How You Can Use SPOTIFY to Improve Your English

probably if I only had one choice of something to use for learning languages as far as a piece of media I would probably have to settle for music more than series more than movies more than books or anything else for me it's my my favorite tool let's like dig it a little bit deeper into this why is it that we recommend that and what are the advantages to learning English or any other language music [Music] uh so you've been jamming out to any good songs this week Chicago yeah sure listen to music all the time and right now right before I started recording I was listening to this classic song from a movie an old movie called uh The Lost Boys yeah it's a vampire movie from the 80s and it's really cool and this song that I was listening to is from a guy named Tim Capello I believe and uh the song is called I still believe [Music] and it's really cool because he has this segment in the movie where he's this buff guy like really muscular you know and he plays the saxophone it's like it's so you know uh contrasting to see like you know a buff guy playing the saxophone you know and when I was in high school actually I went through a phase where I thought I wanted to learn the saxophone but I never got the opportunity never got the opportunity to try playing it but I've heard it's a very challenging instrument to master I imagine yeah but like Bill Clinton even played the saxophone that was one of his claims to fame says he's supposedly a great saxophonist interesting wow [Applause] [Music] so I asked you if you were jamming out to any good songs what does it mean if you're jamming out to something usually music yeah when you are jamming to a song you are listening to it but enjoying it yeah like your head banging or you're enjoying you're dancing to it you are jamming to it so there's a couple nice ways we can use this too because you can call a song of jam and you could even say that's my jam or that's our Jam meaning like that's you know that's one of my favorite songs I love dancing to that I love getting down to that so that can be a fun one to use there's even a Bob Marley song that was that I used to really love that's called jamming obviously both you and I love music it's a you actually play a lot of music I've been trying not so successfully to learn but it's it's like one of my goals for the year and also I think both of us have used this and recommended a lot as a tool for learning languages one advantage I would say is that music is highly emotional it evokes emotions when you listen to it every time I listen to my favorite bands artists I feel something depending on the day I'm having or the kind of music I'm listening to I'm feeling something I might feel happiness I might feel Comfort I might feel excitement I might feel sexy you know so uh you feel stuff when you listen to your favorite songs and it's a fact that if we feel something the odds are that we're gonna remember that experience much more easily because you know it was attached to an emotion just to give an example here um I have learned so many connected speech sounds and pronunciation aspects of English simply by listening to music all the time for example I love Hotel California from the Eagles that's another classic from the 70s they have a a line there in the chorus that goes such a lovely Place such a lovely place you know but you see the connected speech there such a such a lovely Place such a lovely face or even the Beatles Let It Be Let It Be becomes let it be let it be let it be let it be let it be so simply by listening to songs that you like you absorb these connected speech patterns there I would definitely say that this is one big advantage that music has over maybe other Medias uh how um evocative it is yeah of Good Feelings of good emotions you know what is evocative mean something that evokes and if something evokes emotions it causes you to feel something usually in a positive way yeah so I said that music evokes emotions music causes emotions or makes you feel positive emotions usually I think related to what you're saying music sticks with us because it just it tends to be most songs are tend to be repetitive they tend to have a chorus that you hear many different times and songs in their nature we tend to listen to them a lot of times depending on the person but when we really love a song we might be listening to it for every day for weeks and so it really sticks with us and and all of us probably have had that experience that will not hear a song for years and then it comes up on the radio or you hear it somewhere and maybe you don't remember all the words but there's a lot of lines from that song that you're going to be singing along with even after years of not having heard it so it's just works so well with our memory listening to a lot of music having those songs that that for you are definitive of your your experience with that language are going to help you just to really so many of us so many Learners say that they they have a lot of trouble right remembering and and and having things stick so music can be a great way to to improve that to remedy that I love the expression to use there by the way music sticks with us it doesn't mean that it stays with you yeah it's exactly like if something is stuck like it won't come apart right and it's like velcro really if you anyone has the experience of using velcro velcro sticks together and music is as if it were a velcro that had a lot of a lot of hooks you know it's it's going to make a really good connection compared to I don't know if you just read one line in a book or you even watch a series uh sometimes it's you're just hearing something one time and it's in that one moment and so it's not really going to stick with you unless you're being really deliberate about sitting down and studying that expression or that piece of vocab or whatever else it is we wanted to actually talk