AELP 6 – Teaching Reading

Well, hello out there in YouTube land.

This is Drew Badger, the Co-Founder of englishanyone.com and your English fluency guide.

Well, we got, uh, 10,000 views on the last video in our series on advanced listening practice,

and here we are again, so let’s continue the show.

You guys are actually getting these views a little too quickly.

Maybe you should not watch so much, you know, you’re making me busy over here.

I’ve got a newborn baby to take care of.

But it’s okay, I’m just kidding.

If you keep giving me the views, I will keep giving you all of the new videos.

So, let’s keep them coming.

Anyway, uh, if you’re new to the program, as I always say at the beginning of this series,

uh, in advanced listening practice we speak a little bit more quickly,

actually, quite a bit more quickly.

I try to go even faster than native speed just so you can learn a few new words, but also just get used to listening to native,

uh, English, the kind of English that you would see in movies, or TV shows, or in actual conversations.

But if you’re new to the program, or you’re new to my channel,

I recommend you go back and watch a lot of the previous videos.

We have a ov, over 250 videos on the channel,

so please go back and watch some of those to make sure you’re used to my voice,

uh, and that way you can actually focus more on listening to fast English and learning a few of the new phrases that I’ll teach as the, uh, lessons go on.

But do go back and do that.

Uh, also, if you’d like to learn a lot more about how you can learn thousands of new words,

learn lots of great phrases and expressions,

and start speaking in English the same way you speak in your native language, you can click on the link right here, uh, in the description,

uh, down below the video as well,

and that will take you to Master English Conversation and you can learn a lot more about that, and that’s really the best of what we do.

Anyway, let’s get on with the lesson.

Blahlalalala.

Now, so I’m going to speak in a little bit faster voice as I’m usually speaking.

Ah, don’t you just love that?

If you really like listening to the sound of my voice.

I know I do, on occasion.

Actually, I don’t really like the sound of my voice very much, but a lot of people on YouTube have been very nice to comment to say that I do

have a nice voice.

And, actually, my baby, which I, am, am, blahlalalala.

I can’t really speak.

I’m trying to speak too quickly now, but

when I introduced my, uh, my new daughter in the last video, a lot of people were really, uh, congratulatory.

This is a great word, congratulatory.

They were congratulating me for becoming a new father.

I still can’t believe it.

So this is, uh, my new video that I’m making after that one,

uh, and, uh, Aria, my daughter, was born on the 6th of this month, of August.

So only about, uh, maybe less than three weeks.

So she’s only been in this world, uh, for a little bit, and now we’re, uh, experiencing her at home and having a lot of time to enjoy with her, but,

you know, she doesn’t really do so much.

So in between, you know, changing diapers, which I am doing,

I’m actually doing a lot of work around the house,

so I’m doing a little but more taking care of her, picking her up,

showing her around, but, you know, we really can’t do so much.

But, I am trying to get her, uh, as I mentioned in the video before, I believe, the previous video when I introduced her,

uh, I’m getting myself into the habit of how I can teach her.

So having specific times when I read to her,

and how I read to her, uh, and other things like that.

So maybe we go for a little bit of a walk, and we talk about certain things.

And even if, you know, the information is not really being remembered,

self-consciously,

uh, or, you know, I guess I should say consciously,

uh, in the subconscious mind it’s already starting to pour in there,

both her English and her Japanese, and as she grows we can take a little bit more,

uh, of the specific way of teaching her.

And I’m going to talk about that in this video.

So in the previous video I was asking people what they thought about,

you know, me actually taking a lot of time to explain more about how I teach younger children.

Uh, so that way, if you’ve got younger students yourself, or maybe you’re living in a foreign country, and your English is already pretty good but you want to start teaching your,

uh, you know, your growing children maybe they’re a few years old, or even if you have parents, or something like that

that has no idea about the English language at all but you’d like to help teach them,

we actually have a lot of, uh, English videos on our channel.

Uh, we have a whole playlist from 1 to 19.

Uh, actually, I really need to continue with that series.

We’ll come, we’ll come back to that in the future, but right now

that’s the actual EnglishAnyone playlist for beginners.

And so what we’re doing with that one is actually taking people from zero,

so without any knowledge of the English language at all, you could show that video series to someone,

and they would begin to understand the language.

