Hi Inna, I totally agree with you. I was told by my first English teacher that I would never learn English. But to me the problem was the stress on grammar. As soon as I went on an exchange I picked up words and I started using them. I am a native German speaker and since a couple of years I challenged myself learning greek without a teacher and without any experience. Words are the most important things, at best in tiny word combinations. Like "auf jeden Fall" - these little phrases give you the time to think while speaking "What's the next phrase that I need to say?" Of course some basic grammar rules help like I, you, he/she/it declinations. Next step would be past (build with have) and future. That's enough to get along. Once you can communicate, natives will have the chance to help you out / correct you. But as you have said: If you don't know the words your grammar knowledge won't help you at all. Nice channel - keep on producing. And good luck on studying German - You'll master it!
Wow! The comments say she's not native English! She speaks pretty exactly like Emma, who does the UA-cam videos and voice-overs for Tenerife Horse Rescue, one of my favourite speakers of English content, because her voice and diction are so perfect and pleasant. WELL DONE! 'Great content here, too!
Это правда! Я довольно хорошо говорил по-английски (мой родной язык), когда мне было пять лет - задолго до того, как я выучил грамматику. Как еще я попросил бы печенье?!
Hi Inna, feel lucky to find your channel randomly on UA-cam, I like the way you teach. I'm totally agree with you. I'm an Indian, when I started to learn Italian by myself I didn't start with the grammar rather with the words and phrasal verbs and things like that, slowly then I could understand the logic behind it. great video.
Thank you soooo much, I am commencing a TEFL course and was searching for a few techniques and information prior to it so I'm prepared for it. the lexical approach was something no one so far has been able to explain in a simple yet with details. Your explanation is just superb and I did write a few notes which will be very useful for my journey into teaching English. I did learn bespoke Arabic language and after watching your video, yes, it was the lexical approach and I liked it as I understood the functional language. I just need to practice in order to master the language as you suggested. Thank you once again You truly are a very good teacher.
Then I really recommend you have a look at the links I shared in the description box, especially the articles on the lexical lab website. Good luck on the course!
It's a good point, regarding words learning importance, but on the other hand, right structure of sentences is skeleton for learning of lang and ofcourse using
The main purpose of language is to be able to understand and convey meanings. From the total, you need to proceed in training. To ask the question: "how much does this training contribute to the acquisition of these skills?"
Hey, Inna! Found your yt channel recently and I’m so in love with your accent 😍 my goal is to speak this way now :) I’m an English teacher working on my accent. Loved the video itself, like the principles of lexical approach. Thanks a lot ❤
I'm really happy you liked the video Nastya! Working on your pronunciation is indeed important for a teacher, not only because we can teach the correct pronunciation of words and phrases, but also so that our students understand us better and get used to smooth fluent speech.
I think the German's grammar is in some points like grammar in English. I admire your skills in languages. I am a little envious. Of course you have 'in jedem Fall" hard worked and you are extremely intelligent. Thanks a lot for sharing this video. Best wishes from Germany.
Well it does have some similarities of course, they share a common historical background after all! Still, there are a lot of differences, like genders and word order. So it's not easy, at all :)
You are amazing Inna. I wish I could give you a million likes. Can you make a video about how to plan a lesson using lexical approach and activities to do.
Learning a language well is similar to building a good house. Here is why: To build a house, you must have the structure of the house first, such as the foundation, the framework, the architecture, and the materials are what you will use to put in the structure of the house. Similarly, when you try to learn a language, you have to know the structure of the language first, which is the grammar system, including the alphabet, the parts of speech, different types of sentence construction, including how to combine the language's different parts of speech to make a sentence, and the different parts of speech are the very lexical units or words found in the vocabulary. You can never build a good house, just by knowing very well about the needed materials without knowing at all any sort of house structure, and similarly you can never build up any good knowledge of a language in your memory by merely learning well the meanings of the words or lexical unit without knowing how such words are used in different positions of a phrase or sentence structure All the methods of learning and teaching which you are expressing here are unscientific, and merely subjective ideas
I'm not saying you should not learn the sentence structure. Besides, I don't know any recent peer-reviewed study that showed that learning the grammar first and the lexical units second is actually a better idea. And on the contrary, there are lots of studies on the effectiveness of the lexical approach.
I think Inna is right. The volabulary is the most important. Because without bricks (words) you can't build anything. Not even a bad house. 😊 Your example with ready house can be compared to sometime perfect fluent English. But she speaks of a tip for beginners.
Without any word at all, you can certainly use non-verbal gestures to express yourselves well enough, such as using any sign language. You have fundamental misunderstandings of the functions of different parts of a human language because no matter how you try to avoid the grammar system of the language, you will never ever be able to escape from using it. Whenever you put words together to make yourself understood, that is when you use the rules of the grammar without even being aware of it, because the study of how words are put or combined together to make different meanings are nothing else other than grammatical rules. All education systems in the world have been following or applying such rules to teaching languages for so many centuries If you really had mastered the English language, you would understand that the dictionary-narrowly defined meanings of all the language's lexical units or words can very according to different specific contexts, and only people which have such higher levels of English language as university, and post-university, can see how contextual meanings of a sentence is much more important than the dictionary-defined meanings, especially in research of English literature, and interpreting the history of a country and human beings
Hi Inna, you have a great channel. I like the way you express yourself and the humor you use. The content seems to me to be of very good quality. Keep up the good work! greetings :)
You described in details the ridiculous activities you were doing in your German course, but did not give an example of activity from lexical approach. So if filling the gaps and paraphrasing is a grammatical approach, what belongs to the lexical one then?
