What You Say in English!

Remember that part 2 of the IELTS speaking test is a long turn in which a candidate must speak at length on a given topic. Preparation time is given to organize ideas and students must show control of a wide range of features. Here, I'm giving feedback on the main four aspects: grammar, vocabulary, discourse, and pronunciation. The question was: Describe an interesting story that you heard or read...

In this episode, I close 2020 on a high note. Valerio is an English learner with a passion for languages. I've seen how he strives for perfection in everything he shares with the MAOFEN Facebook group . Despite having some hesitation, he manages to communicate his ideas quite clearly. He still needs to brush up his grammatical control and use the correct tenses, but he compensates marvelously with...

What is it that some people do to learn a language effectively that others don't? In this episode, I talk about what research says about the strategies that Good Language Learners (GLL) do that you may wish to incorporate into your own learning journey. Neil Naiman and other researchers give us 6 strategies that you can start including in your own learning: 1) Finding a learning style that suits y...

In today's episode, I take some time to look at factors that people don't usually consider when learning English. I covered aspects like social distance , following Schumann's acculturation model , or the idea that proximity to the culture of the second language will benefit your learning process. Also, I talk about age differences and try to debunk some myths about how younger and older learn a s...

For this week, I am reacting to Pasquale Cangiano , one of the administrators of the Facebook group Canguro English . He's a 47-year-old Italian man who has many things to say about learning English. The best part is that he's not an English teacher, but he has come to the same conclusion as many English teachers: learning a language is about how much you enjoy the process . The whole conversation...

In today's episode, I try to take a deeper look into what people think fluency is, and I question what our conception is for that term. From the get-go, I can say that it's a very tricky term to define and I also believe that it shouldn't be considered as a goal in language proficiency. I open the debate as to what other aspects of English language learning are truly important, in my opinion, and...

Last week, I did a mock speaking with a girl from Oman, Aisha, in which she demonstrated some good skills but still needed some help to extend her responses. This week, I'm coming with some great advice from TakeIELTS.net to make the most of the time you have to show what you do in English. I will guide you through the speaking component and tell you what you should and shouldn't do to get the ban...

Have you heard about the IELTS test? As takeIELTS.net is a sponsor of this podcast, I decided to do a mock speaking with Aisha, from Oman, and give her feedback on her performance. If you still don't know anything about the test and how important it is internationally, I suggest you should head over to ielts.org to find out more about it. The speaking component of the IELTS is quite simple in its...

In today’s episode, we’re going to listen to three incredible people. First, a message from Ahmad (Senegal), who sent his support and encouraging words. If it wasn’t for this kind of feedback, I wouldn’t be able to continue doing this podcast. Also, we have someone a girl from Saudi Arabia: Aysha . She shows good speaking skills but gives an opportunity to see what a missed opportunity is when oth...

In today's episode, an English teacher originally from Madagascar but living in South Africa, Jenny Nadia, gives us excellent examples of great conversational skills. You can tell by the natural way in which she uses English that she's constantly surrounded by English speakers. Her variety of English is quite interesting to analyze because of all the features that are common in many regions of Afr...

The phrase I used from this episode comes from a quote that Francesco has on his Facebook page: "Nella vita ti diranno 'non ce la farai', allora tu girati e rispondi 'guarda come si fa'." This comes in encouragement for everyone out there who still think that speaking English is not for them. He's a police officer from Sicily who enjoys spending time with his family and friends. Francesco showed e...

This time, I'm using two recordings from the fantastic Facebook group Canguro English. Just like in Masters of English, learners from around the world connect and help each other, and most of the time with the guidance of the administrators of the group, to improve their English. The two people I have today are Juan Aguilar , who expressed his desire to be more fluent and Mike Pinargote , a 24-rea...

Telling stories is usually considered a great skill in your own language. When you know how to captivate your audience with anecdotes, people will probably say that you have a great talent: you have a way with words! In this episode, I'm using an anecdote told by the famous Hollywood actor, Will Smith , when he visited the British talk show " The Graham Norton Show ". I will explain the different...

In today’s episode, Daniel Goodson joins us to talk about how much he loves learning languages. We discussed what he loves about learning English, what he finds difficult, and, most of all, what he does to improve. I believe he’s a great example of self-determination and motivation to learn English. We spoke about a lot of things, from accents, receptive and productive skills, code-switching and m...

Today I had a full interview with Ivonne, a vibrant instructional designer from Mexico City who loves learning English. She talks about her life, her job, her family, and her dreams for the future. Overall, she performed very well, very naturally, even using intonation to emphasize her emotions. In her feedback, I tried to focus on things she definitely needs help with to achieve good intelligibil...

Giving feedback requires time and dedication. Also, as a teacher, one must focus on things that people need to improve, which would cause problems in communication. Today, we have the sweet greetings from Ny Haingo (Madagascar), as well as Abhishek (India) performing two of the tasks from the questions of the month, and finally, Harika (India), giving us a summary of the video activity also posted...

In this episode, I discuss some important aspects of pronunciation that teachers should consider when giving feedback on pronunciation. I explain why intelligibility is more important than accent, as well as what specific phonological elements are crucial to sound clear and understandable to other speakers and trust me, it's not precisely to sound like a native speaker. I used two segments to illu...

In this episode, I'll introduce you to the concept of Discourse and how it can help you keep your speech coherent and unified. It's something very extensive, as it touches other areas such as grammar, vocabulary, and even pronunciation. I've tried to keep it as simple as possible but retaining the necessary terminology that will help you identify the elements you need to improve on your speaking....

In this episode, I take a closer look at what makes vocabulary in speaking, also called "lexis". The different levels and the things I pay attention to when I have to give my opinion about how English learners use vocabulary. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/whatyousayinenglish/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/whatyousayinenglish/support

In the first episode, I wanted to cover some of the basic concepts to understand the type of feedback I give to my students. I will cover other ideas as what we look at when we analyze grammar in speaking in the broader concept of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) Useful resources: The CEFR (The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) The ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of For...

Ok, so here's the situation... You've been trying to improve your speaking for so long. The problem is, that you can't always find someone who can help you with it, especially when feel you need to work harder to make yourself understood. Or like when you go into a store and ask for something, and the salesperson comes back with something completely different, and then you realized that it was bec...