English Conversations With Tiffani | Episode 1 "Meet Alex from Russia"

hey hey welcome to today's episode of conversations with me teacher Tiffany in today's episode I speak with my student Alex and I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and I know that you're gonna enjoy it too so let's jump right in this episode of conversations with teacher Tiffany is being sponsored by the speak English with Tiffany Academy the number one online English Academy for intermediate and advanced English learners all right it's so good to see you how are you likewise Tiffany I've been doing good I caught a bit of a cold so my voice may sound a little bit different but I feel ok I'm getting better exactly exactly my Christmas ones alright we enjoyed it yeah it's such a such a magical time you know yeah I still feel like I'm a child and you know I'm excited every every single year it counts it's just great to have this time you know good I also enjoy the holidays I love spending time with my family and I have two little nieces so they make Christmas even more fun they get so excited about opening gifts so yeah it's great I'm a bit jealous because my family is in Russia yeah for four years oh really yeah yeah Oh since we moved to the United States Brazil here and we're still trying to solve the visa the visa status and stuff like that but yeah it's still funny you know because we have friends here in Los Angeles so it's still an option you know to be happy and excited that's very true yeah well Alex I want to go back and start with the first question because you have spoken via email and I keep going but for students that are gonna watch this one conversation later can you kind of introduce yourself Alex you mentioned you're from Russia but tell us about your alright I'm Alex I moved to the United States four years ago as I said earlier and we moved with my wife so my wife and I we're musicians and we have a band and the band is called chase the comet we play kind of alternative rock but just kinda it's a mixture of genres basically and yeah we've been just you know following our dream because we wanted to see if it can't work out here in America our music careers so that's why we moved and since then I've been learning English pretty hard because then was the goal I wanted to feel confident while I'm having conversations and this is this is how and this is why I found you on YouTube by the way yeah I've been watching lots of English channels and lots of English videos uh-huh I'm trying to do it constantly every day uh-huh and then your video just popped up and I was like okay let's give it a watch and I was so like I liked it a lot divide the the way you learn and I just you hook me up that's what I can say I'm so glad you like the lesson I'm so glad that you decided to join the Academy I'm I really loved being an English teacher hold on all right make off a few choice words every words I really love teaching English and I'm always excited when I get an opportunity to meet my students you know even though it's via video call I really haven't you can feel the way and I know you've been you've been hearing this a lot that you're a great teacher and everyone likes you but still that's true drinking I really we're not gonna flatter you is just the way it is you know it's just pure facts thank you I really appreciate that Alex I really appreciate that and also I know what it means and what it is when you kind of teach any subject because I've been teaching guitar for almost four or five years back in Russia oh well I know what it is to you know to talk to students to see their progress or not to see their progress you know it's stuff but if you have passion yeah you're gonna succeed anyway yeah you know this is what I you have thank you you know it's funny but right before I started the YouTube channel about two two and a half years ago there was another youtuber that I followed and he was giving advice about starting a channel he said whatever you do you have to be passionate about it because out of work and it's been so true throughout my time running the English Channel I mean now it's you know doing well and I'm able to meet students and we had the Academy but there was there were quite a few months where was just hard work early morning also I know you're a great planner so it's not just you know random and chaotic you just plan everything right this yeah that makes the difference because when you have strategy it's easier to move on no so I wanted to ask you how much time how much time did it take to build your YouTube channel like properly to have like a decent amount of views and subscribers so I started my channel I think it's been two and a half years and it's there were periodic jumps I would get my first 100 subscribers it took about maybe two or three months and then the next quote-unquote milestone was a thousand subscribers Matt to another maybe two to three months when I hit that one thousand subscriber point I had a few videos that at that time went viral at that time viral was they've left me a million views Alton okay at that time right now yeah million views right time excited when I got 10 pounds for sure it was kind of a process but one thing I would tell I don't know if you and your wife are ever interested in starting a YouTube channel we have that we have them this is where I'm asking the main thing is follow your idea and your passion and listen to your students so what happened is those students that were viewing my videos they were telling me what they liked and what right all right and as long as I paid attention to what they needed and I kind of adapted like okay well let's say for example there was a time I wanted to teach vocabulary how long you been following me but I started off with the visual vocabulary series right images and I love that yeah exactly they wanted a teacher we want step-by-step and so when I switched you skyrocketed right I think the key is you have to yeah you have to listen to your audience for