Another point about grammar - you know how you can impress almost every Russian-speaking person? Tell them that Russian actually has not only singular or plural. It also has dual. It's "один конь", "много коней". But it's also "2 коня, 3 коня, 4 коня". And then "22 коня, 23 коня, 24 коня" - after that it's "25 коней, 26 коней" - but again "32 коня", etc. Most Russians are not even aware of that, although they use it in speaking every day :) It's actually funny enough how "31 конь" is singular again, but the dual variation definitely does add up to the whole picture :) Linguistics is a science trying to put a live language into some frame of rules. But the language is primary, and the rules are secondary. First there was the language, and only then there were the rules. So basically, rules don't matter. Just speak like others do, that's the main (and only) rule :)
And then rules exist to explain how it is that others speak :) But yeah I agree it's mostly about observing the patterns, experimenting with them, getting feedback and learning to use them
Good video and ideas! We need to listen and listen and engrave sentences within “prefabricated” ministories into our brain! That is the way in Pimsleur or Assimil, two of the favourite self learning courses among polyglots
Yes, it helps a lot, because that's how we store a lot of the information. However, it shouldn't of course be just repeat-repeat-repeat. There needs to be a lot of analysis as well and we don't always use prefabricated units to synthesise our speech. Still, it's one of the approaches that should definitely be part of one's learning
@@innainenglish Repeat and repeat prefabricated ministories is just and only during the first 3-5 months as to memorize/automitized around 2-3K words inside chunks/sentences. Afterwards we need novelty, interaction and to extend our vocabulary.
@@alfonsohshk8998 That's not exactly what I was saying in the video. I wasn't saying you should memorise texts or ministories. I said you should memorise chunks and collocations - and that works on any level. Say, as an advanced student, it may be really useful not just to learn the word 'trend', but learn phrases like 'there's an upward trend in...' or 'part of a wider trend'; not just the word 'gather', but a sentence frame 'From what I can gather,...' as well as registers and contexts where these phrases can be used.
@@innainenglish Maybe I was not clear enough. What I was writing above is what I normally do to learn languages. So far 7 with levels from B1 to C2. But I never try to memorize lists of sentences or use SRS, Anki or whatever. I just listen many times to the same short mini-stories (no matter Assimil, TeachYourself, Berlitz, Colloquial…), then read them out loud, improve the phonetics with the help of a native speaker and the IPA, and voilà. These are always my 3-4 first months. Afterwards time for interaction and start talking, reading, podcasts, watching TV according to the level, etc. Sorry for the misunderstanding! 😊
I Like listen you but you make more short films because it is to much information to rememnber in this 30 minutes. 😊😊But your films and you finally are great teacher.
23:30. i remember when i was preparing for ielts exam. the reading section was one of the hardest. There are lots of tips and tricks on youtube, as well as some techniques. But the question is.. Do they really work? No. If you dont know some vocabulary or even the closest meaning, it will be hard and no tips will help you.
Awesome content from a fabulous teacher in a cool and valuable channel. Glad to be led here. We teachers, and learners Never too late to learn and help learn
Thanks a million! Can't but mention your perfect pronunciation ❤I have a question. So, what if I teach using a course book, but there are topics that my students won't need. Should I teach it anyway?😅
Depends. I personally always try to find a way to teach every topic in the textbook, but I adjust it to the needs of my students and might tweak it here and there to make it more entertaining. You never know where and what you'll have to speak about.
It's estimated that around 50% of conversational English is made up of pre-set lexical patterns. And this is probably similar for all languages, because we are all working with the same brains... My understanding is that it's all to do with the limited capacity of short-term memory. Most of us can only process 4-6 chunks of data at a time, so if we learn language in lexical chunks this frees up more mental space for fluent communication. If we had to deal with language letter-by-letter or even word-by-word mental processing would slow to a crawl. So all languages develop habitutal patterns, often quite arbitrary and illogical, to grease the wheels of communication. Sadly very few learning resources seem to take this on board. For the few languages they cover, the Collins Easy Learning [Your Language Here] Conversation series is an excellent way to learn useful patterns. Routledge also do an excellent series of functional grammars called Modern [Your Language Here] Grammar which are a bit more comprehensive. Even more strangely, I've seen more than one authority advise that beginners should just learn the isolated word and not worry about its collcations. This is surely precisely the wrong approach? As for grammar vs the lexical approach, I personally don't see much of a conflict. If you reframe grammar as simply the learning of useful patterns, and use your grammar drilling to reinforce the new words you are learning, you can kill two birds with one stone. And of course, I have just expressed that thought using a standard lexical pattern 🙂
Thank you for the textbook recommendations! I need to check out Collins Easy Learning for sure. From the point of view of cognitive sciences, the working memory hypothesis makes a lot of sense, yes. As for grammar/ lexis, you are indeed correct and that's exactly how grammar is supposed to be learned in the lexical approach. A good place to start for those interested might be Leo Selivan's website as well as his book called Lexical Grammar
@@innainenglish Thanks for the refererence. The resources available for a lexical approach to learning English are infininely better than anything available in most other languages, but self-learners like me can still use the general principles.
For the most part, I do journalling in English and always try to find the right word instead of using the words that are already in my active vocab. When I record stories for my Instagram, I do that, too
So,a serious question here. Right now, I'm doing Bs hon.English literature and language, and I'm really conflicted that in future, whether I should do my masters in Applied linguistics or English literature or even TESOL. Which one would be best in your opinion?.
It depends on what you want to do later in life. So I suggest that you talk to someone who's already doing these degrees and ask them whether they like it and what they are planning to do in the future. And think what you want to do in the future of course. It also depends a lot on the country.
I have a question: how would you use this if you are already pretty familiar with the language but cannot really speak it? I have had french in school for 6 years so i know lots of words and how the grammar works but i wouldn't call myself fluent. Should i then start completely from scratch with learning complete phrases ?
You could build up on what you already know instead. Look up for collocations, read something your level and notice how the words you already know are used, take up conversation lessons, etc
Hi, you can be completely mistaken for a native speaker, which is rare. You've deserved a praise. Counter-intuitively, speaking with a perfect Modern RP accent might indicate that you are a foreigner, ha-ha (but that doesn't matter of course). Have you polished your pronunciation being in the UK by emerging? Arguably, the hardest part of English is pronunciation. Many people speak English, but only a few speak clearly and are pleasant to listen to. My mother tongue is Russian as well.
Учу английский уже пятьдесят лет и понимаю вашу речь с пятого на десятое. Недавно играл с русским ребенком в мячики - он вырос в Англии - ему 7 лет. Он знает английский, по-моему, как Принц Уэльский.... Какой смысл учить мне дальше?...
