How to do a language learning challenge

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi and welcome to the 3 English Experts. I'm Birgit. I'm Dave. And I'm Rebecca. 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. Hi, so welcome back. Here we are again. I'm here with Dave. Hello. And Birgit. Hi there. And today our topic is language challenges. So what does that mean? That means we're talking about a challenge as in like, a bit like when you go to the gym, perhaps in January, you have the January challenge. And it's a fixed time, could be a month. In our case, we've done six weeks. You choose a specific time and you choose a task or something you want to achieve in that six weeks. And maybe you do it every day. Or maybe you do it a certain number of times per week. And like I say, it's common at the gym, you hear people, you know, I've got to do 20 workouts in January or something like that. And in this case, we've done it with languages. And we've chosen, we've each chosen a different topic, listening skills, speaking skills, reading skills. And we've worked on that for the last six weeks. Check us out. It was hard work, guys. It felt like a year. So well then, Dave, you're sounding a bit stressed. So let's go to Dave, first of all. First of all, Dave, what was your challenge? What exactly did you do? Well, good question. I came up with the bright idea, maybe not, to challenge myself to watch a video in Spanish every day. And it was quite tough. And this was for six weeks, every day for six weeks. Every day for six weeks, a short video on YouTube or anywhere else. And I started with YouTube before I became a member of Lingopi. I know you know a little bit about that, Rebecca. And I kicked off with it as well. And I find it absolutely amazing. It is. For those of you that don't know what Lingopi is, just maybe a brief explanation. It's basically the fact that you can watch videos in a slower fashion. You can watch it at normal speed, or you can watch it at slower fashion, half speed, three quarter speed. And on the videos that you're watching, there is the subtitles in English, or me in this case, but also subtitles in Spanish. And the great thing is about this is you can touch on the words in Spanish and get the English translation come above. You can ask the thing to pronounce it again, the word, and you can practice, you can train saying the word. You can create flashcards, right? You can create flashcards. I like that feature, yeah. Yeah. And then the flashcards you can make into a quiz. Right. To test yourself whenever you want. You just need a minimum of five words. Yeah. And then whenever you open the app, it gives you a challenge to do from this vocabulary that's been put together, and you can go through that. It's really a cool thing. Yeah, it is a really cool tool. How much did you pay to sign up? Can you just tell us? Well, I think I paid 36 for three months. Okay. But I was, again, just testing it. But I think I will probably go to the year one because it had actually a really good price for the year. So I'd highly recommend it. Of course, being German speakers, you can do it the other way. So you learn English and everything is in German. And I think it's just a cool way if you are a person who enjoys watching programs and then learning from watching programs. I'm not really the reader. I enjoy podcasts. I enjoy audiobooks. I enjoy videos. So for me, that's the best way to learn. And this is just perfect because, yeah, you can pick the words out that you think are important. And depending on your level, I mean, you can watch Netflix videos as well. Yeah, there's a huge amount of material, isn't there? There's like tons and tons of films, series from all over the world. I mean, the choices, and it will choose one for your level, I think, right? You can say, this is my approximate level and B1 or something, and then it will say, well, this is good content for you. I thought that was helpful. Yeah. And if you're quite good at English already, you can watch, for example, Netflix videos or films and series that are on Netflix. And then, of course, when you're watching those, it's just exactly the same. You can connect your Netflix account to it, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, absolutely amazing. And I really enjoy it. I'm not going to maybe be able to do as much as I did in the challenge, but I'll try to keep on doing it. There was maybe just one downside to it. You can't record full sentences into the vocab list. The only thing that you can do is the individual words. Really? So for a whole sentence, I ended up having to write the sentences down, but that's okay. That's just one small... Well, it's a good learning, isn't it? Yeah, of course. A bit more effort. A bit more effort. I thought you could do whole sentences. Maybe I'm going... It didn't work, or at least I didn't find the way to do the whole sentences. But the great thing was it mentioned about the grammar. It mentions, you know, it's colour-corded, so blues are for nouns, reds for verbs. I mean... It's great. It is really, really good. So you did that every day then, Dave, and your Spanish has improved now, do you think? I think so. Yes, definitely. I mean, it's just with time, your speed, you'll understand more and more. And that's my goal to, when I hear a native Spanish speaker, to be able to pick out the individual words