So this is a project that I began a long time ago,

uh, and hopefully I come back to it in the future, but I’m going to come back to it in a certain way.

It’s actually funny.

If you type in YouTube search, if you type in EnglishAnyone,

uh, maybe it’ll be different for you, but if you’re typing that in the auto complete feature that Google has or that YouTube uses,

uh, it actually says lesson 20.

So that’s the one, it’s like one of the things that people are searching for,

but we don’t have the video made.

So if you’ve been looking for that one, I’m sorry,

but we’ll be coming to that, uh, in a few, in the future, but in a slightly different way.

So what I wanted to talk with, uh, you about today

is, uh, how I’m teaching reading, and how to teach reading to my daughter.

So, uh, before…and just, uh, just like quick, if you hear any like crying or anything like that coming from the next room,

that’s going to be her making herself known in this video.

So we’ll see if she, uh, remains quiet or not.

Anyway, in the previous video I asked people if they were curious to know how I’m teaching my daughter and what I’m doing at home,

you know, because she gets to have me be her personal fluency guide and actually show her all of the things.

So I’m actually trying to make it even faster than native,

so assuming, you know, she has a regular mind and can absorb things.

We’re still trying to figure that out, hopefully she’s okay.

I think she will be.

But, uh, assuming she can learn things normally and doesn’t have any, you know, developmental problems or anything like that,

we should be able to do lots of things to get her even faster to fluency than normal,

because we’re not only just, you know, kind of doing the everyday talking with her but teaching her in a very strategic way.

So making sure that all the things that we’re speaking,

uh, are nice and clear, and it’s obvious, and we’re not giving her too much information at one time.

So, because people were interested in knowing how I’m going to teach her, and other things like that,

I just want to talk about one specific thing in this video,

and that’s reading.

So most of my, uh you know, all the, the fans or the people that I teach and help on YouTube,

they know me for doing these kinds of lessons

where I’m speaking, you know, like talking to people having the Master English Conversation lessons as well.

So those programs that we have for more higher level students, so they already understand quite a bit of English,

but the problem is that they don’t really know how to express themselves in a native and natural way.

So that’s how we’re helping them, and we’re kind of making videos that bridge the gap,

what I call the fluency gap,

so that you can go from not understanding the things that you would see in a conversation, or movies, or TV shows,

but then we would teach you those so you could actually enjoy conversations more.

So that’s the typical thing that I do,

but really my education as far as, you know, my teaching experience and my career experience, is starting with really,

uh, really young children.

So when I lived in Kyoto, Japan, and even before that, and maybe, um,

even, uh, older previously, I should say,

uh, than ten years ago when I was just coming to Japan and I started teaching younger children.

So, actually, when I first came here I was teaching maybe junior high school kids, but the students I really liked teaching a lot,

uh, are the really young ones.

I like to get them young, as I say.

So anybody you want to try to influence the way a child thinks, or the way they learn, or their behaviors, or other things like that, you want to get them young.

So if you get access to them, if you can,

uh, have them when they’re younger, you can do a lot of teaching and a lot of interesting things and shape their behavior and how they learn, how they think, that kind of thing.

So what I’m, uh, doing with Aria is what I actually did, uh, and I did a lot of experimenting on children, not like in a bad way, you know, science experiments,

but testing a lot of different things about how I read,

uh, and how I teaching reading and help, help, uh, learners read.

So, uh, actually, I have another channel on YouTube you can look for it.

It’s called Shaberry Sensei,

S-H-A-B-E-R-R-Y, Sensei.

I’ll actually put a, just a link in the description if you’d like to look for that.

Uh, but there I have a few videos from me teaching younger Japanese children.

And so this is, uh, some students that are really young.

I think I have a couple of videos about me taking a trip to the zoo with them,

so after we practiced all these things we’d go to the zoo and get to actually, I called it adventure English,

so we’d get to go out and practice,

and see how the actual English works, you know, and getting to practice with them in, in something outside of a regular classroom that looks a little bit boring.

So that’s the way I like to teach.

We kind of give you different pieces of information and…

Oh, oh, there goes a little bit of crying now, but

hopefully we’ll be okay, we’ll be safe for a little bit.

So, anyway, I’ve got some videos on that channel that are talking about that and give you examples of that kind of thing.

