Lessons Learned from a Dangerous Way to Learn a Language

How far would you go to learn English? What types of situations will you put yourself in to make your English-learning experience better? In this podcast Gabby relates a story about her travels in Japan, and how she found herself in a situation where she had to speak Japanese because she was with someone who spoke no English at all. One of the best things you can do if you are really serious about learning English is to speak English as much as you can, even if you could take the easier path and speak your native language. If you put yourself in those types of positions, you will be amazed at how friendly and helpful people can be. If you make the effort to communicate in English with native English speakers, they in turn will encourage you, and appreciate your effort. You will almost certainly learn new words and phrases that will help you communicate better the next time. So, if you are serious about learning English, visit gonaturalenglish.com and let Gabby take you on an English-speaking journey. And don't be afraid to visit some of the other sites that Gabby mentioned during the podcast and check out the resources available to you. Episode transcript below: Hey there. How're you doing? I'm Gabby Wallace, your American English teacher and host of the Go Natural English podcast. Welcome! In today's episode I'm going to share something kind of personal with you. It's actually very personal. I don't always share personal stories but I think it might be helpful and interesting for you as an English language learner so, what I'm going to share about is my travel experience in Japan and something kind of dangerous that I did. Something I wouldn't advise anyone else to do but it actually was the best thing that I've ever done for my Japanese language learning. So, I'll explain about that but before I start my story, I just want to remind you to come visit gonaturalenglish.com for more English learning materials like the premium Go Natural English course that's coming out very soon that you can join. Also you can find out about the Go Natural English eBook. There's a short free eBook available and there's a full-length eBook that's coming out in August of this year – 2015. So, I'm really excited about everything that's going on at Go Natural English. I just want to make sure that you are in the loop, meaning that you know what's going on. So, what's going on with me in Japan? I've been traveling in Japan for a few weeks. You guys know probably that I lived and worked in Japan for a little while and so I studied Japanese and I'm still learning. My Japanese is pretty basic but I've felt in the past like I didn't have enough time to practice Japanese so I tried things like lessons online, Skype lessons or online lessons using Verbling or italki, or different language exchange sites and those were all really helpful. But I still wanted more practice and what I did a couple weeks ago was I was traveling with a friend of mine – with a male friend – and we decided to hitchhike from southern Japan down to farther south in Japan and like I said, it's dangerous to hitchhike. You're standing out on the road asking for a ride from basically anyone who drives by and of course you can use your judgment. You can decide whether you want to get in, or not, and I was with a friend – a male friend – so I felt like that was a little bit safer but I know it's not really recommended so I'm not recommending that anybody hitchhikes but I just want to share that I had such a great time actually. We got our first ride with a really nice older gentleman, Kimura-san, and Kimura-san only spoke Japanese. He did not speak a word of English, nothing – absolutely - not even "hello, how are you?" So, I was put into a good position where I had to speak Japa...