Can't stand those bloody 'forgetCH', 'NeedGE' 'dependGE', itCH', 'thatCH', 'notCH', 'butCH', 'a lotCH', 'findGE'... Your pronunciation is gorgeous, but, please, learn to use glottal stops where appropriate. And, of course, your content is absolutely amazing. Thanks very much and keep it up!
Hello Inna, I came across your video accidently. First, the title looked attractive and I was curious to check it out. Second, from the moment I heard your pronunciation I was convinced you being a native speaker. I had no idea that your native language is Russian. You amazed me with your genuinely stunning articulation of English sentences as if you had been raised in an english environment. You must have mastered RP in England which is believed to be the most accurate way of pronunciation. By the way, how long did it take you to master this level? Another question. Have you happened to watch 'the Rigs'? I found it quite challenging to catch every single word of characters. So, if you did, them what is your reaction? If you didn't I challenge you to watch it and then share your feelings. Thank you in advance and keep up excellent work.
Hi Islombek! It did take me quite a lot of time. Three or four years. But learning is a slow process, especially for adults. So that's fine. I haven't watched it, but I do often find some accents hard to understand.
@@innainenglish thank you for taking time to reply. I understand what you went through to achieve that top notch level in English. By the way, the series name is the Rig. They speak in Scottish accent. You must be a poliglot knowing German and Spanish. What about these langauges? Do you think you pronounce words in both languages well? You must have a phenomenal ear for particular sounds produced by speakers of languages.
@@anastasiyamikhailova6461 а по мне так отличия есть. Белорусы самые адекватные из трех, по моим наблюдениям, хорошие люди. И было бы несправедливо приписывать заслуги белорусов себе. Поэтому все нужно называть своими именами. А так да, все мы люди.
You didn't really say 'I'm teacher of English' at the beginning there, did you? Tell me you didn't drop the article 'a'! Mistakes are one thing, but you should walk the plank for that one...
I don't know how it looks like in different part of world but in Poland we have not good system of learning foreign language - we learn a lot of grammar ,a lot of useless words but we don't learn how to speak . We are affraid of speaking eaven when we know of many words :( this is horrible method , children learn at least 2 languages but a lot of them can;t speak at least one after 5 years of learning :(
I wonder what your natural English accent sounds like. I mean, without any conscious effort put into it. It's hard to believe that British accent could be natural for anyone haha
Think about it this way. Grammar is NOT more important than vocab. You can get the jist of a badly constructed sentence with all the right vocab, but you can't figure out what someone means if they just say gibberish even if it is in proper grammer.
Your statement that most of grammar is lexis or vocabulary is merely your own subjective belief, but not linguistically correct because the concept of grammar is broad, including syntax, semantics and phonetics, whereas lexis or vocabulary is only a small part of semantics. Lexical approach merely teaches learners how to identify fixed phrases, which is similar to teaching people how to copy exactly a sentence without any understanding at all how the sentence is formed from the language's different parts of speech, while the meanings of all the lexical units are not contextually free, or variable with specific contexts and time, and whenever such words have different meanings, a phrase can be interpreted in different ways, which is ambiguous or confusing to learners
In this video, it is not a linguistic concept but a teaching and learning approach. There is lots of evidence in FLA and SLA that proves that people first learn the words themselves, including set expressions and sentence frames and only later do they look at the grammar of it. Don't take this principle literally and yes this approach does work for many people. Not for all of course, as I did say in the video
I was able to pick up Spanish without studying grammar at all. In fact I think I have a grasp on English grammar but struggling with my confidence, today we are taught a tons of grammar but no speaking skills. So as I see it what she said makes sense
I don't know how it even became a thing to teach foreign language "analytically", by teaching the alphabet at first, then grammar, and only then the words to fill in the analytical structures of a language. That's absolutely the opposite of how you learn your mother tongue. Look, all the children when they come to school - by the time they start learning the linguistical structures of a language, they perfectly master the language _already_ . In fact, they also learned to speak _before_ they learned the alphabet or any writing. But the whole reason for children to learn the language is that they _needed_ it! They needed to communicate with parents, ask for food and other things, complain about their aches and other problems, etc. So if you want to learn a language to just "possibly use it one day, when you will be in this fancy country, and then you speak like a local and all your friends and relatives will drop dead jealous" :) - no! Just NO! That's not how it works. That's the same as "Oh, I want to master a music instrument, to _eventually_ impress everyone how good I am at it!" It's hard work and dedication. If you just do it to impress someone, that's probably not going to work. You need to really _like_ it, like _spending time_ with it - and then the mastering will come along. Putting it back to the language: you need to _need_ the language. Then you will learn it rather quickly. I typically say 6 months from zero to a "normal" speaking level - not a master, clean communication, but a level of communication where you can articulate yourself, discuss topics, explain your views, solve daily problems, etc. Just 6 months! And I've seen it multiple times, so it's not just me alone with some kind of "superpower". Myself, I was there for study in Germany, and on my first day they gave me 3 textbooks in German and said - "Would be nice if you had read them by the end of this month". - "Oh, but I don't speak German..." - "Well then, I guess you'll need to learn it..." So I did read the books by the end of the month. It wasn't really hard. Scientific books use a pretty limited vocabulary. I believe you spoke about it in your other video. What I'm trying to say - I would not even call it "lexical learning". It's "situational learning". People are very, very good at watching other people and copying their behavior. It's not only language, it's also the whole cultural thing. It's not only _what_ you say, but also _how_ you say it, or what you _do_ along with what you say. So forget the grammar. Most people don't know the grammar of their mother tongue - so what's the point? Put them into situations, teach them the behavior, including typical language in typical situations - and then you will move on quickly. Basically, the fastest pace you will learn the language is actually when you _don't learn_ it. Just do what you need to do. If you need the language for it, you'll learn it automatically. If you don't need the language on a daily basis, then you'll never learn it anyways, so you could as well skip it and find a better use for your time :) But then as a teacher, you could help people overcome their hesitation to speak, find topics for discussion, correct their faults, etc. It's much more about psychology than mathematical structures of linguistics. Actually, linguistics is a very interesting science - first, there was language. Many of them. They developed over millions of years, separated and came together again, influenced each other, etc, etc. And _then_ came the linguistics and tried to develop some rules that would fit to the already existing language. Needless to say, many "logical" rules didn't actually work, or only worked with a lot of exceptions. So what's the point of linguistics? It's trying to derive some system from how the language developed in the past - but the language didn't use this rules, the development was mostly situation-driven. The linguistics by itself also cannot predict the way how a language will develop in the future. It's an interesting science as such, but not very applicable I'm afraid - but I'm not a linguist, and maybe I'm just being stupid here :)
On the one hand, what you're saying makes perfect sense and I agree with almost everything. On the other hand, there's been enough research that shows that adults (after the age of approximately 12) don't learn a foreign language in the same way children do. Everything you say is correct, but adults do still need at least some explicit learning as well - that about the alphabet and the grammar etc. We shouldn't underestimate the importance of explicit learning. However, you are right in that speaking and the need to use the language should come first and also that a syllabus should never have grammar as its primary focus. I would also take issue with that it would take someone 6 months to go from zero to communicative functionality. Well maybe, if you already have enough experience in language learning and if you aren't working, but for most adults it is unfortunately unattainable. I'd rather say it'd be around 1 year to 1.5 years for most average working adults who aren't particularly good at languages and who have full-time jobs and other committments like children or elderly parents. I just don't want to discourage people by being overly optimistic :) That doesn't mean that it's not possible to do that in 6 months! I just mean that it's not realistic for everyone.