But what you don’t really get to see is how I actually taught reading, so I want to talk about that today.

Well, after all this explanation about getting into it,

basically, uh, the way that you want to teach people, especially when they’re not knowing the language that you speak already,

uh, and even if they, because you really want to minimize explanations,

is you want to use just simple comparison and contrast.

And that’s really all I do to teach.

So all the things that I do for basic students, it’s the same principles I use for Master English Conversation,

and that’s why I teach a few things and help students master them in each month they go through the lessons and…

Oh, no, there she goes.

Hopefully she doesn’t cry too…

Oh, no.

Hopefully she can’t, maybe you even can’t hear that.

We’ll see, we’ll see how it comes out in the video.

But, uh, so when we’re talking about teaching people how to read, we want to make sure that we get them into the language as quickly as possible…

Oh, no, and here comes a motorcycle.

There’s just really, there’s no, there’s no hope around here,

there’s nowhere to go to shoot a video quickly.

But, you know, hey, I try.

Actually, when I shoot the Master English Conversation Videos I go to a new recording studio kind of place, which is really cool,

so those video lessons are very quiet.

Anyway, back to the reading.

So as a very simple example, uh, you don’t want to give a whole bunch of explanations for things, you want to have people

discover how to read by themselves and have them discover the rules by exploration, or through exploration,

rather than having, uh, say this letter makes this sound,

and this letter makes that sound, but in this case it makes a different thing, because those rules are really difficult to remember.

So even as a teacher, I can’t remember, oh, this grammar point does this thing, or this other rule does that, you know, for whatever it is I’m teaching.

So, what I did when I was, uh, working with young students lear,

beginning to help them, or helping them begin to learn how to read,

is I would just take all the, the vowel sounds, and you can kind of see this in the phonics video series, uh, that I have on the channel, but it’s only video,

so it’s kind of a one-way thing.

And that’s the tricky thing about teaching people how to read.

It really has to be a responsive thing,

uh, that you’re working either with a teacher or something else that you can actually show the student many different options, and then have them compare,

listening to the different sounds you make.

So, as an example, I’ve got the five vowels,

uh, the middle, like a, e, i, o, u,

and after we’ve already gone through all the names of the letter sounds I actually like to teach that first.

Some people prefer to teach the sounds of the letters rather than the names of the letters, but I prefer to teach the sounds,

or, excuse me, the names of the letters first,

because those will never change.

So it’s nice to give something to, to students to hold onto to say, look,

any time you look at this letter it’s always going to have the same letter name,

so a, b, c, d, e, f, g, etcetera.

So these are the names of the letter sounds and that wa…

Oh, no.

So these are the names of the letter sounds,

uh, or the names of the letters, I should say,

and if you teach those first it’s going to be easier for, for students to move from that to say, hey,

you know, we have the name for this letter, but it does make different sounds.

And this is how we’re going to teach that.

So I would have a, e, i, o, u, and then I would just take letters,

I would just take different combinations, like, b,

and I would line them up next to those letters,

like ba, be, bi, bo, bu.

Or I could put the, uh, b on the end of that and have like

ab, eb, ib, ob, ub.

Now, what I’m doing here is not trying to focus on specific words,

but really showing the learners how the words can make, uh, or the different letter sounds

can be put together to make different combinations.

Because that’s really what reading is.

It’s not about memorizing certain words or certain patterns, it’s really about saying, you know, if you’ve got this combination of things,

uh, and for the most part that’s how you can remember them.

Now, obviously, phonics isn’t perfect, and no reading system is.

That’s why there’s a lot of controversy when people are talking about reading systems.

There’s like the whole language approach,

or phonics, which is just focusing on the sounds.

That’s the, well, the, uh, the form I prefer,

because really it gives you about 84 percent of the language.

Uh, and there are always going to be some exceptions, but it’s still a good enough system that,

uh, with a little bit of help from a teacher,

you can get a nice, uh, well rounded ability to read.

And that’s exactly what my students in Japan had.

So all of them, even starting with young kids,

I would start, you know, teaching them to read at about maybe 2 years old, 2 and a half,

uh, and now like, you know, I can give them something to read and they can read it pretty well.

So it takes a little bit of time, and obviously

I’m only working with these students for a few hours a week,

so obviously much better if you can, you know, if you have your own child or you’re trying to learn,

uh, or help them learn how to read.

