Find Your English Voice Podcast

Today we are talking about grammar and I am talking to Matt Purland, an experienced English teacher with over fourteen years of experience teaching English full-time, in the UK and abroad. Matt has written and published 24 books and thousands of printable worksheets for teaching and learning English. You can find out more about him at purlandtraining.com, also follow him on twitter @purlandtraining. Some quotes from the episode: 01.21: Matt: I am excited to think about this topic, it's very important for our students and for our lessons. Daria: Do you think it is really important? How important is it for students to learn grammar when they are learning to speak English? 02.04 Matt: What you can say in one language will be totally different in the other language. That's why grammar can help to control it, to control what is said and what is the meaning of this. 02.33: Matt: Yes, we need to have grammar to help control the meaning. It's absolutely vital, it's like a skeleton of our language. 02.45 Daria: While you were speaking, I started thinking: we, teachers, really see grammar as a help. We always say grammar will help you to express yourself. 03.02 Our students often feel limited by grammar. Why do you think it happens so? 03.08 Matt: I think they may be disappointed that they want to learn a different language so they can't just simply translate what they think in their language into English because, then, because of the different grammar, they will maybe sound absolutely different. 05:35 Daria: Our task as teachers is to let them [students] know that they need to understand the language, I mean, not just translate word-by-word from their own language. 09:18 Daria: Does some grammar matter more for communication than other? I believe that there is grammar which will change your message completely if you do it wrong and you just can't do without it [for example, word order or correct prepositions] even in a very simple communication and there is some grammar, yes, it will add to your reputation if you do it right but you will still be understood the right way. 10:39 Matt: When I start teaching someone and they say they don't know anything, I start with the 5 tenses: Present Simple, Continuous, Past Simple, Present Perfect, and Future Simple. 11:42 Matt: I start with this. I think it's not negotiable. If they don't know these 5 tenses, or what are the auxiliary verbs, and what are the negative and question forms. And we work from there. ... I believe if they can understand these 5 different times and five tenses, the rest of the tenses will make sense. 12:46 Daria: Sometimes I understand that this is not the problem of remembering the things, but the problem of acceptance. They keep protesting, they keep saying: 'I don't want to remember that because I don't understand the sense of it'. 13:34 Daria: If you are a learner, it's very important to understand: this is just a different thing. And you are struggling with acceptance of it, you will not be able to learn it just cognitively. It will be very hard. 13:51 Matt: You have to accept and you have to believe you can do it. 14:18 set the goal 14:38 don't be hard on yourself 16:36 Matt: Try to find a good reference book (Matt's recommendation: An A-Z of English Grammar & Usage; Daria's recommendation: Practical English Usage by M.Swan) Key points: 1) Don't translate; be ready to use a structure from English, but not your own language structures; 2) You have to believe you can do it. 3) Remember that grammar IS important because it does change the meaning when you don't use it correctly. 4) Look for the differences in your language compared to English. 5) But don't always think about grammar - remember about your meaning. Grammar just serves the meaning.

Today I am talking to Jack Askew from www.tofluency.com. Jack was very kind to answer my questions about the concept of fluency and how it works for Intermediate English learners. He has a course which helps achieve fluency in English. Visit Jack's website (www.tofluency.com) to download his ebook and more information on the course we discuss in the episode. I see a problem with fluency these days. When I read forums and social media I see that learners tend to overuse this very word ‘fluency’ and often misuse it. It has become such a popular goal which everybody talks about achieving, but there is no clear understanding of it. We are sharing a teacher view on fluency in the podcast. Jack mentions that fluency seems to be one of the most favourable learning outcomes for many people because it means confident use of the language. Many people, though, don't realise it's a long-term goal which needs determination and clear vision. We give some tips on how to form a clear understanding of your goals and achieve fluency in English. We also discuss how online courses work for both teachers and learners on the way to this goal. The episode is packed with useful tips! Don't miss it!

Today we are talking about the lessons that year which finished not long ago taught us: about learning and about success. We also discuss attitudes to planning and New Year Resolutions. What are the secrets to succeeding with your goals? We will tell you our opinion in the new episode of our podcast. It's the last episode with Maria Kochakova, but you will hear a lot of great interviews with English teachers, English learners, polyglots and many others in the next season of the podcast. Stay put! Check my website for more resources for English learners: www.stordar.com.

