Look, you have a choice. This is what it's like in the textbook,
So you know, I want you to have as much information. I
want you to make an informed decision when you speak English. Do you want
to speak like as textbook? Do you want to speak correct and accurately,
or would you like to speak naturally like your neighbors. You have a choice.
Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you from New York City.
And here's your English teacher, Michael. All right, thank you John,
and thanks everyone. It's Michael here from Happy English and I help people
speak English better. And I am so excited today because I've got a special
guest for you. You know her as the language Hacker expert. That's right,
Kira sage Kiro. Welcome to the Happy English podcast today. Hi,
thank you so much for having me. Very exciting. I would love for
the listeners to get to know you, so tell us about yourself and how
you help people with English. Okay, well, I help people hack English,
which means take the complexities of English and make it useful and relevant for
their personal situation. We do this at www dot language Hack dot coo dot
com CEO and that's also my Instagram Language hack dot CEO, so language hack.
Right, So when I think of hack, I think of like mean
people doing bad things to my computer. But you want to hack English,
which is kind of interesting. Yeah, so tell us a little bit more
about that. Okay, Yeah, hack has so many different meanings, like
the coding hack or old person rude word hack, and then also there's like
life hack, that type of hack, which means make it easy or convenient
or useful. So I want to really differentiate myself from the Irish polyglot Benny
Lewis, who also has this language hacking system. He's written books about how
to learn any language in three months. He's trying to make language learning fast.
That's his way of hacking things, right. My way of hacking things
is taking something that's really complex, convoluted, and you just take the pieces
that you need in order to be successful making it useful. Right. So,
like today you said something on Instagram like, okay, say something that's
going to get you in big trouble, and then you said something like when
Americans speak, they generally don't use perfect tenses. Yes, for the benefit
of the listeners here, could you elaborate on that a bit, like what
is it that we do here in American English. That's kind of naughty.
It is so naughty because you know in your ESL class you need to go
through several tenses and take these exams and such, especially for like a toll
full situation or an ield situation. But when you really get down to you
know, this conversational daily life English, especially I shared a text message from
my friend, sorry James, but he just missed up present perfect, like
he destroyed it. But native speakers, from my experience and I have just
traveled from California all the way down through the South to Georgia, they're using
simple tenses, simple future, simple past, simple present, a couple of
progressive continuous tenses. We need that, I g. But other than that,
you are not going to see future perfect. Right, Why give me
a good use case for future perfect? Please get a better score on an
exam, like I have to really know the future in order to use that
tense. Right, past perfect, had done, had had sorry now right?
And that's really interesting because we and I'm sure this happens in other languages
too, we don't need all of that grammar when we communicate, right,
are you hungry? No? I already eight oh my god, I used
already and the simple past. Oh I'm sorry to my British friends, but
right, that would be normal, so common. When I got to the
party, jack was gone, or when I got to the party, Jack
wasn't there. When I got to the party, Jack had already left.
So long, so many words you had to use just to say that,
yeah, that's interesting. So you help your students speak, you know,
how we really talk. Yeah, and help them to say, okay,
look, you have a choice. This is what it's like in the textbook.
So you know, I want you to have as much information. I
want you to make an informed decision when you speak English. Do you want
to speak like a textbook? Do you want to speak correct and accurately or
would you like to speak naturally like your neighbors. You have a choice.
Good luck exactly. And I always tell my students that, you know,
this is what's in the textbook. It's good to know. But it's good
to know how we speak because as that's how people are going to talk.
So when you don't be surprised when you ask somebody are you hungry and they
say no, I already ate, yes, your expectation might be coming from
a textbook point of view, but it's actually not necessarily how we do it.
And adding to that, students beat themselves up if they don't use it
correctly, and it's like, yeah, but I'll show you a handful of
Native speakers who aren't using it correctly. Earlier today on My Life, we
were talking about if I were you, and it's like, yeah, but
here's Nicki Minaj going if I was you? You know, I mean,
there are so many cases in movies, in songs where they say if I
was And I'm getting to this point in my career, should I just give
up on unreal tense? Gotcha? So let's talk about your career. How
did you get into the English teaching world. I've dumbled upon it. I
was a study abroad student in Osaka, Japan. We'll suck it up the
house. Yes, so I was a study abroad student there and then someone
said, hey, do you want to teach these grandmas? I said,
okay, I started teaching them. I listed myself on a tutoring website.
Started doing that. I got some great grocery money, and that's what I
considered it to be as a university student. But it wasn't until the end
of the year when it was time for me to think about going back to
the United States, where those first three students of mine, these Japanese grandma
said, Wow, out of everyone that I've learned English from over these ten
years, you're the best teacher. Wow. And twenty year old me was
like, I have a skill. I can do something. I know like
they told me, like that should be your job. Okay, great.
