Learn English with Teacher Joe

Hi Everybody,

Below is a link to another video for learning English pronunciation. As always, comments are welcome!

English Rhythm, part 2

How do we succeed in learning another language? Is there one simple approach we can take? I don’t think so. People who succeed in learning a language do many different things, and all of those things together lead to success. I remember one of my most amazing students…

I was teaching in a high school in Japan. During my first year there, I taught over 400 students. Although I knew their faces, I only knew a few of them by name. Two years later, those 400 students were in their final year of high school and 14 of them took English as an elective class. They chose to take an extra English class with me two days a week, but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe they thought it was easier than the other choices!

Only two of the students could speak a little English. One student really surprised me, though, because she was so much weaker than the others in English! I mean, she didn’t know the days of the week in English. She couldn’t count to 20. She didn’t understand the simplest questions I asked in class. And then she surprised me even more - she said that, in the future, she wanted to become an English teacher!

Well, I wondered how she could do it, but it was her choice. All I could do was teach the best I could. We did a lot of listening exercises in class, with lots of discussions in pairs and as a whole class. We did some activities such as planning a trip and cooking “French toast”. We used English two times a week, ever week. However, I cannot say I saw a lot of progress from any of my students, including her.

So, maybe you can imagine my surprise, the final surprise, two years later, when I met this student in the train station one afternoon. She spoke to me in perfectly fluent English! She managed to get into a pretty good university where she was majoring in English. After one year of taking English classes there, she went to the United States to study for one year. All of the things she studied in my classes, and in her university, were finally put into use, and she finally did learn.

In slightly different ways, this is how we all learn languages. We start by learning the parts, we practice them, we listen, read, write and speak the language and finally there comes a time when it all “comes together” and we can use it well. We just have to keep on trying, keep on learning.

Herodotus, sometimes called the “Father of History”, wrote the first history book in the West. He observed the following:

“Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.”

Language Notes:  1) “deeds” means “actions”; 2) ”wrought” is old English (we don’t use it in speaking) but we will read it sometimes. It means to make or do something with great effort.

When we look at history, this quote seems obvious. But isn’t it true in our own lives, too? When we are bold, we may fail, but sometimes good things happen too. We may meet someone special by taking a risk. We might improve in a skill, when we try to learn even though we lack confidence. Or we could get a better job just by having the courage to speak out and express a new idea. 

In my life, I think I took a risk to learn languages. Even though I don’t use French much, and I’ve forgotten a lot of what I learned in Spanish and Japanese, all of my effort made me a better teacher. I took a chance with a certain woman, and in that case I failed, but that is life, isn’t it? (We win some and we lose some!) Now I am looking for a new job for the next school year in September - should I try to stay in China or go back to the U.S. to teach? Or I could go to another country where I could learn a new language! I might not make much money, but it would be interesting. Am I ready to take that risk?

And what about you? Are you naturally a risk-taker? Or do you hesitate to try new things? What risks have you taken in your life? What were the results? Are there any risks you would like to take right now? Do you think, in the end, that risks are worth it? Maybe we should just be careful all of the time.

That reminds me of another great quote (I do not know who said it):

“Ships in harbor are safe, but that is not what ships are for.”

So now the question is, are you a ship?

Okay, here’s something a little different… I joined a speech contest at my local Toastmasters Club in Beijing a few weeks ago. (Toastmasters is a public speaking club.  There are more than ten thousand clubs in the world, probably at least one near you. Anyone over the age of 18 can join, so find a club and check it out!) I won the club contest, then last week I was able to compete against the winners of three other clubs in the same area. You can see the winning speech here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6jbiKV9lTY

I think I improved this speech a bit compared to when I gave it at the club contest, but I want to improve it more because next Saturday I will compete again, this time against speakers from clubs all over the north of China. I’ve heard there will be some very good speakers there, so I don’t think the above speech is good enough. For one thing, I must improve on my body language - too many pointless gestures. I think, because this is meant to be a humorous speech, that maybe I should exaggerate more. And finally, I should probably find a way to strengthen my message, “mistakes are good, even though they feel bad”.

