The Level Up English Podcast
The Level Up English Podcast
#42 "Find Your Shakira" with Lindsay Williams
A conversation with Lindsay Williams from Lindsay Does Languages.
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Hello and welcome to the English with M ichael podcast, the best place to come to study English as a second language as well as to practice the British accent with me. Michael Lavers as your teacher. Hello English learners. Welcome back to the English with Michael podcast. Today I have a really, really exciting guest for you. We had a great conversation. First of all, an apology. If my audio sounds a bit strange today. First of all, I'm still traveling at the time of this recording anyway, and also my microphone broke so I have to use my laptop microphone, not so happy about it. By hope it's still listening. I will hope it's not too bad for you and as always, if you want to read the transcript for today's episode so you can read what we're saying while we're saying it, you know it's a really good way to improve your vocabulary and practice your listening skills. Then head over to our show notes page, which is ewmichael. com/lindsay. So that is a hint who I'm talking to today. So her name is spelled L, I, N D S A Y. Lindsay, so head over there for all the information about today's podcast. So yes, the guest today is Lindsay Williams and she is a well known language learner English teacher. She also teaches other English teachers or other online teachers how to, how to be better really. And I've been a fan of what she's been doing for a long, long time. I highly recommend you go over to her website and see what she's up to. So her website is lindsaydoeslanguages.com in this episode we talked a lot about Lindsay's history as an English teacher and a language learner and she has some really, really amazing advice for you as well on how to improve your English. The main theme of this episode is to find your Shakira. Find your Shakira. That probably sounds a bit strange to you. So if you're wondering what that means, listen to the end and you will find what this fantastic advice really means. So I hope you enjoy. And now I give you Lindsay Williams. I am joined today by Lindsay Williams. So thank you very much for joining me on the podcast. How are you?
Lindsay:You're welcome. Not a problem. And I'm very well thanks for inviting me on.
Michael:Yeah, of course. I, I get the impression you're a very busy person, so yeah, I really do appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.
Lindsay:Absolutely. Absolutely.
Michael:Yeah. So could you start by giving us a little introduction and maybe telling the listeners about what you're from and who you are?
Lindsay:Yeah, sure. So I'm Lindsay and my business is Lindsay does languages, nice and straightforward name there, and I'm all about inspiring independent language learners to go further. We're doing it soda and I work a lot with teachers as well with um, teachers that want to start teaching online or who are already doing, so want to get better at that. So there's two sides to I do. And it all started in 2012. I started tutor and offline English, French and Spanish. I was driving around, um, in the nights, you know, from 4:00 PM till like 8:00 PM after school hours. And, uh, and I would be teaching people in their homes. I was teaching in the daytime as well. I'd be teaching corporate clients like groups and stuff like that. In 2014 I switched things up and I moved online because my husband had trained to be a teacher. So his job was in a different place. So we had to move house and I thought, okay, what am I going to do in between? Cause now all these students live here and I'm going to live that and that's too far away. So I thought online would be like a transition to help me kind of earn some money in between. And actually I found that I much preferred working online and so most of what I do now is still online all these years later.
Michael:That's really interesting. Yeah. I think many teachers do that where they kind of transition offline to online over time.
Lindsay:Yeah. Yeah. And I think as well, like there's nothing wrong with teaching offline. I think both definitely have their perks. Um, for me right now, this is what I found suits me best. Who knows? In the future, I might go offline again for certain things, but yeah, we'll see.
Michael:Yeah, absolutely. I think there are a lot of benefits to online, but of course there's benefits to both of them. One, what do you think was like the biggest benefit to you of moving online?
Lindsay:Um, I really like working, I really like just being able to work from home. Like I'm quite, I did, I did bit of background to explain why I think that is, I did my degree with the open university, which is part time distance learning, right? So six years of my life, even while I was starting the business as well, I was having to be very disciplined. Um, in terms of saying right now is study time. I need to do these studies and so that I can, you know, do my exams and so my exams and on time and all of that, um, you know, you didn't have a tutor but you're not with them like as much as you would be in a sort of typical brick university. Um, and that really helped me I think in the beginning to give me that same mindset towards my work. And so I worked really well on my own and I think that that just being able to like, you know, be in the same place and not have to drive for half an hour. Like in my old job before I started, um, even even before I started, Lindsay Does Languages offline, I was working in a school and it was fine. And then I switched schools to another school and I absolutely hated it. And part of why I hated was the commute I would be driving to work to a job that I did not enjoy and having to sit in traffic to get to this job that I didn't enjoy. And that was not a nice way to start the day. So I think, you know, being able to just work from wherever suits me and then, you know, working from home is really good. And then if I feel, you know what, I just need a change of scene. I'm not getting stuff done today. I can just get up and go and take my laptop and go somewhere else.
