How to review the year and plan for the next using correct English grammar

(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 and welcome to this episode, which will be the final in 2024. So today I thought we thought we could have a look at 2024 as a year. So look back, talk about how we can review language for reviewing the year. Things like what we have done this year, what we've done so far using the present perfect. But I'm sure Birgit will come in more on that with the grammar points later on. And going forward into 2025, the plans we are making for 2025, both with our professional work, but also with our various languages that we're learning. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Maybe Birgit would like to start us off with her 2024. How was it for you, darling? Thank you, David. And hello, everyone. 2024. How has it been? Yes, for me, from a business point of view, I have managed to find a new publisher because I needed to republish my exercise book. And that has worked out well. It was finally published or republished in April this year. And I'm very glad to have done that now. It's been achieved. And actually, yes, now one book has been published in two parts. So that's even better because both books focus on certain aspects of the language, of the grammar, present perfect and future would be in the first part of the exercise book. Englisch Grammatik Richtig Anwenden. That's a title that can be found on my website and maybe in there. I was just about to ask you, where can we get the books, of course? Yes, just Google my name, visit my website and you'll find all the books on there. It's also on Amazon, is it? Yes, yes, yes. So no excuses, guys. Off you go. Exercising, yes, getting down into practising. And I also have achieved from my business point of view to work to manage a four day week. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. I take one day off. I do some good, do some drawing classes, which I really enjoy. And I've managed to put in or fill in the other four days with all the work I have. So have you done that for a whole year now? Has that been a year since you started the drawing classes or? It has been a year. I started, I think I started in February. I missed out in January. I started in February. It's been almost a year and really it's sort of the same amount of work in four days. And I'm really glad that I have managed to do that. Yes. So is that an extra day at the weekend or is it a midweek day that you take off or? It's the Thursday, the Thursday I take off, which is nice. Yeah. That's why she never answers emails on Thursdays, Dave. You didn't notice that. I didn't notice that. No, you're right. Because that's it. That's a drawing day. It's a creative day. Now I know. Now you know. What about you? The secret is out. It's not a secret. You just didn't read the mail. You didn't get a memo. Oops. What about you, Rebecca? What have you achieved? So, yeah, I was making my notes. I'm still doing my positive psychology qualification, which is way bigger than I ever imagined it would be. I never realised it was going to be so much work. But this year I have completed three assignments, which is a lot because they are, they take a while and they're quite long and very academic. And so, yeah, I'm so really happy. I've completed three, which means I only have one left to do. This is the big mama project, though. It's a really big one. So, yes, but I'm happy I'm finally getting to the end. And I've learned a lot. I've learned so much. I've read so many books that I, you know, I've learned so many things about psychology that I had is a very steep learning curve. But yeah, so I have done that and I have finally started writing my book. I have wanted to write. Yeah, I wanted to write a book for so long. I know. And I find big. It's always motivating me and telling me what book. So I have finally started. And that's good. It's a good feeling that I've really made some progress. There's still a long way to go, but there is a book in me and I have to get it written. Yeah, spit it out, get it written. So I'm happy to say that I finally. Can you already give us some ideas into what it's going to be about? So it's all connected with my positive psychology. So the idea is coaching techniques and positive psychology theories combined with language learning. So how to apply positive psychology and coaching to language learning to coach your way to kind of better English. So that's the idea. And with a hint of humour of your. Of course. Well, it's got my life stories in it. So. Oh, wonderful. It's never boring. I hope. Yes. Yeah. So that's what I have done from a business point of view, Dave. What has happened? What has happened this year? Well, as you may or may not know, I actually do seminars and webinars on various sorts of soft skills like presenting in English, English in, for example, customer services. Also done this training as well. This was the first time this year that I did that, which was really, really interesting. So this sort of personality and also mixing it with the English and the soft skills. It was a really cool one day event where I went to a company and did this. And I think it was it was brilliant because people sort of saw how it can work within a company and how the relations between the people can actually work better if you understand each other