@@innainenglish Thank you for your thoughtful response! Regarding the 6 months - the key here is that the person should NEED the language. If he/she doesn't need it - as you say, full-time job, kids and parents, etc - then I would doubt if they will learn it in a year. I would actually doubt they will EVER learn it :) But if the need is there, people learn surprisingly quickly! Moreover, the first thing a language learner does learn in a foreign language environment (that he doesn't speak yet) is that you can understand a lot without language. 20 words and a sign language will let you go through without dying ;) After they understand that they can describe words using other words and have a set of about 500 words - it's done, they're on a communicative level. From there, you can learn new words for the rest of your life, the question is what's your goal - do you want a nice, well-educated level of language competence, or do you want to be able to have a smalltalk with your neighbor? But I would still insist that someone who's put into the environment of native speakers and is forced to communicate with them himself, not being able to hide behind someone else (children with better language skills, friends, etc) - this person will learn the language in under 6 months, I've seen this multiple times myself. Our mind is just so powerful, that it can not only learn fast, but it also can see that you're trying something in vain, doing something that's of no use to you - and the ultimate goal of the brain is energy preservation, in other words laziness :) So if not really forced to do something, it will prefer doing nothing any time of the day - or take an easier "shortcut", like asking a friend or using another language for communication, that you already know. It's understandable, because the energy consumption of the brain is huge, so the body is very concerned about what you do with your brains :)
@@innainenglish One good example for "learning by doing" instead of learning the theory and then trying to apply this theory in practice is swimming: you can read a lot about swimming. You can watch videos on how to swim. In fact, you can even become an expert and know all the possible faults in every specific swimming style. But you only learn how to swim when you start doing it, and you only get better _while_ you do it. In your case, it's really astonishing that you reached your level of English without being there. This really requires a lot of motivation: you seem to love your job as a teacher, you have high quality standards regarding your own work, you like the language and the sound of it, but probably also the culture, so that you read books and listen to the songs in English. But that's why it's so difficult to give guidance to someone else: the level of motivation can be very different, not just between different persons, but also the same person over time. But this (internal) motivation is basically the defining factor. In comparison, people who take a "deep dive" into a foreign language environment have two major advantages: they have an imminent need to communicate (that's their primary and consistent motivation), and they also have lots of possibilities to mimic the behavior of others. But you really need to _be_ in this environment, if you just sit home and watch UA-cam in your mother tongue, just being in a foreign country doesn't help, of course :)
tbh all you said it's totally obvious, it's what all language learners do to reach fluency besides other personal strategies, I've almost seen all your video but I couldn't, too obvious everything, 15 min wasted
If I understud what she sad .... I'm not sitting hear... I'm hear but not understud all.... if you not show it -what you said or speek slowly.... it's not usefull. Those gays hwo understood , they not need this video. Level A1 not undestood, Level B2 and Up not need this video. Sorry for my English.
Your pronunciation is absolutely perfect btw. Very few people could master this highest level of pronunciation. I’m really impressed.
Thank you Den!
Hi Inna, I totally agree with you. I was told by my first English teacher that I would never learn English. But to me the problem was the stress on grammar. As soon as I went on an exchange I picked up words and I started using them. I am a native German speaker and since a couple of years I challenged myself learning greek without a teacher and without any experience. Words are the most important things, at best in tiny word combinations. Like "auf jeden Fall" - these little phrases give you the time to think while speaking "What's the next phrase that I need to say?" Of course some basic grammar rules help like I, you, he/she/it declinations. Next step would be past (build with have) and future. That's enough to get along. Once you can communicate, natives will have the chance to help you out / correct you. But as you have said: If you don't know the words your grammar knowledge won't help you at all. Nice channel - keep on producing. And good luck on studying German - You'll master it!
I had a very similar experience. Although grammar is also important, it shouldn't be the main thing on the syllabus
Wow! The comments say she's not native English!
She speaks pretty exactly like Emma, who does the UA-cam videos and voice-overs for Tenerife Horse Rescue, one of my favourite speakers of English content, because her voice and diction are so perfect and pleasant. WELL DONE! 'Great content here, too!
Thanks for sharing! This video opens my eyes. As you say, by learning the lexical chunks, we can get fluent in English faster.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying :) Well it might not work for everyone, but as a general rule, it does
I've tried all 3 of them and it worked😅
Это правда! Я довольно хорошо говорил по-английски (мой родной язык), когда мне было пять лет - задолго до того, как я выучил грамматику.
Как еще я попросил бы печенье?!
Word is more important than others. I completely agree with you in this point.
Hi Inna, feel lucky to find your channel randomly on UA-cam, I like the way you teach. I'm totally agree with you. I'm an Indian, when I started to learn Italian by myself I didn't start with the grammar rather with the words and phrasal verbs and things like that, slowly then I could understand the logic behind it. great video.
