[0:12]Good afternoon, good evening, good night, because there are people from all over the world and in different time zones. We got people from Colombia, from Ecuador, from Angola, from Turkey, from Greece, from from from Austria, from Germany, from Romania, lots of people from Romania. I'm sure there was somewhere else. Where was the other place? Can't remember. Oh yes, Mexico.
[0:41]that it's just wonderful, it's wonderful to see so many people. It's an absolute, an absolute privilege for me. And I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming to this session. And yes, obviously, because those of you who know my history know that Mexico is, is super special for me and it's lovely to see so many people from all over Mexico from Chiapas and, and Baja and Chihuahua and, enfim, it's just wonderful. And, and Turkey, and everything, yes, it's lovely. Anyway, listen, before I start, I just want to say a massive thank you to, to the team from Lucy and the team at, Helbling for organizing these webinars. I don't know about the rest of you who are here, but I've watched the others they've had so far, fantastic webinars, full of incredible content and I believe you can still watch recordings of those, of those fabulous webinars and I would like to recommend them to you. But, Helbling, thank you so much for organizing these webinars and more than anything else, thank you for inviting me. And once again, you are all very, very welcome. So, let's get started. Let's get started. Here we go. Now, here are some of the words and the terms we're going to be talking about during this session. And don't worry if they don't mean anything to you yet, I hope that by the end of the talk they will, otherwise I won't have done my job. So, first and foremost, I suppose here in this list is content. And that's very easy. It's the topic, the subject, the things we're talking about, the things students are reading about and so on and so forth. Then there's this concept of deep processing. What does it mean? What's that all about? Well, that's something I want to talk about in a minute. Then I want to talk about root and branch and, and I'll explain what I mean by that in terms of language learning, and harvesting. How do you harvest language? We'll talk about that. And interactions, well, that's pretty clear-cut, and we'll talk about focused language practice as well. So those are some of the things we're going to talk about. And, and so for the last time and I'll probably say something about it at the end, it's an absolute thrill to see so many people popping up in the chat box from so many different places around the world. And, and you are all very, very welcome to this session. So, the first question I have for you this morning, this afternoon, this evening, tonight, I'm really enjoying myself. The first question I have for you is this, where do students get language from? What are the sources of language for students of English as a foreign or second language? Oh, I forgot to mention Brazil, of course. And I'm sure I've forgotten to mention other countries. School, games, media, music, internet, songs, people, film, video, home, songs, YouTube, exposure to real content, from school, from the teacher, from, I'm trying to read this, it's, it's, it's doing my head in, my brain's going crazy. But, but yes, I, I, I kind of, I kind of, I kind of get all that. And, and, I've tried to summarize some of the things you're saying, from listening, from games, from from from teachers, from Tik Tok, yeah, absolutely. From social media, from podcasts, from music, from books, music, TV, native speakers. Well, yeah, that maybe and all, all, so I've tried to sort of summarize all those in four broad categories. So, of course, as many of you mentioned, students get their English from their teacher. Well, let's face it. That's where they're going to hear most English. If they're working in an environment where there isn't English in the world all around the classroom, it's the teacher's English that's going to be the most present in their lives.
[4:59]And that's why many, many students will end up pretty much speaking very much like their teacher because that's the model of English that they are faced with every single day. And, and it's not just the, the English that teaches that we give students when we teach them grammar, the present simple or the third conditional or vocabulary, that kind of thing, it's also the other language we give them, which is just as important, the language of classroom management. The language of, oh, hello, how are you? Oh, how's your mother? Or, did you have a nice weekend? What have you been doing? That kind of thing. So, that's one source of language for students. And, and, another source for me is, of course, the materials. The language presentation, the texts in their coursebook, the grammar exercises, the, the dialogues, the, well, all the stuff they get in their materials, which the teacher sort of leads them through.