sure yeah good advice yeah well tell me what's what's your channel I mean students watching they can go watch your videos too well that's funny because we have a few channels the first channel is the channel of our band is called Chase to comment so we have they're like our music videos official media clips and all that stuff you know that bands have okay I want to show it to Jace change the comment yeah okay hold on I want I want to promote my students to I want me I'm gonna open it up on my computer right now I'm gonna share my screen so you guys can see exactly what Nina islets are talking about okay all right this is the first one yeah we've just we've just dropped a new record like a few weeks ago it's called out of the matrix 1.3 thousand subscriber well but we we got stuck a little bit so yeah I mean you know there's a little bit different but with music channels have music bands you have to do lots of light covers so you see through the singer of our band Nika she made a it's like a cover for frozen - oh no the views are not there I don't know why because maybe there's too many covers out there so you have to kind of mix your original stuff with covers because covers they bring you followers they bring your views very true it's not all the time like that's we want to do like you know on the regular base yeah damn we want we want to be focused more on our original stuff but at the same time we have to combine it with covers but anyway pop Palooza solution no what's that since we're talking about it I'm gonna show you there are their YouTube channel because looking at your YouTube channel and also what you are trying to do hold on pumpa loose here we go one second they're also a band they're really good but it seems again like they're doing what you want to do they make their own music but they also do covers but I think they make a great channel for you to follow to get ideas and to see how did they grow what are they doing why are they getting so many like I love it that was ten years ago they haven't may abuse but let's see uploads like one week ago yeah - dissing amount abuse yeah yeah their style seems like something maybe you and your wife or your band would kind of you like to mimic or copy man yeah and also my second channel isn't this second channel is in Russian and this is where I help my viewers and subscribers to stop smoking weed because yeah I've been well I've been through some difficult stages in my life and then I quit and I'm completely sober and I've been sober for a long time thank you this is yeah I felt this necessary to share my experience with some other people and we kind of we have created a little community where we helped each other and where we support each other you know where we were trying to reveal all the negative factors that nobody's gonna tell you about you know really good well do you mind telling me that I know it's in Russian but I do have some Russian students in the Academy and again they may be able to see your channel well my channel is just to scold Alexander miss Joseph my first name and my second name let's spell it together Alexander is just a regular winner huh typing and the last name how do you the last name is M I SH US govt steel V alright now I show it to you just to make sure that spelling is correct is that right yep and again students you're watching this video remember you're at each other so you guys can him and go check out his channel this is refrain I'm just telling how cool it is to live your sober life to be happy every single day of your life you know to achieve some goals no I'm just I'm just sometimes I'm goofing around sometimes I do little rap videos you know I'm just I just feel so much energy that I can not hold it like inside anymore I just want to share it and I'm just feeling happy this is this is the way you feel I guess right so when you feel happy your life is so meaningful and you want to just share it with everyone very true Wow excellent thank you this is a great introduction all right so can you tell us the next question I have for you is when did you start studying English again because it seems like you're very very comfortable with our conversation you're not shy at all when did you start studying English and why did you choose English hmm I've started learning English back in Russia when I was like 10 years old I guess it was my fifth grade but I guess I've started teaching it a little teacher learning in a bit earlier with my mom we would just pick up a vocabulary and she would just teach me like cat dog you know table like simple words when I was a little bit like younger but yeah the 5th grade I guess but again the system we the system the teachers teachers in Russia it's kind of pretty much everywhere you need to practice it every single day you need to have like real conversations you can learn vocabulary you can learn grammar but if you're not using this it becomes like passive you know I mean yes it's like every skill you might have this skill but if you're not using it it's just it's just fading away so yeah it took me it took me some time to get to the level where I'm comfortable with my skills still there's a long way to go okay I want to improve it and I want to be better good good so what is currently the hardest thing about studying English for you not having enough conversations even though I live in Los Angeles even though I have options you know sometimes well again my wife and I we're Russians and obviously we speak in Russian and sometimes just it's it's fine we live in a Mexican neighborhood so no one pretty much speaks English here I got to you know so we have to go out there like we have to go to the office of our company where we work for to have this practice you know to have this conversations but sometimes we work from home and I just get it we just keep speaking Russian and if it like goes on for like a few days I feel like I'm missing it I feel like I'm losing it even like might might my tongue my tongue flexibility you