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Here is the transcript for the latest episode of the Breeze Lingo podcast English is a Breeze!
Hi everyone, Sam here and welcome to the latest episode of the English is a Breeze Podcast. I hope you are all having a nice day, wherever you are in the world.
So today, I have a question for you, my lovely listeners:
“Do you actually like English?”
A lot of people would probably answer this question with a big fat NO. Most people actually hate English, but I think it is because they put so much pressure on themselves to learn it for things like improving their job opportunities or passing exams, and this extra stress and pressure actually makes learning English even more difficult. According to research, stress actually prevents information from entering the brain and being processed, however, if you are having fun and actually enjoy what you are learning, your brain releases all kinds of good and helpful hormones which improve learning and memory.
So, to help you put the fun back into learning English, I´ve invited a very good friend of mine, David from Chile, to tell us about why he feels that we should not take learning English so seriously.
Sam: Hi David!
David: Hi Samantha, how are you?
Sam: I´m fine! How are you?
David: Very good here in Val Paraiso in Chile.
Sam: Perfect and thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today.
David: yeah, I´m glad to talk to you again in English because we just talked in Spanish some seconds ago, and I’m happy to be here with you.
Sam: Thank you very much, it’s great talking to you again. So, you just mentioned that you are living in Chile and you are from Chile of course but can you tell me a little bit more about yourself?
David: Ok, Ok, yeah, well I´m from Santiago the capital of Chile. I´m 40 years old now, and just moved to Val Paraiso a city near the coast just roughly 2 hours from Santiago. I´m a Civil Engineer in water, basically a water engineer and I´m working in the Universidad de Val Paraiso or Val Paraiso University, just giving some lessons of engineering and water.
Sam: OK, and of course everyone listening can hear that you speak English extremely well
David: Thank you!
Sam: So, can you tell us a little bit about that?
David: I started in school, when I was in school maybe 13, 14 years old, there was a time that I took some lessons after school, because I wanted to learn more English. In the school I was, we had some English lessons too but I thought it was a good idea to take extra lessons, and that helped me a lot, actually, just to get greater grades in school but also to talk to some people in some trips I took with my family when I was young and also with some family I had in the States. So, I think it was a good idea if I look back.
Sam: So definitely, people say that starting English when you are younger it does help doesn’t it, because I think when you´re a kid, but also, I think it´s important to have some motivation because, I don´t know, as a 14-year-old child, sometimes the idea of studying is not really your idea of fun! So having the motivation to study English when you are younger, I think it is very important to help you.
David: Yeah, I think some people here in Chile, some kids, are studying other languages to get to know the culture, maybe some Japanese, some people are studying Japanese just to get more into the Manga culture and more people is studying English because of, I don´t know, music, and video games or whatever. So, I think that is the motivation that young people can have. I had that too, because I love music, rock music, and I love to hear and to understand what the bands were playing, and also because of just conversation, I think that is something that maybe not at 14 years old, but I see now that it’s so great to have conversations with many people from different countries in the world. English is universal now so when I was in Europe for a while, I got to know many people just talking in English so that is a great motivation now.
Sam: Yeah, you are right. In the end English at the moment is the universal language, isn’t it, so if you travel anywhere it’s kind of the base language that most people are going to be speaking. So of course, it gives you a lot more possibilities of getting to know people and not just in Europe, I guess in a lot of countries around the world. But of course, you spent quite a lot of time in Europe didn’t you so can you tell us a little bit about that?
David: Well, yes, that’s the part of my English motivation in the technical way because I studied engineering, I wanted to travel around the world when I finished my studies here in Chile, and my teacher just told me “You know there are some scholarships to go to study in Europe, would you like to go?” and I said ah, continue studying, OK, I will think about it! And in the end, I won the scholarship and I had to learn more technical English. I lived then one year in England where we met, I think in the year twenty-eight, 2008, so a long time ago.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, a long time ago.
David: Yeah, exactly and then one year in Hungary, so in Hungary, not most people speaks English so all the people speak German, but with the young people we managed to communicate in English and those two years in my life were just perfect I have great memories of those years.
Sam: Yeah, I remember as well, it was fantastic that year, 2008 was an amazing year and yeah, when I think back to that year when we studied together the masters at university and in our group, there were people from all around the world weren´t there?! So, in your case and some others from Latin America, then there were people from Asia, from different parts of Europe, and I found it incredibly interesting how we all managed to communicate to each other but it´s because all of the other people who were not English all spoke English! So, for the English people like me, it was incredibly easy to talk to everyone because everyone else made the effort to learn English. And I remember be so impressed by people like you because it wasn´t just going on holiday and speaking English to ask for a beer or an ice cream, it was using English to study a very technical master’s degree in engineering. So, I remember being incredibly impressed by everyone that year and having a lot of fun as well! Getting to know everyone.
