How to learn English | Canguro English

I'm here with my nephew James and he looks like a normal person but actually he's not a normal person why are you not normal James I struggle to get up in the morning I have to reoffer I tried to get up at 6 o'clock every morning by car saw my phone I have about 10 10 could look at all the alarms crazy [Music] hello and welcome to kangaroo English I'm Christian and today we are going to be talking about the best way to learn a language so a lot of people have been asking me recently about the best way to learn a language especially if it's necessary to to study grammar if it's necessary to you know have a book and you know learn vocabulary and learn grandma and today I'm going to prove to you that it's absolutely not necessary this is James hello James is English where are you from German I'm just out of kangaroo jack just outside of cambridge about half now okay just outside Cambridge did you go to primary school yep did you go to secondary school yes and did you study your GCSEs yes okay and you were born in England yes spoke English your whole life okay yeah English do you speak English perfectly yeah yeah okay so now I'm going to ask him a question James what is an adjective okay James what what is it now and you know now he's describing the describing word so for example like happy is a noun yeah okay um do you know what do you know what the verb is a modal verb okay what about um a conditional sentence okay never a relative clause you get the idea right is that he has no idea what a noun is a verb an adjective and he speaks English perfectly okay did you did you learn about this at school about nouns and adjectives were you you learn about it at school but and you you've often forget it because it's a role you don't have to remember it's a rule you just have to learn that the you have to just get it in it put it in put the words in the right places exactly in sentence exactly so this is 100% true okay it's not necessary to memorize the rule it's necessary to memorize how the language works right and James has done this because he lives in England he speaks English every day and he has absorbed all of the rules of English subconsciously subconsciously okay so another example James what is the correct order of adjectives in English is it for example material and then Carla and then size and then origin do you know no okay so which of these sentences is correct the old green big lady or the big old green lady bigger why it's just it makes sense okay it just makes sense he doesn't know the rule for the order of adjectives but it sounds correct to him he has subconsciously absorbed these rules in 1958 there was a psycho linguist called John Bercow Gleeson okay and she revolutionized the world of linguistics when she proved that children children as young as two years old and three years old had memorized internally the rules of English okay and she created something called the one test and today we're going to do the Walker test with James and also you can do it at home okay so the walk test is genius okay so basically we have this is the first slide okay so the first thing we're going to prove is that James knows how to make a plural for a word that doesn't exist in English so James do you want to read okay this is a walk now there is another one there are two of them there are two walks Wireless so James knows to make a plural in English you put an s on the end next one okay there is a couch now there is another one there are two of them there are two gotchas two catches so James automatically knows that when he the word ends okay in a sure he has to add es chess this is a man who knows how to spell he is spouting he did the same thing yesterday what did he do yesterday he spouts yesterday he's found because James knows that when you talk about things in the past in English you add Edie spouts word okay this is cats okay there is another one that there are two of them there are two Casas okay now what's really interesting here is if we focus on James's pronunciation of the plural he actually adds the voiced s he doesn't say casts like this he says Kaz don't you Casas Casas exactly because he knows that when the word ends in a voiced consonant the plural will be up voiced consonant did you know that did you know that when the plural is a voiced consonant I didn't know I was that good this is a man who knows how to Rick he's Ricky he did the same thing yesterday what did he do yesterday yesterday he wreaked exactly okay and again we will see here that James knows when he talks about the past tense and the end of the word rick is an unvoiced consonant that the past tense will be Rick this is a dog with quirks on him he's all covered with quirks what kind of dog is he he is a quark quark key dog wow did you see that a quirky dog James knows that if we need to invent an adjective in English that we put the Y on the end did you know that in English if you can you can take you can take any noun and put a Y and make an adjective quirk quirky Chile's cheesie's yeah James James II good worker maybe you think that James doesn't need to know about English grammar because James is not going to become for example he's not going to be the Prime Minister of England maybe because James doesn't know any grammar it's not possible for him to have a good job like a lawyer or a doctor or the Prime Minister of England well you're wrong in 2016 somebody asked the Prime Minister David Cameron in Parliament if he could describe three things one what is a model - what is the past progressive tense and three if he could identify a relative clause and look at his response for the benefit of the house and for ten and 11 year olds up and down the country will the Prime Minister explain what the past progressive tenses would he differentiate between a subordinating conjunction and a coordinating conjunction and finally will he set out his definition please of a modal verb the whole point of these changes is to make sure our children are better educated so basically you can see from his response that he has no idea what a modal verb is or a coordinating conjunction but it hasn't stopped him from becoming the Prime Minister of England okay so I think this proves that it's not necessary to study grammar or even to know what grammar is to speak a language but I am NOT saying that this is the best way to learn a language I'm not saying that you should learn a language like a baby and just listen and repeat sounds because this would be very very very slow but I want to show you that it's not necessary to focus so much on grammar okay that grandma is a small part of learning a language so now I'm going to give you my top tips the fastest way to learn a language the number-one thing the most important thing get motivated okay if you are not motivated you are not going to learn anything the next thing is use technology we live in an amazing world you have the internet you have internet radio you have YouTube you have apps on your telephone you have a million different ways to absorb and to practice English the next one is make mistakes when you're learning languages it's really important to make mistakes but it's not just my opinion scientific evidence shows us that making mistakes is really good for example this paper here tells us that if we make mistakes we learn faster this paper here says if we make mistakes then it helps us to stop repeating the same mistakes and this one here says that making mistakes is really good for our memory so don't be afraid get out there and make mistakes and finally and I think really this is the most important thing is have fun okay if your classes are boring if your methods of studying are boring okay you're not going to continue have fun incorporate things that you are interested in in your studies and enjoy the learning process okay it's some it's not easy to learn the language but sometimes difficult things are also fun I hope that you found that interesting if you would like to see any more videos about the English language or if you would like to see any more videos with James then don't forget to subscribe I'll see you in class bye [Music] Oh weird

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 42,822

Keywords: canguro, learning english, learn english, english grammar, grammar, wug test, best way to learn english, how to learn english

Id: XHtG30bj4_k

Length: 13min 9sec (789 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 09 2016