know what I mean mm-hmm exactly it has to be like has to be moving the proper way all the time yeah otherwise you're losing this so yeah not having enough conversations it's a it's it's a problem it's an issue for me I'd say this is who I am this is why I've joined the Academy this is why I'm trying to you know yeah do as much as I can good good good have you um when did you join the Academy how long has it been for you it was like happy Thanksgiving deal or something and oh yeah did you say that's that's the high time this is when I joined it well you joined just in time because I don't have you got my other email January first the price is gonna increase but you don't have to worry it's just fair this is forgiving the service you provide for your students it has to be like but you know that as well as long as you're in you're fine like you're gonna remain askew so currently in the Academy what have you enjoyed so far like again every student in the Academy is at different levels you're intermediate in it but a different level so how has it helped you so far well I've started watching my first step was I started watching the interviews with some other students and this is where I've noticed and this is where I found that no one has to be afraid of their speaking abilities or speaking skills because we still can understand each other and what I think is like the perfection is that the correct word perfection when you're trying to do everything yeah that's where you write you ever can I guess this is this is the most like this is the worst thing you can have this perfection when you just it doesn't allow you to go to the next step you know what I mean like having to afraid yeah and be perfect and you're being too afraid to even start talking because I remember my feeling when we just moved to the United States everyone was speaking so fast and using so much like slang and stuff and I felt like maybe it's not the right time to start speaking maybe this it's not a right time to say something I just I'll just be silent you know mm-hmm the more silent you are the more smarter yeah you are this is what I thought but it's not the way you you will never learn anything if you just you know you have to get out of the comfort zone and I like how this how the students with different skills on the different levels do it anyway they do it anyway I explain they express themselves you understand them the connection goes on exactly it's it's brilliant because so many times we just we are afraid to move on just because we are afraid to make mistake yeah yeah very true logically logically it makes no sense because you make mistakes you become you become a better doing of you know whatever better speak you're better guitar player exactor and stuff you just learn from your mistakes but if you don't if you don't make them you don't learn exactly that's good good I'm glad you said that I I've been um talking to another student in the Academy because again I get a lot of emails every week and I respond to every email and students have said teacher you have so many as like a fan i love them ready i don't know the thing is I really do love my students Alex like I really enjoy you guys a lot so are you sure are you sure you have 24 hours it seems like you have 48 or something I think because I'm so organized and I have certain periods of times for certain things that's really helpful it helps me a lot but I also been a student like I speak Korean yeah I know how it feels to be a your teacher so I know yes it may take me an extra hour every day to check every single email but I know how special a student will feel if I respond to them even if it's very short I think it's very important for me to continue you know responding to email and I like it I enjoy you know breathe brings the meaning to you - what do you do to your job with you or to your passions it's yeah how it has to be you know not everyone does that so yes respect and my today's sponsor is the speak English with Tiffany Academy this is the number one online English Academy for intermediate and advanced English learners the Academy focuses on helping English learners take their English to the next level and change their lives it is a platform where you will find all the resources that you need to finally master English and achieve your biggest goals the Academy's monthly membership is divided into five specific sections section one deals with speaking and fluency section two deals with real English conversations section 3 deals with lesson plans journals and advice section four deals with vocabulary expressions idioms and phrasal verbs and section five talks about American culture as a member you can watch the courses read the ebooks download the lesson plans watch the video conversations and watch the lessons on American culture as much as you want anytime anywhere and on any internet-connected screen you can enjoy a constantly updated library of English courses and other amazing English resources it's a ton of power English lessons waiting for you so click the link in the description and enroll today hopefully you can join the the VIP group which starts in January because like you were saying before meeting the practice time and again that's one thing that students keep telling me needing practice time so I'm working on a project for VIP students where you guys will have a partner from another country so like maybe your partner be from Brazil well you're in bridge I see your Brazil sure I'm just trying to support all the Brazilian students you have yeah but like putting you guys together and letting you talk and that'll also help you become more comfortable and just talking and learning about you this country so I have a lot of ideas you know good good yeah just keep us updated yeah definitely definitely okay well what's your do you have a favorite English book well I listened to lots of like recently I've been listening to lots of audiobooks this app called audible yes audible yeah yeah I just I just