This is an All Ears English podcast episode 2078.
Real English Conversations host Amy Whitney on deliberate English practice.
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Hello, Amy.
Welcome to All Ears English.
Glad to have you here.
Hey, thank you for having me on the show.
This is really exciting to see you again.
Oh my gosh, yes, you were here way back in the day.
I actually don't even have that episode number that you were on, but you were on probably in 2018 or 2019.
We're so glad to have you back on the show.
So I'm going to take a minute and introduce you to our audience.
So guys listeners, today I have Amy Whitney on the show, and Amy Whitney is an English fluency expert who has helped thousands of students to speak English with more confidence and better fluency.
Amy is the host of Real English Conversations, and one of Amy's specialties is helping students to recognize where they're stuck and how to quickly overcome those challenges.
And that's what we're going to talk about today.
Welcome again.
Again, Amy, where are you based in the world right now?
Right now, I'm living in Mexico, actually.
I live in the beautiful city of Puerto Vallarta.
It is extremely hot and humid right now, being September, but the cooler days and beautiful weather are just around the corner.
Oh my gosh, what a life.
When I think of Puerto Vallarta, I think of vacation, and you live there.
That's incredible.
I'm a little bit jealous, I'm not going to lie.
It's beautiful.
I just have the beach 10 minutes down the road.
So it's a really special place to live and an opportunity to be here.
Yes, 100%.
But you're not at the beach all day, every day.
I have a feeling you are working on some pretty cool things.
And one of them is the Real English Conversations podcast, which our listeners may know about.
If you guys don't know about it, make sure you go over there and hit follow on Amy's podcast.
But today, Amy, we are talking about Deliberate practice for our listeners.
When I think about being deliberate, I think about successful people.
I mean, if you think about anyone, you know who's successful.
They are absolutely deliberate and organized in reaching their goals.
Would you say that's true?
Yes, absolutely.
We have to be intentional about everything that we do.
And that's exactly what being deliberate means, right?
Intentional, purposeful, goal-oriented.
Yes.
Why would you say that this matters especially for our listeners, for our students who are trying to improve their English for work or for global travel?
Where does this fall into our industry?
All right.
So really deliberate practice is something that is important, because Learning English is a massive project.
This is something if you're going to be learning a language.
This isn't something that's a month long project, or six months or even a year.
Our listeners, they've been doing this for years at this point.
If they're able to understand us and follow along, they've been at it for a while.
So, because it's such a big thing, it's important for us to get really specific about where we want to improve.
Otherwise it can take decades to really get to our goals.
Oh my gosh, it's so true.
And you and I just had a business chat before we turned on the microphone, and the same is true for a business owner.
So I think our listeners will relate to this if they do anything else in their lives.
If we don't sit down every week and say this is where we're trying to get.
We won't get there because there are so many distractions out there.
Yeah.
Yes, absolutely.
Super interesting.
I love it.
So I was hoping that today you could let our listeners know the three steps that they can follow to become more deliberate with their English practice, especially now it's the fall weather's getting cooler, at least in our part of the world.
Um, and it's time to, to buckle down, right.
To focus.
This is the time to do it.
So what would be the first step that we can get into?
Yeah, for sure.
So the first step that we're going to do is identify our problem areas and set some goals.
And this is something that I notice again and again with my students that they're so general with their goals.
It's like they're aiming for something, but it's very unclear how to get there.
So the action step that everybody can take right now is to think about two three, maybe four situations that you've recently had with your English.
This could be real situations where you've had to use your English and it hasn't really turned out the way that you wanted, or you just didn't really feel good about how that went.
Yes.
And if you're not really using your English with other people, because there are people that are just learning alone.
Sure.
It's okay.
Just some sort of exercise that you did where you didn't really like your performance.
Those are the areas where, if you focus on those things, it's going to reveal the areas that you need to improve.
So for example, we had a student, her name was Olga, or her name is Olga.
And she's actually a restaurateur.
She owns a restaurant.
And what she was doing is saying, I want to improve my English.
I have to help my clients, English speakers come in and I don't know what to say to them.
So I just need to improve my English in general.
So what we realized with Olga was that we had to focus on the specific type of English she needed with her clients, rather than English in general, because she was just going for fluency right right, right.
Did you narrow it down into a specific area of restaurant ownership?
Was it like negotiations, or how did that work?
Yeah Yeah, for her it was front of the house work, which means you're serving your clients, you're greeting them, you're taking their orders and things like that.
And naturally the guests that are coming in that are English speakers are foreigners and she wants to talk about the local attractions and what to do and things like that.
So it was really just a handful of conversations she needed to focus on and improve.
So that was her goal setting.
Yeah, we had another student.
His name was Pedro and he found himself in work meetings where he was only able to understand maybe 40 or 50 of what was being said.
And he felt really uncomfortable about that.
How are you supposed to do your job if you don't understand what you're supposed to do?
It sounds stressful.
It sounds absolutely stressful.
Yeah, exactly.
So, you know, the first step is just to identify those problematic areas that you're having and from there look at which skills you maybe need to dive further into I love that so good and you know when I think about this it instantly makes my goal achievable right it instantly makes it something I can actually sit down or and study my vocabulary approach it I can go out and put it into action whereas we get that a lot too a lot of students will come and say I want to improve my fluency or I need to speak fluently it's just too broad It's too broad.
Yes.
Yeah.
I love it.
All right.
So step one it sounds like Amy is setting up the situations, the scenarios in which you want to succeed.
