Three Experts Share Their Top Tips to Upgrade Your English Fast

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, we are the Three English Experts. I'm Rebecca. I'm Dave. I'm Birgit. And welcome to this episode. Three 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, everybody, and welcome back to the Three English Experts. We have an episode today where we are called the Three English Experts. So we thought perhaps we should divide into three and each expert is going to talk about their specific area of expertise. So we all do the same kind of job. We're all business English coaches. But as you know, we all focus on different things. So Birgit is our grammar queen, Dave is our communications guy, and I'm your mindset girls. And I'm the mindset girl. So we thought if you had five or six minutes, each of us, and you had to tell someone something really valuable, something that they could take away and really use in their language learning journey, what would it be? So that is our challenge for today. And Birgit is going to kick us off. Are you ready, Birgit, to tell us what is something really important that you think people should take away? Take away. Thank you, Rebecca. Yes. Hello, everybody. That sounds a bit like grammar queen as though I was talking only about grammar, which is not true. I talk about all the other issues, also vocabulary, mindset and how to stay motivated and all that. But I must confess there's something I always check with clients. And I think it's really important when you want to speak English. And this is something I noticed when I started teaching English and working with people who needed some help. And that is the grammar bit is important here, especially for German natives. So we all have the same background. We translate our sentences and we get confused. So once you stop after school and you leave school, of course, you had some grammar lessons, but you don't remember that very much. And in English language, there are about 12 side form and tenses, you could say. But I discovered when I started teaching and working with people, not every of these tense has the same importance. So you need to know the basic ones, which I call the big five. And that's five out of 12. And then it's the first step for me. That's what I discovered. It's easier if you take it in steps. And this is how I started to work with people and they found it helpful. I discovered it helped people and it makes it possible to navigate a little more easily through the language. And when I thought about this and wanted to break it down, it became clear to me that this were five tenses really. And I would like everybody to realize that what we do very often, we don't reflect much on the tenses maybe when we talk, but it's important when you talk English to use future tenses to communicate the future and to use the continues when you're doing something at the moment and to be able to use present perfect tense because this is the tense that's really, really difficult for learners because it's got a different mindset behind it to our German language. So what are the big five? So I can give you an overview. We have the simple present tense. This is when you talk about things in general, work somewhere, you live somewhere and you do something repeatedly. Then you have the present continuous, the ING. And a lot of people confuse this. So we had an episode on overuse of ING. People say I'm working for a company, but that would mean for a listener of native English that you would stop at some point. So you come to an end. So it's more like I'm doing something, which we don't use when you're really doing it at the moment. This is the ING. Plus you can use it as a future tense. And this is something interesting people don't remember from their school days, but it's a future tense that's very often used in English. And then you have, of course, talking about the past, the abgeschlossen, the simple past tense, when you talk of some certain point in the past, last week, et cetera. But you also have the present perfect, the very difficult tense. And I discovered working with many people that even people who spoke a good command of English were struggling with this. So this needed surely to go into the big five. And that's the basic grammar tense that you really should be sure about. Present perfect. I have just done something. I have not done it yet. So you have wonderful signal words, how to learn them. And we talk about it in one of our episodes, too, of course. And the last one, number five, is to use future tense. We have a tendency here to forget about future. So we say I go to the gym tomorrow, but there's no future transported. So my advice is for learners who need to integrate this, to start using will. Will will always help you to transport the future. But there's more, as I said before, 12 tenses. And then you can build up on that. So you have five major or basic tenses. And that's, for me, looking from above, really like the basics, the first step, and then you build up on them. So you have present perfect, and then you can build up past perfect. It's a lot easier once you've understood the concept to work with that. And this is my main message for today and the takeaway. So that could mean you want to listen to some other episodes now. You might think, oh, grandma, leave me alone. I don't like it. But I