Learn English for Spanish Speakers: Immersion Part 1

Hello everyone. Welcome to the first lesson where I'm going to talk about how I grew up in the United States. I'm going to speak English now. I was born in Chicago, raised in the suburbs of Chicago. And growing up there was great. It's a very multicultural area with people from different places, different backgrounds, different languages. Spanish is a big language spoken in Chicago. Polish also. Spanish is the second biggest language spoken there. So if you do come to Chicago, you will have the opportunity to speak your native language. I know you probably want to speak English and you will have a lot of opportunities to speak English because the majority of people do only speak English. But when you go to certain places, certain restaurants or certain stores, certain neighborhoods, you can be greeted in Spanish. So for me growing up, it was fun. And I had the opportunity to do different things, different sports growing up. Intramural volleyball, intramural basketball. That's when you play volleyball or basketball against people in your own school. So I did that in 4th and 5th grade. This is before high school. This would be elementary school as we call it in the United States. Elementary school is my world. Look that up. And then also I did youth football. And that's American football. So not soccer or football as you may say in your country. Another thing, I didn't want to let you know, most of the Spanish speakers in Chicago are from Mexico. There are some people from Puerto Rico. There are also people from Honduras and other Central American countries. So as I stated, growing up there, it was fun. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of different people. I was impressed with people's English skills who were from Spanish speaking countries. And those people motivated me to want to learn Spanish. And I also, in high school, I did football for a couple of years again. As I said, that's American football. And you'll hear that a lot in the United States. People just say football or American football for a couple of years. I was in theater too. I had the opportunity to be in a couple of plays and perform in English. That's where I get this great English enunciation. And the opportunity to be in diverse organizations. In high school, there's a lot of different organizations for people to be a part of. I was in student council. So that's another thing you can look up. Student council. And yeah, so high school was a great opportunity for me to meet different people too. To be in different classes. To learn about different things about the United States. To learn about history, geography, science of course, math of course, Spanish. I took Spanish also. That's one of the reasons why I speak the language at a high level. So I know every country is different. So how you grew up may be different from how I grew up. And I know that I know some countries, when you go to school, you're with your same classmates every single year. And the teachers come to the class. That's not fair. But in the United States, when we're in school, we're with around the same classmates, but we go to different classes. So starting in 5th grade, you go to different classes and you have different teachers. 6th grade, I'm sorry. 6th grade, that's middle school, 6th and 7th and 8th grade. You go to different classes and you have different classmates and there's different teachers. So let's say at 7 a.m. you go to math class. 7.45 you go to English. At 8 something you go to science. 9 something you have gym. Around 10 you have another class. 11 you have lunch. So it was kind of like that. And high school is similar. So high school, you go to your first class then I remember I had a gym in the morning that was like my first class. And with gym you do stuff, different sports. That's what gym is. So let's say I played basketball in gym or football or soccer or hockey or tennis. So those are the different things that we did when I was in school. So yeah, that was how it was for me growing up. I loved growing up in the United States. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. And I can't wait to see you in the next lesson. Hasta pronto. Hola a todos. Ahora quiero hablar sobre el argot de Chicago. Chicago slang. El argot de Chicago. So yeah, when you come to the United States each city and region has different slang. Just like you may have different slang in your country. I know in Argentina you may say certain things. In Mexico you may say certain things. In Spain you may say certain things. Panama, Colombia, there's differences in where you're from. That's the same in the United States and other English speaking countries. So for us, Chicago, one of the first things that you'll hear for a soft drink like a Coke or a Pepsi or Sprite or 7-Up, instead of saying soda, which is a word that I don't even like saying because we don't say it, we say pop. P-O-P. Pop. Pop. You go to Chicago and you say the word pop, people will think you're from Chicago. Well, they may not think you're from Chicago, but they will think you know about Chicago that you've been living in. That's what we say for a soft drink. We say pop. And you'll see it. You'll go to a restaurant, let's say you go to a chicken restaurant, and it'll have the prices of the chicken, chicken thighs, chicken wings, and it'll say fries, French fries, and there will be pop also listed, maybe pop will be $1 or $1.20 or $0.80, so pop. That's one of the biggest things we say in Chicago. Another thing, the highway. There's highways, and in some parts of the United States they're called highways or freeways, free because