about too how can you learn with music and we're also going to be talking specifically about Spotify as a tool to learn with music and I did a video a few years back and actually reviewed it in preparation for today's lesson uh and it's still a good video it's definitely like a bit dated now but the the method that I kind of proposed there for learning with music I think is still a really great one and it's it's one that I still use more or less I'm not so active in my learning now but I thought I would give that for any of you that are really actively studying English right now that you could you could try this out uh and we'll also link to that video in the show notes in the description if you're on YouTube and uh and then I'll also give you you know how you could how I use this more nowadays that I'm learning languages more passively and travel can also give some of his his tips for learning with music so uh what I used to do is I actually would find a song I really wanted to learn with I would actually print it out because working with things with your hands it's it gives another layer if we're trying to build our memory it's always good to add more layers on top of things so actually getting your hands dirty in a sense with it is really good to uh you know help it stick even more so basically just treat it like a piece of text those lyrics that you printed out you can read through it you can mark it all up I would even recommend using different symbols for different things so you know if you see a word use a certain symbol maybe you underline it maybe if you see an expression you do a double underline if you see grammar you do a square around it if you see pronunciation you do a squiggly line under it whatever is going to help you to uh differ these different pieces of the language and you can a great thing about having it printed out is you can look up the definitions again I've talked about this before don't use a translation tool it's always better to use definition language because it helps to train you to be thinking more in English and write the definitions right out on the sheet like get get that sheet should be just covered in notes you can even get creative and draw images even if you're not a great artist this again it adds more hooks it adds more probability that things are going to stick with you and we talked about uh we've talked about before space repetition software on the podcast so using a piece of technology using unkey memorize on the real life English app we also have this but we don't yet have it that you can add your own words there but you can get uh all the words and expressions we're using in the podcast and this is a way for you to study it outside of that session that you're learning with this piece of music you can keep studying it and this technology Works along with the way that your memory Works to remember things you know finally I mentioned pronunciation you're not going to get this usually by reading if you're already aware of some connected speech patterns then you might want to take note of things that you think could be connect to speech and that you want to pay attention to when you listen but then actually listen and go through and try to pay attention to if there's any interesting pronunciation any words that are pronounced differently than you might have expected and you connected speech again and you might want to even Mark things with different colors depending on what they are so you could have some highlighters even handy and that's pretty much it it doesn't take that long really and you can learn just a ton of plethora of information can come out of just one song before I comment on that what's a plethora of information again that's a great word it's a huge amount of information such an advancement I love that word it sounds so good man uh one comment about pronunciation how music can help you with that um a great way for you to practice that also is pay attention to rhyming words you know words that rhyme in the verses let me give you guys a demonstration here I have here a verse from a song that I like from Metallica yeah the the band is Metallica And The song is called wherever I'm a roam thank you and then the verse starts and the row becomes my bride I have stripped of all but Pride so in her I do confide and she keeps me satisfied gives me all I need you see so pay attention to the words that sound the same that rhyme Pride bride confide satisfied you see so this is also great for your pronunciation another thing that I would say about using music more intentionally like this is uh sometimes just reading the lyrics can already teach you vocabulary without you wanting it where you without you planning just to give an example here from the same song There is a line here a verse that he says uh end with dust in throat I crave only knowledge will I save to the game you stay a slave now Romer Wanderer Nomad Vagabond call me what you will yeah so this line here Roamer Wanderer Nomad Vagabond as a learner maybe I wouldn't know the words Roamer or Wanderer but I know Nomad and Vagabond because they are closer to my Portuguese language right so oh Nomad Vagabond I understand that ah so if there are used if they are being used in sequence together probably Romer and Wanderer there are synonyms so you start making these associations as well so music is great to activate your English like that more intentionally and I love the the step by step that you are presenting here yeah because uh it's a great way yeah for you to actually study with music and what does that mean by the way if you roam or you wander yeah when you walk around aimlessly without a purpose or a clear Direction I don't know where I'm going I'm just you know walking around I'm roaming this place or wondering like a nomad yeah I don't have a a fixed Place something else actually that just occurred to me that I thought I could recommend to to people that's