just had a wonderful post on LinkedIn where it says you can care about your grammar if you don't care. But that's like people will have an opinion. You talk a good English, don't you? And my clients, very often business clients, even C-level, they do care a lot about how it sounds and to be correct when they talk. Okay. Was this too long? No, I was timing. It was about exactly five minutes. So well done. Really? Well done. You stuck in your five minutes. Really? Five hours? Absolutely. I was just going to add, isn't there some nice statistic that something like 90% of all English conversation is based on the big five or something like that? I'm always a bit more reluctant to say like nine to 95%. I would probably say 80%. But it's a lot. You can be sure I really observe myself and I observe people a lot when they talk, even when I watch television. And it's true. I mean, it's the vast majority of wordings of sentences in English are communicated with these five tenses. So this is why I feel so strong about it. I would really like to help people integrate those and understand them. And I think the other point is that, like you said, once you've got those, you can build on them. But I get so many learners who come and go, oh, I want to learn future perfect continuous. And I think you can't do present perfect. When was the last time you used that? Exactly. First of all, don't need it. And first of all, learn the other one first. And they want to sort of run ahead, but they don't realize that going back to basics, it's not a step backwards. It's actually what will bring you forwards in the long term is like go back to some of that. And then once you've really got that, yeah, a large part of your conversation will be correct. And then you can build on that. That's what I experience with my clients, I have to say. OK, I think the signal words, you mentioned that, Birgit. I often try and say, because I think we always tend to translate out of our own language, German into English in this case, that if you have these signal words and in your mind, you know that you're going to say, for example, since, zeit or since, then that should be a sort of a ringing in the head that it's probably, not always, but probably with the present perfect. So I've lived in Spain since 2021 or whatever it was. If you have these signal words in your mind, it maybe helps you then to say, aha, I get the right tense here. So if you're talking about something at the moment, then it's the present continuous to the ING version. So I think that's maybe a hack for people just to try to figure out which are the signal words for each tense. And that maybe then, and also to obviously know what the German signal words would be in that context. And then when they're talking just to bring them in. But of course, use then the correct grammar. And I do agree. I think it's very important that the grammar is right. Yeah. It's there for a reason, even though many natives don't always have the best grammar either. Of course. Yes. Always. Right, Rebecca? Yes, of course. No, that goes against what I'm going to talk about. So let's move on. Let's leave this. Okay. And Dave is next, I think. Okay. Have you got the time? Yeah, I'm timing you now. I'm ready. I'm ready. On your marks. Get set. Go. Go. Here we go. All right, guys. Hello. I didn't say hello earlier. Shame on me. Yeah. What's a key thing for learners? I was listening to Birgit, what she had to say. And at the very end, she talked about listening. And that is my topic. It may sound very simple, but I think there are two ways of looking at this. Firstly, there's listening for language learning, which is what Birgit was talking about earlier. And secondly, there's also listening as a form of helping communication work between yourself and other people, because of the way you listen, or how well you listen. And I think for both sides, it's a skill that certainly people underestimate, and maybe don't do enough of on both sides, whether it is listening for learning, or also listening in the idea of communication. So what we call active listening, basically. I'll have a look at both sides, but I'll start with obviously the one that is important for learners. And that is very simple. Listen as much as you can, because it helps you to learn the language, in particular, new vocabulary, maybe also new structures to come back to the grammar things. And of course, new phrases, anything like that. What can you listen to? Very simple. First of all, podcasts. Listen to our podcast on a regular basis, because did you know that not only with the podcast, we also have a transcript. The good thing then, of course, is that you can listen to us, and also read the transcript at the same time. And that helps you, of course, that you can hear the words or phrases, etc. And then also maybe pick out the words that you didn't quite understand. And then maybe it's easier to understand that way around. And use that to maybe on the one hand, when you're doing something else, like chores or in the gym, it's just using the time, or actually using it as a learning tool. So to spend time when listen to us again, when you're the podcast for that matter, or maybe a podcast in the English language of a topic that you enjoy, crime or whatever it might be, and make some notes on it, take out vocabulary, and then learn it from there. Of