English Listening - Episode 50 Q&A
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Summer is finally here! ¿Estás listo para un verano inolvidable? Food tiene los ingredientes perfectos for creating unforgettable summer memories. Fire up the grill and enjoy food sausages. Whip up amazing sandwiches con jamón y queso food. No matter your summer plans, foods, meats and cheeses are the perfect companions for this summer.

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Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast. Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 50 of the Listening Time Podcast. I'm very excited to have reached episode 50. I want to thank you all for listening. I hope that the Listening Time Podcast has been a very helpful resource for you and has helped you improve your listening comprehension in English. I

I think that this was my goal when I first started the podcast because I use these types of podcasts when I learn other languages. So I knew that this type of resource was really effective and really helpful for people. And so I wanted to create something similar.

And I hope that I've done a pretty good job so far. I think that you're all enjoying it because I receive your messages and comments thanking me for the podcast.

I want to thank all of you. Thank you for listening and thank you for motivating me to continue doing it. So, of course, today is a special episode, so we're going to do a Q&A, questions and answers.

I just took a few different questions that I received to talk about in this episode, but I will continue receiving questions from people that are Listening Time members that I'll answer in future episodes. I'll probably do some more Q&A episodes in the future, so I'll continue taking your questions if you have any.

And I'll try to answer a few different ones on each of those different episodes. So if you'd like to ask me a question, then make sure that you become a Listening Time member and you can send me a direct message on the Patreon page and I might answer your question in a future episode.

Remember that our membership has three different levels. You can become a Listening Time member for just $2 a month, and you receive an extra podcast episode every month, and you also receive a listening practice seminar each month where I help you train your ears to hear the different difficult sound patterns in English.

And you can also become a Listening Time super member for $3 per month. And if you become a super member, you receive an extra seminar every month. So you receive two seminars and an extra podcast episode.

or if you want to become a Listening Time family member, it's just $4 per month and you receive both seminars, the two different seminars, one bonus podcast episode and a sound training video. And in this video, we look at one particular sound pattern in English and I help you understand that difficult pattern better.

So make sure to become a member if you want these extra resources and you want to improve your listening even more. And please share this podcast with anyone else who might find it useful and help this podcast continue to grow. I hope that we can reach episode 100 in the not too distant future.

In English, when we say the not too distant future, this just means in the future, but not too far in the future, right? In the near future, the not so distant future. So make sure to share this podcast with any of your family members or friends who might find it useful.

And of course, remember that you have the transcript available for this episode. It's underneath the episode in the episode description. So just go down and click on that link if you need the transcript. All right, let's get started. Are your ears ready? You know what time it is. It's listening time.

Okay, so the first question I want to answer is regarding the standard American English accent. Someone asked me if there's like a standard accent for American English and what that accent is. And this is a tricky question to answer.

I have my opinion about this, but I know that other people might disagree with me. So I'm definitely not saying that my opinion is fact here. But from my experience, I think that the idea of the standard American English accent is really the accent that you find on the West Coast of the US.

This is where I'm from. I'm from Southern California. And so I might be a bit biased when I answer this question.

In English, the word biased means that you're not being objective. You have a subjective perspective. You're not objective. This means that you have a bias. So I might be a little biased when I say this, but I think that the West Coast accent is

is probably the standard accent that people think of when they think of American English. So when you talk to people from other areas of the U.S., like the North, the East, the South, wherever, we can usually say things like, oh, he has a Southern accent or he has a Northeastern accent or something like that.

But people don't usually say this about people from the West Coast. They might say it like he has a Californian accent or whatever, but I don't really hear it that much. Usually when we describe accents in the US, we tend to talk about the other regions. When talking about the West Coast, we sometimes think of the West Coast accent as being standard.

And there might be a few reasons for this. One reason is because Hollywood is located on the West Coast.

Why is this important? Well, Hollywood is where all the music, movies, TV shows, entertainment, that's where all of that is produced. And so because of that, many people hear this type of accent. They hear the West Coast accent. And so it's the accent that people are most familiar with.

because they hear it in the entertainment industry. So this is one of the reasons. And honestly, I think another reason why people think of it as the standard is that it's pretty easy to understand the West Coast accent compared to other accents.

Of course, some people might disagree with this. Some students might think it's easier to understand someone else from the U.S. But most of the students that I talk to say that it's easier to understand people like me from the West Coast.

So I think that's another reason why people think of speakers from the West Coast as not having an accent, just speaking standard English. So again, I'm a little bit biased, but this is my opinion about it. But of course, other English speakers might tell you something else. All right, let's move on to the next question.