really fun is a website called lyrics training I don't know if they changed the name but I know it still exists and it's a really great way if you're again if you're learning with a specific song that you can go there and then it's like another layer that you can add on top is it will play the song and you can choose a difficulty it'll play the lyrics and it's going to leave word out and you have to fill in the words as it's playing so depending on the difficulty you'll leave out more or less words so this can be you know after you've gone into that whole breakdown it's gonna be another uh sort of game that you can play but that's going to help to test your listening test your memory and so on another great website that I think I learned from you by the way Ethan in one of the past videos you did was genius right genos.com it's a great website yeah for you to understand maybe uh more about the context of the song usually at the bottom you have comments from the artist about the song what the song is talking about most definitely that's actually one of the things I like about Spotify too is they have for for the artists it's such a great tool for discovering new music because they do different playlists they have um like the discovery weekly every Monday they give you a playlist of music that they think that you'll like based on what you listen to they have the release radar with that has new music from the artists that you listen to or artists that are similar to the ones you listen to they have different music uh different personalized mixes that they make they have radio playlists for different uh different artists which basically is just a they will play some songs from that artist and then they'll play other songs they think you'll like based on like in that artist and then they just actually released I just saw this last week uh artificial intelligence DJ so it's again it kind of like personalizes music to you but it also it's as if you were listening to a DJ who's like playing a radio just for you saying like next up I'm going to play you songs from this artist that you were listening to or uh I'm going to play you some songs that you're listening to four years ago or it's it's a really cool feature so I recommend Spotify users check that out but I was mentioning uh with these new artists that I find oftentimes I like to go and dig into who they are it's something I always I'm curious about is you know who who is this person that I'm listening to and you can go right from there to that there's usually a bio you can go from there right to their Instagram and sort of you know dig into who this person is so you can if you're learning with people who speak the language you know maybe you follow them on Instagram and you are able to see their posts there and it's another way of interacting with them getting a deeper sense for your relationship with those songs with that music and just another another layer of practice there the cool thing about Spotify is that you can also uh create your own playlists and share them right with friends and stuff right yeah most definitely and what I was going to recommend here too that I do I have a playlist for every language that I'm learning and sometimes if I'm in a specific mood I might want to listen to Portuguese music or to French music or to Spanish music for example and it's just repeating those songs that I've learned with and you could even have one maybe with the songs that you're actively learning with so it could be a shorter playlist that's really those ones you want to listen to while you're on the go to be you can be singing to yourself or just singing in your head but you're just really getting in that those reps that repetition over and over again after you've learned with it you're hearing those words again you're paying attention to that kind of speech and I think that's also really important that you're listening without reading in some different points so that you can really hone in on the pronunciation because a lot of times our eyes will trick us that's expression there hone in hone in the pronunciation what does that mean it means you're focusing in on something and it's definitely a thing that we say in English a lot like practice makes perfect right so the more that you're listening to these I like to also sing in the shower sing sometimes maybe take a three minute break to listen to a song and sing while I'm working or something like that I'm not foreign necessarily doing it on the street but maybe if you're a good singer it could be it could be an opportunity or if you're like Chiago and you you play an instrument you can kill two birds with one stone by you know learning a song of the guitar singing it for your your friends and family music is just awesome for you which came first was it the the fascination with music and learning English with that or was it that you were already playing instruments I was already playing uh I started early with music yeah I started at a seven because my father plays guitar yeah yeah so I learned my very first song is seven so from seven to thirteen it was all about music for me but then I started getting into English and then when I discovered that oh man you know I can learn English and I can practice you know music at the same time it was it was great a great discovery that's fantastic I was mentioning about just getting fascinated with different musicians and you were mentioning I think it was I think it was the last podcast actually recorded that you mentioned uh or no it was a couple ago that we talked about books and you mentioned reading the biography of Eric Clapton yeah so that's like a personal connection that you have with that artist that probably really it's adding another level of the English on top of it right or I've been kind of obsessed with a Brazilian artist named Zhang over the last couple of months and I found a a Brazilian podcast where they