I had no other plans after college, so thank you for deciding for me.
Wow. Yeah, that was history as they say. Yeah, so
what were you studying abroad in Osaka? I was getting my Japanese minor and
then I was also studying business. Okay. And so when you work with
students, or if you could give some advice to students about you know,
because everybody says, okay, how can I improve my English? Somebody wrote
to me this morning, how can I improve my English faster? I said,
well, you can't, because learning a language is like learning a sport
or learning a musical instrument. And Cristiano Ronaldo did not become a champion World
champion soccer player because he had a quick way to do it. Nor did
Eddie van Halen become a world class guitarist because he did it in three months.
So it's saying with language, right, that's what I think. I
love that metaphor. So what's your advice to students? What should a student
do to improve I go back to what language hack truly stands for. It's
make it useful for you. When you go to an average school, they're
going to follow a textbook. A textbook always has the first chapter is where
are you from? I'm an American, I'm a Japanese person, I'm whatever,
And the second chapter is usually something like what's your job? What's your
profession? Third chapter, We're at the hotel. It's always the same with
these English textbooks. So if you really want to hack the language, you
make it useful for you. Maybe you never go to hotels. That's okay,
Where do you actually go? Write that down? What do you actually
talk about in your first language? Write that down? Now, find the
English equivalent, because you're whatever you're saying in your first language, you're going
to be having the same conversations just now in English. Right. If you
have that self awareness, then you can learn faster or more efficiently. At
least that makes a lot of sense because I'm not a sports guy, so
I never sit around with my high school buddies and talk about sports or football,
and that's not my thing. So and I can't do that in my
second language, which is which is Japanese. Like I can't talk about sports,
I can't. I can't even do it in English. So let alone
try it in second Languge that makes a lot of sense. Make it useful
for you? Yes? Right? We mentioned grammar a couple of minutes ago.
How important is it to study the grammar? And because I know a
lot of students are obsessed with grammar rules and becoming, you know, top
notch in grammar, what's your thought on not? Well, there are two
schools of thought that I've seen on the internet with grammar, and one is
be perfect a grammar and the other one is you don't need grammar to speak
a language. And I'm somewhere in the middle. You have to have grammar
because you need some type of rules of the road in order to drive your
car get your meaning across. But do I need to be so focused on
it? No, because even when you have the wrong grammar, I can
still get my meaning across. Right gestures, facial expressions, intonation. We
have all of these other skill sets that can still help us, right,
And I always feel that grammar from the textbook style of learning, there's no
context to that. Yeah, So the Grammar and Use series, which I
love and hate at the same time. You know, it's just your drilling
one sentence, but in a real conversation, there's millions of kinds of sentences.
You don't need to have that one perfect sentence for everything, because you
can make yourself understood and you can communicate, Right, that's the bottom line.
Yes, do you speak any other languages? No, Hanasa masio,
So as a language learner, yes, What do you think of some of
the best ways to improve your vocabulary or maintain your vocabulary or grow your vocabulary?
What are you obsessed with? I mean the thing for me and my
Japanese music TV shows, I was obsessed with Gasto, if you know,
Gakto and Cancohido and these Japanese rock stars, and so I'd listened to their
songs, I'd watch their interviews, I'd go and see those TV shows and
movies that they were acting in, and I just wanted these guys in my
face all the time. And subsequently at the same time, I was exposed
to all of that natural language, natural vocabulary, and usage. I didn't
have to try. So, what are your recommendations for let's say, American
TV shows or do you have a preference TV shows or movies or I suggest
that if you're learning a language and you really want to use that content for
explicit learning, TV shows take it bite sized pieces. A movie is just
like a flood of information, way too much. You're gonna zone out after
a certain amount of time. But at least with thirty to forty five minute
show. Okay, that's enough. Are there any particular TV shows that you
think are great for learning English more better than others. Something that's a little
more modern that I've used in the past is The Good Place, like a
Heaven and Hell type of thing, but it's really quirky. They use a
lot of safe swear words like shiz instead of the other word that means poop.