So someone asked me about how to start talking when learning a foreign language. Of course, for you guys, that would be English.

So I've talked a little bit before about the input hypothesis. This is from Stephen Krashen, the linguist. The input hypothesis states that we acquire a foreign language through input, meaning through listening and reading. And this is the primary way that we acquire a foreign language. I agree with this.

And this is one of the reasons why I do this podcast, because I think that by listening to English, you acquire it, you acquire new vocabulary, you acquire grammar, you get all of this through listening and of course through reading.

So, I always emphasize this aspect of language learning. However, everyone learns languages because they want to speak these languages. We don't just want to understand them or acquire them but not be able to speak fluently. Everyone wants to speak.

So, of course, in order to do that, you have to practice speaking. So, in my opinion, you want to start practicing your speaking when you're ready. Okay, what does this mean? Don't force yourself to speak too early. I know that some people promote the idea that you should speak from day one. Just start speaking as soon as you start learning a language.

I don't agree with this approach. I respect that idea. I have nothing against that personally. But I think that it's better to speak when you're ready. So when you feel like it's time for you to say things. And I think this is important because when you speak, you shouldn't feel so stressed and so nervous the whole time.

I think that speaking in your foreign language should be a fun experience. And if it's a fun experience, it will be motivating for you and it will help you learn and acquire more. So that's really important, in my opinion, to not force yourself to speak if you're not ready.

However, when you're ready to speak, once you've done enough listening and reading and you definitely want to transition into speaking, I think it's very important to find a partner or a teacher or someone to speak with who will adapt to your level. Okay. So if you're still at a lower intermediate level, for example,

and you find a teacher to practice your English with, and the teacher just speaks at a million miles per hour, and you can't understand anything they're saying, and it's a really stressful experience, and they use all kinds of phrases that you can't understand, this might not be very productive.

I think that it's good to find someone who can adapt well to your level. So someone who can speak a little bit more clearly, someone who can use phrases that are a little bit more understandable for you, but who also knows how to naturally introduce new phrases and new expressions and challenge the student a little bit more each time.

I think it's important to find a teacher like that and there are many teachers like this so it shouldn't be too hard to find one but it's important that you find someone that you're comfortable with someone who can adapt to your level so that you'll be motivated to speak and it will be a fun experience and you'll enjoy the process.

One other thing that I believe is important is to not focus too much on error correction in the moment. I, as a teacher, don't do error correction in the moment too often. Some students ask me to do this. They ask me to correct their errors as soon as they make them.

This usually isn't very beneficial in my experience because the vast majority of students make many, many mistakes. In English, when we say the vast majority of people or the vast majority of something, this just means almost everyone or most of these people.

So the vast majority of people who are learning a language make mistakes in just about every sentence they speak. That's just the nature of language learning, right? We make mistakes. It's completely normal. And so if you have a teacher who's constantly interrupting every sentence that you're saying so that they can correct your errors, this is very demoralizing.

In English, the word demoralizing means that it makes you feel bad about yourself. It doesn't motivate you. It makes you just feel negative. So this can be very demoralizing if someone is constantly interrupting you and telling you that you made a mistake. And so the way that I recommend doing this is you can ask your teacher, uh,

to write down some of the main errors that you make during the conversation. And then at the end of the class or the conversation, they can send you this report with these errors on the report. And you can look at those errors together and see the corrections together.

And I like doing this at the end of the class because you're already done with the conversation. And now you know that you're dedicating a few minutes to actually look at your errors. And it's much better, in my opinion, because it doesn't interrupt the flow.

flow of the conversation. In English, when we say the word flow in this way, it means like the rhythm, the course of the conversation. So it doesn't interrupt the flow of the conversation. It's still fun and natural. And then you dedicate a little time so that you can look at your errors at the end.

So that's just a little tip I wanted to give you. Okay, another question was about Duolingo. A lot of you might have heard of this app before, and I'm sure a lot of you already use this app. So what are my thoughts about this app? I think Duolingo is great. I really like this app.

And I think that it serves a specific purpose, right? Of course, you don't just do Duolingo and then learn the language only through this app. Of course not. You can't do that with any app.

The way that you use Duolingo is to give yourself a feel for the language, to actually start to understand how the language works and start to get used to the language, its structure, the word order, how verbs work, all of that.

And because of this, I think that it's a great resource for beginners especially because beginners really benefit from having some type of resource that shows them the general structure of the language that they're learning.