David: Yeah, that year was fantastic. I think as you say, we did a group of, I don´t know, 10, 12 people. Do you remember that trip to Scotland? So we were, I don´t know, from many nationalities and we were all talking in our rough English but we had a lot of fun and a lot of experiences.
Sam: Definitely, definitely. So, it´s true that speaking English it’s not only related to the professional life. Like, a lot of people find the motivation for learning English because of their jobs or more towards their professional careers. You´re talking about learning English to be able to meet people and to get to know people from other countries and to study, and of course, probably later that has helped your professional life but, in the end, you found your motivation in another way and obviously you used your English a lot.
David: I can give you an example. In 2021, I came back to Europe for a couple of weeks for a technical conference in Ireland and so I was, I don´t know, in a technical session in this water congress, but at night, I went into some bars to drink some beers and talk to people so, I used English in both ways so it’s part of life now. It’s part of my job but it’s also part of my life because I like to go to some bars to drink some beers and listen to some music, and also, to talk to people so it’s part of life, and it opens you many doors and windows in life.
Sam: It doesn’t have to be so serious, does it? Like a lot of people, maybe a lot of my students take English very seriously because it is more related to getting a better job or advancing their professional careers, but I think English or any language can be so much fun cant it, because even if you don´t know exactly how to say something but you’re in a bar and you’re meeting people and if you make a mistake, everyone just has a laugh and it’s good fun. I think making learning English a fun thing is really important as well and not to take it too seriously.
David: Yeah, that´s definitely true. It´s part of life and in life, we commit some mistakes and that’s OK. I don’t speak perfectly and nobody speaks perfectly so it’s part of life, it doesn’t have to be that serious as you say, and it opens up more doors than anything else, I think. I got to travel to Poland, to Denmark, to many countries because I met some people that don´t speak, are not natives in English, but we communicated in English and they said “hey, if you want to come to my country sometimes, just come” and of course many times.
Sam: Your right, so like you said it opens up so many doors and windows and possible friendships and it is really fantastic having that way to communicate with other people, definitely.
David: Yeah, exactly.
Sam: So, just before we finish, I was wondering if you had any advice that you could give people who are learning English.
David: I think it’s the things that wave just talked. It´s like it helps a lot in some technical way or it opens professional windows or doors, but it’s more, much more than that. It opens much more ways to communicate with people from other cultures. So, we had this guy from Ethiopia, that we had a lot of communication, remember with Alex, and we met, a guy from Chile that doesn’t anything from Africa or whatever, and I just met this guy and we had this friendship. I met you so I got to know the proper English culture of the North. That’s fantastic! That’s the thing I value most, not the technical and professional things. It’s the opportunity to talk to people from different parts of the world, knowing their culture or how they see life, how they understand life. And also, I can share what is Chile or Latin America. Well, you got to know that because we made a lot of BBQs at my place and we drank some Chilean wine. So, I think that’s the most important thing for me.
Sam: Yeah, exactly! So, like a change of cultures, isn’t it? Rather than, it doesn’t have to be all focused on the technical part, or speaking perfectly or passing exams in English to have a certificate. It’s more about opening up your mind to different cultures and learning how people are from different countries. I completely agree. I mean, it’s not a normal situation, like you say, for maybe an Ethiopian guy, a Chilean guy and an English girl to be in the same room, talking in English about different things! But I think we all learnt so much from each other and maybe it’s helped us become more open-minded people and that has probably marked us for the rest of our lives which is wonderful as well.
David: Yeah. We have to accept that we are different but we can communicate and we can have fun, we can share and that’s I think very important to how to educate or children just to say “hey, we are different but we can communicate and we can share a lot.”
Sam: Exactly, exactly. I totally agree David. Well, that’s amazing, that’s all we have time for today but I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today. And I’m sure all the listeners will find what you’ve said extremely interesting and it’ll help motivate them to keep learning English I’m sure as well.
David: Yeah. I hope so and I hope to see you in person again! After 14 years and I don’t know when but I would like to travel again to Europe in the short term so, if I go, I will take a good bottle of wine from Chile! That’s for sure.
Sam: Perfect, perfect and I hope to visit Chile sometime too. I’ve been telling you for 12 years “I’ll definitely come to Chile”, so I hope eventually that will happen.
David: Please, you will be more than welcome here.
Sam: Thanks David, thank you so much.
That´s all for today folks! I hope you have enjoyed this episode and that it has helped you realise that learning English doesn´t have to be stressful and boring and that actually, it can be a lot of fun! Remember if you have any questions about any of the words or expressions from this episode, go ahead and contact me by email or any of the Breeze Lingo social media pages, and I´ll help you out. You can also find the transcript to this episode in the Breeze Lingo blog, so if you want, you can follow the transcript whilst you are listening. I probably should have told you that at the beginning of the episode, sorry! But you can always go and listen to it again. Have a great day everyone. Thanks for listening!