course, there's also YouTube videos, goes without saying, with subtitles and works similarly to the transcripts. They're not always perfect, but I think they give you a good helping hand. Maybe the downside to YouTube is that often it is very fast, people speak quickly. But there is the little hack that you can go to the bottom, there's a little cog, and you can press there on this cog, and it will be able to reduce the speed a little bit of the sound of the video. So that's always a good thing to do if it's too difficult to understand if it's too fast at the time. It's also quite good, a little tool, if you like a video and you want to get, for example, the transcript like you would get from a podcast. If it's below 30 minutes, you can copy the link and put it into a tool called TurboScribe. It's all for free, and then that will produce a transcript of the video. So that's also then you can use that transcript to do, like I said before, any kind of vocabulary work, watching the video again, reading at the same time. And also with TurboScribe, the good thing about this topic, TurboScribe, is that you can get the audio, you can download it. So you just have the audio of the video as well, and linked up with ChatGPT. You could then maybe ask ChatGPT to give you a summary, or there's all the kinds of things that you can do with that. The other things, of course, you can listen to. The third thing is a conversation. Obviously, you were in conversation with people. And I just remember the times when I was in Germany, learning German. And of course, young Dave liked to go out for his beers. And what did German pubs do brilliantly? They threw beer mats around, like there's no tomorrow. Everywhere had beer mats. And it was great. The wet beer mats, you just tore off the back, and then you have a blank piece of paper. And that's how I would learn German. I would go there, speak to people, write down the words I didn't know. I listened in, what was that word again? And I wrote it down. And I'd go home with a pocketful of beer mats. And then the next morning, I'd wake up with a strange feeling, and I'd be able to look at my words that I learned yesterday. Anyway, the other big thing is, I'm going over five minutes. Rebecca's giving me the book I've done in five minutes. Just a very quick one. Active listening, very important. We're building communication stuff. Please, guys, move away from the level one, which is what most people do. And that is just listen, but you have your own thoughts, you focus on yourself. If you can get to level two, that would be brilliant. This is where you're more focused, and you are actually listening to the people's words, and you're trying to follow them. And then there's a level three, which very few people actually get to, where you're really being more empathetic with your listening. You're listening out for their needs, and their thoughts, and everything like this. That is also a skill that can be learned and practiced, and I highly recommend that as a tool for communications, to build a better rapport with other people. So that's my five minutes over listening. Great. Did you listen carefully? Do you still have the mat? I'm listening. The beer mats. The beer mats. Have you got your collection? No, no, no. They're all in my mind. Did you never do that? No, I didn't know that story. I was thinking, where are we going with this story? I didn't know what you were going to say. I thought you were going to learn vocab from the Sprichel. Yeah, I was thinking that. I was thinking that. But isn't that normal to have masses of beer mats? You're shaking your head. To be honest, here in Ireland, you do get, with your Guinness, you always get a beer mat. But I think Germany, it's more extreme. They throw them around. My dad, for years, collected German beer mats when he came to Germany, because they were just interesting. And there were lots of different ones of all the small breweries. So it is a big German thing. That's true. And it's the best way to learn, isn't it? You're listening to people and you pick up words and phrases. Taking notes. Yeah, absolutely. I have a picture of mine of Dave sitting there writing. Yeah, but the problem was when I woke up in the morning and they were all in the one side of my pocket, the back pocket, I had a bit of a backache and it was hard work. Did you? Hard work learning German beer pits. I'm not going ahead with that part. Well, you left your pants on. Okay. Well, when you get home. We're getting too much detail here. Dave and his pants. No, no, no, no. Not pants. Trousers. Trousers. Jeans. Yes, yes, yes. There's an American difference and the British difference, guys. How can I follow that now? I don't know if I can follow that story now. But you were listening to me, weren't you? I was actively listening to you, Dave. Right. Level two, I hope. Yes. Level two. Of course. Very good. Okay. As we all know, as language learners, mindset is important. It's not just about grammar and it's not just about communication. It's also about your mindset, how you feel about a language. So that's going to be my topic. Are you watching the clock? Is someone watching the clock for me? Yes. Yes. I think my main topic today is people always talk about things you have to think about when you're learning a language, things you have to remember. So my topic today is things you