Michael:Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a, that's a huge benefit. And I felt the same way. I always feel kind of, uh, a little bit of pride, but also a little bit guilty sometimes if someone asks me about my commute or something. This happened in the past, how long is your commute? And I said, well, 30 seconds maybe.
Lindsay:Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think, I think there's, there's still, you know, there's still downsides that come with that. Like, you know, when you work for yourself, you're responsible for all of your income, for your pension, for paying all of your bills for, you know, it's not like when you have a sort of more typical regular job and the money's going to come in, no matter how much work you do when you're actually at work, you know, so there's, there's, I try and tell myself when I feel that, that guilt sometimes of like, Oh, my commute is nothing and these poor people are having to go a long commutes and, Oh, why do I get to do this job? That's not fast, surely. And then I think, you know what, actually I've made other sacrifices for this, so it's totally fine.
Michael:Yeah, that is a good point. I mean, I think there are downsides to any job you have, isn't that not, no job is going to be completely perfect, so that's a good thing to remember. Yeah. So yeah, it's been interesting to hear a little bit about your progression over the years. I don't know if you have any idea actually, cause I, I wouldn't know how to answer this myself. Where do you see yourself going in like in the future? It's like a real kind of interview question though.
Lindsay:Yeah, it's a big question. I have lots of ideas of like what I would want to do in the future and some things that feel right now, like, Whoa, that's crazy ambitious. Um, and then I think, well hang on, is it because what I'm doing now five years ago would have seemed crazy ambitious, you know, so I really don't know how to answer that. I really don't. Um, yeah. And like, you know, there's, there's, there's loads of things that I'd want to do, but I feel like if I say anything now and then it didn't happen, I would've jinxed it. you know, so, yeah. I'm not sure.
Michael:No, that's fine. I, I completely, I would be exactly the same. It's really hard to say isn't it?
Lindsay:Yeah,
Michael:yeah. And yeah, you five years or whatever time it is, that is such a long time and anything could happen in that time. It is so much can change. Um, so I think that's exciting that you don't know what's going to happen. Exactly.
Lindsay:Yeah. I, I do and, and I like, I like that idea as well of like, okay, I have these rough pinpoints in my mind, but then also that open to being picked up and moved about either moved closer to the present or moved further into the future or just picked up and shoved to one side. If that's the case, depending on what other things kind of come my way, you know, there's only so much that you can control in terms of your future in terms of opportunity. You never know what's around the corner, what someone else might just turn around and email you tomorrow about, you know, so it's good to kind of keep a slight, slight openness as well. You're right.
Michael:Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. Yeah, I always like to think more of like having a direction and not having a goal or destination because if you have a direction, it's a bit more fluid and flexible. Yeah, I like that way. But yeah. Okay. Well, um, obviously your, you know, your brand name, Lindsey does languages, so I guess that means you know, a lot of languages, right?
Lindsay:Define"know", I think, I, I, I'm very reluctant to call myself a polyglot. It feels like a word kind of like, um, what's another example? I don't know. It feels like a word that someone would call someone else. Right. So if someone else were to say that about me, I'd be like, okay, that's fine. You can call me that if you want to. But to describe myself in that way feels almost like I'm going to be tested. Uh, so I, I've definitely studied a lot of languages. Um, in terms of what I speak, that really depends on where I know what I'm focusing on. If I'm, you know, if I've not touched that language for years or if I'm kind of studying it in the background, if I'm actively, you know, working with a tutor on it at that time. So it's, it's quite varied. I've studied like, I would say extensively at some point about I think 13, wait maybe more now, maybe like 13, 14, 15, something like that.
Michael:You know it's a lot when you've lost count.
Lindsay:Uh, yeah, a little bit, a little bit. But you know, I hate to kind of say that number because then like I say, it then feels like almost intimidating and that's totally not the case. Um, you know, I'm definitely not fluent in that number of languages at all. I'm, I could talk right now in like French, Spanish, and then Italian, Portuguese, German to a lesser extent. Um, and then it kind of goes down from there, like a lot with a big drop. But that's just in of the exposure that I've had, the experiences I've had, you know, the number of years that I've been kind of connected with the language in some way, even if I've not been actively studying during that time, it's still been there, you know? So yeah, quite a few. Quite a few languages.
Michael:Yeah. No, that's was really amazing. And I, I do know what you mean, like when someone asks you, how many do you know? It's not really that simple. And you know, bits and bits of each one.
Lindsay:Yeah. Yeah. And different bits as well. It's really weird, isn't it? Like I could say one thing in one language and then I try and say that in another and I'd be like, Oh, wait a minute, what is that word? That seems like such a simple word that I should know that I don't know in this language. Yeah. I can still do all of these things in this other language, you know? So
Michael:yeah, that's a really funny thing. It's not consistent at all in some languages. You know, some really kind of advanced words, but then you don't know the simple words and it's kind of funny. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's one thing that I can really see from the work that you're doing and you know, on your social media and things like that. You really do have a passion for languages. I think that's obvious. But is it possible to kind of talk about where the passion comes from or what made you interested in languages in the first place?