Thank you! I'm glad you liked it. Good luck with your Italian!
@@innainenglish thank you, have a great day!
Thank you soooo much, I am commencing a TEFL course and was searching for a few techniques and information prior to it so I'm prepared for it. the lexical approach was something no one so far has been able to explain in a simple yet with details. Your explanation is just superb and I did write a few notes which will be very useful for my journey into teaching English.
I did learn bespoke Arabic language and after watching your video, yes, it was the lexical approach and I liked it as I understood the functional language. I just need to practice in order to master the language as you suggested. Thank you once again You truly are a very good teacher.
Then I really recommend you have a look at the links I shared in the description box, especially the articles on the lexical lab website. Good luck on the course!
this channel is deserve following it
That's great your teachings and pronunciation teacher 🎉
It's a good point, regarding words learning importance, but on the other hand, right structure of sentences is skeleton for learning of lang and ofcourse using
Very interesting channel, perfect pronunciation! Greetings from Poland 🇵🇱
The main purpose of language is to be able to understand and convey meanings. From the total, you need to proceed in training. To ask the question: "how much does this training contribute to the acquisition of these skills?"
Most helpful channel. I can't stop watching it.
Glad to hear that!
Hey, Inna! Found your yt channel recently and I’m so in love with your accent 😍 my goal is to speak this way now :)
I’m an English teacher working on my accent. Loved the video itself, like the principles of lexical approach.
Thanks a lot ❤
I'm really happy you liked the video Nastya! Working on your pronunciation is indeed important for a teacher, not only because we can teach the correct pronunciation of words and phrases, but also so that our students understand us better and get used to smooth fluent speech.
100% agree with you 🥰
@@nastyakonovalenkova1206 Nastyaaaaaaaa
great video hope to see a series of Inna preparing IELTS
This approach to language learning is called TPR(S) --Total Physical Response (and Storytelling)
I watched to the end🎉 It was great👍
Totally agree.
I think the German's grammar is in some points like grammar in English. I admire your skills in languages. I am a little envious. Of course you have 'in jedem Fall" hard worked and you are extremely intelligent. Thanks a lot for sharing this video.
Best wishes from Germany.
Well it does have some similarities of course, they share a common historical background after all! Still, there are a lot of differences, like genders and word order. So it's not easy, at all :)
You are amazing Inna. I wish I could give you a million likes. Can you make a video about how to plan a lesson using lexical approach and activities to do.
Thank you! I'll think about it
Thank you very much 👍
Омг, я никак бы не подумала, что вы русскоговорящая изначально😍
Thank you very much for your useful work. Keep it up! Peace, Love and Respect from Russia 🇬🇧
Learning a language well is similar to building a good house. Here is why:
To build a house, you must have the structure of the house first, such as the foundation, the framework, the architecture, and the materials are what you will use to put in the structure of the house.
Similarly, when you try to learn a language, you have to know the structure of the language first, which is the grammar system, including the alphabet, the parts of speech, different types of sentence construction, including how to combine the language's different parts of speech to make a sentence, and the different parts of speech are the very lexical units or words found in the vocabulary.
You can never build a good house, just by knowing very well about the needed materials without knowing at all any sort of house structure, and similarly you can never build up any good knowledge of a language in your memory by merely learning well the meanings of the words or lexical unit without knowing how such words are used in different positions of a phrase or sentence structure
All the methods of learning and teaching which you are expressing here are unscientific, and merely subjective ideas
I'm not saying you should not learn the sentence structure. Besides, I don't know any recent peer-reviewed study that showed that learning the grammar first and the lexical units second is actually a better idea. And on the contrary, there are lots of studies on the effectiveness of the lexical approach.
I think Inna is right. The volabulary is the most important. Because without bricks (words) you can't build anything. Not even a bad house. 😊 Your example with ready house can be compared to sometime perfect fluent English. But she speaks of a tip for beginners.
Without any word at all, you can certainly use non-verbal gestures to express yourselves well enough, such as using any sign language.
You have fundamental misunderstandings of the functions of different parts of a human language because no matter how you try to avoid the grammar system of the language, you will never ever be able to escape from using it. Whenever you put words together to make yourself understood, that is when you use the rules of the grammar without even being aware of it, because the study of how words are put or combined together to make different meanings are nothing else other than grammatical rules. All education systems in the world have been following or applying such rules to teaching languages for so many centuries
If you really had mastered the English language, you would understand that the dictionary-narrowly defined meanings of all the language's lexical units or words can very according to different specific contexts, and only people which have such higher levels of English language as university, and post-university, can see how contextual meanings of a sentence is much more important than the dictionary-defined meanings, especially in research of English literature, and interpreting the history of a country and human beings
What education have you got in SLA or ESL or a similar field?
@@innainenglish the comment above can give us some indication… let’s read it again… 😊
Thank you! I'll definitely use some tips.
Glad you liked it Olesia!
hi Inna,i like your kind of approach to this language.Are you available to lesson one to one ?
Thank you! I don't teach 1-on-1, but I will be offering courses and group lessons soon.
Excellent
Hi Inna, you have a great channel. I like the way you express yourself and the humor you use. The content seems to me to be of very good quality. Keep up the good work! greetings :)
Thank you!
Можете снять видео про то как вы добились такого произношения при изучении английского языка? У вас тот акцент, к которому я лично стремлюсь.
Пожалуйста❤
You described in details the ridiculous activities you were doing in your German course, but did not give an example of activity from lexical approach. So if filling the gaps and paraphrasing is a grammatical approach, what belongs to the lexical one then?
Blessed!
Another point about grammar - you know how you can impress almost every Russian-speaking person? Tell them that Russian actually has not only singular or plural. It also has dual. It's "один конь", "много коней". But it's also "2 коня, 3 коня, 4 коня". And then "22 коня, 23 коня, 24 коня" - after that it's "25 коней, 26 коней" - but again "32 коня", etc. Most Russians are not even aware of that, although they use it in speaking every day :) It's actually funny enough how "31 конь" is singular again, but the dual variation definitely does add up to the whole picture :)
Linguistics is a science trying to put a live language into some frame of rules. But the language is primary, and the rules are secondary. First there was the language, and only then there were the rules. So basically, rules don't matter. Just speak like others do, that's the main (and only) rule :)
And then rules exist to explain how it is that others speak :) But yeah I agree it's mostly about observing the patterns, experimenting with them, getting feedback and learning to use them
Good video and ideas!