interviewed him so I had no idea what he sounded like outside of singing and it was really interesting just to hear him and to to hear him talking about his life and how he rose to fame and all of these different things so it's like again another another level of practice it's interesting about you the word you use there I've been obsessed with this singer this person is here called John because you know there is that yeah I mean we discover a new artist and we kind of stay obsessed with them for a while at least you know for some time we listen to all their songs all the records we watch interviews with them right it definitely adds just more depth to your learning right and it's one of those things it I don't know for me at least it's like I'm listening a podcast I'm not so focused on learning it's just kind of like living the language and interacting with things that that I'm enjoying in that moment so Ethan you've just presented here some cool features that Spotify has for music right to practice English with music but what about podcasts I mean do you listen to podcasts on Spotify too I do and I think that Spotify they're doing some really awesome things with podcasts they have videos on some of them like that interview I talked about with young it had video and I usually listen to podcasts while I'm doing other things so I think I listen to that one while I was in the gym but I watched while I was wrestling I watched some short parts of it just because it was kind of cool to to see him and see him interacting with the hosts and and everything it adds obviously another dimension and I haven't actually listened to any of these myself but uh in when we were preparing for this I saw that for Spotify original podcasts so they have some some podcasts that they're producing themselves they have transcripts in the app so very similar to how the songs most songs will have the lyrics right in the app they'll also have transcripts for their original podcast and maybe it's something that's going to expand to other ones in the future but it's definitely worth listeners looking into I mean I'd say probably if you're listening to this podcast you're better off on Spotify you're probably better off going to listen to it on the real life English app because there you get the full digital transcript you get vocabulary flash cards which will help you to never forget the new words and expressions that you're learning with us and so much more you know you can also be practicing your speaking there so that's uh probably the best tool out there to learn with this podcast in specific but before we move on I thought that I would just mention quickly because again like I've been trying to listen to more podcasts in Portuguese and so it's been giving me some different maybe a different level of ideas and stuff for how to improve that and something that I was doing the other day that I found was really valuable was actually I was riding in the the Metro here in the subway and I had I was listening to a podcast and I had chat gbt open so they would mention some different expressions or words that I didn't know and of course you can translate you can look it up in a dictionary and that that works but a lot of times there's things that are slaying or that are specific to a situation so uh one of the podcasts I was listening to they were talking about a company they said and I was like okay what is that word Pika mean in this context you know I I asked and Pika has one meaning as a slang word but it uh was good because giving the context it's it told me the definition in that context which is like something you know you have to be like really great or really awesome to accomplish that the combination I think of being able to listen to something and chat GPT is just such a it's much better than using translation tools much better than using dictionaries because it's it's can be so contextual for explaining something awesome so we mentioned the real life English app we also wanted to take the opportunity to give a shout out to one of our very special app users yeah this one goes to Abdi King and Abdi says hello all real life English hosts I want to appreciate the app in you it's really useful I have been using the app for a week and I have found it it has rescued me from my shyness and shame in speaking English oh yeah oh yeah so it's great to hear that you're overcoming your shyness and your I don't know like shame there maybe it'd be more embarrassment in learning the language but yeah that's one of the really great things is if you start using it can be intimidating at first to speak with strangers in another language but as you start to do it more and more you're going to gain more confidence since really the only way you can prove your speaking is by speaking so you have to get out there and learning with music is great of course but you actually actually then put into practice what you're learning right [Music] all right Ethan so this is an interesting question because you have learned multiple languages and this viewer is asking what to do and what not to do for beginners uh but specifically if you want to become a polyglot so a beginner on the polyglot Journey why should a person do or don't do to learn multiple languages what would you recommend that's nice there's a nice expression there too the do's and don'ts of something people might have seen this before yeah I thought something I would start with here because everyone who's listening I'm sure is learning English and a lot of you might have considered learning a third language or fourth language if you already grew up bilingual uh and you might be split about should I like do I need to master English first can I start can I learn two languages at once what should I do here and I think ultimately it really depends on your goals like if you need to get to a point of Mastery in your English and and you're you're under a time constraint