as opposed to... And I feel it's getting there more and more. And of course, then to learn the vocabulary. So yeah, I think it's working well. But as I said, it's just you don't get to watch... What was the negative? So the positive is you feel you've got better, but what were the downsides, would you say, of your challenge? There was no real downside to it, except for this sentence thing, that you can't have the whole sentence. And of course, every day, if I only did, let's say, half an hour, what are you going to do? Are you going to focus on like five minutes and take every word out that's new? Or are you going to try and watch the video to the end and try and just watch it to listen to the Spanish? So I think you have to sometimes choose what you want to do on any particular time, or are you going to do five minutes this, 10 minutes that, whatever. But that's just what time you have, how you divide up your day. But for like five minutes, I would get out 10 or 11 pieces of vocabulary. Wow, great. That's a lot. So it shows how much I have to learn. Okay. So Birgit, what did you do? Well, I actually told myself I wanted to get into speaking Dutch after I had sort of learned Dutch with devices for almost three years now, I think. Now I wanted to get into talking and I booked lessons with a native person who actually lives in Spain. Yes, and it worked well for me. I would draw a very positive conclusion. And what I found out is I wouldn't have done that without the challenge. So if there had been no challenge for me, I would have postponed that. So I was structured, I had a structure, I had those lessons coming up. And what I did, I took some preparation time because I didn't want to go into the meetings without being prepared. So she sent me something in before our lessons, which I had to read or should read, and I did. I revised the words which I had learned before. I went into the lessons, enjoyed it when I felt prepared. So the more I prepared, the better I felt. That was nice, actually. The perfect student. I know, Birgit would be your perfect student. Fantastic. Well done. The streber, the streber. Is that your translation of the streber? The swatty pants? Swatty pants. I would say teacher's pet. Oh, teacher's pet. But you see, you can't do that always, but that's what's important if you set yourself a challenge. So if you set yourself a challenge and you want to be successful and get something out of it, so I advise you do it at a time when you can prepare a little. I mean, it doesn't have to be like an hour or it could be enough half an hour. And then after the lesson to revise, to look again at the file. So I somewhere in my house, now I have this little booklet, this Dutch learning booklet. So I would pick up every now and again, which I wouldn't have done without a challenge, you see. I think that's if that's on the priority list, we spoke about that in one of the early episodes. This then gives you some progress. And if you feel a progress, you might carry on. So I have decided now I don't want to lose that. So are you going to carry on with the speaking lessons then? Well, I have some left and I'm even considering booking more. And how did you, sorry, how did you find her? What platform or? That's on the Preply platform. I don't know whether you know that one. You find many native speakers there, sometimes students, sometimes proper teachers. It's all a very good variation of offers. And you have ratings and you can choose, you can test it. I think I tested it. And there's different price ranges, right? There's people who are very cheap price, others who are more expensive. Exactly. So you find all kinds of things. Yeah. And any, any downsides, anything you would do differently or anything you think didn't work so well or? Well, the downside I think is, well, it's an extra thing to do, isn't it? Yeah. It's like, as I said, going to the sports club, if you want to lose weight, you got to want to get into shape. It's another thing on your list. So compared to times when I don't have this challenge, I feel like I have more time to myself, maybe. Well, that's the downside to stay, to keep doing it. And it's this. Yeah. But I think if you're doing something, and this is what I noticed with my situation is, if you're doing something that you like, it actually becomes a kind of a hobby. So you could... Positive habit. Positive habit. You could maybe say, yeah, it's my hobby. And so I spend an hour a week or whatever it is, speaking or practicing my Dutch, doing the work for that. And that's, yeah, that's a hobby kind of thing. Yeah. Well, Rebecca was asking for the downside. And that was as far as... It's just, yeah, the time. Everybody finding the time is always... There was no real downside and... Okay. Well, that's good. Yeah. No. Yeah. Okay. Very good. What about you, Rebecca? So I did Japanese and I decided, because I knew time was going to be an issue in January. I just had to keep it really, really simple. So I did Duolingo. So I'm sure a lot of our listeners know about Duolingo. If you don't, you should, because it's a fantastic free app. I think it's the biggest language learning app in the world right now. It's huge. And I love it. I have to say it's so well done. And I think that there's all this free opportunity to learn languages now and they're developing it all the time. I think I used it a few years ago and