have to forget. So I'm going to talk about the four forgets that I often mention to my clients. If I have a short one session, we haven't got a lot of time and they want some mindset advice, I talk about the four forgets. So forget number one is forget perfection. If you are learning a language, you will never be perfect. And even high level people C2, we're not perfect. You know, my German is C2, but I make mistakes. And the minute you accept that, the more you can progress. You can't progress if you always looking for this perfection because you will always avoid speaking. You will avoid taking risks. You will avoid trying new things because you're afraid of making mistakes and you will never progress like that. This is phrase practice makes perfect. No practice makes progress. It doesn't make perfect in all parts of life. Let's be honest. It's not just about language learning, but I think that is a big issue to keep in mind. And also think when people connect with you and people communicate with you, they don't communicate with your perfect grammar. They communicate with you as a person, as an authentic individual. Are you engaging? Are you interesting? Are you fun? And when I think about clients and how they engage with me, you know, I don't think about, oh yes, that so-and-so with his perfect two to tens. I think about, oh, that's him. And he tells me stories about this and that's really nice. And it's interesting. And you engage with the person you don't engage with their perfection or their perfect grammar. So that's my first point, forget perfection. Point two, second, forget is forget shame. This fits on with perfection. Language learning is one of those things where you will constantly make mistakes. So if you are a person who's really embarrassed every time you say something wrong, you will not do well with language learning. You have to deal with that and accept that it's nothing to be embarrassed about. You don't have to be ashamed or you can laugh it off or you can just ignore it. It doesn't matter. The best people in the world make mistakes at the top of their game. You know, number one people in the world in sports have a bad day. I was reading something the other day, Michael Jordan, you know, top basketball player of all time. I think they say he missed something like 3000 shots in his life, in his career, in his professional career. And he lost 300 games in his professional career. So if you were really embarrassed about that, you'd just stop. You wouldn't carry on. But of course, that's not a good philosophy. So keep that in mind, that shame, being embarrassed. Often clients say to me, oh, I'm sorry, they make a mistake and they apologize. And I would say, there's absolutely no need to apologize. Making mistakes shows that you're trying and correcting those mistakes then shows that you're growing. So that's the most important thing is growth. It's not perfection. Number three, forget number three is forget about the negative past. So a lot of people carry this negative baggage. My teacher told me I was no good at English and I never would be. It sounds dramatic, but I can tell you so many people who've told me that, that they experienced that at school. Could be a teacher. It could be even their parents told them, oh, forget about English. You're no good at that. So don't do that. Your peers, if you've had some sort of negative experience with English in the past, or you just didn't do much English at school, perhaps. And so it's always been this lack that you see, leave it behind. It's holding you back and it's not going to help you in moving forward. So forget about the negative past, forget about that teacher. It doesn't matter. You decide from here what happens. So that's important. And the last one, my last forget, fourth forget is forget the magic pill. There is no magic pill to becoming good at languages. Of course, now people are saying AI is the magic pill. It's like the azempic of weight loss. AI is the azempic of language learning. You just take this pill and everything's better and you get the results you've always wanted. It is a tool. It is helpful. Absolutely. Does it have a place in language learning? Absolutely. But it is not a magic chip in your head. Maybe it will be in the future. Maybe we will have a chip in our head and it says right now I speak Mandarin or something. We don't know. But right now and for the foreseeable future, it is not a magic pill. And no matter what system or app people are trying to sell you, it doesn't mean that it's going to solve all your problems. It's like weight loss. There is no magic solution. You have to find your way. You have to find your method. You have to find what works for you. It is consistency and just keep going, doing the small things like doing your listening, like Dave said, working on your grammar, like Birgit said, working on those tenses and take it step by step because there is no magic pill. That's my piece for today. Four forgets. Wonderful. I love that. Love it. Yeah, yeah. And also the practice makes perfect is wrong. I mean, it's a common phrase, isn't it? Practice makes perfect, but practice makes progress. I like the shift there. Absolutely. And the shame and the negative past, of course, is something that you hear all the time. I'm sure Birgit as well has a similar thing. There's no magic pill, is there? Just don't