Lindsay:Yeah, absolutely. I, when I was at primary school, so now I think in 2014 a law came in. Um, and technically it's a requirement with the national curriculum of schools and education that in primary school you learn a language, another language, living or dead. That's the kind of description of it, right? So for example, you could learn Latin, um, or you could learn French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, whatever. Um, but when I was in primary school many years before 2014, this was not the case. And so I went to, it was an extracurricular club and my, you know, my parents had to pay for me to go to that, but I wanted to keep going. I guess they thought it was a good thing and I liked it cause you've got croissants at the end of term. But then I didn't really think about it as a thing of like, wow, I love French French. It wasn't like a passion at that point I think. And then even when I went onto secondary school, I then became even less of an interest because I was good at it. And in secondary school we were starting from zero. So the teacher's trying to teach 11 year olds, cat, dog, blue, green. They don't want to know that. Right. So, uh, and I knew all of that stuff anyway, so I was just repeating like two or three years of my life for another two or three years. All the same language that I'd learned with a class that just didn't care. And it wasn't until I would say Shakira released her album Laundry Service, which was like her first kind of English album. But they were still some Spanish songs there and I thought, Oh wow, these songs are in Spanish. Oh, that's cool. I was like, well, Spain is close to France and some of these words I recognise already, so if I can know French, I don't see why I can't learn Spanish. There was just, there was no second thought there at all whatsoever. I know for a lot of people, especially adult learners, there's this theory, this feeling of, Oh well I can't start learning another language until I've mastered this one, or you know, I'm still learning this one. So I can't even begin to learn how to say hello in that language, that other language, because that would be too much. I couldn't hack doing multiple languages at once, but for me, I just never, that just never crossed my mind. I just thought, well, if I can do it for that language, the process is the same. It just seems so logical to me of like, it's just another language. Right. And so then I wanted to do Spanish and I asked for an older Shakira album for my birthday that was all in Spanish. And a little Spanish dictionary and I remember sitting on my birthday and my grandparents kitchen table like, why was I doing this on my birthday? I'm sat there with the little dictionary and the lyrics booklet from the CD case trying to translate every single word. Of course, this is Shakira as like conjugate verbs as well. None of this is going to be easy. None of this makes sense. This is not a good way to start, but I was doing it and then I had the choice. I had the option rather to pick at GSCE when I was like, you know, uh, 13, 14 to do Spanish. My school said, Oh well if you want to do Spanish or German you have to do French to like prove that you can do languages. And it was like, well, fine. I guess because I wanted to do Spanish that much and then so the passion really came from the passion for wanting to learn Spanish. I just thought that would be cool. It would be a cool thing to be able to do. It's a skill, it's an ability. It's something that if I learnt it, then it would stay with me for life. And I didn't, I still didn't think about it. I just thought, yeah, I'm someone that speaks two languages. That's a cool thing. And when I went to sixth form then, which is after, so for a level to age 16 my school didn't have that. So I had to move to a different school. And this was a specialist language college, right? So they had a Japanese tutor come in, they had a language day every year where they had Italian, Russian, British sign language teachers come in and teach for a whole day for different groups. Right. This was like, just blew my mind. And that definitely opened up this idea to me of like, wow, you know what? This isn't just a case of I speak French and Spanish. There's no reason why I couldn't learn Italian, Japanese, British sign language. Right. And I had a teacher there as well who was from Columbia actually, but it was one of our Spanish teachers. And he said to us one day, you know, with your knowledge of Spanish now you could go, not not just to me, but you know, to the class, you could go to Italy for a year and you'd speak fluent Italian. You could go and work in Portugal for a year, you'd be fluent in Portuguese. And I thought, really, that's amazing. All of a sudden these two languages are just become like instantly accessible to me. And so then when I started my degree, I had the choice of either doing French and Spanish at the same kind of beginner level that I just done in my A levels. I thought, Oh, that's pointless. Or add the choice of doing new languages, Italian. And they just opened up a Mandarin course and I thought, yeah, why not? Why not? Now it's, you know, it's now another. And through that, through during my degree, I then got to this point where I was able, I was able to teach myself a language without the need for the courses, without the need for my, you know, my, my university course as a base resource. And then I started learning them myself. So it was, there's not like one pinpoint. I would say there's definitely a process and when I think back I can see all these moments like the shoe care album, the Spanish teacher saying it would be easy to learn Italian and Portuguese. I'm doing those other courses in my first year of university. That just all began to build up and lead to me. Then being like, you know what, I'm just going to keep doing this on my own cause I like this thing.