you don't have to pay, but in the Chicago area you have to pay if you go to certain areas on the highway, so we call it either the tollway or the expressway. Some people, even with more slang, call it the e-way. It's short for expressway, so tollway. I usually say the tollway or the highway. Oh, you're going to take the tollway to such and such town, or you're taking the tollway here, you're taking the tollway there. Also, with the highways, there's different names, so you'll hear this person takes the Dan Ryan or this person's taking the Eisenhower or Ike for short, so that's very different. I know in your country you may say autopista numero such and such, so that's the thing, the highway or the tollway, that's different in Chicago. What else do we say? We say a lot of different things. Oh, so you may say, some people may say carro or coche, depending on your country of origin, and you know what that means in English, car, so we say, so that's how it's pronounced in regular English car, car, car, C-A-R, car. Some people in Chicago in the hoods, in los barrios in the hoods of Chicago, they say ca, ca, ca or store, una tienda instead of saying store, they say stall, stall, stall, I'm taking my ca to the stall, so yeah. So that's very much Chicago, ca, stall depending on where you're from, depending on the area. I do want to let you know that some people from outside of Chicago make fun of Chicagoans for the sports teams because the football team, the national football team is the bears, the bears, like a bear would also los osos, but I guess the people in Chicago, we pronounce it the bears, the D-A, the bears, the bears and the Chicago Bulls would be the bulls, but we say the bulls. Chicago White Sox would be the Sox, we say the Sox. Chicago Cubs would be the Cubs, we say the Cubs, so the bears, the Bulls, the Sox the Cubs, or the Chicago Blackhawks, we say the Hawks but it sounds to other people, we say the Hawks, right? So those are different things you have to be aware of when you hear when you recognize you're speaking from someone from Chicago. I did study abroad in Argentina a few years ago and I told one of the guys, he was from Argentina, there was this international event, international night, and I was there, and I think we were talking in Spanish, and I said, yeah, I'm from Chicago, and he said, oh, Chicago would talk like this, and he said, he kind of mimicked the accent that we use. I usually don't speak with the accent, I know there's a lot of people that speak with the Chicago accent Here's a way you can tell someone's most likely from Chicago and not from, let's say, California. So, from California, they would say, my mom is here, mom you see the pronunciation, mom, M-O-M, mom, mom, but in Chicago the mom, M-O-M, would say, mom, mom, mom is here my mom, my dad, my mom, that's how some Chicagoans pronounce mom or dad, mamá o papá en español. So there you go. Nos vemos en el próximo video. Hasta pronto. Hola, hola, quiero hablar sobre los deportes en los Estados Unidos. So let's talk about American sports. Well, what do you think about sports when you think about the United States? I'll give you a couple seconds. One, two, three. I'm sure you said football. American football. Don't say American football. When you're talking to an American, don't say are you familiar with American football? They would know you're not a native English speaker. Just say, what's your favorite football team? And then they would answer with if they have a favorite team or not. There are various football teams. The Philadelphia Eagles, Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Miami Dolphins, Los Angeles Chargers, Las Vegas Raiders, Green Bay Packers, New York Giants, New York Jets, Atlanta Falcons, Houston Texans, Dallas Cowboys. Remember, some people say Dallas Cowboys are America's favorite team. So that's another story for another day. But anyways, there are a lot of sports. So American football is one of the main sports. So we just call it football in the United States of America. It's such a big sport, even I played it for six years when I was younger, four years in youth football, two years in high school, that people play it in youth football maybe as young as seven or eight years old. Kids are playing American football or football. And then also in high school, they play on Friday nights. There might be a show called Friday Night Lights. So it's big, especially in states like Texas or Florida or California, southern states. And then on Saturdays, it's college football. So there's colleges like University of Miami, Miami Hurricanes, University of Oregon, Oregon Ducks, and University of Texas, Texas Longhorns. So Saturdays are for college football the whole day. So in the morning, it's mostly in the day, it's mostly teams on the east coast for eastern time. And in the midday, it can be east or west coast. And at the evening, during the evening, they're usually west coast teams that are playing, such as Arizona Wildcats or Oregon Ducks, they'll be playing on the west coast. And Sundays are for NFL. NFL stands for National Football League. And the NFL has those NFL teams that I mentioned, like the Bears, the Packers, the Lions, the Vikings, and these teams play and are, it's usually on Sundays. And that's the whole day on Sunday too. I think 12 o'clock eastern time, the 3 o'clock eastern time, the 7 o'clock eastern time, then at the end there's also on Mondays, there's usually a Monday night game. And then later on in the season, we call it a season, and later on in the season, there's the Thursday night games. So you have all these different games, just football alone. And the thing about