eat. Stop eating. Just drink water. Exercise. It's hard work. One way, the other, any subject is just consistency, discipline, change of habits. Just have that the day before. People can't get started, can't get around to repeating. Just make it a habit 10 minutes a day if you really, really need it or you want to forget about the past. Change your perspective. Yeah, I think that's important. Yeah, very good. Yeah. Okay. That's our three expert inputs, let's say for today. And this kind of is what we are doing on Friday this week, April the 24th in our workshop. Not the same content, obviously, but this is just an example of kind of how our workshop functions that we all divide. The group rotates between the experts. So they do an hour with Dave, an hour with Birgit, an hour with me, plus a group session as well or two group sessions. And this is the point is that it's a short amount of time. It's only a few four hours, I think the whole day, four and a half hours starting at nine. But you get this sort of intensive import. It's not only import, it's also interactive. There is time for questions and some discussion and some practice. But the idea of the workshop was to just give you a boost for a short amount of time. You get a large amount of input in a similar kind of way that we've done that today. So there's still time to sign up. You can head over to the website freeenglishexperts .com and you can book online. If your company would like to pay, you can also book offline. Just drop us a message and we can sort out an invoice, a separate invoice. You don't have to pay by the website if that doesn't suit. And you get three sessions for free to the conversation club as well. So after the workshop, you still have the option to come along and to have conversation to keep you going. And you also get a personalized roadmap. So a learning roadmap, how to continue after the workshop. There is some kind of future progress from going forward from the workshop. The golden nugget. So it's me for the golden nugget this time. And the golden nugget is to explain what a Padlet is. And more importantly, the Padlet that is linked to our 50 golden nuggets PDF that you can get if you sign up for our newsletter. So what is a Padlet? A Padlet is something like a notice board, a digital notice board. And on there, you can attach posts, you can attach links to a website, you can attach photographs, whatever you want to attach to it. What we did is we provided this 50 golden nuggets PDF, as I said, which you will receive if you decide to take our newsletter, which is every month. And with that, the 50 nuggets is linked to this Padlet. And there we also have extra materials for you based on the 50 nuggets. And what we're going to do now is also add to the 50 nuggets. So this time round, we thought it would be great to add something to the Padlet, which is basically now nugget number 51. And that is my cheat sheet to my one and a half hour webinar about active listening. If from a communication standpoint, you're interested in the topic of active listening, what it's all about, how you can do it, what things to listen out for, excuse the pun in that situation, but what you need to do, how to make it better, etc, etc. Then you can get the cheat sheet from that webinar as number nugget 51. So please, if you like all that, and you want to get all the rest of the ideas that we have for golden nuggets, then go to our website, as Rebecca told us before, sign up for the newsletter, and it will come through into your email box with the PDF. And on page five, I think it is, there is the link then to the Padlet, which you click on, and then you will see everything that you have, what you want to have a look at there, you can download stuff. But it's important to also try to keep the link, save the link, and then can always come back to it and look at it again and again. And we will always add new stuff. So congratulations, guys, we're on 51. 50 plus, I would say. Heading to more. Absolutely. Not everyone. I'm not 50. I'm getting there. I'm nearly there. I'm nearly there. Almost. But you know, once the year started, I always say the new birth, it's my new age. New age. Well, what do they say about 50 now? It's the old 20s, right? 50 is the new 20. I don't know. Yeah, definitely. 100%. You certainly look 20-something. Oh, thank you, darling. Okay, next time, we're going to talk about how to answer questions. So in a business setting, so that's a Business English episode, it will be in a Business English presentation, people know they can prepare for a presentation. And we had an episode on that as well. But then it's a bit at the end of every presentation, usually Q&A or just questioning. And they are supposed to answer spontaneous questions and how to answer those. So that's a big, maybe a scary moment for some people. But Dave has got fantastic tips on that, a new communication tool. It was a difficult part, obviously, but you can prepare for that. And you can use it in meetings in general anyway. So we thought that's worth an episode, how to answer questions. Okay, thanks for listening today. And hopefully you'll press play again and follow our episodes and we can win you as a regular listener. That would be great. Thanks for listening. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for pressing play today. If you enjoy our podcast,