Michael:Hmm. Yeah. That's really fantastic. Yeah. I think that kind of matches what I believe as well about passion and you know, many people kind of say that passion is something you're born with and it's something you have to find the, I've always kind of thought it's something you have to work on and build and develop over time and it's, that's what you've done. Yeah,
Lindsay:definitely. You know, I definitely wasn't born with a passion for languages. Like maybe I was born with an interest, but you know, I grew up, both my parents are native English speakers. Um, we, we spoke English at home, we spoke English in the town I lived in. Um, and we know we went on holiday to France. Um, and I would, I would go and order the baguettes, you know, I used to enjoy that when I was like younger than when I started the classes at school. But then I remember, I remember we went to Italy one year and I remember sitting in the back of the car and saying, sounds so nerdy. I'm like a little kid. Right? And I was like, Oh, the words in Italian, like looking at the road signs or the words in Italian and in a vowel, it's like little kids. It's in the back of a car, like on holiday in Italy and says that. So maybe it was always something that I'd had like a curiosity for, but I think, you know, there's kind of sequence of events, definitely, like you say, help to just build a passion for it.
Michael:Mm. Yeah, absolutely. I love how it also started with Shakira as well, that was like the spark that started everything.
Lindsay:I know. Yeah. I'm, I'm glad that she's still like famous and successful. It'd be so embarrassing a story to tell if Shakira had just become this like washed up like, like you know, nostalgia of the past. So yeah, I'm very grateful to Shakira.
Michael:That was good. That was good. Hopefully you can meet her one day and kind of thank her in Spanish or something.
Lindsay:That's the dream. That's the five year plan right there. Meet Shakira.
Michael:Yes. That, that'd be amazing. Yeah, I think that is a good point though because you kind of spoke about, you know, in school most of the class didn't really care about learning. I think this was my experience too when we learnt French and Spanish, you know, no one cared. Um, and I think maybe the main reason was because there was no motivation or no reason to learn that you in the music you kind of saw something that you enjoyed and something, you know, more of a connection to that culture perhaps that wasn't in the classroom.
Lindsay:100% it gave me, it gave me a thing to latch onto to be like, why am I doing this? Like w cause people would, people would say in the class like, I'm never going to go to France. And when I do, they all speak English. That was the, that was the general answer. Like even with Spanish, like yeah, I'm going on holiday to Spain, but they all speak English. That's fine. Right. And that was the class with Spanish. That was the class that people are chosen to be in. You know, we had a year of Spanish at GCSE where the teacher who people I think had picked Spanish because they actually liked the teacher. And in fact there were so few of us that picked Spanish and German that we got put into one class, thankfully because this kind of led the path of my life. Thankfully. Um, the people that want to German said, okay, yeah, we'll do Spanish. So we got to do Spanish. But the teacher was so, so good. Um, and then after a year, he left second year, we then got a new teacher who I thought was great and I worked with her actually. I went, it's really weird. I went and worked at that school later on and she was, she actually came back to work at that school as well. So we ended up being work colleagues, which she was just lovely and um, but people didn't like it because in the very first week he looked at all our coursework we'd done in that first year and said, I know this says that you've got Bs and Cs, but I hate to break it to you. You're on, you're working at F's and E's and D's. And so everyone just went like, Nope, done give up. And I was the only one that really still cared. Um, so even then it was still just, you know, a lack of enthusiasm. And I think, I think it's, it's a similar story. Like you say, it was the same for you. I think across the English speaking world, it seems to be much harder to motivate language learning because you know, for most other people, it's almost like the obvious choice is English as the foreign language that you would learn. But for us it's not that clean cut. You know, maybe in America it's more obvious that Spanish makes more sense. But still that's probably that same attitude of like I don't need to learn Spanish. They can speak English and it's just, it's trying to kind of chip at that, that attitude at that perspective. And just like a lot of what I do, I see as trying to open up languages to more than just what people remember in the classroom. Because then that stores people for life'cause people don't think, Oh I couldn't do languages at school, therefore I am. I'm not very good at languages. And the minute that you describe yourself in any way, but you know, in our case right now in, in that, that description of I'm not the type of person who is good at languages or I am not, I was never good at languages. We do the same with maths I think as well a lot. But you know that then gives you this framework that you are putting your own. You're putting yourself in that box to say, Nope, I can't do that thing. So therefore I'm not even going to try. And I think if you, if you can give people a a reason, if you can, if you, if people can find their own Shakira, you know, to come back to what did it for me, then that is going to really help. Cause it's that motivation. It's that drive. It's that passion for, for giving people a reason to learn.
Michael:Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. Maybe I can even title the podcast this. So, for the English learners are listening to this episode, you know- find your Shakira.
Lindsay:Find your Shakira. Yes. Yes.
Michael:It won't make sense until you listen. Well, really good. I really love to hear that. U m, yeah. So speaking of, of English a b it, you know, my listeners are primarily English learners. You have had some experience, well a lot of experience teaching English. This is a very broad question, but I wondered if you had any, w ell, you could share your, kind of your teaching methods or if that's a bit too broad, maybe what you think many teachers do wrong then.