where you need to be really focused on that then go for it if you're not if you're learning English and you're don't have you're not in a rush you're not needing to do it by a certain point it can actually be really helpful to learn that next language there's a whole concept of learning how to learn and when you study more languages it helps you to become a better language learner and those kind of things only come because of experience so you can get that just by studying English but when you different languages present different puzzles different problems and so on so they're going to cause you to have to overcome different barriers and uh making just basically getting to know yourself as a learner and and getting to know how to overcome problems in the learning process and the other reason why I would recommend that if you have this bandwidth in your life to learn more than one language is that when you learn more languages they always connect to each other and it can be any language can be languages that are far apart it can be languages that are both from the same language family you're going to find a lot of connections and this helps you to understand both languages on a deeper level even for myself like learning French for example was really interesting because a lot of English comes from French and so I learned words in English that I didn't I didn't know but that exist that came from French and this happens to me all the time with these Latin words I'll realize that you know I'll be listening to something or reading something in English I'll see them use a word and it's like oh I didn't know you could say that in English it's a word that I would use in Spanish it's a use a word I was used in cuts on or Portuguese or French but it's not one that I knew that we could we had an equivalent in English that's not exactly a do and don't but it's more of a if you're doubting should I learn more languages I think you for most of you who are listening I think the answer is give it a go try it and if you're learning English like be speaking every day in the app if you're learning another language find you know I have a friend who I've been doing tandems with I've been doing language exchanges with Portuguese and English find people who you can practice with every day or at least you know every week or multiple times per week and I think the final thing too is what we've been talking about today is like be curious so just like having that that learning Cap all the time I think that really is what it takes to be a polyglot it's just that constant curiosity so there's a lot more you could do entire podcast on this but that's my two cents are you sure it was too 10 cents okay guys before we wrap up we wanted to share with you just some of the takeaways just to repeat some of the main points that we want you to apply after you've listened to this podcast because you shouldn't just listen to the podcast you should actually try to make some change try something new based on it so if you're not already using music as a language tool can be a really powerful tool for your learning Spotify can be a really great platform to help you to do this and a lot of Learners a lot of learners just listen to music without ever being curious about the lyrics and one of the main things that you really have to adapt is that Curiosity to not just be listening without knowing what it's saying but actually digging in a little bit getting curious like you know what's that expression or how did they say that word I'm really surprised by how they say that word or I didn't understand that line at all like there must be some connected speech there whatever the case is so just trying to dig in a little bit and understand what it is that you're listening to and it's going to give you another layer that you can sing along with it you can actually use it to build those muscles of articulation so that when you speak you're speaking more comprehensively people can understand you all these sorts of benefits and I would also say that music is highly emotional remember uh it evokes emotions and because of that it's easier for us to remember new words and expressions we learn with music so do use music to either live your English or also to activate a English in a more deliberate way but use it oh yeah so if you're enjoying these lessons we just wanted to remind you that a free way you can support us is by giving us a five-star review in your favorite app store be that in Spotify Apple podcast or wherever you're listening that has the ability to do this also you if you are watching this on YouTube then you can subscribe hit the Bell so you don't miss a single one and hit the like button as well and this lets other Learners know about it so other people can have a lot of fun improving their English with us going from feeling like a lost insecure learner to being a confident natural English speaker and of course download the app give it a try if you haven't yet start speaking English every single day take your learning to another level with this podcast and so much more and remember that no matter what divides us that which unites us is far greater so thanks so much for joining us today we look forward to seeing you next week one two three [Music] oh yeah so we're all aspiring to have a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset can we actually change if we have a fixed mindset in something oh yeah absolutely and I would say it's really important to change that because part of a growth mindset has to do with if you dedicate yourself to something you can learn it foreign [Music]

Channel: RealLife English

Views: 51,544

Keywords: reallife, real life, english, learn english, practice, podcast in english, podcast english, english podcast, conversation, comprehension, spotify, music, english with music

Id: a1zq2PDeGbw

Length: 28min 9sec (1689 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 02 2023