Meet the Three English Experts: Birgit Kasimirski, Rebecca Deacon, David Preston

(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 everyone and welcome to this episode. This is our very first episode of our very first podcast. We're all very excited. And in this episode, we are just going to introduce ourselves so you can meet and learn about the 3 experts. So I'm going to kick off. My name is Rebecca Deacon. I am a business English trainer, and I've been living in Frankfurt in Germany for the last 25 years. I'm originally from Sheffield, like my colleague here, Dave, although we have never met. We are from the same city. We've never met. And actually, all three of us have never met each other. This is all remote. And hopefully one day we will be meeting. But so far, we still never met. I'm a business English trainer. I teach business English to various clients in various different types of companies. And I'm also a qualified coach. So I realized a few years ago, a long time ago, that in my opinion, language learning is not only an academic thing. It's also a mindset thing. And that mindset and confidence and all these kind of things are very important when you're learning a language. So I also have a qualification, a coaching qualification, and I use that as a tool to combine that with my language training. I'm also studying positive psychology at the moment to become a positive psychology practitioner. And I'm hoping in the future that I can also combine this aspects of positive psychology with linguistics and integrate that into my courses. I'm a Brit, but I do speak various languages, which is a little bit unusual. We're not known for our linguistic talents, but I speak fluent German. I've lived here for a very long time. I also speak Spanish. I speak Japanese, a little bit of Japanese. I speak a bit of Polish and a bit of Swahili, a little bit of Urdu. Actually, I was chatting to the taxi driver in Urdu the other night, a little bit of all sorts. And I just love anything that's to do with languages, really. Language nerd. Passing over to my other British friend here, Sheffield buddy, Dave, would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners? Yeah, thanks, Rebecca. I'm Dave Preston, also a business English coach like yourself. I also lived in Germany for many years, 20 years actually. But now I live in Valencia. Most of my work or all of my work is now remote, not dealing with people face to face, which of course is not always ideal. But it also has other aspects to it that are quite beneficial, which I can also talk about in a few seconds. I also try and focus a little bit more on the communication side of things. So offering communication techniques to help people make their communication clearer. They speak more confidently in an impactful way. I'm also a big believer in technology and language learning with its apps or maybe online quizzes during the actual sessions to practice grammar or to just vary your vocabulary. And also, of course, now with AI. But we can talk about that, I'm sure, in the coming episodes. And last but not least, I'm really into culture. So I also speak other languages, not as many as Rebecca. And even though I live in Spain, I must admit, I don't think my Spanish is as far not as good as Rebecca's is. But I speak French and German. And as I said, I'm learning Spanish, but it's a long process. Birgit, what about you? Please introduce yourself. Yeah. Hello. Thank you, Dave. So I'm Birgit Kazimierski and I love Britain and Brits. And this is how I found Dave and Rebecca online, actually. I contacted them at some point online and then I think I established a contact between those two. And eventually that's how we became familiar. But as Rebecca said before, we actually haven't met and that's really unusual, but we still, we believe we get on well. I am also a coach. I'm a business English coach and an author of four English grammar books. My background is that of a journalist. So I wrote for English and German newspapers. So that's where the writing interest comes from. And as I said, I love England. I spent two years there 30 years ago. And when I came back, English was in need at the university where I studied English and later a journalist who wrote for English newspapers. I really stayed in contact with the language a lot, using it for my work. Eventually I moved to, for a short period of time, I lived in Hungary, in Budapest, and then I moved to Vienna, Austria. And that's where I started helping people with English. And I've been training and helping people improve their English for, I think, 20 years now. And what I enjoy is finding out what's really important for people. What do they need in order to speak a better English? I think, I guess that's my journalist background to put the most important thing in the focus. So this is my really focus. And I would say that I enjoy structure analyzing. Maybe you can call me a grammar nerd. That's okay. As I said, four books on English grammar have resulted from that, hopefully helping people. Yes, and I do have background from industry and companies in the industry, banking, McKinsey. I worked for some time, so I have quite a lot of experience. And when I work with people, I try to speak their language, whatever they need in their businesses. Very good. So the question is, I'm sure people are wondering, why are we starting this podcast? What is the point? Why are we sitting here? What are we aiming for? What are we hoping to achieve with this podcast? Any thoughts, Dave? What do you think? Well, I think we as trainers want to help people improve their English, their communications, also their cultural knowledge, maybe of, in this case, Britain or English-speaking countries. That's basically what we're here for. We're