Cultivating your English #12: Pyramid power and the most effective way to learn
❤️"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach"❤️ George Bernard Shaw
❤️"Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym"❤️ Woody Allen
Thanks for reading once again and for another interesting bit of feedback from Rosa:
“I’d like to see, in a near future, this idea of knowing all the languages spoken in Spain . It had to be a compulsory subject in schools, I think it would help us to understand our diversity as a country.”
Great point Rosa! Even knowing 20 or so key expressions in Catalan, Basque and Galician would make a big difference.
I heard a funny story once about someone from Cuenca coming to a wedding in Catalonia. The whole family decided to come by AVE and not by car because they were worried that they wouldn’t understand the traffic signs in Catalonia. The AVE was obviously a lot more expensive and inconvenient as the wedding was in a rural area. It really does “beggars belief”!
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/beggar-belief-description
The question is this….
Why am I talking so much about teaching and other people learning when the objective of this newsletter is really about your learning process?🤔
Well, here is why…. (They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, right?)
This is one of the images I have in my little classroom and although it’s very unscientific and approximate, I believe that the basic principle is totally correct.
The reason I believe this is because I have seen it for myself. In 1997 when I started teaching English I literally didn’t know what a noun or an adjective was.
Things like the present simple, auxiliaries, conditionals, the present continuous…. These things meant absolutely nothing to me. I’m really not joking- when I went to school these concepts were not taught whatsoever.
I still remember trying to teach a C1 level class that first year and I had to learn sooooo much before every class. I knew instinctively, of course, if a sentence was correct or not but I had absolutely ZERO idea how to explain why!
💃🕺Challenge💃🕺
You all know someone who has a lower level than us in English. You all know someone who wants to improve their English.
The difficulty is finding someone who is prepared to invest the time and energy into actually improving their level.
But, if you can find that person or those people and offer to help them, then you will discover that by helping them you will also be helping yourself.
It might take you some time before you find someone to help, but if you do, then you will see how rewarding it is and how much confidence it gives you with your English.
Helping people to learn can be a little difficult at the beginning but if you are reading this you are perfectly capable of coaching and helping your friends find their "English way".
Why not start thinking of who you might be able to help?
If you are serious about improving your English there really isn’t much you can do that would help you more!
I’d love to hear the reasons why you shouldn’t/can’t/don’t want to do this….. If there are any of course! And, if there aren’t any reasons to NOT do it, I’d love to help you to help someone! (Wow, was that a complicated couple of sentences or what?! Sorry but not sorry!😂)
Thank you so much for reading and I’d love to hear from you with any thoughts or feedback!🙏😊
See you in #12+1!