Episode 11 - How to practice speaking English

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the 3 English Experts. I'm Dave. I'm Rebecca. And I'm Birgit. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. So, hi guys. Welcome to this episode. Today, we're talking all about how to practice speaking English. And I'd like to throw the ball straight over to Rebecca, who's got a few ideas, tricks and tips for you that we can all, of course, talk about. So, Rebecca, what ideas, tricks and tips do you have? Yeah, I think speaking is always something that people struggle with when they're learning a new language. It's this how to find the opportunities. And then the big thing is how to have the confidence because everyone says, well, I'm going to say something and they're not going to understand me or they're going to ask a question and then I'm not going to be able to answer. And so there is this sort of fear of how do you get started with speaking? And one of my tips when I'm learning a new language, I really do this parroting. We've talked about parroting before. So literally listen and repeat, listen and repeat. I learn phrases. So when I learned Polish, for example, and most of my first lot of Polish, I learned from a phrase book, a really like a travel phrase book where I learned how to say, hello, my name is and please, can you tell me how to get to the station? And really kind of practical phrases like that. So listen and repeat. And I didn't understand the grammar. I didn't even really know how to read the letters. It was all a bit confusing. So I just listened and repeated. And then I went on a trip to Warsaw with one of my Polish friends and I got to practice. She really encouraged me to use your phrases and see how they react. And the great thing about that is then you get this, like the Germans would say, the efolks erlebnis. You get this instant, nice situation where people go, oh, you speak Polish really well. And then you go, no, I don't. But it gives you a good feeling because you say something and it works and they know what you want and you get your bread roll or whatever you've ordered or you have this nice interaction. And I think for me, that's what it's about. It's this efolks erlebnis. Would you agree with that, Dave? You're the same with Spanish at the moment, because I often get into a situation where I could speak, but somehow I feel nervous to speak in case I can't say anything. And in the last few occasions where I have spoken to somebody and got the words out and spoke a little bit, it felt really cool. It felt really good. But there is those times when I understand when you're learning a new language, you freeze because you think you know what you could say, but you don't want to make a mistake. And that's another thing that holds people back, making mistakes, trying to be perfect. I know Birgit wants to say a few things about this as well, with this perfectionism thing. But that's definitely something. So I agree with you. The parroting, gaining the confidence is always a key thing. And if you can have that early success, fantastic. Yeah. And I think this learning phrases, not only just learning vocabulary, really learn phrases. I did the same with Japanese before I started actual proper Japanese lessons. I listened to like a phrase book and I sat on the flight to Tokyo listening to all these phrases of how to say this. The only problem was I was listening to a man speaker. So every time I spoke Japanese, I had this really deep voice. Someone said to me, why do you sound like a man when you speak Japanese? And I was like, oh God, I sound like a man. And it's because I was literally copying exactly what I was hearing. And I had to realize I need to switch it to a female voice. So I'm not sounding like a man all the time. So there is that problem. But that was just my problem. Yeah. Handing over to Birgit, we're talking about confidence. So it is a confidence thing, isn't it? Yes. And this is a very interesting conversation we're having here because it's two Brits actually talking about being at a different country, whereas we Germans always think, oh, the British people only need to speak English because everybody else speaks English. But here's a good example of how Rebecca tells us. So she learned Polish. She went to Poland to train it and then she had some good feedback. And as we say, most people are very nice in giving feedback to the native speakers. And here's Dave living in Spain and he's feeling insecure with his Spanish. But then he talks it and he gets a good feedback and he feels good. And that's experiences Germans often forget that other people also have. And I have discovered or I believe that in Germany we have a huge number of people and they divide. I mean, there are people who have been to English-speaking countries, native, and that's the crowd who feels more confident, who's had the experience, and people who have only learned it from the books and they've never been there for maybe even a week or a few days in a row. And that's what I tell people. Please, if you can, make it happen. Plan a trip to England, to Australia, to America, whatever. Could be nearer, could be Malta, to get the practice because that's when it changes. I experience that a lot with my clients that I have these two groups. There's the groups who have spent time in the States or in the UK or wherever. And then there's the group who haven't. And the group who haven't automatically feel inferior. They always go, Oh, I'm never, ever going to speak well with my colleagues. And it's just, and they put this pressure on themselves because they just haven't had that experience. And I always say to them, look, you deal with it. It is what it is. You've either been or you haven't. You can't change that. You can maybe change that. But at the moment, you can't just go off and live in the States for a year, perhaps. So just take it as it is. Yes, exactly. And I think we as trainers, we see the difference and we can see that from a bit further away, but they can't. And they think and put the pressure when it comes to confidence, put the pressure on themselves. I mean, Germans always want to be nearly perfect, a lot of them. And they feel, as you say, inferior or even intimidated. I have had people telling me they feel this intimidation from even colleagues. And that's very often German colleagues. So the people who might be better at English and are fluent, they even show sometimes to other people or give signs or make a comment that might not be with a bad intention, but it leaves a mark on a lot of people. They feel inferior. They don't feel confident. And I have experienced that a lot and tell my clients, you look, English people would never say this. Most native speakers haven't had any response whatsoever from a native to a learner of language. Am I right or what's your opinion? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. I would say 99% of the world are kind people. I really believe that. Maybe that's naive. I don't know. But I think in my experience of speaking languages, just the fact that you're trying, people are very, they appreciate that you're trying and they try to help you. And yeah, I think people are so afraid of getting this criticism and, oh, listen to this guy trying to speak English. Doesn't he sound terrible? And I think people are not going to do that. And I think they think too much about it. I think they've got other things on their mind. If they're sitting in a meeting, they're not going to be sitting there analyzing your grammar mistakes. They're just too busy. And I think people overthink about what do I sound like and what do people think of me? And I think that's a big step to get over that fear. And for the most part, I think the German speakers actually know the language better than natives do. So they probably wouldn't be able to correct you anyway. So not to worry about that. I mean, I think, as you said, the natives tend to see things a lot more laid back when it comes to making mistakes or grammar or whatever. So long as they understand the message, that's the main thing. And if you've got the wrong past tense here or it should be this word here, so long as the message comes across, then that's absolutely fine. Yes. And I think the problem is to think what do the colleagues think and what do the other people think? Maybe it's Germans rather than the natives. So that could be a problem in Germany. And there's a lack of opportunities. We said that before. When can you really talk in a free atmosphere with a group of friends who wouldn't judge on you? I mean, a lot of people get the pressure, they need to be in a business meeting and maybe the boss is in it as well. It's really opportunities. And this is what David has got an idea about, I think, how to practice maybe your English. Yeah. I mean, of course, on a very basic level, it sounds maybe quite strange, but go where there are native speakers. And in most German cities, where are the native speakers? Let's say the Irish pubs. So that's one very simple way that you can maybe meet the odd native person and maybe find contact and talk to people. And you never know, then maybe there's some kind of a friendship or some kind of relationship builds out of that. So that's the one thing, the sort of physical way. Yeah. And there are sometimes conversation groups. So I know here in Frankfurt, there are some like expat groups, but they welcome Germans as well. So there are places where you can sort of interact with different people from different countries and in an English speaking environment. So I think to Google like local Stammtisch, English Stammtisch or something like that. Or tandem speaking. Yeah, tandem, exactly. It's exchange. There are people looking to exchange conversations. So that's one option. Yes. I had a thought and then I thought, is this a thought? Yes, it is. Maybe. You know, when you put up your hand in class and then you take it down and the teacher goes, oh, I don't really want to say now. No, actually, I know. Yeah, I will. Well, one of my clients I've been working with for over almost two years now. And the goal is to serve international clients. So a very successful company, actually. And they didn't feel confident about their English, have never been abroad. And he started listening to our podcast and the feedback was, oh, it's really nice and it's good and I like it. And especially I do like that I understand you as a German speaker so well. And then I said, so that's interesting, because when I listen to our podcast, so I was listening to myself, I felt, oh, I sound very German after 30 years with English. My feeling was, wow, I don't sound like an English native at all, but I can live with that. I've been living with that for 20 years. I think this is a big point, if I can just jump in about accent and dialect. And I've spent 20 years living in Germany. And for me, the biggest compliment was always when someone goes, oh, you don't sound foreign, you sound German. And I always think, wow, for me, that was like the best thing. And then sometimes people would say, oh, I can hear a little bit of a British touch. I would always get insulted by that. And then I realized why, because that's who you are. You're a British girl living in Germany, speaking German, and your German is really good. But does it matter if you sound a little bit British? And to me, this is authenticity. It's about finding your voice, like, who are you and what do you sound like? And it's okay to be, I am British. Why should I try and cover that up? It's like, I'm a British girl speaking German. And I think as long as the dialect is okay, that it's not disturbing the communication, when people go, I have to tell you this, Dave, there used to be a girl who lived in Spain, British girl, when I was studying in Spain, who had the best Spanish accent ever. That's how she spoke in Spanish. And it was like, and the Spanish people were like, what? And they were just confused because she had this so like British. She was from Oxford or something. And it was just hilarious. I hope she's not listening. But the point