You have a lot more time to spend with them.

The more time you spend, the more you review,

the faster they’re going to become great readers.

And, of course, this is something I don’t really need to mention, but I will,

but reading is one of the most important things you can do, especially when you have young children.

Not only the time you spend with them,

uh, it’s much better than, you know, even watching a TV show with them, but that communication.

The people that are, you know, the most intelligent, the people that are the most successful, they’re readers.

I mean, really, they, uh, just on average,

uh, readers are just much stronger.

They have, uh, you know, for lots of different reasons I won’t go into, but I highly recommend people

teaching, you know, their children, or anybody, how to read.

So that’s why I’m such a, uh, uh, it’s such an important thing for me.

And even though most of what people know me for on YouTube now is about teaching these kind of more difficult things, complex expressions and things like that, so you,

uh, so non-native speakers can sound more native,

I really want to go back and start doing those other things.

So as I mentioned with these different, you know, teaching,

uh, showing the different comparisons and, and actually, you know, students would have me say, well, what about this combination, or what about that combination

So, again, we’re getting them to understand the rules without explicitly telling them that this letter and this letter

makes this sound because of this.

Were just giving them different options and letting them test that.

So, what I’ve actually done for that, and this is, you know, knowing my wife was pregnant a few months back,

I finally got around to beginning the production of the new app that we’re building called Scroll Phonics.

So I actually want to talk about that a little bit in this video as well.

So, uh, when I knew my wife is pregnant, and I was like, okay, we’re going to have a daughter.

And obviously, you know, she can’t read right from the beginning, but I want to have, you know, those things created for her so that when she gets old enough

she can begin using them, they’ll be all ready for her.

So I looked around for lots of different phonics apps and other things like that, you know, other,

um, you know, early learning tools.

Obviously since I’m there I can do a lot of teaching myself, but I wanted to give even more

resources or having other things like that available to help her, or help my wife, or other people, especially since she’s living in Japan at the moment.

So if she has a really good resource, then maybe a teacher won’t be so necessary for certain times.

So one of those things is teaching reading.

And instead of me going back and physically saying this sound makes this combination, and this sound makes that other thing, the same way I would do in a regular classroom,

I decided to make an app that takes that exact same formula

and then, you know, give that to my daughter, but something I could produce for everyone else out there as well.

So whether you, uh, are, you know, a great speaker maybe you know some,

uh, some, either your own children or some family members or something like that,

uh, I’ve just made something.

My team and I, we’re working together to release our first app,

and it’s coming out next month.

Now, right now, depending on when you watch this, it might already be out, so you can click on the link in the description of this video as well to learn more about that.

Uh, and you can learn more about how we’re building it and that kind of thing.

We’ll probably be talking about that more in future videos, but this one I just want to talk about a couple of things about learning

and how Scroll Phonics works.

So one of the biggest things I wanted to think about,

uh, was for, you know, when I’m building an app and thinking about the design of it, and how I want it to work,

uh, one thing is that I really wanted to make it something that anyone could use.

I really pictured an app, you know, it could be on an iPod, like an iPad or a pod, or a phone, or whatever,

or an Android device, uh, or desktop; we’re making all of these versions of the app as well.

But what we’re doing is making something that we could really, like we could put a parachute on it, drop it in the middle of a jungle, or a desert, or a city, anywhere in the world,

and anyone that knew how to hold an app, and scroll, or, you know, touch a button or something like that,

you know, when people get a new thing with buttons on it they try pressing things and exploring different things like that.

I wanted to make it accessible for anyone.

So what I find really odd about a lot of phonics apps or other teaching apps,

uh, but especially if you’re a non-native speaker,

you will, you know, maybe look at a phonics app or it will try to tell you a word, and then it will explain to you something.

And if you don’t already know how to speak, and you don’t have a teacher sitting there with you,

if you don’t really understand the language, it’s basically impossible for you to understand that.

So it’s a really weird thing that a lot of phonics apps actually have a lot of writing in them.

So why would you do that?

I don’t understand why, you know, why those are in there.

I guess they’re assuming that maybe a child would sit with their parent and go through the app,

but I thought that was really slow.

I really want, you know, to be able to control my own learning, and I wanted to give that to my learners as well.