It gives them a feel for the language and it makes it more accessible for them. And I also think that Duolingo is pretty fun. It's actually kind of like a game. So this adds an extra element to it that motivates you to use it and to spend more time with the language that you're learning. So I've used Duolingo for Portuguese, French,

Indonesian. I've used it for three languages and I would definitely recommend it to anyone else who just wants to get a little more practice in their daily life with the language that they're learning. So those are my thoughts on Duolingo.

Alright, another question was about slang in English. So of course, I can't talk all about the different slang words and expressions that we have in English. And to be honest, since I don't live in the US currently, I'm actually not up to date with all the different slang expressions and words in English.

In English, when we say that you're up to date, this just means that you know about this thing currently. So I'm not up to date with all the slang that young people use in the US because I don't live in the US and I don't hear this on a daily basis.

So I actually have trouble understanding some of the same slang that you have trouble understanding. So I thought that was a funny thing that I wanted to mention. And let me just give you one note about this word slang. It's always singular. So we don't say slangs. We just say slang. We always use it in the singular form.

Okay, so I can't talk all about the world of slang in the U.S. or in English, but I thought I could give you a few common slang words that I do know and that young people use and also older people as well, depending on who they are. They also might use these words. The first one is dope.

You might have heard this word before, D-O-P-E, dope. When you say that something is dope, that means that it's cool. You like it. It's cool. It's dope. So that's the first one. Another one is salty. So of course, salt is what we put on our food. But nowadays, people like to use the word salty to describe someone who's a little bit mad

or angry because of something you did to them or because they're reacting badly to something that happened. So for example, if I don't invite someone to my party and then afterwards I find out that he's really mad at me and he's talking bad about me behind my back, I might say that that person is salty.

In English, when we use the phrase behind my back or behind someone's back, this means that you're talking about the person when they're not present, when they're not there. So if you're talking behind someone's back, you're talking about them when they're not with you.

And one other slang word I wanted to mention is savage. This word is used a lot, especially in the online world, to talk about things that people say or do that might be really direct or maybe even mean to someone else, but the thing that the person says is true.

And they really kind of defeat the other person in an argument or something like that. But they do it in a very brutal way.

In English, the word brutal just means very hard, very tough. So if you defeat someone or beat someone in an online debate in a brutal way, you can say that that person is savage when doing that.

Alright, one other question I wanted to talk about is the history of San Diego. Someone asked me this question. I'll just talk very briefly about this. So San Diego is sometimes referred to as the birthplace of California because it was the first European settlement on the West Coast.

The word settlement just means a place where people live. So it was the first settlement on the West Coast, and that's why people call it the birthplace of California.

And the people that lived here before the Europeans arrived are called the Kumeyaay people. So these were the Native Americans that were already there. And then, of course, the Spaniards arrived. So the first person who came from Europe and discovered this part of the U.S. was Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo.

And some people say he was Spanish. I think some people say he was Portuguese. I'm not quite sure. But he claimed this area for Spain in 1542. And we still have a monument today called the Cabrillo Monument that you can visit.

and you can learn a little bit about the history of this man who found this place and was the first European to see it. And then a couple hundred years after that, in 1769, some Spaniards came up from New Spain

New Spain was the name of the area that we now call Mexico and Central America and a lot of the U.S. actually. Some Spaniards came up from New Spain and then they settled in San Diego and that was the first European settlement on the West Coast. And so this settlement was what we call a mission settlement.

The missions in California were these 21 different settlements that Catholic priests set up so that they could spread their religion to the Native Americans. So we called these 21 different settlements missions. So these are the missions of California. And the first mission was in San Diego.

So today, if you visit San Diego, you can visit Old Town, which is one of the neighborhoods in San Diego. And you can see some of the old buildings from this first settlement and you can learn a lot about the history of San Diego. And this is one of my favorite places to go in the city. So if you go to San Diego, definitely visit Old Town

visit those museums and see those old buildings.

All right, why don't we stop there for today? So like I said, if you want to continue asking me questions, you can become a Listening Time member at patreon.com slash listening time. The link is in the episode description below. So click on that and I'll do some future Q&A episodes and answer some more questions like I did today.

And please remember to share this podcast with anyone else who might find it useful. And of course, you have the transcript available in the episode description. So go down and click on that if you need it.

Well, thank you again for listening to this episode and thank you for helping me reach episode 50. I really appreciate all your support and I'll talk to you again on the next episode of Listening Time.

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