Lindsay:Oh yeah. No, I think I can answer that. So my own teaching methods I think are, so I think it really stems from when I started out, first of all when I was looking around locally to see, okay, what other people are tutoring. Um, and how can I make myself different? And I found that a lot of people, cause I started with French and Spanish. Um, well actually when I, when I started into those languages, I started with French and Spanish. I taught English before that, but um, French and Spanish was the, the logical starting point for me when I started the business. And so a lot of people teach in French and Spanish were retired language teachers, which is absolutely fine. Understandable. Makes sense. They've got the experience. But that meant that the thing that made me different was that I was young. That was, that was like, you know, I didn't have years of experience. How could I compete with that? But the fact was I was young, so how do I then make that different again? How do I then stand out beyond just that? Cause I only self isn't quite enough. Right. And I thought, well, you know what, I'm going to make my own resources and I'm going to come to lessons with my own plans because I'm teaching, I'm not teaching in a school, I'm not, you know, a restricted by a curriculum of any sorts. This is private tuition. The whole purpose of this is that it's tailored to each individual student. So I've always made my own resources. That was the, that was my, my thing that I wanted to be different about me and about why offered. And that then carried on to when I added in English later on as well. Um, again, so in terms of my teaching methods, it's really very personalised and then very kind of fun and enjoyable. I want to, I want, like I say, I want to help people find actually care. Right? So, uh, like I would, I would go and teach, um, French and Spanish. I didn't get the chance to do this with English as much because generally when I was teaching English, it was in this country. So people had already moved to the country. Right. So there was a slight difference. But when I would teach French and Spanish, um, I was teaching a lot of school children, so I had this whole bank of PowerPoints about countries and you know, cause it's not just France and Spain, which is what it feels like a lot of the time when you're learning French in Spanish in the UK, you know, there's like basically a continent that speak Spanish. There's French spoken pretty much on every continent across the globe I think. And so I had this whole bank of resources and you know, they, they were in the language. So maybe I'd go into a lesson and we'd be talking about Madagascar and um, I will be talking a little bit about a country on the slides. I'd be all in, in French, in the language, a bit about the food, about the music, all of this stuff, trying to help people find their Shakira. So that was something I did a lot that I enjoyed. And I think actually thinking about it, that then comes to answer your second question, what do I think a lot of teachers do wrong? And this I kind of, I kind of hate answering that question cause it sounds just like a desk. Like I'm a rapper and I'm dissing another rapper. That's not, that's not the case. But I think a lot of the time in my own experience of being a student, teachers didn't incorporate that cultural element enough. You know, like I know many teachers do, but I think that some teachers there is less of that. It's more focused on, okay well we need to learn the grammar to pass this test. We need to learn the vocab to pass this test. But then what happens after the test? You want people to learn a language, yes, to pass the test but also to have a skill for life. And the only way that that's going to happen is if there is a reason to keep learning beyond that test. So if you can incorporate the culture of the language, you know, into your lessons in some way, then you'll be onto a winner. And I think that's a really good, um, really good thing too to add to the way that you teach already. Cause we all have our own styles, like with a lot of what I do, especially when it comes to working with teachers. There's very little of that that is aimed at teaching how to teach if you like. Because especially cause I worked with online tutors, a lot of the learning curve that a lot of the things that, that people need, need and want to learn about aren't actually to do with teaching. We all have our own teaching style and people come and they already know how they're doing that. But the thing is it's about like setting up a website and how to promote yourself online and all of this. And that's what I spend a lot of my time doing with teachers. I feel like the teaching is more personal. So do you have a podcast teach languages online where I talk about from time to time we have episodes discussing like pedagogy and different learning theories and teaching theories and all of that stuff. Because I think it's important to learn that. But then I think it's important to interpret that in your own way as well.
Michael:Hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. And, I mean, I hate to sound like a fanboy, but I do love your podcast so, and I know that I do have at least a few listeners to the podcast who either are teaching English or want to teach English. Maybe even if it is their second language. So yeah, if anyone listening is interested in teaching English online, then yeah, definitely check out the podcast. It's teach languages online. Is that the name?
Lindsay:That's the name, yup.
Michael:Yeah. Teach languages online. So I'll put link to that in the show notes for this episode too. Yeah. Really? Yeah, I really, yeah, I 100% agree with your culture answer. I think you need to kind of see the culture and find yeah, that motivation, that reason to keep keep learning. Yeah.