American sports, especially with professionals, is that every season there's a sport. So in the fall, it's football. In the fall, spring, it's basketball, hockey. In the summer, spring, summer, it's baseball. And so, yeah, so we have all those different sports. Yeah, basketball, hockey, baseball, football. So let's go to basketball. So basketball I'm sure you're familiar with. Michael Jordan the Bulls, Scottie Pippen the Bulls, right now LeBron James, and his different teams that he's been on. And there's a lot of other great NBA players who have played throughout the years. And the NBA teams, the Bulls, the Heat, the Suns, the Celtics, the Lakers, the Pacers, the Bucs. So there's a lot of teams out there. And yeah, basketball is very big in what we call the inner city. That's like the core neighborhoods in the United States. And a lot of these kids play basketball in school, high school, and then the thing about college is that they can get scholarships, and this is the same for football and other sports in the United States, with a scholarship meaning you don't have to pay for college as long as you play for the sports team. So you're playing for the sports team and you get the opportunity to use your talent to travel with the team, support away games, you play against different teams, and you want to try to win a national championship. So isn't that great that these students can use their sporting abilities to get an education and also have fun at the same time. Other sports we have are soccer, which you would say futbol, and twice, right, we have soccer. We have hockey, which is very big in Canada, and I'm sure you know that Canada doesn't speak English, and some people speak French. So we have all these professional sports, and there are other sports too, like tennis, lacrosse, and others, but the main big four sports are football, basketball, baseball, and hockey. Those are the big four sports in the United States. I can't wait to see you in the next lesson. Hola, hola, hola. Bienvenidos. Ahora quiero hablar sobre mi experiencia aprendiendo el español. So let's talk about my experience of how I learned Spanish. See, I was able to say that in Spanish with ease, with no problem. So what was my experience? Well, it started a long time ago. When I was around 4 or 5 years old, my mom bought me these two books for little kids from the company Berlitz, and one book was in Spanish, one book was in French, to learn Spanish in French. Now, they weren't complete books. They were basic books to learn the alphabet, numbers, one through ten, basic phrases, and I went through both of the books. I actually liked the Spanish more because it was easier to understand. I'm not sure if you've ever tried learning French, quizás sí, quizás no, and French, the language, some of their sounds are silent, right? If you're familiar with French, I won't go into detail, but if you're learning French, you know what I'm talking about. With Spanish, everything is more or less the same. I started Spanish so long ago, it was when the CH, the CHE, was still in the alphabet, the NE was still in the alphabet, the RE and the EYE, those four letters were still in the alphabet, so when I learned the alphabet, ABC-CHE, I learned it like that, instead of ABC-DE, right? So I learned it, and I can obviously say ABC-DE, there's no problem, but I learned ABC-CHE first, and then the language changed, and now I say ABC-DE. So that was my first taste of Spanish. Then when I was younger, maybe under 10, my grandfather he bought me another book, it was with courses and cassettes, four cassettes, now this one was more an all-encompassing language course, but it wasn't for little kids, I was still a little kid, maybe 8 or 9 years old, and so I dabbled with it a little bit, it was more, I think it was called Express Track to Spanish, I can't, I think it was produced by Barrett's, and it was for adults, just for maybe someone 15 or 16 or 17 or 18 years old, an adult, and just someone who had more experience with the language, and I kept that course for a long time, and I looked back on it later, and I saw how advanced some of the concepts were. I remember being in maybe 4th or 5th grade, and I did a Spanish class for a few weeks, and I remember there was a teacher, I think she was from Mexico, and she taught us Spanish, but then when I got into 7th grade, I would ask my aunt, can you help me with this Spanish word, can you help me with this Spanish word, and she, one day, we decided to go to a bookstore, and we bought a course, and this is when I really started learning Spanish, I was 12 years old, so unofficially was when I was maybe 4 or 5 with the first books that my mom got me, but officially is when I said, you know what, and the reason I wanted to learn Spanish was, if I travel to another country, I want to be able to enjoy my time there, and I don't want to be able to get, I don't want to be swindled, like taken advantage of, I'm not saying Spanish books are bad, but you know how you go to some other countries, and there's the American price, and there's the local price, or you want to be able to know if people are talking about you, that's an American thing, is this person talking about me in their second language, I hope not, so that's how I was at 12, so my aunt bought me a course, it was 4 cassettes, 1 book, and I think it was from Berlitz, or Behrens, one of the two, they both start with B's, and it said to learn in 10 minutes a day, now the only thing about the verbs is that they were in present tense form, so I learned how to say, yo llevo, yo voy, yo hago, yo veo, and then the conjugations in the present