giving some of our free time just to talk about various topics in English that people would love to tune in and listen to us talk about these topics, pick up some ideas, thoughts, maybe some tricks and tips on grammar aspects, different cultural aspects or maybe communication tricks and tips. So I think that's, from my perspective at least, the main reason why we're getting together to produce the podcast. Yeah, and I think it's a different format. I think so many people today enjoy listening. In the past, it was more books and I think now this podcast format is so popular and we just thought perhaps it would be something nice to try, something different and maybe we can reach different people through a podcast rather than just, I don't know, websites or blogs or it's just something different, isn't it, Birgit? Yeah, I think I always felt when we met online, obviously, and discussed things, that was kind of entertaining and interesting and we had so much to talk about. We share so much knowledge. We do all have a lot of knowledge and there are so many aspects to the English language so that when we came up with the idea, immediately could think of so many subjects to cover. So I think we will probably find enough topics to talk about that are interesting and there are so many aspects for learners. As I said, what needs to be in the focus, that's our message. I think people, this is what is important when you want to improve English, I guess. And also because all of us speak different languages. I didn't mention I speak Spanish also and I'm learning Dutch. So it's not only English but learning languages in general. I think we know a lot about. I think the other thing I wanted to say is that, yes, we're doing a podcast, but correct me if I'm wrong, guys, but the majority of podcasts that I've at least listened to talking about languages or English or whatever, it's just been that one person. And so it's been quite maybe monotone even sometimes. But I think as a three, we're working as threes here, of course. So it's more dynamic, there's more conversation and that's really what we want to bring as well in the future. That it's not just one person talking, but we take it in turns. We all give our little bit of information, our thoughts, our ideas, our opinions. But we have a conversation and a discussion as well. Yeah, and I think that's our point is that we all do the same kind of job and we've all been working for over 20 years in this business. So we kind of have more than 60 years of experience that is really worth sharing. But we all bring something a little bit different to the table, I think, which could be interesting for listeners. Yeah, and I also believe hopefully this is an asset that we have this combination of one German native. I have a completely different look at the grammar. Obviously, I know why Germans have problems with present perfect, for example. That's a different point of view. But sharing this and hearing how you feel about it and you putting in more native input of vocabulary, I think that's a good idea. That's what we think at least. Let's find out. Yeah, I think that's true. I think it's a unique combination of it's not just one person. There's three of us and it's not just only natives. It's two natives plus Birgit, who obviously has been teaching and learning and teaching for such a long time. But it gives you a different perspective. It's a different view than maybe some of the other classic kind of podcasts out there. Hopefully. What kind of topics are we going to cover then for our listeners? Grammar. That's Birgit's favorite topic. You will find that out. That's Birgit's favorite topic. So we're definitely covering grammar aspects. Dave, what else are we going to cover apart from grammar? Also focusing on vocabularies and also maybe functions of the language. Also various communication things. How to's. So how to help you improve your English, any tricks and tips, all these kind of things. So basically, we hope, of course, things that any listener who is interested in improving their English would want to listen out for. Also mindset. So from my point of view, I would like to also talk about some coaching topics. So how coaching methods and tools can also help you overcome fear of speaking, be more confident. Learning methods, how to learn smarter, how to learn better, how to stay motivated. Motivation is a massive factor in learning anything, but definitely in learning a language. It's a never ending story when you're learning a language. Yeah, overcoming that fear, as you said. I think that was also one of the major arguments when we thought, shall we start a podcast? Because we know we feel so many people out there who don't dare to feel more confident. Maybe they are not as bad, but it's a lot about confidence. So that's a perfect combination with Rebecca, with you having me here. And Dave's also going to give us some techie tips on language learning. Today is also quite so, there's so much out there now, so many resources. So Dave's going to give us some tips and tricks on apps and websites and all kinds of ways that you can also use technology to improve your language learning journey. Absolutely. Okay, yeah, so thanks very much for tuning in this first time. I hope you enjoyed meeting the three of us. And next time, our very first topic, real topic, if you like, is actually finding the time to learn languages, learn your English. Maybe some tricks and tips from our side to give you some help in finding the time, making the time during the day to learn your English. So thank you very much for listening. Hopefully hear you and see you next time. Take care. Bye bye. Bye bye. Take care. Bye for now. Bye bye for now. 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.