well enough. And I think that was absolutely brilliant. I've done a number of other webinars this year and next year I'm hoping to do some more, but we can come back to that later. And I've also taken on a couple of new companies that I work with for a longer period of time. So I'm very happy about that too for group work or for individual work. So all in all, I'd say 2024 has been a great year and we're all looking forward to 2025. But before that, what about the languages? My Spanish, guys, and I have to admit, is still very, how can I put this, basic, but it's improving slowly. And this last few months I've been travelling quite a bit for work and obviously when you're travelling it's not easy to keep up with the lessons here in Spain. And so I'm only really starting to go back to language classes again. And so I've got a few months of hopefully stability here that I can go to my groups and improve. And next year, of course, I want to increase my Spanish a lot. What about you guys? Okay, I can tell you something about my Dutch progress. But first I want to mention that, Dave, I think that's great that you're admitting here that you still feel not super confident in Spanish. And because that's what a lot of learners probably experience themselves. They get stuck, they think they're not progressing, they haven't done enough. So that's a very human thing. Yeah, I think you just have to be honest and real. It's authentic, it's life. Life is not always easy to follow plans and you have all the best plans, but life just gets in the way sometimes. And I think it's also with the time as well. I think that's a big, big issue. And what's the most probably the most difficult thing for me is it's just fitting in what time of the day is also better for me to learn. And then so I understand students when, you know, evenings you're very tired, but sometimes in the mornings, I can't have sessions because I'm working with my clients. And so it's very difficult to fit lessons into my daily routine as well. Yeah, but I can recommend we have a super episode on how to find time to learn. Absolutely. Listen to that episode. I think I have to re-listen to that one. Sorry. Yes, with my Dutch, just looking back into 2024, I think I have made headway. I have made progress. Not enough, I feel. I tried to do a test the other day online, trying to get a B1, but no, not quite there. So in this respect, what I want to tell listeners, it's I think I understand most what I read in Dutch and I can have a little conversation. But still, that doesn't mean I'm on a B level already. So that was a little frustrating for me, but I will not give it up. I will tell you about my plan when I talk about my plans next year, what I want to do. 2025. Come on. Yeah. I mean, this year I haven't done my Japanese this year. So I think the problem is I'm always trying to do too many things. It's like Japanese, Spanish. Oh, what about Polish? And yeah, I really realised I can't. Oh yeah, I did Polish for a while. Yeah. What am I going to, yeah, what am I going to do? And so this year, actually I've gone back to Spanish and I have started Spanish lessons again, which was a major turning point because I thought, you know, I was doing Duolingo and I was reading through some of my books again, but I thought, no, I really need to just talk to someone. I need, and it's hard, you know, to sit there. And I was thinking in my first lesson, like, how am I going to get through 50 minutes talking? Is this really going to be possible? And it was fine. It was really good. And where did you do this? So I have books. Yeah. I have booked a subscription with Preply, which was the biggest idea. Um, and there's just thousands of, you know, conversation partners out there. It's really well priced and it's pretty good system. You can book all your appointments online. And I think if a conversation classes, you know, if you just really want to focus on chatting and just really practising would highly recommend it. So yeah, I've started and I'm, yeah, I am pretty happy with that. So it's not, I haven't, I wouldn't say I have progressed. I've refreshed again because I'd lost so much. So I've refreshed my Spanish and I have found my motivation again. I think that's the most important thing. It's not that I have now suddenly massively improved, but I have realised, Oh, I do know quite a lot. I've just forgotten. So it's just getting the confidence again and coming back. And so how often do you do sessions then Rebecca? It's different. You know, I'm trying once a week, but sometimes I have to move cause I'm too busy, but I just, you have to book four lessons. You pay for four lessons in a block. And then I think you have a month to use those lessons. So, you know, I've had two lessons a week. Um, sometimes when I've just had a bit more time or I wanted to focus a bit more. So, So did I understand correctly that that is also individual lessons or? Yeah, it's one-to-one. No, it's one-to-one, but that I'm going to, I'm going to come to that in a minute about group lessons. That's what I'm going to. All right. So shall we go on to going to then? Go straight on Rebecca. 