Lindsay:Mmm. Yeah. Cause cause you know you can, it's not just a case of like a lot of the time in textbooks as well. It's almost like an add on. Like there's like a little box in the corner that says coacher and it'll say like in maybe there's a page about, I don't know, ordering a meal in a restaurant. And then it will say in the box French people tend to eat at this time of day, you will order a menu du jour that kind of thing. Right. But you can incorporate that into the whole thing rather than just as a side note at the end. So I think that's, that's important too. It's not just a case of, okay, we're now taking a break to teach culture. It's just mixed in together.
Michael:Yeah. No, I completely agree. I completely agree. That's a really good point. Um, so in your many languages that, you know, bits of or that you have been learning. I'm trying to like, word it carefully. Have you ever had any embarrassing moments? This is my favorite question.
Lindsay:Oh, that's a good question.
Michael:Any kind of mistakes or anything like that?
Lindsay:Okay. All the time. So first of all, I'm, I'm a big fan of mistakes of like mistake goals. I have, um, like a mistake goal, a tracker like mistake or setter in my kind of free freebie library. Um, because I think it's so important because if we, we often think like, Oh, mistake is a bad thing. And actually when you turn that around and you say, okay, I want to make five mistakes in this lesson I'm going to have next. Right then you'll be speaking more. You'll be forcing yourself to go further than perhaps you would if you were playing it safe. So I think if you reframe a mistake to be something positive, that's just wonderful. Um, so I'm a big fan of mistakes in terms of embarrassing ones. The one that always comes to mind is when I was, so I said that before. Um, the French and Spanish, I taught English before that and that was the first time was actually when I went to Costa Rica. I was 18 years old and I went down like this volunteer program thing, um, teaching English. And uh, it was great. You know, I was living with a family and I was in this little, this little town for like three months. I became like part of the community. It was wonderful. And in the, in school one day I was sat with this boy, they were twins. Um, and I was sat with one of them and they were a bit naughty. These twins, you know, compared to the rest of the kids, they were really well behaved. These twins were a bit, bit of a ruckus. Um, and uh, so I was sat with him by the teacher, the main teacher was teaching and I was trying to like, I was on like crowd control duty if you like. And he just gets up and I told him in Spanish to sit down and he turned well I thought I did and he turned and looked at me and just went and I said it again and he laughed and turned around to the whole room. And I think what I said is, cause it's very similar, I think I must have said" feel yourself" rather than"sit yourself down". So yeah, that was an embarrassing one in a room full of like 15 year olds.
Michael:Was it followed by lots of laughter then or, did everyone..
Lindsay:He asked, you know,"que?" Got the clarification you needed and just turned around and told the whole class. And I still, I didn't realise until after I thought maybe that's what he said. Hang on a minute. Those verbs are quite similar. Yeah. Embarrassing.
Michael:That's so good. I love that one. I haven't heard that before. Um, did you ever make that mistake again?
Lindsay:Hell no, definitely not.
Michael:That's one of the great things about making mistakes like that is that it, it will never leave your mind. So you'll never ever make the same mistake twice. Will you? Generally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. That's a really good one. I like it. Thanks for sharing.
Lindsay:You're welcome.
Michael:What motivates you to continue studying in your languages? Because I think that's the thing that my students struggle with the most is that motivation. They can't find a reason to keep going every day. So what advice would you have for them? The people that struggle with finding that reason to keep going?
Lindsay:I think it doesn't always come naturally to, to find your Shakira as we say. Um, and, and you know, if you're still sort of looking for that, if you're still looking for that drive, I think you, if you really, you know that you want to learn this language, you know, you want to learn in this case, um, where you need to, then it's about showing up. So even when you don't feel like it, the difference between people that do a thing and a good thing for a little bit of time and then quit versus the people who stick with stuff and get really good at stuff, the difference is showing up even when you don't want to. So there will be days when your motivation is, is down slightly and you have to figure out a way to still want to do the thing. So even if it means, let's say that you have, um, okay, so I'll give you an example. So typically I have an hour in the morning that's like my language hour, right? And right now that's split 20 minutes, 20 minutes, 20 minutes. So 20 minutes I do one language than another than another because I want to be just refreshing multiple languages. At this point, right. And, uh, now like, um, you know, we're not now, but like at the end of December, um, obviously Christmas is, was, was coming up and it wasn't possible. The mornings were changing. Like I said, my husband's a teacher, so he was kind of like going in at different times and then finishing like on odd days of the week. And so it was harder to get that same routine. So instead of just going, well, it's not going to happen and put my hands up in the air and just going, forget it. I was cutting down that time of 20 minutes to 15 minutes, so I was still showing up. You know, I was feeling kind of less motivated because I'm thinking, Oh, it's not gonna happen, but I thought, you know what, I'm just going to keep, keep going. So I was just cutting down the time. Um, so that it was still possible so that I could still do it without it kind of getting in the way of my day. Um, and that's one option. Another option is if you feel like, okay, I've showed up, I'm here, I've got the same amount of time, that's not a problem, but I just don't want to look at that textbook anymore and change it up a bit. Allow yourself a day where, or like a study session where maybe instead of your textbook stuff that you've been working on quite diligently and you're just, you've lost motivation switched to something else and maybe that involves you. Um, like with English, I think you can do a, there's an app, a website called lyrics training. That's just a really fun way to kind of, if you're thinking, Oh, I need to do something right you, you've got like cloze exercises for song lyrics and it's connected to YouTube. So it's like, you know, real songs and that's a really great way to just give yourself a bit of contact and feel like, okay, I've done something that's better than nothing. So something is better than nothing. Shut up as much as you can. If you do miss a day, it's totally fine. You can maybe set yourself this rule of like never missing two days in a row. Right. And that helps because then if you, once you miss one day, you feel like, Oh no, I missed the day. The chain is broken. If you miss two days, it's broken even further. But if you just start again on that second day, forget day that you missed, it's totally fine. It's going to happen. And then it would be easier to stay motivated. Whereas if you miss that second day getting started again on that third or fourth or fifth day, the longer you live at, the harder it gets. So that would be my advice when you kind of lose motivation.