[6:07]And, of course, that's where students get English from. And we'll talk about the value of that in a minute. Where else do they get it from? Well, they get it from people we know, from real-life interactions. Someone said earlier on that I, I saw the, the, the term native speaker flashing up. Well, yes, it might be a native speaker, but increasingly in the world we live in, it's almost impossible to say who is a native speaker. And there are so many, many more people who speak English as a second language, just as efficiently and communicatively and well as people who were born with English like me, that, that the distinction is beginning to, in my opinion, but you don't have to agree with me, is beginning to kind of fade away. And most of my good friends in English language teaching, English language publishing, we all speak pretty good English. We may have slightly different accents and come from different places, but it's not so much that. It's, it's the real-life interactions we, we, uh, we have. And anyone who's learned a foreign language, which is probably most of you, most of us, knows what it's like, those real-life interactions. So, for example, living in Mexico as a young man with no Spanish, some of the most powerful learning experiences for me were when I had, when I went to the farmacia or the super or the, maybe not the supermercado so much, but the, you know, maybe the dry cleaner or, or when I went to, um, the tyre to get my car fixed or something like that, you have to, you have to interact in the language you're learning, in Spanish. Help, help, I don't understand. So you fight to understand, you listen to you really listen to what people are saying to you and your brain tries to process what you're hearing and work out what it means. Help, what did he just say? And, and, gradually, as you spend more time, in my, great good fortune of life, spend more time in Mexico, the bits begin to sort of make sense and separate and come together and you, and those interactions were terribly powerful for me as a as a, as a learner of Spanish. And it's exactly the same for learners of English. Interactions, real interactions, whether it's with teachers, classmates, um, people that they meet, I was going to say on the street, but you know what I mean. Those are all terribly important. And, and, and so on. And, and finally, of course, something that all of you have been talking about in the in those, that sort of blizzard of, of, of wonderful suggestions that we had in the chat box, things like Tik Tok, all the social media, like, like YouTube, like podcasts, like, like blogs, like, like English language journalism, like English language movies or, or, or, or songs, or whatever it is. Wow, there's just a richness of, of, English available at the touch of your mouse or whatever it is or or at the touch of your phone.
[9:31]And, and, and those, if you like, are my kind of four general areas.
[9:40]I hope I haven't missed any out, but I hope that they include they're kind of, are sort of overarching terms and categories for most of the things that you've said. But here's my next question. Of these four, of these four, which do you think is the most effective way of getting English? Which is the most effective way of receiving English? The teacher, three, three, three, three, three, four, one, four, three, three, three, four, four, four, three, one, two. This is exhausting, just watching the chat box.
[10:28]Um, but yes, lots of people say three, but that's it's not a it's not there's not complete agreement amongst you and I understand that entirely.
[10:42]And someone said it depends on the on the, I missed what it was, I think it may be depends on the situation or what's going on or something like that. Well, look, I'm going to suggest what what I think, which is the most effective I am. You don't have to agree with me. This isn't, I'm not giving you evidential fact, I'm not giving you the law or the or the law of the prophets or anything. But in my, in my understanding of it, what I believe is that if you look at what I've just put up on the screen, the, and someone mentioned dialogic interaction, and, uh, uh, uh, and, uh, yes, I mean, I, that, that's, for me, if you look at what the darker the blue, in my opinion, the more profoundly effective, uh, these sources of information are. And, and, uh, and I wonder whether those real-life interactions, uh, are, are, uh, are, uh, the absolute sort of gold dust, the, the jewels, uh, and, of course, that's why we always say, if you're lucky enough, if you want to learn Spanish to to end up in, in a village somewhere in a Spanish-speaking country, uh, where no one speaks English, well, wow, you know. That you're going to learn Spanish unless you really, really fight against it. And the same is if you can go to the, there are some parts of, of Britain, agricultural communities or, well, anyway, I'm sorry, I'm getting too detailed. The greatest thing you can do is live in an English-speaking community and have interactions with people. It sort of English happens to you. Um, but it doesn't have to be that. You can also have interactions with all sorts of people online. You can have interactions with people, um, all around you. And as I said, even in the classroom, or with other students, and with teachers and so on and so forth.