We need to listen and listen and engrave sentences within “prefabricated” ministories into our brain!
That is the way in Pimsleur or Assimil, two of the favourite self learning courses among polyglots
Yes, it helps a lot, because that's how we store a lot of the information. However, it shouldn't of course be just repeat-repeat-repeat. There needs to be a lot of analysis as well and we don't always use prefabricated units to synthesise our speech. Still, it's one of the approaches that should definitely be part of one's learning
@@innainenglish Repeat and repeat prefabricated ministories is just and only during the first 3-5 months as to memorize/automitized around 2-3K words inside chunks/sentences. Afterwards we need novelty, interaction and to extend our vocabulary.
@@alfonsohshk8998 That's not exactly what I was saying in the video. I wasn't saying you should memorise texts or ministories. I said you should memorise chunks and collocations - and that works on any level. Say, as an advanced student, it may be really useful not just to learn the word 'trend', but learn phrases like 'there's an upward trend in...' or 'part of a wider trend'; not just the word 'gather', but a sentence frame 'From what I can gather,...' as well as registers and contexts where these phrases can be used.
@@innainenglish Maybe I was not clear enough. What I was writing above is what I normally do to learn languages. So far 7 with levels from B1 to C2.
But I never try to memorize lists of sentences or use SRS, Anki or whatever. I just listen many times to the same short mini-stories (no matter Assimil, TeachYourself, Berlitz, Colloquial…), then read them out loud, improve the phonetics with the help of a native speaker and the IPA, and voilà. These are always my 3-4 first months. Afterwards time for interaction and start talking, reading, podcasts, watching TV according to the level, etc.
Sorry for the misunderstanding! 😊
@@alfonsohshk8998 No problem! I might have misunderstood what you meant as well. Thanks for sharing your tips!
I Like listen you but you make more short films because it is to much information to rememnber in this 30 minutes. 😊😊But your films and you finally are great teacher.
23:30. i remember when i was preparing for ielts exam. the reading section was one of the hardest. There are lots of tips and tricks on youtube, as well as some techniques. But the question is.. Do they really work? No. If you dont know some vocabulary or even the closest meaning, it will be hard and no tips will help you.
They do, but only on top of the language knowledge you already have
Thank you! It was very useful.
Awesome content from a fabulous teacher in a cool and valuable channel. Glad to be led here. We teachers, and learners Never too late to learn and help learn
Thanks a million! Can't but mention your perfect pronunciation ❤I have a question. So, what if I teach using a course book, but there are topics that my students won't need. Should I teach it anyway?😅
Depends. I personally always try to find a way to teach every topic in the textbook, but I adjust it to the needs of my students and might tweak it here and there to make it more entertaining. You never know where and what you'll have to speak about.
Интересно что узнала про канал от американца)). Очень рада что подписалась.
It's estimated that around 50% of conversational English is made up of pre-set lexical patterns. And this is probably similar for all languages, because we are all working with the same brains...
My understanding is that it's all to do with the limited capacity of short-term memory. Most of us can only process 4-6 chunks of data at a time, so if we learn language in lexical chunks this frees up more mental space for fluent communication. If we had to deal with language letter-by-letter or even word-by-word mental processing would slow to a crawl. So all languages develop habitutal patterns, often quite arbitrary and illogical, to grease the wheels of communication.
Sadly very few learning resources seem to take this on board. For the few languages they cover, the Collins Easy Learning [Your Language Here] Conversation series is an excellent way to learn useful patterns. Routledge also do an excellent series of functional grammars called Modern [Your Language Here] Grammar which are a bit more comprehensive.
Even more strangely, I've seen more than one authority advise that beginners should just learn the isolated word and not worry about its collcations. This is surely precisely the wrong approach?
As for grammar vs the lexical approach, I personally don't see much of a conflict. If you reframe grammar as simply the learning of useful patterns, and use your grammar drilling to reinforce the new words you are learning, you can kill two birds with one stone. And of course, I have just expressed that thought using a standard lexical pattern 🙂
Thank you for the textbook recommendations! I need to check out Collins Easy Learning for sure. From the point of view of cognitive sciences, the working memory hypothesis makes a lot of sense, yes. As for grammar/ lexis, you are indeed correct and that's exactly how grammar is supposed to be learned in the lexical approach. A good place to start for those interested might be Leo Selivan's website as well as his book called Lexical Grammar
@@innainenglish Thanks for the refererence.
The resources available for a lexical approach to learning English are infininely better than anything available in most other languages, but self-learners like me can still use the general principles.
How do you practice speaking with the new vocab you acquired from books etc.?
For the most part, I do journalling in English and always try to find the right word instead of using the words that are already in my active vocab. When I record stories for my Instagram, I do that, too
So,a serious question here. Right now, I'm doing Bs hon.English literature and language, and I'm really conflicted that in future, whether I should do my masters in Applied linguistics or English literature or even TESOL. Which one would be best in your opinion?.
It depends on what you want to do later in life. So I suggest that you talk to someone who's already doing these degrees and ask them whether they like it and what they are planning to do in the future. And think what you want to do in the future of course. It also depends a lot on the country.
I always hated to fill in this gaps in the sentences. I know why now 😊
lol I feel you! Filling the gaps can be useful too, but for most people it can't be the main way in which you learn vocabulary and grammar.
I have a question: how would you use this if you are already pretty familiar with the language but cannot really speak it? I have had french in school for 6 years so i know lots of words and how the grammar works but i wouldn't call myself fluent. Should i then start completely from scratch with learning complete phrases ?
You could build up on what you already know instead. Look up for collocations, read something your level and notice how the words you already know are used, take up conversation lessons, etc
видео просто супер!!! вы тоже супер!
🎯👍👏Good point!
Love you
love
Hi, you can be completely mistaken for a native speaker, which is rare. You've deserved a praise. Counter-intuitively, speaking with a perfect Modern RP accent might indicate that you are a foreigner, ha-ha (but that doesn't matter of course). Have you polished your pronunciation being in the UK by emerging? Arguably, the hardest part of English is pronunciation. Many people speak English, but only a few speak clearly and are pleasant to listen to. My mother tongue is Russian as well.