Michael:Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah, I think that's, yeah, brilliant advice because it is all about motivation and creating that habit to do it and just sit down or start open the textbook, whatever you're doing. And yeah, that's something that I do have most things actually, like whether it's exercise or meditation or something, I always set kind of a limit show up. Yeah. I show up. So I say, I'm going to do this, whatever I'm doing for five minutes. And that's nothing. And most of the time when you sit down or for five minutes, you can actually do it for much longer once you start getting into it, can't you?
Lindsay:Yeah, that's a really good, that's a really, really good tip, that idea of like, okay, I can't be bothered. Well I can at least give myself one minute, two minutes, five minutes. Right. And then just if you don't set a time on that, just see how long you can actually do it and can be interested and kind of get into a flow. So, yeah, that's a really, really good tip.
Michael:Hmm. Yeah. But when you, um, have this kind of daily morning study habit, do you do anything to record it? Like do you have like a streak or any calendar where you cross off the days or is it just in your head?
Lindsay:Um, yeah, so I use an app called, is it called streaks? Um, I think it's called streaks, the app that you use. Um, and it's really simple because once you've got it all set up, you tell it how many days you want to do a thing or you know, if you want to do something just once a week or once every two weeks and it doesn't matter what day within those weeks, it's very flexible. And then all you do when you've done the, the habit is you just tap on the circle of that habit and it goes a little circle goes round and it goes and then you've, you've done it. And so I use that to keep track of what I'm doing, um, with my languages. Yeah, I found that to be really, really helpful.
Michael:Yeah, I thought, I thought, I kind of thought that you would have something like that because I haven't heard of the app actually, but I've got a very similar app. It sounds the same, which I forgot the name, but I'll again, I'll put links to both of these on the, on the show notes. But yeah, it's really good because on my app you can see like the month calendar view and it's every day you've done it. It's highlighted and it's so satisfying to look back over that month.
Lindsay:Really rewarding. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. It really is. And you don't realise that until you start tracking something like that, you know, you just feel like, Oh yeah, but I've done it so it's fine. It's in my head, you know? Um, like I recently, um, well for, for a while I've been wanting to get like a sports watch. Um, cause I was using Strava to kind of log when I was doing activity and then like, yeah, but ah, I was really struggling and I was like this battle of like, but do I do enough sport? Did I do enough activity to warrant a sport watch? Am either, again, it's that mentality of I'm not the type of person that has a sports watch, you know? Um, and I got one on black Friday, I found a deal and uh, I'm really happy with it. And ever since then I've, I've gone for an actual walk every day. Um, and I have done exercise most days, you know, so it's definitely increased because I know that I'm tracking it because I know that it's going to be there and I'm going to see it and it's going to feel rewarding. So it's really encouraging as well. So that's the same exactly the same as having a little habit tracker for you, for your languages as well.
Michael:Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah. That's kind of interesting how when you invested in some, you know, uh, equipment for your activity that maybe you were more motivated to do more.
Lindsay:Yeah. Like more skin in the game, right?
Michael:Yeah. I wonder if that can be applied to kind of English learning too. Maybe, I don't know. Invest in a nice notebook or a textbook or something and then you're kind of by buying that, you're telling yourself that I am the kind of person who studies and uses this tool.
Lindsay:Exactly. And I think with a tutor is a great way to do this as well. You know, if you know that you've got a lesson coming up with a tutor and you know that you're paying for that, you don't want to waste that. Right. So then you will feel more of a motivation to do the work and to get something done because you know that you're going to have that session. You don't want to show up and pay for the lesson and be like, actually, I haven't done anything since last time. I haven't done my homework. I haven't haven't learned anything new. You know, no one wants that. That's not what you're paying them for. So, uh, so that could be a really good investment as well to help with this kind of tracking and this motivation.