adore it it allows you when you just register when you just get this it allows you to download like three to five audiobooks for free and then you just keep the subscription on going on it's like $15 a month or something but again there's so many good books and recently I've been listening to yeah that's the one showing for students listening this is what he's talking about yeah yeah website and also I watched one video per students and one guy told that he really likes the power of now I like yeah I really love this kind of you know motivational books where you just can have some inspiration from and yeah this is what I'm listening right now the power of now good my next book I've already download it my next book is called this is marketing and thanks to you yes great book on my desk good so I have I have something implants and yeah also my previous one was talking to strangers it's a it's a it's an interesting book it's not what I expected it would be but still I I didn't I don't regret I I read it I copy strangers okay into strangers just like well shortly it's a it's a book about how different we are and how our behavior sometimes cannot be predicted learned well as we think we can predict it so it's kind of complicated to talk about it but if you listen to it you get on in here good okay I want to show that one as well again he said this one right here right talking to strange yeah talking to strangers yeah good okay guys so you see this book that Alex has mentioned you guys want to check it out talking to strangers by Malcolm Gladwell good good good all right perfect okay so now I want to know your opinion this question I always enjoy because basically it's students telling me their opinion about teachers so what are three things that make a good English teacher in your opinion well I like the fact that you're not too focused on the grammar because personally I love grammar and to me it seems to be like very logical but again it's very tricky when someone is speaking something when someone is speaking in English and you thinking should I correct him or her or should I let him go yes you know express the thoughts and stuff so it's again it's your question and I kind of question you how like how does it feel what let me think about it so how does it feel when someone when someone is making mistakes but you just let them go on because you know they are expressing themselves great question yeah I mean is it a good way to correct every single step because you know one one girl told me that she lives in Canada and she has been doing the same grammar mistake or something for like ages and no one would correct her and she got so annoyed and so pissed off like no one would even would even tell me lit I'm wrong this is what this is what one one situation yeah like one situation and on the other hand if you if you're correcting someone for like over and over again they just feel like okay I don't want to go on because like everyone ever everything I'm saying is just wrong so where's the balance I'll tell you the balance and I want to see something so remember toward the beginning of conversation you asked me about the word perfection you're like I said okay and I said oh sure it keeps going and you kept saying and you kept saying it and then I responded and I used it in the correct way and then you immediately copied what I said that's so instead of me saying Alex stop we don't sing it over and over again now perfection is a word but I knew the context you were trying to say it in so I think as a teacher instead of me correcting every single mistake instead it's more important for me to say okay wait a minute maybe he made multiple mistakes but there's one mistake that he's making over and over and over let me correct that because what has happened in his brain or in a student's brain if they're making the same mistake over and over it's become a habit my job is to break the habit those other small mistakes over time if they hear somebody say something they'll kind of mix it so that's my methodology I realize first you get rid of the old lab like main mistake like the mistakes that you hear well how to say teacher so again as a teacher and again it's not something that can be taught every teacher has different techniques my technique is I've given if I got in to know a student or again like we're having a conversation we'd be talking for a little while I can see kind of your level and I'm like okay I can see your comfortability I can see when maybe you get a little nervous again I don't think you're nervous at all but I think for me the main thing I do is try to figure out okay what's the student's weakness let me help with the main weakness and not make everything a weakness because I know how how difficult it is for students to speak in English it's not an easy language so there's a word in English I don't know if you ever heard this word nitpicking you ever heard that word let me show it to you and I'll show to you guys also that are watching this soap nitpicking means to look for all the small problems every single small fun so it's called nitpicking looking for small or unimportant errors or false we say no yeah I see that yeah I see the what's example code examples the synonyms yeah yes pretty makes makes more sense yeah so as a teacher it's important to not for me to not nitpick oh you didn't say this you didn't say that I have another student who's also in the Academy and he'll probably watch this we're very close we talked and talked and I recognized that his issue was he would always go between past and present tense oh so he'd be talking to give me an example let's say for example I'm talking to you and I asked you a question about mmm studying English last year I say hey okay Alex so how did you study English last year some question about the past what when you answer me you say well I will study English with my mom yesterday about the grammar as far as the word the bigger issue was ah you're having a hard time going between past