you really see now how much it has progressed. It really is constantly being developed. So I learned every day, approximately 15 minutes. That was normally my challenge was to learn for 15 minutes every day, just using Duolingo. Obviously there is no speaking part in this case. So it was literally just reading and listening actually as well. And I have to say it was easy to fit in because it's only 15 minutes and because you can just pick up your phone. I did it on the bus. I did it on the train. I did it while I was cooking dinner. It's just so easy to do. And I think that's what kept me on the challenge because it was just something so it didn't feel like an effort to pick it up and do it. It is gamified. If you don't know Duolingo, it is gamified. So there's leagues and you're in quests with other people, which is often my husband, which is quite annoying because he's really good at Duolingo. No, no, no, you're indifferent. You don't have to be doing the same language to be in a quest. He's doing Spanish. And he's always like top of diamond league and all this stuff. It's very annoying. But anyway, it kind of just makes it a bit fun. There's leagues and yeah, you get points and you earn gems and things. The only downside is there is no speaking. Sometimes before in the past on Duolingo, there was some speaking where you had to say a sentence. That's right. Yeah, I remember that. But I don't know if that's because I'm doing Japanese and that's not available on the Japanese part. It's available on the Dutch. Oh, is it? It is. Yes, it is. OK, well, then I think that's a Japanese thing that they haven't developed that yet. So but that was that's kind of missing. So sometimes I just said the sentences out loud while I was learning to try and practice that a bit. But refreshed loads of vocabulary, remembered lots of things I'd forgotten, learned new things. Yeah. Are you setting yourself a new challenge now for speaking maybe coming up? I have to say, I think that is that's got to be next on my list now is that I've gone, you know, I've come back into it and I would like to. So probably, like you say, I'll have a look at that platform. I know I talk here as well. So I'm thinking of trying to combine it maybe every second week. It doesn't have to be every week, but every second week with a with a conversation lesson, I think I would be quite nervous. But hey, I'm not that bad. You know, I'm doing OK. So what I wanted to I wanted to ask with with Duolingo, I mean, especially, I guess our the listeners here, their English will be already at a quite a at least intermediate, if not higher than that, because they hopefully can understand us. So, yeah, I don't know what it will be like if you're learning English on Duolingo. I'm not sure if that's a good platform. It really depends. Yeah, it does depend on your level. I think my first advice would be definitely do the test when you start, because I've had learners and they go, oh, I just started from the beginning. And then it's like, hello, my name is and it's way too easy. But if you do do it with English, do the level test, try and at least go in at approximately your level. But I don't think it is. I don't know if I don't think it is really suitable for higher levels, but I think it's good for like, you know, drilling the basics, going over grammar and, you know, repeating certain structures and stuff. And it's just so easy to do in between everything. So you can't do that. I wouldn't do everything on there, but as a nice extra was really helpful. Yeah. Okey dokey. Very good. Wonderful. So, yeah. Okay. So challenges, yes or no. I think for me, challenges are a cool thing. I will continue and maybe I will set myself another six week challenge. It can be any time of the year. So I think it's a great thing to do. It keeps you motivated. And if you know, I think this is the most important thing. If you know that other people are watching you. Oh, yes. You have to do it. I think this is the thing is accountability. It's like when you go to the gym, you know, I my gym, it follows you in an app. So every time you check in at the gym, it knows when you've been. So if you're doing these challenges, you can't really cheat. You really can't cheat. And I think that's the point. Accountability. And it does motivate you, even though there's nothing, you know, you're not going to win a thousand pounds at the end, but it's just accountability, knowing that it's maybe only for a fixed time. It's not forever. It's just for now. I'm trying to do something positive, maybe develop a new habit. And I would say yes to challenges. I'm convinced. Yeah. And me too. And especially if you pay for some device or you pay for somebody you're going to have conversation with. If you pay for a gym, that's a motivation to go. It should be. Maybe for some people it isn't, but it should be a motivation. So, yes, maybe set yourself a challenge. Maybe we have managed to motivate you somehow to set yourself a goal in learning English. And in the next episode, we will talk about typical mistakes. We're going back to grammar issue, typical mistakes German learners make when they speak English and how to fix them. That will be our next topic. So hopefully you will press play again and we will be happy to have you as a listener to our podcast. See you then. Thank you. Bye bye. 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.