Michael:Yeah, completely agree. Yeah. If you've never had a tutor before, I think it's something that you should definitely look into doing. Yeah. Okay. Here's a random question for you. Do you have a favourite English expression or English many British English slang word that comes to mind?
Lindsay:Ooh, that's interesting. You know when you're like abroad and you see you meet someone and then you kind of hear that accent, you're like, Oh you're British. I've, I've noticed that when that happens, my, my language does kind of change. Um, and even when, another example is if I'm abroad because so many people speak English, it's really hard. How can I say this without sounding like a really mean person? Cause that's not what I'm trying to, it's not what I'm saying. I am, um, you know, when you want to say something, say you're in a queue and it's taking ages, right? And you just want to say, Oh my God, why is it taking so long? What's going on? And you feel like you don't want to like offend anyone around you. Then I kind of switch to really slangy British English. I'd be like, Oh my god what.. well like let me try and do this. Like what are they even doing over there? This is ridiculous what's going on? You know what I mean? And I always say like,"Know what I mean?" on the end, r ight? Really, really fast, really squashed together, you know what I mean? O r that's my go-to when I'm trying to, like, it's almost like pig, Latin, p ig, Latin, right. When you add the sound to the end of the words, it's almost like that d ah, d ah, d ah. You know what I mean? you know what I mean? So that would be one t hat I think is, is something I really like c ause it comes in handy when you're trying to disguise the language that everyone seems to know. You just want to say something and not be understood d oes r eally, you know what I mean? So, yeah.
Michael:Interesting. You know, I mean, yeah. You know, I mean yeah, that was a good one. That sounds very British to me as well.
Lindsay:Yeah.
Michael:So do you think kind of like softens the blow a bit? Maybe if people do understand you, you kind of feel like that makes it less blunt.
Lindsay:That's wow. Like, yeah. Even even in a more, you know, um, kind of realistic setting than just trying to, than just being angry abroad. Yeah. You can use it when you are, you know, if you're in the UK and you're talking and you may be explaining something and you don't want it to come across as you say, you don't want it to come across too harshly. You want it to just soften the blow. You can say, um, I think it would be better if dumb, dumb, dumb, you know, let's say you work in a shop. I think it would be better if we put the biscuits next to the cakes, you know? I mean just and it's, you're not saying, I think this, you're inviting the other person and you know, I mean you're given, yeah, yeah. You're given them a chance to respond rather than just, I think this, so, yeah, it does. That's a really good point. It does help to sort of soften the blow.
Michael:Hmm. Yeah, I do know what you mean. I know, really good. I like that example. I didn't expect that, but it's good. Okay, so one final piece of advice from you, if you don't mind, if very hard question. I think if you could summarise your advice for English learners into one sentence or even one word, one piece of advice, what would it be? What is your advice?
Lindsay:You know, I always give the same piece of advice because this question comes up a lot and like interviews and stuff. And I think today you've really helped me to consolidate it into one very simple sentence that hopefully by this point in a podcast, people listen to. I understand. And that would be find your Shakira.
Michael:I knew it, I knew it would be really good. Find your security. I find your, how would you translate that and find your motivation. Find your passion.
Lindsay:see that's the thing I've always said like find your passion, your reason, find your motivation and it requires more explanation. But for today, find your Shakira.
Michael:That's good. So find your Shakira inviting people to find out more by listening to this podcast perhaps. Really good. Great. Great summary. So, uh, as I said earlier, you're, I feel like you're a very busy person. So where would you most like to send people if they want to know more about you? Which you know, they should, of course, where, where should they go?
Lindsay:Yeah, I mean, I mentioned, um, earlier the mistake goal tracker as part of my free library, there's loads and loads of stuff there. There's a free monthly planner, um, loads of start pages for different languages, goal setters, habit trackers, all that kind of stuff for free. Um, if you go to Lindsaydoeslanguages.com/signup and that's where you can get access to that. And that's linking back to my main website as well, where you can then see everything else.
Michael:Okay, perfect. And I guess all your social media can be accessed through that. I know you've got, that'd be Facebook and YouTube and things like that, right?
Lindsay:Oh, the things, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest. Yeah.
Michael:Okay. Pick your favourite. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. That's excellent. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Again, I will make a, a page personalised for, for you. So if you want to see, the listeners, if you want to see anything we've spoken about today, you can go to ewmichael. com/lindsey, which is, let me know if I'm right. L, I. N. D. S. a. Y.
Lindsay:yay. that's right.
Michael:I am reading it, so I shouldn't make a mistake really. But um, yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining me. It's been really fun to get to know you a bit and yeah, thank you for your amazing advice.
Lindsay:Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks again for inviting me on. It's been a pleasure. You have been listening to the English with Michael podcast to view the podcast notes for this episode and to listen to previous episodes. Head over to ewmichael.com/podcast.