and present present so the longer answer to your question but basically that's the way I teach I let you see yeah this is my answer to you like to be able to analyze such mistakes and make methods out of them you know like to be to be very accurate with every single student and kinda analyze the they are their mistakes their issues and then to be able to bring it up and just improve it that's that's great that's one of the most abilities of the and one of the most goals I guess for every single teacher thank you yeah I really do enjoy it I don't like to make it to make it really individual for everyone yeah yeah that's true very good point very good point yeah the final approach as well good I like that one okay um tell me now I know you said you've been studying English since you were 10 years old and that you also practice your mom but you got more serious about it as you got older how has your life changed after speaking English dramatically dramatically well the first thing I want to mention is that what King movies and TV serious in English it has become such a pleasure you know because because of the voiceovers even though sometimes they are great the great actors do them but still it kind of kills the main idea because you cannot separate a character from his voice yeah it's just it doesn't work this way yeah and to be able to watch the TV series and movies in English it's it's it has changed my life dramatically and also when you listen to your favorite bands and they sing in English and you can understand the lyrics this is great because like back in the day hours I would just listen to them and I would love the music but I I wouldn't have a clue like what they're singing about yeah and also also boobs real conversations I work for for an American company which does the video licensing so I mean my life has changed dramatically as I said and I've been doing a lot to to get to this level so it's kind of it's not just a miracle yeah it is a miracle how we are as human beings capable of you know becoming better learning so many things having everything in our head like a little chorus you know yeah yeah if you put enough time if you put a decent amount of time and if you practice enough and if you're consistent enough it's just it's a miracle how talented we are all of us yeah how far we can go it's great sure good very inspiring good all right what is your dream regarding English do you have a dream well dream maybe not regarding English because I feel like I know I know what I have to do and I see my next steps but maybe just you know my dream for the future is not to stop doing what I do you know not to stop not to stop morning something you know like exploring and discovering new different areas of your life where you can be better as you were before and you know to just grow grow grow grow constant yeah not to get stuck this might be good good all right our final question our final topic is literally what advice do you have for other people other learners because again like you watched other videos and other conversations that I had with students they're gonna watch this video what advice would you give them for students that may not be in the same level what would you tell them well this is what I this is what I said like a few minutes ago my advice would be guys don't be afraid don't be shy you are doing a great job already because not only people of the world speak a few languages speak different languages most of the people they just speak 101 English one language and yeah I mean you are already getting yourself out of the comfort zone and this is great I mean it might be stressful it might be not comfortable but once you start doing this you see it's not that scary anymore you know just you just get this self-confident and just if you do it constantly again this is that this is the way you just don't don't drop what you what you're doing you have to put some time into whatever you do and again don't be afraid don't be shy because we are all human beings we all make mistakes and this is where this is where and this is how we learn from from it so you are already doing a great job speaking of you languages again not everyone does it okay not ever not everyone wants to learn a foreign language mmm since you guys want to learn something new you're in the right place so just go on okay keep moving on can everything is gonna happen Alex thank you so much I really enjoyed this conversation we'd likewise Tiffany likewise really enjoyed it well I'm gonna definitely be posting this today and I know that students are really gonna enjoy this conversation thank you I look forward to seeing you more in the Academy and hopefully you can join us and be I only have a few spots for the VIP but I would love to have you as one of the VIP members too we're gonna do a lot more live classes with the VIP members so hopefully we'll see you there yeah keep me posted as well about your band you know any questions remember you can always email me or message me if you have any questions and anything you need absolutely absolutely I will thank you too all right I hope you enjoyed today's episode if you want to join me for a conversation all you have to do is join my Academy and become my student the link is right here on the screen speak English with Tiffany academy.com join today and you can join me for a conversation I'll see you in the next episode this episode of conversations with teacher Tiffany was sponsored by the speak English with Tiffany Academy the number one online English Academy for intermediate and advanced English learners [Music] you

Channel: Speak English With Tiffani

Views: 73,878

Keywords: english, teacher tiffani, speak english with tiffani, english conversations, learn english, english students, esl students, american english teacher, speak english, english lesson, english class, english conversation, learn english online

Id: Arn3gZG5OU0

Length: 37min 2sec (2222 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 03 2020