And that is very manageable.
What would be step two?
So step two is really thinking about how you're going to practice to improve those specific things.
So this is something that we call purposeful practice or intentional practice.
Okay.
So this is, okay, I've got this problem.
I've identified what the issue is.
And now the question is, how am I going to practice this thing to make it better?
So in the case with Olga, it was a question of those particular restaurant conversations.
And what she had fallen into was this general program.
It was an excellent program that she was doing.
They had like a movie channel and live classes and groups and as much speaking practice as you want.
But all of those things didn't really solve her particular problem, the area where it was hurting her the most right.
So she actually decided to learn with us and we were able to identify that problem quickly and do those specific role plays, because there isn't going to be a specific course for your particular problem.
Sure, that makes total sense.
That's where the one-to-one lessons or having a coach can be a really, really big asset.
So with that, she was able to get those personalized lessons feedback.
We recorded the lesson.
She was able to review them after the session and that sort of thing.
So it was, how is she going to practice?
That was her strategy.
With Pedro, it was, okay, so you've tried everything to improve your listening.
Nothing is working.
Okay.
We needed to get a strategy to actually learn how to listen.
That's actually what I talked about in that previous episode.
So maybe you can link through to that.
Yeah, sure.
We'll link to that in the show notes.
Yes.
Yeah, for sure.
But anyway, what we had to do was start with audio that was within his listening skill range and then gradually make it more difficult.
So that was his purposeful practice that he needed to do.
I love this.
This is fantastic.
I think this is showing our listeners guys, once you hit that level of you know intermediate, upper intermediate, the way to get to we call it 99 fluency that that fluent, near fluent level is not just to say i need to practice speaking Right.
So I'm going to show up somewhere and I'm going to speak with a native speaker.
It's just not the way anymore.
It's targeted practice because you are using your English out in especially your career.
Right.
So it is being intentional about exactly what aspect of English do you want to learn?
It's a very 80-20 approach.
So I like it.
I like it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's all about... focusing on the areas that matter that are going to move you forward.
Cause it's not that your English in general is bad.
It's one particular area and focusing on that can make a huge difference.
And you'll actually enjoy it more because we need to see improvement as human beings.
It's this, you know, we need this improvement in our mind.
It's a, it's a bias in our minds.
We need to see progress in order to keep going.
So let's get that progress.
What would be step three?
What did Olga and Pedro do next?
Yeah.
So step three in the deliberate progress practice thing is actually the deliberate practice part, where we need to reflect on how things went for us in our practice and identify where things are still bad, where we improve right.
Maybe not bad, but where you want them to improve still what you've mastered, where you need to have additional work.
And this is kind of a cycle between step two and step three, step two and step three, until you conquer this thing that you're focusing on.
But in this case, for example with olga, it was important for her to review that recording after the class.
Go through and get them you know, hearing what her teacher said to her, how she responded, the corrections that she got, phrases that she wasn't able to use before.
Learn all those things, practice them, practice and practice them.
Come back to the class, and this is actually where she was able to test her performance and get some feedback from a professional who can really tell her okay, that's good, but you need to improve in this area.
So for her, that deliberate step is actually analyzing how you did, getting the feedback and recreating your strategy to continue.
I like it.
It's a very iterative process.
Right, Amy?
Yes.
Absolutely.
Very good.
Very good.
And there is so much that we can do.
I guess this is kind of more of a teachery thing to say, but there's so much we can do with one piece of content, right?
Rather than just being so fast to jump all over YouTube.
And this video, that video has the answer.
You can use the same role play dialogue, a recorded lesson phrase from a teacher multiple, multiple times, for weeks at a time, and come back and you'll build a stronger foundation than if you were just jumping around the internet to this teacher, that teacher, that influencer to try to get the answers right.
You have the answers inside you.
You do.
And you can use anything that you want to help you to learn and develop whatever skill that you're looking for.
Absolutely.
This is motivating.
I feel like I can learn something as a business owner about what we're saying here, about being focused and deliberate.
So Amy, I love your advice.
I love these steps.
Tell us more about what you're working on and where our listeners could find your show or your website to learn more about you.
Yeah, for sure.
So everybody that's listening right now, unless you're... Well, if you're on YouTube, you can search Real English Conversations.
You're going to see our YouTube channel.
But if you're on a podcast app, just take a minute right now, type that into the search and follow us.
What we do is we actually have natural conversations between my husband, Curtis Davies, and I, And we talk about all sorts of different things.
People love listening to our conversations.
They're really interesting, natural, relaxed, and...
It can help you.
Going back to what you just said Lindsay, going through the transcription and really analyzing how do native speakers speak?
What are they saying that I'm not?
How are they transitioning?
What are some cool phrases and words that I can extract from that?
That's actually what we teach on our podcast and how to do that.
So yeah, I'd love to have you guys as a follower.
You can come to our website, realenglishconversations.com and see what we've got going on there.
Wonderful.
I mean, this is exactly the kind of content that our listeners love.
It's that real English.
So can you say your website one more time, Amy, for us?
Realenglishconversations.com.
And I forgot to mention that, if you want to learn with a teacher who's trained in deliberate practice, we do have a trial option on our website.
So if, If this sounds like something you've been looking for, we'd love to have you as one of our students.
Amazing.
Wonderful.
Thank you for coming on the show.
I hope to have you on again soon.
Hopefully it's not three years in the future.
No, we can do it sooner.
All right.
Good stuff.
Great to chat with you today, Amy.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
It was great being here.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
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