Hello, everyone.
My name’s George,
and I'm currently in Korea teaching English.
I have a guest today.
His name is Taehyun, he’s a friend of mine.
And he’s from Korea but studying in Germany at the moment.
The purpose of this interview is to talk about the challenges
of learning English,
particularly in the current lockdown situation.
I know that a lot
of you will be in a similar situation to Taehyun,
in which you are currently in lockdown,
so there are not a lot of opportunities to practice
English and to study with other people.
So, I'm going to be talking a lot
about English Grammar and Use.
And how you can use it to help you study English independently.
What was the most effective way to study English for you?
In my experience,
I think it is quite important to put yourself in a circumstance
where you have to speak English.
For me, working with people
who speak English helped me a lot.
I, personally, think
that not translating from English to Korean,
and Korean to English is quite important.
Because of the huge differences between English and Korean.
So, if you translate it from your language to English,
some people might misunderstand
what you are really wanting to say.
How long have you been in lockdown for?
I think it’s been around three months.
Okay, so it must have been a long time
since you hung out with a group of friends.
Yes, I think so, yes.
Yes.
In order to prepare you for hanging out
with your friends again and speaking in English,
I’d recommend using English Grammar in Use.
It focuses on conversational skills
and it’s a great way to prepare you for social situations.
It’s a simple grammar explanation,
followed by practice exercises, with answers in the back.
So, you can use it to study anywhere,
in your own time.
What difficulties did you encounter
whilst learning English?
I've got a lot to talk about,
but one of them would have been Word Order.
So, Word Order in English is completely opposite
to order in Korean.
For example,
if you want to say in Korean, I want to go to the cinema.
You have to say I the cinema go to want to.
It’s not really possible to translate directly.
So, let’s see which activities could help you
in English Grammar in Use.
On page 205, there's a whole activity,
which talks about Word Order.
For example, here, I got up at six this morning.
Get up early usually so don’t.
So, you have to put the words in brackets
in the correct order.
So, this is a really nice way to practice
what you find difficult.
What do you still find difficult
and still feel you need to study?
I found hard to use Articles appropriately really difficult.
And I still find it difficult.
I think that is
because in Korean we just have one Article for the most part.
But as far as I know,
there are three articles in English, right?
Yes.
So that is why I found it difficult
and I'm still struggling to use it properly.
Yes, I think that this is a problem
that students all
over the world have a problem with when studying English.
And in English Grammar in Use,
starting from page 144, there are several pages
devoted to teaching you all about Articles.
For example, here at the top of page 144,
Joe says I had a sandwich and an apple for lunch.
So, he uses A and An because it’s the first time
that he’s talking about the sandwich
and the apple.
And in the second sentence he says,
the sandwich wasn’t very good, but the apple was nice.
Because he’s already talked about the sandwich
and the apple,
he’s now referring to them as The sandwich and The apple.
So, there are lots of useful tips like this
in the following pages to help you understand
how to use The and A.
And there are also exercises on the opposite page.
So, it must be quite difficult to think of
what to study, right?
Yes, that's absolutely true.
Fortunately, in English Grammar in Use,
there's a study guide at the back of the book.
And it has lots of questions about various grammar points.
And you can find out what your strengths
and what your weaknesses are.
And then, following on from that,
you can choose a section in English Grammar
in Use to study.
What do you find difficult?
The study guide will help you find the units
that will help you to improve.
Thank you for taking the time to chat with me, Taehyun.
Yes, thanks for having me, it was a pleasure.
And if you enjoyed watching this video,
don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and to hit
the Like button.
Okay, so it’s bye from me.
Bye-bye.
Bye.