Hello, and welcome to the Learn Every Day English podcast, Your Road to English Proficiency.
You've come to the right place to improve your listening comprehension skills and mastery
of the English language.
My name is Gary, and I will be your host today.
I am a native English speaker born and raised in the United States, and a retired engineer
living in a small Texas town.
I am also a language learner, so I know what it is like to learn a new and different language.
So now, let's jump right in to today's episode.
Well, hello listeners, and welcome to the inaugural, or first episode, of the Learn
Every Day English podcast.
Glad to have you with me.
Again, my name is Gary, and this is going to be kind of an introductory episode.
I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself, why I'm doing the podcast, and maybe what
you can expect to get out of this podcast.
I'm a language learner myself.
I've been studying Spanish for about three to four years now, so I know the difficulties
and also the enjoyment that you can get from learning a new language.
It's a language learning adventure that, I guess, began for myself when I was in high
school.
I went to a private Catholic high school, and every student had to study a foreign language
for four years, from ninth grade to twelfth grade, and I decided to study Spanish.
And I really enjoyed it.
It was really a lot of fun.
I had a good teacher, his name was Mr. Hosty, and his wife was from Mexico.
He was American, and we would go out to eat sometimes at a Mexican restaurant.
But the problem, looking back on it now, I realized that I learned what I would call
book Spanish.
I learned grammar, and how to conjugate verbs, and tenses, and the subjunctive, and also
looking back on it, I realized we never did speak.
We never used the language, so I never was able to communicate.
And I graduated from high school, and then I ended up going to college, and then life,
as we say in English, life got in the way.
I didn't really have time to devote to studying Spanish.
I was an engineering major at the University of Houston, and engineering's a pretty difficult
field of study, so it took a lot of my time, got my degree, and started working.
And then later on, I got married, and again, life gets in the way, so I just totally abandoned
my Spanish studies, or studying any foreign language for that matter.
Then I worked for the city of Houston for 30 years, and I was lucky to retire about
five years ago.
So about three and a half years ago, I decided to study Spanish again, but I had completely
forgotten everything I had learned before, because it was 35 years ago.
So I had to relearn everything from zero.
The city where I live at, there is a university.
So I decided, hey, you know what, I'll just go and audit some classes.
I won't take the classes as a registered student.
I'll just audit the classes.
It was very low price.
And I did that for three semesters, so I could go back and review the grammar, the tenses,
the conjugations, the subjunctive.
I wanted to kind of get a good base or foundation before I started trying to actually use the
language.
But what I also did at the time, I started listening to Spanish radio stations in the
car while I was going to classes or going to the grocery store.
I couldn't understand anything, but I said, well, at least I will have some familiarity.
I will get used to the sound and the rhythm and the feel of the language, even though
I don't understand what they're saying.
And my wife is Mexican-American, and she can speak Spanish.
She would always tell me, hey, Gary, you really need to use the language.
You really need to speak.
But at the time, I was kind of nervous.
I didn't feel confident.
I wanted to try to, like I said before, get a base of knowledge back that I'd learned
before, before I would start to try to speak with anybody.
But looking back on it, I think she was actually right.
I needed to try to start speaking a little bit sooner.
So two years ago, I felt confident enough, and I went to two websites, Conversation Exchange
and Italki, and I found some language partners.
And I highly recommend these two websites because you can find people that you can converse
with, talk to for free.
And I said, hey, this is a great, great thing.
So I've met people from Mexico, Costa Rica, Spain, Colombia.
And right now, what I do, I speak at least three, four times a week with various individuals
from different countries.
And I found that that has really, really helped me to improve my Spanish.
Also, I listen to a lot of podcasts like this podcast.
I listen to probably three or four different podcasts for learning Spanish.
And I found that it's very helpful to listen to podcasts because one of the keys, I think,
important things to learn a language is to just hear it, to listen to it over and over
and over again.
You won't be able to understand much at first, but slowly, but surely, as we say in English,
you'll start to understand more and more.
And so I urge you, encourage you to use this podcast just as a tool for listening, comprehension,
listening practice.
Perhaps you may not learn a lot of grammar, vocabulary, and that type of thing.
But you have books for that, and we will have episodes where we will study some parts of
English speech and grammar.
But I think it's too, it's like I said before, it's very important that you learn to listen
and try to understand and improve your listening comprehension.
Also, I began to read books and novels in Spanish, but based on my ability or my level
of Spanish at the time, so don't try to read books that are, we say in English, way over
your head or too complicated for you.
Try to find a book that is at the level that you're at.
