How to find good English learning materials

(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. Hi, so here we are again, and our topic today is how to find good materials. Last time we talked about vocabulary learning, and we talked a little bit about where to find vocabulary, but topic today is really like how to choose materials. There's so much out there now, just overwhelming amount of material that you can use, which is great, but sometimes it's too much and you don't know where to start. So I'm going to pass over to my buddy Birgit, who's going to talk a little bit about grammar, or how to find nice learning materials for, what do you recommend when your clients ask you, you know, where can I find good materials? Yeah, hello everybody. Hi again. Yes, that's a good question. Us being Germans, we've learned at school that we all need learning material and books to learn languages. I mean, we're used to using grammar books, and there's so much out there. So that's really difficult to find the right one. So you do depend on recommendations. So when you go to any language school, they will have their own material, obviously. Yes, you might have books from your former teaching or school, or you might just want to go into a bookshop, a local bookshop, and see what's out there, what's new and what people offer. But you might have heard or noticed, or I might want to tell you that I've written actually three books on English grammar and why have I done that. I started teaching and working with learners on English. I went out on to the bookshops, and I was looking for an overview, good English grammar book, and I come from the practice. So I'm not a teacher, I'm not an educator, I'm not a Lehrerausbildung, Pädagogik, but I know what people need when they talk English. And that's essentially five tenses that are really, really most important when it comes to start speaking English. And that's what I always was looking for in the grammar books, and I didn't find. And that was when my idea started of writing down what I sort of had to repeat again and again for my learners. Rebecca, you want to say something? I thought that was interesting. So you're coming from like, not necessarily just from this teaching point of view, you're coming from an experience point of view. And I think that's important, because people write these books. But I think, have you ever sat in the classroom and done this? You know, they write these books, and I think, I'm not really sure that you've ever actually had to do this book. So that's interesting, the way you approach that. Yes, I know this from my own experience. And also, I'm a mother of two now teenagers, and I know that the curriculum hasn't changed a lot. So what I am missing a little bit, just a little bit here, is being more aware of looking at what do people need, and then teach that first. And to me, that was very obvious at some point, that that's the basic tenses. I mean, that's five, simple present, continuous, past, present, perfect, world, future. And if you are able to use those correctly, I mean, that makes up almost 90 % of English speech. And then after that, if you feel confident enough, then you can teach all the others. But in school, I know, they're all taught on the same level. So like, present, perfect, continuous would be taught as important as, I don't know, simple present, Rebecca. You know, I love this 90% of speech is made up of these five tenses. I'm using that all the time with my clients when they go, but I want to learn future, perfect, continuous. And I'm like, guys, you can't do present perfect. Let's get the basics. But we're going to talk about this next time. This is going to be our topic next time, right? It's going to be grammar and what to learn. Yeah, yes. But just a little more on what I advise my learners to use when they learn. There's so much on the internet. I mean, Dave's going to suggest very useful things later. And you can emerge into English. I mean, just read a book Rebecca is going to talk about. And I personally love the British Council, for example, when you learn Dutch language, there's the Dutch Academy. So very often you find something which is very done by the natural people. I mean, maybe it's a governmental thing. I don't know. And that's usually very good. And you find learning material for free on the internet. I mean, there's so much, Rebecca. I agree. Yeah. I think when you look back, when we were learning languages such a long time ago, when we started, there was just nothing like the material you can get today. Like people are spoiled today for materials. It's so different. Things have changed so much. Yeah. I want to talk about books, actually, because one of the things when people are looking for materials and they'll say, oh, can you recommend a film or can you recommend a podcast or can you recommend a book? My first point is do what you would do in your own language. You know, people say, can you recommend an audio book? And I say, well, what kind of audio books do you listen to in German? And they go, non. If you don't listen to them in German, you're not going to listen to them in English. What do you do in German? Do you like watching TV? Do you like watching films? Are you a podcast person? You know, do what you love to do normally. You know, don't try and do something different just because your colleague said, oh, I listened to this podcast. It's brilliant. And maybe it's just not your thing. So do align the things that you do in your own language with the new language. I think that's the first point. And for me, that's reading. And I love reading. I'm not an audio book girl. I have to say I've tried it. I just don't know. It's not my thing. And I still just love to pick up a book and read. So people say, OK, how do I choose a book? I'm talking fiction now. I'm not talking about textbooks. My first thing is don't believe what everybody tells you because somebody will go, oh, I read this book and it was brilliant. I've had that before. And then I've gone, oh, this is awful. But then I have to read it because I told them I was reading it and they loved it. Oh, it's terrible. So recommendations can be good, but everybody's different. Everyone has different tastes. So don't automatically read something just because somebody else loved it. I also recommend when people are choosing a book, try to choose something with a lot of dialogue. So when you go through the pages, see, is there a lot of dialogue? Because dialogue is generally easier to understand than masses of description. So