I really like it. It's it's modern. Like, as I said,
like Friends, Friends is great. Don't get me wrong, I have
nothing against Friends, but Friends is over twenty years old. Right. The
Office is great too, But then you're starting to see the office is like
fifteen twelve years old. Right, that's kind of sad. Modern family or
Big Bang Theory. That's even it isn't that wild when you start to look
at when these things started. The kind of I was talking to somebody recently,
there's the spinoff of a Big Bang Theory is Young Sheldon. And I
always thought like, okay, if you want to learn a southern sounding accent
like this, it's said in Texas, that's a great TV program to catch
that particular accent. But yeah, you're right. You know Friends is from
the nineties, so is Seinfeld. Yeah, it's kind of sad to really
think about. Right. So I know that you work with kids and you
have a book now, so tell us about your books. Yes, So
I work with kids three all the way up to twelve. So I wanted
a time we're in group. So when I did the younger kids, so
as we're in groups, the little group of three year olds and then with
elementary school kids one on one. Okay, but you know what I noticed
with the three year olds is they want to show their power to you.
They don't want to be taught. They want to show off, like,
look I can do this, I can do that. I can do.
I'll buy myself. I'm a big kid now. So that got the idea
in my head about this this book concept. I was walking around the streets
of Atlanta, Georgia, and I saw a lot of isolated letters. Huh
yeah, okay, well look there's a P okay P for parking. There
are a lot of parking structures. Whatever, la la la, there's a
V. Huh okay, there's an R. Whoa. I better start taking
pictures. Next thing I know, I had the whole alphabet pictures of them.
I created a photo book. And the whole concept behind this is we
want to inspire kids as well as parents that when they go outside your ABC's
live outside of these picture books, they're here in real life. Get the
kids excited about hunting for them, pointing them out and feeling that sense of
achievement. Yes I can read, mom, Look at that. I found
that letter all by myself. And when I get old enough, I'm going
to find words for you and read signs. So this all became a book
aimed at what group like three year olds? Four year olds? Yes,
gotcha. We're in the iPad baby generation now where children are met with screens
first and this is my small way of combating it. Oh. I see.
So my first ABC book, These Days for Kids is on a screen?
Yeah these Days? Yeah, it's really sad for sure. And where
can we find that book if you're a kindle reader and you want to put
a screen in your child's face. The ebook version is available, but I
do suggest to get the paperback version, which is also available on Amazon.
On Amazon, Okay, great. And what's the title of the book,
Explore the Outdoors Photorealistic ABC's. So that's Explore are the Outdoors photo Realistic ABC's.
And there is a link just below this episode where you can grab that
book. Excellent. So you're starting the three year olds off. And I
also heard somewhere through the grapevine that you've got courses for business people. So
can you tell us a little bit about that and how you help business people.
Are you also telling them don't worry about grammar? Oh? Well,
it depends on which industry you're in. I think that's key. This particular
course comes from a culmination of the nine years in Silicon Valley tech world that
I've been in and I just got kind of the most requested lessons. Okay,
how do I delegate tasks. How do I answer questions if I don't
know the answer to the question not related to English, it's really related to
the content of the question. How do I seem confident in a presentation and
the conversation gets off track? How do I steer everything back on track so
we can end within the time we said we'd end in these types of questions,
And so I just compiled everything together and released it as a course.
Wow, that sounds useful, and so is that a self study course or
so? I decided based off of my Platsy experience that I don't understand asynchronous
learning too much, and from what I've seen on you DEMI on Platsy on
YouTube, it has to be at least for me and my attention span.
I'm a millennial. I'll admit that I just can't sit there and watch someone's
face and lecture the whole time for you know, a ten minute video.
It's too hard for me. So I have the offer of, like,
if you really want to, if you're that type of learner who is self
sufficient and can manage that great you can take it by itself. Here's the
price for just the course, or if you want to work with me one
on one. Let's go, and here's that price, all right, if
you want to work as a group, and we do it really like a
class. And now that course becomes a curriculum, and although homework and all
of that is still there, but now you just have that live component,
right, we have that too, So you have all the options. All
the options excellent. And so then do students need to be of a certain
level to join the course? Like, how does that work? Yeah?
So I designed this with an A two B one learner in mind. And
yeah, definitely not not for A one, not for C one C two,
C one C two. You need your own custom learning plan for that,
right, that's for sure. Well, I think here that's all the
time that we have for our chat today. I could keep going on and
on chatting with you, but for the sake of my listeners, can you
let us know again where can we find you out there in the blogosphere of
the Internet. Yes, find me on my website www dot language hack dot
ceo CEO and not coom dot co co dot co language CHAC. All right,
well, thank you for hacking this language learning podcast today. It was
totally a pleasure to talk to you and maybe we can do this again sometime.
Well, thank you so much for having me, for inviting me and
letting me share on your podcast again. Thank you Kiera for coming on the
podcast. If you guys want to find her, she is at language hack
dot c. Oh, there's no m and that's it. Thanks for coming
on the podcast, and have a super day, Oh Kimmy love by.
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