I will teach you to become a confident English speaker without schools and rules
“Where’s Trutnov?” I asked.
One of my Czech friends was trying to tell me but she was having problems. She confessed – a little embarrassed – that she always confuses the English words for “east” and “west.”
And she didn’t know why.
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Has this ever happened to you?
You’re speaking English and then you start to think about the grammar…
People who are good at taking tests are good at taking tests.
Sometimes they can also have a conversation.
But not always.
“Introverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable, according to research.”
“Introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than extroverts do.”
“Some of our transformative leaders in history have been introverts.”
English Is Not A Dead Rat
And Why English Should Not Be Taught In School
by =&0=&
Let me explain.
In 9th grade I took biology.
I hated it.
But one week Mr. Beetly announced we were going to dissect dead rats.
And my dissection partner was going to be Liz Schumacher.
Now biology was interesting.
Every day Liz and I cut up the rat, we removed pieces of the rat, and we learned the names for the pieces.
I really loved that dead rat. He taught me so much about anatomy, myself, life, death…
Liz, on the other hand… well, I guess she didn’t find the situation so romantic…
I arrived in Prague on a Saturday and after a weekend of sightseeing I was siting in a classroom learning how to be an English teacher.
And suddenly, it was the story of the dead rat all over again.
They gave us the language.
We cut it up.
We learned the names of the pieces.
And then we taught students how to do the same.
But this time, there was a final step:
Put the pieces back into the rat and tell the rat to jump off the table and run back to the sewar.
In other words, our students had to use the language. To speak. And to speak fluently.
Well, that usually didn’t work so well.
The problem starts in school.
You have a math class and a history class and a science class.
And then you go to English class.
And you use the same methods to learn English as you did to learn math and science.
And that’s the problem.
English is not an academic subject.
It’s not something you need to study and take apart and analyze.
Instead, it’s something you need to DO.
When I was in school we had all our academic subjects – science, math, etc. – during school.
Then after school we did activities, like sports or music.
Now imagine this:
What if instead of dissecting English for years in a boring, stressful classroom…
Instead you spent those years doing English after school?
Speaking, listening, reading, having fun…
Where would your English be today?
In school we learned to study like crazy the day/night before an exam studying.
This seemed like the fastests way.
But science proves this method actually takes more time.
In one experiment[1], researchers asked two groups to learn a poem.
You can see that one group took a lot longer.
But why?
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