if you think of a book like The Hobbit, Tolkien, and there's pages and pages and pages and pages of describing this cave and this place, and it's even in your native languages, sometimes it's quite heavy going, you know, and it's because it's so descriptive. Not saying it's bad. I'm just saying if you're trying to learn a new language, it's not always the easiest type of reading. So I would say choose something where there's a lot of backwards and forwards. Dialogue sometimes makes it a bit easier, I would say. Don't always assume that children's books are easy to read. People think, well, I need an easy book, I'm going to take a kid's book. Not necessarily true. They use slang, they use like magical, strange, funny words, which are maybe not relevant and also not necessarily easier than an adult book in a way of understanding. And just pick it up and look at the text. When you look at two books, you know, and you compare, like if I'm picking up a German book, you know, if I'm wandering around the bookstore and I'm thinking, what can I read in German? I would always look at the text and you know, there's a difference between Rosa Munder and Thomas Mann. You can see immediately that the text is so different. I think with reading as well, you mentioned the children's things and I was just thinking, oh yeah, well, maybe learn a children's book or something like that. And actual fact, you're right, it can sometimes be really, really complicated. But I think for the most part, depending on the book, it is easy and it does have a lot more conversations with it. But there's also comics. I mean, I know comics are maybe a little bit outdated, but I remember when I was a kid, I was learning German back in the day. I often bought comics in German because I think they have good conversations. Yes. I think comics are still worth their money and gold because you can get conversations. They're having chats with each other, obviously. And yeah, it's a bit of fun. So it's not too serious reading. I think comics, children's books are good. Yes. And of course, when we learn English, we have other languages too, where the Spotlight magazine, where you have vocabulary. So that's also a good way of flipping through the magazines in English language at the station, usually. I mean, here in the smaller village, we don't have a very big choice, but at major stations, Düsseldorf, Cologne station, usually Frankfurt, you get a huge choice and then pick whatever interests you. If you're a sailing man, there are sailing magazines in English. And I just want to say, maybe you're not the audio lady, but audiobooks can be very useful when you learn a language. For example, when you have some time in the car or on the train. Absolutely. I didn't want to say audiobooks were bad. What I was trying to say is do what you would do in your own language. And if you're not an audiobook person, don't force yourself to do that in another language. I think that was my point. But yeah, last point, I suppose, is about textbooks. So when people think about learning a language, they often immediately, they think, like you said, being back to school, you know, what did I use at school? And I think a lot of people had bad experiences with textbooks. You know, Deutsch, Heute, Teil, Eins, Zwei. Did you have that at school, Dave? Everybody in England, it's actually here on my shelf, had Deutsch, Heute, Teil, Eins, Zwei. You still have it? I bought a version recently because I wanted to see it. And we have Linda and Colin. Linda and Colin, Toby and Tibby. And what was the name of the book? Do you remember? Oh, no, I don't. Sorry. Everybody in like the whole English-speaking world used Deutsch, Heute to learn German and have been traumatised ever since. It was all based in Saarbrücken. We actually went there recently to like experience Deutsch, Heute. We sat and ordered Gemischtes Eis and a Currywurst just to like... Oh, well, that's super. We did the role plays with Deutsch, Heute. It was like so weird. But yeah, people have these terrible, not always terrible, of course, there are some good textbooks. But what you have to remember with the textbook, they're aimed at, first of all, they're trying to make a lot of people happy, not just one person. It's like, so they try to cover various topics for a group. They're aimed at groups. They're not aimed at individuals, really. I bought one when I started to learn Polish because I just thought I'm going to try doing the textbook approach. And within a And it just didn't really inspire me at all. And so I think, of course, if you join a class, they will say, right, we're using this textbook and you have to do that. And sometimes there's good things in there. But I think if I'm learning on my own, if you're learning on your own, I wouldn't go the textbook route. I would go, like you say, get yourself a good grammar book, then find something extra like watching videos or reading books or listen to podcasts, get your vocabulary going on top. And I think that's enough. I wouldn't go down the textbook route. So, yeah, going on to videos, I think Dave's got plenty to tell us about YouTube. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. I often find that's maybe the most difficult thing for people, for learners to find, is really good listening materials. And nowadays with YouTube, it's made it a lot more easier. I would highly recommend people, like you said before, Rebecca, that if you watch something particular, maybe on YouTube in German, that you're interested in, that you try and look for something in English that would then interest you as well. Because, of course, then you learn the language of your interests, special interests or whatever, also in English, and it's then hopefully more motivating for you to watch. So if you're into cars, then you maybe would watch a YouTube video that talks about cars and newest cars, or if you're talking about tech, if you like tech, the new tech stuff. But what I decided to do today was just to give you a list of sort of my top 10 YouTube channels, if, for example, you're learning English. Number one, guys, is the Oxford Online English channel, which is really cool, has lots of different topic areas that it covers on literally topics. So like presenting, even it talks about presenting, it talks about where you live. And the good thing is, I think they have different levels. So at the beginning, it starts quite easy. And as you go through, it gets more and more difficult. And so you have quite a good script at the end of talking about a certain