STOP speaking wrong English! | How to create perfect English

anybody who has ever tried to learn a language knows that there is a right way and a wrong way to create language there are rules how do we know that these rules exist well two main ways the first one is the books the grammar books and the workbooks and the second one is when we get confirmation of those rules in english tests so actually this is a perfect moment to check if you know some of these fundamental rules of english let's do a quick little test and see how well you know your english tenses in this sentence which one is correct after the match she admitted that she played badly had played badly or had been playing badly now let's see the results are you ready but first let's just stop and examine how you are feeling right now maybe you're feeling nervous because you're not sure if you have the answer correct and you don't want to be wrong or maybe you're feeling pretty confident that you have the right answer so now you just need someone with authority me to tell you that you're correct and depending on what i say next that will either make you feel good or bad about your english but apart from just affecting your emotions it might also determine how you judge your progress am i getting better am i closer to fluency and it might determine what you study if you get the answer wrong you might spend more time studying that part of grammar okay now let's look at the results and i have some great news here because you are correct because all of the answers are correct now maybe your first reaction is to think that i tricked you that i created some weird question that was special but this question was taken from the official preparation materials for the cambridge advanced exam but wait a minute if all the answers are possible then how can cambridge give you a score for your english how can any exam surely there must be things that are wrong in language and of course there are but things are not wrong in the way that you think we are so used to the idea of right and wrong in english grammatically correct or incorrect that we accept this as fact but in reality there are only two ways to judge language acceptable and unacceptable and this usually has very little to do with grammar i mean of course more than one answer is correct how wrong it is to try and interpret a single sentence without any context how inhuman and arrogant to treat language as if it was made of little bits and pieces that only have one true meaning without accepting the fact that you might interpret that sentence differently to me because we are different human beings and how sad that we treat conversation as if it is the lowest form of language and think that real language can only be found written in books especially when most of the languages in the world have never been written down ever let's look at another example of our terrible relationship with language almost all students who study grammar will eventually encounter the subject of stative and dynamic verbs stative verbs describe states and dynamic verbs describe actions here is a list of stative verbs from the british council website it includes verbs like believe doubt taste and love so students will learn this concept and memorize the verb list and then they will step into the real world and see this so now what you might ask yourself why does the rule not match reality but instead you will probably ignore it as an exception and continue to carry the rule of stative and dynamic verbs around with you forever but anybody who knows english well will tell you that any of the verbs on that list can be used as a dynamic verb and the whole category of dynamic and stative verbs is just an artificial category that nobody has the courage to question and reject because it comes from authority but this is not just an isolated example of when the rules don't match the reality and as a language learner this is the part that you should worry about the most because what is written in grammar books almost never matches reality and you don't have to take my word for it this is shana poplak and her team from the university of ottawa they dedicate all their energy looking for evidence that the rules in here match what is out there and what they have discovered about grammar books might surprise you the grammar book is divine really um i mean who handed these things down that's something that people need to ask themselves because almost never have these books been written by linguists and even more rarely have they been written by anybody who paid attention to speech there are a few notable uh examples but when attention is paid to speech then we have to ask whose speech so one of the prime french grammarians bonjour actually uh raised this issue and said yeah we are going to be prescribing the speech of the finest members of the court right everything else forget about it you know we're not he actually said we won't be dealing with the speech of the dregs of humanity which were the people who were not in the courts and there is a an entire message behind these grammars which is telling us somebody's speech is the right way and everybody else's is wrong uh and who is that somebody who is that somebody and who is that person who made this proclamation and do we need to believe him especially once you learn from us that every grammar has something different to say that should raise questions right away if there is a right way to say it then everyone should agree on that and yet the rate of disagreement is so astronomical uh you know we have these these uh graphs which show you know scatter plots of which grammarians said what in which year and all you see is just this ton of dots you know everything is all over the place and has been for centuries i think that once more people get to to learn that this could possibly be the case i mean i i understand it's like saying that the bible is false i do i do get that but it's time i think to debunk this myth as well especially because it has such deleterious effects on so many segments of society and with no real motivation other than social differentiation and this reveals the fundamental problem with the ideology of right and wrong in language social differentiation and when language gets associated with social class and symbols and culture and that culture gets packaged and exported and sold around the world it becomes cultural invasion listen to the words of the great brazilian philosopher paolo freire and take a moment to ask if this reflects the way that you think for cultural invasion to succeed it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority since everything has its opposite if those who are invaded consider themselves inferior they must necessarily recognize the superiority of the invaders the values of the latter thereby become the pattern for the former the more invasion is accentuated and those invaded are alienated from the spirit of their own culture and from themselves the more the latter want to be like the invaders to walk like them dress like them talk like them the truth is that you might find things in language that are illogical or inappropriate or things that need more context but finding things that are really truly wrong in language is very difficult but that is what the industry does when it creates materials for students they work really really hard to twist language and find right and wrong questions to test you on it is a necessary result of the way that exams work let's imagine that i give you the job of testing the level of english of everyone in your country how would you do it well you can't test every single thing in english because it would be impossible so you have to select a small number of things to test that represent the whole of english in the world of professional testing these things are called domains and items the domain might be english grammar and the items might be phrasal verbs and so we select a few phrasal verbs to represent all of the phrasal verbs that you might know and that represents your knowledge of english grammar but now we have a really specific problem we need to choose these phrasal verbs well let's try with the verb think i need to think the problem so think about the problem think on think out think around think through and think over one two three four five six so now we have at least six possible answers that all work that all have very similar but different shades of meaning but we can't put them on the test because we can't test shades of meaning we can only test yes and no so we can only use a tiny fraction of very specific english how tiny well let me put it into [Music] perspective [Music] this is a standard deck of cards 52 individual items and every time i shuffle these cards i get a different combination but here's a question how many different possible combinations do you think there are a thousand a million a billion the answer might surprise you there are more possible combinations than atoms on earth let me explain it in a different way let's imagine that there are 10 billion people on every planet and 1 billion planets in every solar system and 200 billion solar systems in every galaxy and 500 billion galaxies in the universe if every single person on every planet has been shuffling decks of cards completely at random at one million shuffles per second since the beginning of time you would not even come close to creating all of the possible combinations and that's just with 52 things now let's take a moment to think about english which has not just 52 words but thousands of words the possible combinations of english are infinite in fact almost every sentence you produce has never been said by another human being ever in the history of the universe including the sentence i just said and the one before that and the one before that but why is this important it's important because language is not a set of rules it is a creative act every time you speak or write you are producing something completely new that probably no human has ever seen or heard before and if you only focus on right and wrong it robs you of a true understanding of language once you understand that language is only about acceptable and unacceptable then you are free to do the things that language is designed for communication expression and creativity freedom freedom from worrying about whether you are good enough freedom from worrying about whether you have the right accent freedom from the fear of making mistakes freedom to be your true self i know what you're thinking all this talk of freedom is fine for you christian but i live in the real world where i need standard english to speak correctly and i need to pass my english exam to be successful but this ideology is old-fashioned and will not prepare you for the real world the world doesn't need or want people who can create a perfect relative clause it needs creative people with ideas who can solve problems and even countries that are famous for chasing perfection are starting to see the damage that it does not just to students but to society singapore is often used as an example of the power of hard work and testing their education system is famous for consistently ranking number one in the world but in 2016 the minister of education chi meng admitted that they were producing the wrong kind of students the focus of our education system should go beyond test scores currently despite our very best efforts to move towards a holistic education there is still a narrow emphasis on academics and paper qualifications this is deeply ingrained in our culture translated into expectations of our children parents and teachers eventually this is perhaps even manifested in employer mindsets in workplaces we need a better balance in our students education journey this means dialing back an excessive focus on academics we need to free up time and space to nurture other dimensions that are just as important for our children's development let them not just study the flowers but also stop to smell the flowers and wonder at their beauty i want to finish by telling you something really important i don't think that your english is good now you're going to start asking yourself what makes you so imperfect and what you did wrong for me to say that to you and that's why i don't think your english is good because you will not always be loved and there will be days when others will be tired and bored with life and they will hurt you because people are like that and somehow they always end up hurting the feelings of others because of carelessness in comprehension or conflicts with themselves if you do not love yourself and create protection around your heart other people will destroy you i have made a promise to myself that i will not think your english is good until you believe it is and then i promise you that your english will be perfect i'm christian this is kangaroo and i'll see you in class [Music] i

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 71,302

Keywords: canguro english, kangaroo english, canguru english, learning english, learn english, english teacher, english grammar, grammar, linguistics, stop speaking wrong english, create perfect English

Id: AObUDRohprU

Length: 21min 15sec (1275 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 20 2021