If you're a beginner, find a beginner level book to read.
If you're an intermediate speaker, find an intermediate book or advanced speaker.
Find an advanced book to read.
And also, maybe there's an online language learning course that you can take.
I do that with Spanish as well.
I would say when I was about intermediate level, I started trying to watch some videos
on YouTube and Spanish, and I found that very helpful because you can turn on the subtitles.
I would turn on the Spanish subtitles and read along with the video and found that helpful.
And now I've gotten to the point now I'm trying to do that for the first time with
a Spanish movie on Netflix called La Esclavablanca.
I can't understand the series without using the subtitles.
I'm improving day by day, as we say in English.
So the keys to me to language learning are listen, listen, hey, and listen.
Try to listen as much as you can.
Also, read, read, read, and most importantly, I think, once you get to a certain base level
is to speak, speak, and speak.
Just practice and use the language.
Also, I think it's important, a key is you need to be consistent and persistent.
You need to do a little bit every day, about 20 to 30 minutes, if you can spare the time.
It's better than trying to do a lot of studying, say, once or twice a week.
So do a little bit every day if you can.
And to me, the most important thing I find is just to have fun.
You're not in a competition with anybody.
You're just trying to improve and better yourself.
And what I like about language learning is that I can learn about different cultures.
I can meet different people.
And it's just a whole lot of fun.
So I try not to put pressure on myself.
And the most important thing once you start to communicate with others is just to be able
to communicate and express your thoughts and ideas.
Make yourself understood.
And you can understand the person that you're speaking to.
So you don't have to be perfect, nor do you have to speak like a native speaker in your
new language.
I think that's where a lot of people make a mistake.
And they get frustrated and you probably know or heard a lot of people just start off.
They're very excited when they want to start to learn a new language.
But then after several months, they quit.
And you always wonder why, hey, what happened to Joe?
Why did he stop learning?
I think we put undue pressure on ourselves with unrealistic expectations.
So again, just try to have fun.
To me, that is one of the most important things to do.
Now, I'm going to tell you a secret, but don't tell anybody else.
But this is a secret to learning a new language or what I have found to be the secret.
You want to know what the secret is?
OK, I'll tell you what the secret is.
There is no secret.
That is the secret.
There is no secret.
It's just a lot of hard work over a long period of time.
And it's not something that you will learn overnight or immediately.
I see these videos on YouTube, learn a new language in several weeks or three months
or one year.
And to me, that's not realistic.
I think they are just trying to sell something.
And also, I've been thinking about this.
I have some grandchildren and their mother speaks Spanish.
So she speaks Spanish to them.
And one of them is maybe two or three years old.
And they can understand and answer back in Spanish.
And I ask myself, hmm, how can a little kid like that understand Spanish?
They haven't gone to school.
They haven't taken lessons.
They speak Spanish better than I do.
And they understand Spanish better than I do.
And I was thinking about that.
And I said, well, hey, they just learned by hearing.
Hearing and hearing the language being used over and over again.
Think of a little child growing up in the country where the language is spoken
that you want to learn.
They're hearing that language every day, 24 hours a day, for years and years.
So how do we expect to learn a language in three months or six months?
We're not using that language, hearing that language every day, 24 hours a day,
for years and years, especially if you do not live in that country
where that language is spoken.
So I'm trying to learn Spanish while living here in the United States.
I've never traveled and lived in a Spanish-speaking country.
But you can still learn a foreign language, like I said, living in your own country.
And we have a great advantage in this day and age and the time that we live in, don't we?
Because we have the internet.
We have YouTube.
We have meetup groups.
We have language exchanges.
You can find people to talk with over the computer using Skype or WhatsApp.
So the best time to start learning a language is right now.
I'm going to be bringing you different episodes,
cultural things about the United States,
things that we do here in this country that you might find interesting,
a little history, like I said, a little culture, grammar, exercises or information,
just things that you might find interesting.
Podcasts that I like in Spanish are the ones that do the same thing.
I can learn cultural things, new things about different cultures in different countries.
And that's what I'll be bringing you with this podcast.
And just to help practice your listening comprehension skills,
I'm speaking fairly normally as an English speaker.
I'm 58 years old and I have the time now that I'm retired.
And I just want to give back to others that want to be able to improve their language learning ability.
So I hope you enjoyed this episode again of the Learn Everyday English Podcasts.
Let me know what you think about the podcast.
I do have a Facebook page called Learn Everyday English.
If you can look that up on Facebook and send me a comment.
Till next time, we'll see you later on Learn Everyday English.
Thank you and goodbye.