2025. Yes. 2025. I'm going to continue, but I'm also going to try group lessons on LingoPi. So we talked about LingoPi before it's this app where you can watch films and Netflix series in different languages. And I realised the other day they have free group lessons. So you can just, there's this big schedule of lessons and it will say there's a Spanish lesson starting at this level talking about films, or there's a Spanish lesson starting talking about how to describe the weather. I don't know what, and you can just join in. I haven't done it yet, but I'm going to give it a try. And it's yeah. And it's included in my subscription. So why not? So I'm going to try it and I will let you know how it goes. So that's my plan for Spanish. Keep going and just push myself to speak. I think it's, that's the key. Yeah. Birgit, any going tos for Dutch? Yes, definitely. And that's in the best case, I would like to spend a weekend in the Netherlands somewhere with a, I don't know, with a group, or maybe I can book myself into some kind of academy or a course just for the weekend. Language lessons then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Something like language learning to do with language learning a weekend or something. I have to look into that because that's the turning or can be the turning point. I mean, that was when I learned Spanish when I was in Spain, English when I was in England. So obviously I need to go to the Netherlands and spend time. Immersion. Dutch people, because when I'm on holiday and try to start a sentence in Dutch with the waiter, nope. They always say in English or in German or whatever. It doesn't work. I really need to get into some English, proper English training. Dutch language. Okay. Okay. For me, I'm going to continue with the Spanish, but it's interesting what you said about the, what was it called again? Prepley. Prepley. Yeah. It's a platform. Yeah. So I might, I might look into that as well. Yeah. Have a look. Yeah. You might find a teacher who lives next door to you. You never know. But at the moment I'll stay with my course. I like it. It's a nice little group, other internationals here in Valencia. So it's nice to go to, but maybe if I'm travelling a bit more than the online version might be a good plan. Yeah. And from the business point of view, any plans you're having? Yeah, of course. I want to do more webinars and I'm going to do more webinars and seminars next year. Hoping to travel even more to Germany to do webinars and seminars. And the other thing is I want to build out my online business English self-learning resources, which is already partly there, but I want to work on that in the following months so that hopefully in 2025 I can sort of launch it more and broadcast it more. So that's really what I'm going to do in 2025. Rebecca, any plans, business? Hopefully I'm going to finish my book in 2025. That would be good. And I'm going to hopefully find a publisher or I'm going to self-publish. I don't know. I need big advice on books. Yes, I can give advice on book publishing now. You can write a book on writing books. And hopefully I am going to complete my positive psychology practitioner training. So like I say, it's a very big project that I have to do. I have to do live sessions. I have to record them. They have to be evaluated, assessed by my lecturers. It's a big deal. And I need some guinea pigs. I need some people who will be in my sessions. So it's going to be a big project, but yeah, I need to get it done. I need to finish this thing. So yes, that's my going tos. Maybe some of our listeners would like to be your guinea pig. Yeah, yes. That's a very good idea. So if you're interested, because it's going to be free, I'm not allowed, I am not allowed to charge money. It's a freebie. So if you're interested in joining some kind of, it's basically a language course, but it will have elements of positive psychology included in it. So if you've got any interest in that at all, drop us a message. Yeah, 3englishexperts.com, go to the website, drop us a message or go to my website, drop me a message because I need people. What a good idea. Yeah. What a good offer. Thank you, Dave. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Good, good point. Can I come on and learn Spanish with you? That's the other thing. I think I'm officially not allowed to take people that I already know. Ah, okay. Yeah, I'm supposed to take people who are not already sort of connected, I think, so. So please, listeners, whoever's out there. Yeah, come and join me. Yeah, it doesn't matter where you are because it's all online. We'll all be online. So it doesn't matter whether you're in Timbuktu or around the corner from me. It doesn't matter. You can be anywhere. Cool. Thanks for that. Birgit? Business plans. I'm going to try to meet more clients and presence. I have one where I might start going to a company. So I haven't seen many clients here in my office this year, which is okay. But sometimes it's nice to be out at the client's place, at companies. Mm hmm. And I'm going to look a little more into marketing, book marketing, podcast marketing. Yes. Yeah. I think that's a big thing for all of us. We are going to work hard on our podcast. Yes. Yes, of course. And we're going to continue with our podcast. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's the big going to. Yes. So that was our last episode of 2024. Thank you to all of our listeners, all of our followers for supporting us this year, and hope you'll be joining us again in 2025. 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.