So anybody using the app, they can go through and begin scrolling and testing things out,

and there’s no descriptions, there’s no explanations, none of that.

It’s all intuitive.

And that means that when you start playing the app, it’s really simple.

You go in and begin learning, and

testing the different sounds, and seeing how they work.

And so that’s also another really great thing about the app, something that we wanted to make.

We didn’t just want to take a textbook and put it onto an app,

which is what a lot of people have done.

So the, a lot, and you know, obviously this is a new thing with the digital technology so you can take, you know, interesting videos and other things,

but what a lot of people are doing are just using the digital part as kind of a gimmick.

Now, the word gimmick if you’re not familiar,

just means kind of something special, or,

you know, maybe a little bit silly, but it’s not really anything substantial or important.

So maybe I’m wearing like, uh, a rabbit costume to teach English.

So there’s really nothing helpful about me wearing a rabbit costume, but it’s different,

and it’s gimmicky, and maybe it will get more people to watch me.

So that’s a gimmick.

So I didn’t want to use that when we were having the app.

So I didn’t want to just take something and say, whoa, it’s a digital textbook.

I really wanted to make something so that you could actually

use the app and teach yourself something, and really explore the language, and really test different rules for yourself, instead of someone telling you what they are.

So what happens like this is, it becomes an actual game for people to play.

So you don’t need to think about like, oh, I’ve got to like raise this baby tiger over here and that’s how I learn my language, or whatever.

I don’t care about any of that stuff.

I want to get right to the language

and make, uh, you know, all the extra animations and other words and, you know, things like that, that are just um,

they’re just unnecessary to help someone learn how to read.

So we took care of everything, we removed everything else,

but a very simple system that teaches people how to read.

Now, I don’t want to go into everything here, but I just want to, you know, kind of talk a little about, uh, little bit about that for you when you’re thinking about these kinds of things for educating your own children.

So you don’t want to give too much information, or extra information that, that’s not necessary.

You want to give everything that’s straight to the point and make sure that things are easy enough for the learner to test by themselves.

Because when a learner understands a rule for themselves and they’ve taught themselves that rule, they never forget it.

And then, they understand it and can use it automatically.

Why a lot of people struggle to learn English is because they were learning rules,

and they were learning, you know, lists of rules and, you know, lists of words, things like that, in English textbooks,

but when they actually try to use things in a conversation they can’t.

They have to think and translate something from their native language into English in their head when they speak,

and then they can speak.

Now, if you actually get people to understand, uh, this principle, what I’m telling you right now, about helping people,

uh, understand how things work without an explanation,

that’s how you get people to use things automatically.

So that’s actually what we do in Master English Conversation, but we’re taking that same principle

and just using it in a very basic way with Scroll Phonics.

Another thing I wanted to talk about, whether you’re a teacher out there or a learner, or something like that,

just another thing that I noticed when I was looking at different phonics apps for my daughter,

uh, one of them was, uh, when you’re looking at a picture of something like that,

uh, and something happens in your mind when you don’t quite understand what the picture means.

Excuse me.

And what happens is, uh, you, you don’t really understand that thing, and you can’t make a very quick, direct connection to that.

So you need to form a translation or somehow

have some kind of explanation in your mind to understand what that means.

As an example, uh, let’s say I show you a picture of a vase,

so this is like a, like a bottle or some kind of cup or something like that, a vase with a flower in it.

Now, I’m not going to put a, a picture up here, but you can imagine that.

Now, if I tell you and you’re a native speaker and you understand the word flower,

then you know, ah, okay, I’m talking about the actual flower in the pot, or in the vase, and not the whole thing.

But if you think about that logically, there are lots of different descriptors I could use for something like that.

Now, if I, you know, teach you a different language, like if I’m speaking Japanese and I have you, uh, look at this same picture and I say hana,

uh, or I say kabin or something like that,

uh, again, these are Japanese words that one could be referring to the flower or one could be referring to the vase.

So a lot of phonics apps or a lot of education apps, they’re kind of designed for children,

and they have lots of colorful pictures and there, there, it’s really too busy.

There are lots of animations and you don’t really know what a specific word is describing.

So is flower, does that mean flower, or does that mean vase, or does that mean

like a, a color, or something like that?