topic, maybe talk about your job, or talk about where you live, all these kinds of things. So that's number one. Number two, there's a really nice Ukrainian girl called Anna. And the first time I watched one of her videos, her channel is called English Fluency Journey. I actually thought she was American, because she's trained her accent so well, that for me, as a Brit, I actually thought she was American. And I had to check the About Me section and say, oh, actually, she's not. And I said, why English Fluency Journey? She sounds like an American. But it turns out she's actually Ukrainian. So well done to her. Number three, there's seven ESL learning English. By the way, I'll put all these in the show notes with a link to one of their videos. This guy is really good, because he presents lists, or diagrams, or drawings, and then he voiceovers. And so he explains his drawings, his lists. And so that's a really cool way to see what he's talking about. Maybe it's a bit of grammar. Maybe it's a bit of, this is something maybe we can talk about next week, Birgit, for grammar learning. Yeah. I think he does some good stuff with that. Same is with Emma from mmmEnglish. I don't know where maybe that's something to do with Emma. I don't know. But she's really cool. She does a mixture of grammar and also vocabulary. Number five is Steve Kaufman. It gets a bit more serious with him. He goes a bit deeper into general language learning. And he's called Lingo Steve. I think he gives some, not all of his videos, but he gives some interesting insights how to learn, because he literally is a polyglot. He's learned a lot of language, and a lot of them since he's retired. So often people, older, more mature people say it's difficult to learn when you get older. Yeah, that's true. Although he puts more time into it because he's got the time as a retired person, but he's done it really well. And I think that proves that maybe even as, let's say, more seasoned people, you can still learn languages. But he's a good example. He's a good example. He's a good example. Yes. Yes. Number six, Germany versus USA. Really cool. They don't make any more videos. It's two guys, one guy from Germany, one guy from the US, and they talk about differences between two countries. So that's really cool. Dragon's Den, if you're into a bit more sort of business style stuff, if you like business English and to learn business English, I highly recommend Dragon's Den. By the way, I also have a course on this because as I said, I think it's really difficult to find genuine, authentic material with some kind of course or vocabulary to help you work with it. That's the Höhle der Löwen in Germany, isn't it? The Dragon's Den doesn't ring any bell to our listeners. Thank you for translating. I just want to throw in here, that's the Höhle der Löwen. And it's shark tank in the States, right? It's shark tanks in the States, yeah. So you have sharks, dragons, and lions. And who invented it? Where was the original from? Is it British? You don't know. I believe it's British that they started it off and then the Americans copied. I don't know why they thought of sharks tanks. But anyway, yeah, I think originally British. Yeah, so they're cool. Also, if you like maybe learning things as well, TED Talks. I'm sure you've heard of TED Talks. I love TED Talks. They're great, aren't they? They're great, yes. So good, so good. It's a little bit maybe more focused on little presentations that are 18 minutes long, things like that. But great for learning how to give presentations, but also how to learn English on different topics. I like the way they're limited as well. You know, it's always like 18 minutes. And I think that's something like that. Yeah. In that 18 minutes, you're going to get a lot of information. And I really like that. It's a nice short format. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I believe it's good for listening practice. When you get to a level and you realize you can follow, I think sometimes it's good you have the subtitle also with it. So that makes it easier. You can, yeah. And if it's on YouTube, you can always put the subtitles on anyway, so. Because I believe for learning how to present in English, oh my, that's on a high level. I mean, I could look at that. Because it's a very high level, isn't it? TED Talks. It depends on the topic, I think, what they're talking about. Again, if it's a topic you know something about, then depends on the topic. But generally, they're very good presenters. So even if it's a complicated topic, they present so well. Normally, they're quite good to, you know, easy to understand and follow, I would say. Yeah, that's true. Okay, so the last two, nine and ten, are really for really high level speakers of English. First one are three guys from Ireland. So if you want to train your Irish English, these are the guys for you. Foyle, Arms and Hog. They are comedians. They are hilarious. I can highly recommend. They use play on words. They use their accents. It's absolute, it's brilliant fun. They're only about two minutes each video. Highly recommend it. And my favorite, my number 10, I left the favorite to the end is 42, a British guy called Aaron. He does lovely videos on all range of topics. And he's something that you should definitely take a look at some of his videos. They're usually about 18 minutes long, 20 minutes long on various topics. So yeah, that's my top 10 YouTube channels. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you get one or two things from it. And yeah, bigger. Yeah, I want to add, but you have got your also some material and your tidbits from Dave and learn to talk like a native. So you should put that in the show notes also. That's a very good input. Yeah, no problem. So now in our next episode, we will look a little bit into grammar, guys. Not too much, but a little bit, because it is important, as you always say. So hopefully you'll be interested and listen to us again. And what are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about how to learn or which tenses to learn or what do you think? Well, I think we should mention the big five, as I call them the most important ones. And then what's happening once you know those and how you can put on more knowledge onto those, because there's some structure in the grammar, actually. And there are some interesting concepts. So I could introduce. Yeah, perfect. Sounds good. Looking forward to that. Why not? See you next time. See you next time. 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.