You have to avoid that for IELTS writing.
So this is very different.
You have to compartmentalize a little bit.
Separate it out in your mind.
Am I using formal speech for writing or formal grammar structures for writing?
Or am I just trying to communicate with someone in spoken English?
And it's going to be very different.
Yeah, we need the whole spectrum of English, right?
We need it all.
And, by the way, if you guys are looking to prepare for IELTS, getting started on the exam, go and find the IELTS Energy podcast.
Aubrey is over there with Jessica twice a week giving you guys awesome advice.
Yes, everything you need to know in order to get your seven or higher on the IELTS exam strategies, vocabulary and how to use it.
So be sure to follow IELTS Energy wherever you find your podcasts.
Yeah, good stuff.
Okay, what are we going to leave our listeners with here today?
Well, I think, you know, of course, encouraging you to learn with songs, I think is helpful.
It's not going to be for everyone.
You might not find that that's particularly useful for you, but try it, because you don't know until you try it right.
And you can use a free program called Audacity to listen to songs more slowly.
And some media players will allow you to listen to something more slowly, podcasts or music.
And that might help to listen to something at half speed to get the lyrics better, to hear that pronunciation and then mimic it.
Yeah.
I mean, you can do this with podcasts too.
Like most podcast players do allow you to put 0.5 speed or 0.25 speed.
Okay, guys.
So give that a try.
Yeah, definitely.
You can always do both.
Listen to it more slowly to make sure you get the gist, and then try listening to it faster the second time and you're going to understand more at regular speed.
All right.
The idea here is open your mind, guys, to getting away from the textbook, away from the classroom.
I like that Idowsa has really opened our minds here, given us some real ways to make it happen.
Yes, definitely.
Check out his site, mimicmethod.com and his YouTube channel of the same name.
Thank you so much for coming today, Idowsa.
This was a really awesome interview.
Yeah.
Awesome.
And thanks for hanging out with me today, Aubrey.
I'll talk to you very soon.
Yes.
Bye, Lindsay.
All right.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to all ears english and if you believe in connection, not perfection, follow our show wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you don't miss anything.
See you next time.
