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Welcome to the A.D.Z. English podcast. My name is Jack and I am here with my
co-host, Sochil. And today we have an email from one of our students or one of
our listeners. And this is a dear Jack and Sochil episode where students write us
and ask for some advice. So dear Jack and Sochil, I recently moved to a new
country and I'm struggling with learning English as a second language. I feel
embarrassed when I can't express myself clearly and it's affecting my
confidence in social situations. Do you have any tips or resources to help
improve my English skills and boost my confidence? I really want to integrate
better into my new community. Sincerely, lost in translation.
Okay, you're not going to like my advice because you say you feel embarrassed.
But it'll, I mean sorry, but I'm sort of speaking Spanish there. But you're
going to have to throw yourself out there and the more shamelessly you throw
yourself out there, the faster you're going to learn. And it's going to be some
months of embarrassment and even years in you might do or say something that
completely embarrasses you. But the people who learn language the quickest are
people who are willing to throw themselves into the environment, immerse themselves
and go out on that limb with the confidence to mess up. No one expects you to
speak perfectly if they do their jerk. But most people don't expect you to
speak perfectly. Most people will work with you and they might even gently
correct you. It's like when I moved to Korea, I spoke only very, very basic
Korean and I would say people were surprised by how quickly I picked things up.
And I felt like I wasn't embarrassed to toss myself out there and go to a
restaurant and try to order or go to cafe and try to order. And I would
notice the waitress would say like repeat it back to me the correct way. Because I
would like mix up the order of the words. And then I would repeat it that way.
The way that she corrected me and that being kind of humble is helpful.
Because take that embarrassment and channel it into being humble. And when
people correct you, absorb that. And don't let your pride or anything like that
get in the way of you learning. Yeah, I agree with what you said. They're
100% replace your embarrassment, the feeling of embarrassment with the feeling of
humility. You know, and just like understand there is there is no path other
than the embarrassment path, right? It's like you have to walk through that.
Every single second, you have to go through the my pronunciation is terrible.
Oh my gosh, I can't believe I said the wrong thing. You know, in Spanish, you could say something like
Oh, Losiento, Mui and Barisado, you know, yeah, I'm very pregnant. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm very pregnant,
you know, instead of I'm embarrassed, you know, it's like these are mistakes that people make
all the time when they're on that journey. And if you're one of those people that like, oh,
the only way I can get to my destination is if I can do it without being embarrassed,
you're never ever going to reach that destination. Like there's just no way. Yeah.
You gotta be, it's like trial, biofi or you have to be embarrassed. Another thing that I think
will help a lot is how I'm trying to teach my boyfriend English, which is I make him watch
SpongeBob fully in English with no Spanish subtitles or anything. And you can watch it once in your
English with subtitles in your native language and then watch the episode again fully in English. I
used to do this with dramas. I would watch it in Korean with English subtitles and I'd watch bits
again in fully in Korean. But my favorite thing to do is to watch children's shows. Why? Because the
language is a lot more simple. They usually like explain and repeat the same things over and over.
And at the end, you gain some cultural context that you can share that experience later with people.
Like if you watch SpongeBob in English, then you'll understand SpongeBob jokes that people make in
English. Like my generation loves SpongeBob. So you'll hear people quoting it like on a daily basis
and you'll understand because you watch those shows in English. And so I think it gives you cultural
context as well, which is very important when you're learning language. Yeah, I really agree with
what you're saying here. I like it a lot. And I feel like that, you know, I don't think there's
I don't think there's really any way you can kind of avoid looking silly sometimes. It's just like
it's impossible to make the leap to like from zero to I mean, you could try to do it alone,
you know, but but you need people. You need other people to talk to like you can't do it
solely by yourself. I don't think I mean, maybe there are some people that can learn languages alone,
but I feel like learning a language in a vacuum is impossible. I think it's a social
it's a social construct. It needs social interaction. Like if you're going to get there the fastest,
you know, for example, when I and also I think it comes down to your necessity. How much you need it
is going to be how much you how quickly you progress. And it sounds like this, sounds like this
writer needs English because they're living in America. They're immersing and integrating into the
culture. One of my I feel like I made a lot of progress in Thailand because I was in the outskirts of
Bangkok where no one spoke English. And it was kind of like survive or die, you know, like I
either learn this and go to the market and be able to, you know, navigate the market and buy
stuff in bargain or I'm just isolated in my room all the time for the whole time that I stay there.
And I didn't want to I didn't want to live like that. Conversely, it came to Korea and everybody
speaks English. So a lot of people do and they didn't really need Korean to get by. And so I made
much less progress. So I think it kind of comes down to like how much you need it and how willing
you are to like what social said, put yourself out there and be be vulnerable so that you can be
in you know, in embarrassed is another word for to you know, another word we can use. But if people
are jerks to you, just stay away from those people. They're not good people, you know, that's a
them problem. It's not a you problem. It's a them problem. That's a them problem. You know,
there's some good zingers. I can equip you with my mom always use to say sorry, how many languages
do you speak? But people make you funny. You probably only speak one. Right. Someone who has a very
a very thick like accent, like speaks English with a thick Spanish accent or Korean accent.
The only thing that means is that they speak multiple languages. That's it. I mean, so don't be
ashamed of your accent. Embrace it. Be proud of it. You're a multi your multi-lingual. You're
bilingual or multi-lingual. Yeah. At the end of the day, if you're embarrassed, it's good because
you're learning something. You're wrong, which means that gives you an opportunity to learn. So,
you know, be humble. Throw yourself out there. Watch some kids cartoons. So you have some fun.
And you also have a way to relate to other people. Yeah. Yeah. Make some friends. Put yourself in
situations where you're going to be using English a lot because a lot of people are very friendly
in the US. Actually, we sometimes we have a bad rap. A lot of times we have a rap for being friendly.
And we are. And I think putting yourself out there and working with other people, you'll end
abusing it. In Korea, I learned Korean quickly because I was in the South. And in this very southern
tip, people speak more people speak less English to you. I think they do so understand English,
but they won't really use it with you. And so different to Jack's experience, I really had to
pull out the Korean. I was in Seoul. I was in the big city. So, you know, everybody wanted to.
Everyone. They want to practice English with me. And I'm like, all right. I'll speak English with you.
It's easier for me. Yeah. I'm the opposite. People are just staring at me blankly. And I decided to
pull out the Korean and do everything I could. So that was the context I had. So yeah. So, you know,
throw yourself out there. And I hope that these tips helped you. Don't be embarrassed.
You know, go gung ho as we like to say and just really throw yourself in there. And at the end
of the day, you're going to be so proud of your progress in a year. You won't even recognize
where you started. Exactly. So yeah, if you have any more questions that you would like us to answer,
make sure to leave a comment below at a.tz English podcast.com that really helps our podcast get
visibility. Make sure to shoot us an email. We love to get you guys as questions and be able to
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