Now, people that are native speakers will understand that, but if you’re not a native speaker you don’t know what that means.

So if I’m speaking Vietnamese, or Thai, or Russian, or anything else, and I give you a word like I just did in Japanese.

So hana means flower,

uh, kabin means, uh, vase, you know, like a, like a glass bottle, that kind of thing,

uh, but if you don’t know that, then it’s going to be really difficult for you to understand.

So what we’ve did differently, what we’ve done differently, I should say, with the app is that we’re using icons instead.

So instead of having a picture of a cat that’s all like zany and moving around, and jumping rope, and doing stuff like that, just to have animation,

because that’s what app developers think that people need in order to learn something,

we just have a very simple image of a cat that’s unmistakable.

You know exactly what we’re talking about,

it’s no action,

we’re not talking about anything like that,

and it’s really clear, and you understand.

So any time you’re teaching younger people, or you’re trying to learn something yourself,

you want to restrict to, you know, the most basic essence of what it is you want to learn, and that’s what’s going to help you,

uh, learn a lot more effectively.

So whether you’re teaching someone or trying to learn by yourself, always keep things simple.

Throw out all of the extra information that you don’t; need.

It’s just going to clutter up everything.

That’s a great word, a great, uh, phrasal verb, actually.

To clutter up something just means to make things really messy,

uh, and disorganized.

So don’t clutter up, you know, you’re learning or your education, especially when you’re working with young children.

You know, when we talk to our children normally, I have kind of two kinds of conversations with my daughter.

Or maybe not conversations, because she can’t really speak back with me,

uh, but one of them is just me talking normally.

Maybe a little bit slower than the speed I’m using right now.

And she’s kind of slowly getting to understand maybe just the flow of English,

in the same way that she’s understanding the flow of my wife’s Japanese.

We’re actually use both languages, uh, interchangeably when we speak with her,

but I try to speak more English with her and my wife does the same thing with her in Japanese.

So what we’re doing when we’re doing that is just kind of giving the flow of the language.

But when we’re actually trying to teach something, even though she’s still a little bit too young,

uh, I keep it really simple.

Like big mouse, small mouse,

red ball, black ball,

that kind of thing.

So I’m just letting her mind soak in these ideas, and as we continue to practice, those are the things that are going to help her,

uh, not only, you know, understand the, the general language and how it sounds,

but really understand individual things like grammar.

Again, all these basic ideas, it’s the same thing.

You know, you don’t need to get the lessons have to be more complicated as you get to higher levels, or more difficult things,

you just take the same basic principles and teach them in the same way to more advanced learners.

Again, that’s exactly what we’re doing in Master English Conversation, but now I get to take it back as we release this new app very soon.

So it should be ready in September, and you can click on the link, again,

uh, in the description below this video, if you’d like to learn more about Scroll Phonics.

But I think that’s enough.

Uh, wow, I’ve been speaking for a really long time.

I didn’t realize I was talking for that long.

I guess I even speaking quickly I was, blahlala, talking too much.

Let me know if, uh, you know, I really want this,

uh, advanced listening practice set of lessons to be something that’s yours.

So if you want the lessons to be shorter, or you don’t mind them being a little bit longer, if that’s not a problem for you, you know.

Actually, I like listening to some videos.

Some of my favorite videos are like four hours long.

I can just put something on,

especially if I like the, uh, the voice of the person I’m listening to,

and I put something on when I’m going to sleep.

Maybe some of you listen to me while you go to sleep.

Hopefully I don’t put you to sleep,

but maybe you enjoy listening to me as you go to sleep.

So if you’re enjoying longer videos, you can tell me about that, or if you want me to, you know, cut it down, because maybe you’re busy and you don’t want something so long, let me know.

So let me know down in the comments about, uh, other things you’d like to hear.

We can talk more about, you know, how I’m educating my daughter, or we can talk about something completely different.

Again, uh, advanced listening practice is all about you and what I can help you learn.

So, if you’d like to learn more about Master English Conversation, again, click on the link in the description or in the , uh, video.

As you can see, I forget what side of the video I’ll put it on.

I’ll put it up here somewhere for you.

Uh, but if you’re on mobile it’ll be available in the description below,

and I’ll see you again the next episode, as soon as this gets to 10,000 views.

Bye-bye.