No, most of it is university in Belarus + learning on my own at home
U are amazing 😻
Учу английский уже пятьдесят лет и понимаю вашу речь с пятого на десятое.
Недавно играл с русским ребенком в мячики - он вырос в Англии - ему 7 лет. Он знает английский, по-моему, как Принц Уэльский....
Какой смысл учить мне дальше?...
Thank you!
Can't stand those bloody 'forgetCH', 'NeedGE' 'dependGE', itCH', 'thatCH', 'notCH', 'butCH', 'a lotCH', 'findGE'...
Your pronunciation is gorgeous, but, please, learn to use glottal stops where appropriate.
And, of course, your content is absolutely amazing. Thanks very much and keep it up!
Hello Inna,
I came across your video accidently. First, the title looked attractive and I was curious to check it out. Second, from the moment I heard your pronunciation I was convinced you being a native speaker. I had no idea that your native language is Russian. You amazed me with your genuinely stunning articulation of English sentences as if you had been raised in an english environment. You must have mastered RP in England which is believed to be the most accurate way of pronunciation. By the way, how long did it take you to master this level?
Another question. Have you happened to watch 'the Rigs'? I found it quite challenging to catch every single word of characters. So, if you did, them what is your reaction? If you didn't I challenge you to watch it and then share your feelings. Thank you in advance and keep up excellent work.
Hi Islombek! It did take me quite a lot of time. Three or four years. But learning is a slow process, especially for adults. So that's fine.
I haven't watched it, but I do often find some accents hard to understand.
@@innainenglish thank you for taking time to reply. I understand what you went through to achieve that top notch level in English. By the way, the series name is the Rig. They speak in Scottish accent.
You must be a poliglot knowing German and Spanish. What about these langauges? Do you think you pronounce words in both languages well? You must have a phenomenal ear for particular sounds produced by speakers of languages.
RP isn't "the most accurate" way to pronounce English. It's just an accent like any other accent. And it changes constantly, just like all language. ❤
Ausgezeichnet 👍🏻
Just a comment for algorithm❤
Моя дочь 7 лет с первого взгляда определила, что вы русская😂. Младенец истину глаголит😂. Акцент и правда хорош👍
она с Белоруси
@@donfrancisco8406 это все равно. По крайней мере для русских.
@@anastasiyamikhailova6461 а по мне так отличия есть. Белорусы самые адекватные из трех, по моим наблюдениям, хорошие люди. И было бы несправедливо приписывать заслуги белорусов себе. Поэтому все нужно называть своими именами. А так да, все мы люди.
@@donfrancisco8406 вот это и есть нацизм, считать, что одна национальность адекватнее другой и прочие подобные мысли.
@@anastasiyamikhailova6461 из уст россиянина это наверное должно звучать как комплимент.
Просто клёвая
мне кажется она Zoe пересмотрела...
What is your native language?
Russian (first) and Belarusian (second)
My cratria different I see better human not his or her social status?
You didn't really say 'I'm teacher of English' at the beginning there, did you? Tell me you didn't drop the article 'a'! Mistakes are one thing, but you should walk the plank for that one...
I don't know how it looks like in different part of world but in Poland we have not good system of learning foreign language - we learn a lot of grammar ,a lot of useless words but we don't learn how to speak . We are affraid of speaking eaven when we know of many words :( this is horrible method , children learn at least 2 languages but a lot of them can;t speak at least one after 5 years of learning :(
Exactly the same situation where I'm from... This is really upsetting
I wonder what your natural English accent sounds like. I mean, without any conscious effort put into it. It's hard to believe that British accent could be natural for anyone haha
Think about it this way. Grammar is NOT more important than vocab. You can get the jist of a badly constructed sentence with all the right vocab, but you can't figure out what someone means if they just say gibberish even if it is in proper grammer.
Your statement that most of grammar is lexis or vocabulary is merely your own subjective belief, but not linguistically correct because the concept of grammar is broad, including syntax, semantics and phonetics, whereas lexis or vocabulary is only a small part of semantics.
Lexical approach merely teaches learners how to identify fixed phrases, which is similar to teaching people how to copy exactly a sentence without any understanding at all how the sentence is formed from the language's different parts of speech, while the meanings of all the lexical units are not contextually free, or variable with specific contexts and time, and whenever such words have different meanings, a phrase can be interpreted in different ways, which is ambiguous or confusing to learners
In this video, it is not a linguistic concept but a teaching and learning approach. There is lots of evidence in FLA and SLA that proves that people first learn the words themselves, including set expressions and sentence frames and only later do they look at the grammar of it. Don't take this principle literally and yes this approach does work for many people. Not for all of course, as I did say in the video
Any links to those researches?
I was able to pick up Spanish without studying grammar at all.
In fact I think I have a grasp on English grammar but struggling with my confidence, today we are taught a tons of grammar but no speaking skills.
So as I see it what she said makes sense
I don't know how it even became a thing to teach foreign language "analytically", by teaching the alphabet at first, then grammar, and only then the words to fill in the analytical structures of a language. That's absolutely the opposite of how you learn your mother tongue.
Look, all the children when they come to school - by the time they start learning the linguistical structures of a language, they perfectly master the language _already_ . In fact, they also learned to speak _before_ they learned the alphabet or any writing. But the whole reason for children to learn the language is that they _needed_ it! They needed to communicate with parents, ask for food and other things, complain about their aches and other problems, etc. So if you want to learn a language to just "possibly use it one day, when you will be in this fancy country, and then you speak like a local and all your friends and relatives will drop dead jealous" :) - no! Just NO! That's not how it works. That's the same as "Oh, I want to master a music instrument, to _eventually_ impress everyone how good I am at it!" It's hard work and dedication. If you just do it to impress someone, that's probably not going to work. You need to really _like_ it, like _spending time_ with it - and then the mastering will come along.