Today we talking with Masha and my colleague Alexander about the influence of a profession on learning processes. Alexander is a full-time teacher in a big Russian IT company 1C-Bitrix, which I have been co-operating with for several years. I have much experience with different professional groups, specialising in IT audience in the last years. Masha raised this question about IT guys being special from other learners, and this gave us plenty of ideas for a fruitful conversation about how people learn and how we can help them. We came to a conclusion that there is no direct connection between a job and a personality, but we could find some patterns of professional behaviour in people's approach to learning.in We have stated that IT guys: - are rational, which helps them to learn the rules effectively, but slows them down in getting fluent when emotional relaxation is necessary; - don't like talking about themselves, which causes some discomfort in communication with other people; - are not always aware of cultural differences, which have to be considered when becoming fluent in a foreign language. We give some recommendations on how to deal effectively with learning English if you have the similar mindset. It is important to know about communication rules in a language you learn and follow them. You also need to 'float' in the language and look at the language differently in the learning process. I hope it all will make more sense when you finish listening to the episode! Some language notes as usual: Masha said: 'it connected to communication' but it should be: 'it is connected to communication' as it is a Passive form of the verb; Also, 'We spoke about it earlier' is not quite correct as we use 'earlier' to say about the time on the clock (E.g. 'She came to the meeting earlier (than the arranged time)'), but here it's better to say 'before' (meaning 'in the past'). And finally, 'advice' is uncountable, so it's not correct to say 'advices'. Use 'some advice' instead. Enjoy the episode and please let us know what you think, especially if you're an IT guy. Do people of different professions learn languages differently? Do you find our recommendations useful for yourself? Please comment and share this episode with your friends if you find it useful!

Today we are talking about our struggles in the learning process. Why do we often feel like failures? What can we do to stop feeling like this? We will discuss the importance of discipline in language learning, and how to develop it fro yourself. We will also talk about organising your learning process and making it an integral part of your routine. We will share how we manage to fill in regular learning practice in our crazy schedules. Language Note: I would like to help you guys and Masha learn through this experience, so I will be making some small corrections to something said not in a perfect way. Mistakes are not a problem - we are learners ;) but never lose a chance to improve! Masha said: 'much more easier' (2 times)))) - Well, sorry, Masha, but 'easier' is already a comparative, so you don't need ot use 'more' here. Correct: 'much easier'. 'to climb an Everest' - it is correct to say: 'to climb Everest'. 'Everest' is a proper (unique) name; no article before it. 'from one hand' - well, the correct phrase is 'on the one hand' That's all grammar for now) I also mentioned my resources we use for scheduling our learning activities. If you would like to try using our Learning Journal to make a record of your progress, Get acess to an editable Google Doc here: http://bit.ly/2boWM8e. Just push 'Make a copy' and adapt as you like. And also, I have created a special list of resources for our listeners. I wanted to give you an example of 5-10-15-minute activities you could fit in in any schedule to practise every day. This is an example of such list for improving writing skills. You can download it here: http://bit.ly/2bpOvQb. If you are interested in my Punctuation online course I mentioned, please follow the link http://stordar.teachable.com/. Send us a comment if you start using our resources. We would like to know how they are helping you to learn English! Please share with your friends if you like them. Enjoy the episode!

Today Masha asks me tricky questions about how to choose a good language teacher for your own learning. We discuss and share our experiences on what makes teachers good or bad. If you want to share your opinion with us, please fill in the questionnaire here: http://goo.gl/forms/XQR0805gDYY9KY7v1 Language Note: I would like to help you guys and Masha learn through this experience, so I will be making some small corrections to something said not in a perfect way. Mistakes are not a problem - we are learners ;) but never lose a chance to learn! Masha said: 'knowledges' - Well, sorry, Masha, but 'knowledge' is uncountable, so it has no plural form. 'I am paying attention on' - it is correct to say: 'to pay attention to'. That's all grammar for now) Don't forget to share and comment. Enjoy the episode!

Today we talk about how important it is to understand your own learning style to be able to take your learning under control. If you know your leading representative system, you can process and memorise bigger amounts of information, which is so important when learning a language. We give practical tips on how to determine your learning style and how to apply it to your routine.