So, take a look at the video and if you can think of any ways I can improve my speech, let me know. At the very least, I hope you’ll have a bit of a laugh…

My students wanted to learn some colorful expressions in English, so I made a simple video where I explain three common idioms. You can watch it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4WwI3RGOmg

Let me know what you think. If you find it useful, I’ll make some similar videos.

Learning English can be difficult when words seem to have so many different forms and uses. A storm is normally a noun, but when we talk about a group of people, it can become a verb. Here is the beginning of a news story from yesterday:

Hungry Haitians stormed the presidential palace Tuesday to demand the resignation of President Rene Preval over soaring food prices and U.N. peacekeepers battled rioters with rubber bullets and tear gas.

From the context we can see that the people were angry and peacekeepers had to “battle” them. Their behavior was like a storm, in a sense, with lots of lightning and thunder. And the reason they stormed the palace was interesting - because of “soaring” food prices. Did you know that numbers can fly? All around the world, prices are going up, so the meaning is clear. Prices are not just going up, they’re waaaaaay up there, as if they are flying.

Had you heard these expressions before? I think it’s very useful to see them in context, so that you can understand them without even using a dictionary.

You can read the whole news story by clicking the link below:

Original new story at Yahoo! News

As I mentioned in  a previous post, I made a video of some tongue twisters for my students which you can see on You Tube. (”Tube” is a slang word meaning “TV”.) While on You Tube, I found this really funny video of an old song by a very famous singer with this unknown young man “lip synching” (silently singing along). If you can follow THIS video, you are very advanced. I’ve written about some of these tongue twisters too. You can read about my tongue twisters here.

Remember, practice makes perfect. Or, as some people add, PERFECT practice makes perfect! Good luck.

My last post got me thinking about some of my experiences in learning French. Although I have had a lot of good teachers, it seems that when I started learning French I had a lot of really BAD teachers. (Maybe it was because of them that I became a teacher. I knew I could do it better!) In one French class in my university there was a student from Haiti who spoke French as his first language. He just took the course so he could get an easy grade. The rest of the students struggled in that class - we were always confused by how to use French words and grammar, or how to pronounce the words and sentences we were learning. Unfortunately, the teacher would ask questions of our classmate from Haiti who always answered perfectly, so she assumed we all understood. And if one of us could not answer a question, she would then compare us to the native French speaker and say, “You see, this is so easy!”.

Actually, I had even worse teachers when I went to France, but that is another story! I wonder if any of you have had some bad teachers. What problems did you face? How do you think the teacher could have done better? Let us know about your experiences!

I remember when I was a student, how hard it was to learn French pronunciation. Getting some of the sounds of French right was difficult, especially “r” and “u” as in “tu”. French rhythm is different too, with each syllable equally stressed but with a rising tone at the end of each sentence. I learned so much by listening to French. It took some time, but I finally got it.

My students learning English are also improving their pronunciation, but slowly. We have practiced sounds, especially vowels sounds (see my first pronunciation video on “You Tube”), and now we are working on English rhythm. I have found that students who master English rhythm  sound very much like native English speakers! We practice sentences such as in my third pronunciation video and recently we have started learning “tongue twisters”.  I made a funny video about tongue twisters. Though funny, it seems to be useful for them. They certainly enjoy trying to repeat those funny sentences!

Now I am wondering what people around the world need to learn. Are there some sounds in English that are too difficult? I know “th” is hard for many people, and in some countries “b” and “v”, or “g” and “k”, are hard to differentiate. What other problems do you have? Please let me know - maybe I can make a video to help you!

We have a challenging topic for you today! The Greek dramatist Sophocles, famous for plays like Oedipus the King, once wrote this:

“The end excuses any evil. “

Today, we sometimes say “the end justifies the mean”, which means the same thing.

This is a difficult quote to agree with, but for some practical-minded people, maybe it makes sense. If we can do something good, if we can help people or make the world a better place to live, then maybe it IS good if we do some evil things along the way. Well, I’m not sure I agree with that. Do you?