Putting it back to the language: you need to _need_ the language. Then you will learn it rather quickly. I typically say 6 months from zero to a "normal" speaking level - not a master, clean communication, but a level of communication where you can articulate yourself, discuss topics, explain your views, solve daily problems, etc. Just 6 months! And I've seen it multiple times, so it's not just me alone with some kind of "superpower". Myself, I was there for study in Germany, and on my first day they gave me 3 textbooks in German and said - "Would be nice if you had read them by the end of this month". - "Oh, but I don't speak German..." - "Well then, I guess you'll need to learn it..." So I did read the books by the end of the month. It wasn't really hard. Scientific books use a pretty limited vocabulary. I believe you spoke about it in your other video.
What I'm trying to say - I would not even call it "lexical learning". It's "situational learning". People are very, very good at watching other people and copying their behavior. It's not only language, it's also the whole cultural thing. It's not only _what_ you say, but also _how_ you say it, or what you _do_ along with what you say. So forget the grammar. Most people don't know the grammar of their mother tongue - so what's the point? Put them into situations, teach them the behavior, including typical language in typical situations - and then you will move on quickly.
Basically, the fastest pace you will learn the language is actually when you _don't learn_ it. Just do what you need to do. If you need the language for it, you'll learn it automatically. If you don't need the language on a daily basis, then you'll never learn it anyways, so you could as well skip it and find a better use for your time :)
But then as a teacher, you could help people overcome their hesitation to speak, find topics for discussion, correct their faults, etc. It's much more about psychology than mathematical structures of linguistics. Actually, linguistics is a very interesting science - first, there was language. Many of them. They developed over millions of years, separated and came together again, influenced each other, etc, etc. And _then_ came the linguistics and tried to develop some rules that would fit to the already existing language. Needless to say, many "logical" rules didn't actually work, or only worked with a lot of exceptions. So what's the point of linguistics? It's trying to derive some system from how the language developed in the past - but the language didn't use this rules, the development was mostly situation-driven. The linguistics by itself also cannot predict the way how a language will develop in the future. It's an interesting science as such, but not very applicable I'm afraid - but I'm not a linguist, and maybe I'm just being stupid here :)
On the one hand, what you're saying makes perfect sense and I agree with almost everything. On the other hand, there's been enough research that shows that adults (after the age of approximately 12) don't learn a foreign language in the same way children do. Everything you say is correct, but adults do still need at least some explicit learning as well - that about the alphabet and the grammar etc. We shouldn't underestimate the importance of explicit learning. However, you are right in that speaking and the need to use the language should come first and also that a syllabus should never have grammar as its primary focus. I would also take issue with that it would take someone 6 months to go from zero to communicative functionality. Well maybe, if you already have enough experience in language learning and if you aren't working, but for most adults it is unfortunately unattainable. I'd rather say it'd be around 1 year to 1.5 years for most average working adults who aren't particularly good at languages and who have full-time jobs and other committments like children or elderly parents. I just don't want to discourage people by being overly optimistic :) That doesn't mean that it's not possible to do that in 6 months! I just mean that it's not realistic for everyone.
@@innainenglish Thank you for your thoughtful response! Regarding the 6 months - the key here is that the person should NEED the language. If he/she doesn't need it - as you say, full-time job, kids and parents, etc - then I would doubt if they will learn it in a year. I would actually doubt they will EVER learn it :) But if the need is there, people learn surprisingly quickly! Moreover, the first thing a language learner does learn in a foreign language environment (that he doesn't speak yet) is that you can understand a lot without language. 20 words and a sign language will let you go through without dying ;) After they understand that they can describe words using other words and have a set of about 500 words - it's done, they're on a communicative level. From there, you can learn new words for the rest of your life, the question is what's your goal - do you want a nice, well-educated level of language competence, or do you want to be able to have a smalltalk with your neighbor? But I would still insist that someone who's put into the environment of native speakers and is forced to communicate with them himself, not being able to hide behind someone else (children with better language skills, friends, etc) - this person will learn the language in under 6 months, I've seen this multiple times myself.
Our mind is just so powerful, that it can not only learn fast, but it also can see that you're trying something in vain, doing something that's of no use to you - and the ultimate goal of the brain is energy preservation, in other words laziness :) So if not really forced to do something, it will prefer doing nothing any time of the day - or take an easier "shortcut", like asking a friend or using another language for communication, that you already know. It's understandable, because the energy consumption of the brain is huge, so the body is very concerned about what you do with your brains :)
@@innainenglish One good example for "learning by doing" instead of learning the theory and then trying to apply this theory in practice is swimming: you can read a lot about swimming. You can watch videos on how to swim. In fact, you can even become an expert and know all the possible faults in every specific swimming style. But you only learn how to swim when you start doing it, and you only get better _while_ you do it.
In your case, it's really astonishing that you reached your level of English without being there. This really requires a lot of motivation: you seem to love your job as a teacher, you have high quality standards regarding your own work, you like the language and the sound of it, but probably also the culture, so that you read books and listen to the songs in English. But that's why it's so difficult to give guidance to someone else: the level of motivation can be very different, not just between different persons, but also the same person over time. But this (internal) motivation is basically the defining factor.
In comparison, people who take a "deep dive" into a foreign language environment have two major advantages: they have an imminent need to communicate (that's their primary and consistent motivation), and they also have lots of possibilities to mimic the behavior of others. But you really need to _be_ in this environment, if you just sit home and watch UA-cam in your mother tongue, just being in a foreign country doesn't help, of course :)
tbh all you said it's totally obvious, it's what all language learners do to reach fluency besides other personal strategies, I've almost seen all your video but I couldn't, too obvious everything, 15 min wasted
Words? This stuff is not so important :)
Цікава як размаўляеш па-беларуску 😂
podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9lMjk0YTMxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw/episode/YmY2ZDhmNzktM2QxZC00Njk2LWFiZmItNGRjY2MwMjY3NjFl?sa=X&ved=0CAgQuIEEahcKEwjYjdSw5dH_AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA
Boring
If I understud what she sad .... I'm not sitting hear...
I'm hear but not understud all.... if you not show it -what you said or speek slowly.... it's not usefull.
Those gays hwo understood , they not need this video.
Level A1 not undestood, Level B2 and Up not need this video.
Sorry for my English.
Dope
What a nice girl 😊so clever