is, you can be two things. You don't have to sound American or when you're speaking English as a German, they always feel like you have to choose one of those dialects, right? No, exactly. And that's a good point. You've just said as you will notice once you get to the country, you will get the feedback. And I mean, there will be some honest feedback also, if people just compliment because they're being nice, you would spot that. And that's about going to the country, as we said in the beginning, going to Poland, living in Spain, going to England, having a trip, and then you will get that feeling and feel more comfortable about it. And Dave, what about this idea of talking to the computer? Yeah, of course. Nowadays, with the internet and AI, as we call it, there's all kinds of ideas. Before that, I'd just like to tell you about a thing called italki. I don't know if any of you as listeners have heard about it. It's just a website where you can basically link up with people from different countries to practice the different languages, whether it's English, whether it's French, German, Spanish, whatever it might be, and it's relatively inexpensive. That's the one thing. And then also there's two other possibilities nowadays with the invention of AI, things are going very, very quickly. And the first one I'd like to tell you about is an app called Kanzai. And in this, you can literally talk with a native speaker. And so you create an account, you go online to kanzai.app. And there you can, as I said, choose a person you want to talk with. There are one or two that you can talk with and then start a conversation. And this person will literally ask you, for example, how are you feeling today? And you can start having a conversation with them. Is it a real person? It's an AI person. Okay, sorry. I was a bit confused that you said a real person. I'm confused. Yeah, but they sound very real. That's what I mean by AI real person. They sound very real. And in the notes, I'll actually put the link down to a video where you can see it working for yourselves. So hopefully you'll agree with me. It sounds pretty real or authentic. The only problem is that this time when we're recording, the app is actually down. So I'm hoping that maybe when you listen to this, then it will be back up and be able to work with. So in the show notes, it'll be all about that. Secondly, there's ChatGPT. I'm sure you've heard of ChatGPT already. If you have an account, there's some good news there too, because, and again, this will all be in the notes down below. You can go to a thing called plugin called Voice Control for ChatGPT, Google it, maybe say for the Google Chrome, and then fix it up into your ChatGPT account. You just follow the instructions. It's relatively easy to do. And then you can literally have a conversation with ChatGPT. Again, I've got a link to a video in the chat. And then from a certain place in the video, you can actually see how to put the plugin into your, or find the plugin and then put it into your account. Yeah, Rebecca. Can you do it in any language? Does it do like every language? Pretty much. Yeah. Okay. For example, with this prompt, you can talk to ChatGPT. And then for example, you could say it in German, and then you can change the language into English. And then the reply can be in English. And you can do it in, let's say, Polish, Japanese, I guess as well. So it works in lots of different languages. I also heard of, or I saw examples, let's say, you want to have an interview for a job. You can literally have an interview with ChatGPT, that ChatGPT. Of course, you have to get the prompt right. And this is sometimes a tricky thing. But once you've got the prompt right, you've explained who you are, what you want, the role that you want ChatGPT to play, so that when you're having the conversation, ChatGPT can hear what you say to them, and then think about a question to ask after that to push you or to mimic the interview situation. So it's amazing what you can do. And with time, the technology will just get better and better and better. So if you have the feeling that maybe you don't want to speak to the main person yet, a real person, then have a go with ChatGPT. Yeah. And I know maybe we're going to talk about this next week, because I know ChatGPT is going to be our topic. Do you know, can it correct you? Some people have you can put text in, like in a foreign language. So if you're learning Spanish, you can type something in Spanish, and it will give you feedback on your Spanish, and it will correct you. Do you know, can it do that with speaking as well? In theory, yes. But I've played around with it quite a bit. But it doesn't always pick up on mistakes, or it doesn't always pick up on every mistake. That's still to come, probably. But you can ask it if it wants to. Or you can ask it to correct you. Well, it will always do all the corrections. That's another thing. But it's a place to practice. Support some basic, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Wow, fascinating. So I might try to talk in Dutch to it. I don't know. When I was learning languages at university, I used to talk to the rabbit. I had a house rabbit. And I used to talk to it in German and in Spanish, because I just wanted to hear my voice out loud. And if you don't have the opportunity to hear your voice out loud, how do I sound? You need this partner, you know, a silent partner, not a lot of feedback. But it was just to hear myself was quite useful. Yeah, absolutely. That was our episode about speaking. We hope you enjoyed it. Next time, we're going to talk about writing. So we're going to switch to writing, and specifically email writing, how to write good emails, how to avoid typical mistakes. So hopefully you'll join us again then. Thanks very much. Bye bye. Bye for now. Take care. Bye bye. Thank you so much for pressing play today. If you have any comments, questions, or perhaps suggestions for future episodes, feel free to contact us at our website, 3englishexperts.com. Have a great day and see you next time.