tense, voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van, and vice, because it's Spanish, so I learned that, and then one day I thought to myself, listen, I want to learn these verbs, so what I did, I bought flashcards, I bought maybe 10 to 20 flashcards, one side I wrote in English, to go, on the other side, ir, I go, one side, other side, yo voy, you go, tu vas, so I did that with around 20 different verbs, and every day, not for a long time, maybe for 5 to 7 minutes, I would just test myself, this side says ir, the other side says to go, this side says salir, the other side says to leave, this side says to eat, this side says so that's what I did to learn, to help me learn the Spanish language, other things that I did, I would watch TV in the language, and then this was also supplemented by me taking classes from 7th grade and 8th grade, there were 6 week classes that I took, and then from 9th to 12th, I took classes in Spanish the whole year, there were my classes, you know, I mentioned I took classes in biology, sciences, math, and other things of that nature, but I took Spanish also, all of high school, and I also worked at a fast food restaurant, and that really helped me hone in on my Spanish language skills, besides that, I majored in Spanish, major means that was my program of study in college, so, I took a Don Quixote class, I took Spanish writing, Spanish conversation, and I also studied abroad in Argentina for 5 months in Buenos Aires, Universidad Emigrano was the college that I went to, so it got to a point where I knew Spanish, and now I don't say I'm learning Spanish, I just say Señor Espanol, I know Spanish, I speak Spanish, so that was my journey with the Spanish language, so a lot of years, so the question you may be asking me is, how long did it take for me to become fluent? I would say throughout those years, it maybe took a few years because I was doing other things, I wasn't just doing Spanish, I was living life as a teenager, right? Going to school, and doing sports, doing theater, but for you, if you have an intermediate or advanced knowledge of English right now, try what I did with Spanish with those flashcards, try that, I'm sure you'll learn a lot more, and I would say it'll take a few months, give yourself 3-6 months, and you can see the improvement, and I can't wait to see you in the next lesson, hasta pronto. Hola, hola, hola quiero hablar sobre la televisión y la red, el internet como aprender idiomas usando estos métodos so let's talk about TV and internet, and how to better your English using TV and internet, so if you live outside the United States, I recommend you watching, going on the internet, use YouTube right? We have American channels, which I'm sure you're familiar with, MTV, ABC, CBS, FOX right? We have those channels, go on the internet, type in ABC.com, CNN.com and you'll see different information, CNN has news 24-7, that's an expression we use, 24-7, which means all day, every day, 24-7, right? So you have the opportunity to go to these websites, and see real spoken English watch videos in English, and also read different writings in the language, read different articles as we say in the English language, so give yourself that opportunity to do so, that's the biggest thing Internet, use YouTube, this is what I do to learn other languages use YouTube, go to CNN's YouTube channel, ABC's YouTube channel and you may say, well I don't want to watch CNN or ABC, right? Let's say you're interested in Taylor Swift or another singer, or another rapper, or a basketball player, or a baseball player, just go type in their name on YouTube, and you can watch them being interviewed in English, isn't that great? Or you can just type in YouTube, English conversation with natives and you can watch people, native speakers speaking the English language there's so many opportunities for you, right? Take advantage of it, whatever you want to learn in English, that's the great thing about English is that it's the biggest global language foreign language, I know Mandarin is the biggest language because native speakers, but English is the biggest language that people want to learn people from China want to learn English, people from Korea want to learn English, Indonesia want to learn English you as a Spanish speaker, you want to learn English right? So I know we know that English is all over the Internet, I think the Internet the biggest language on the Internet is English there are people in the Netherlands, people in Germany, people in Sweden, Switzerland who search things in English on a daily basis now, for you as a Spanish speaker, you may just search most of your stuff in Spanish I remember this, when I said Spain because I was thinking about something that I want to talk about now, at one of my previous jobs, I had a co-worker and she would talk, she would search the Internet in Spanish all the time, but we worked in English when I first saw that, I thought it was weird, but I thought to myself she's actually from Spain, she just moved here maybe within the last couple of years and she searches in Spanish if she has a question about something. Now the Latinos from the United States who were born and raised in the United States guess what language they searched in? English. Me, knowing Spanish and Portuguese, guess what language I tend to search things in? English. So that's what you have to do too whenever you want to find out, oh I want to find out how to cook this recipe, search it in English brownies, English. If you want to learn more about a sport, English. If you want to learn about what's going on in the United States, search it in English. Just that one little trick change your searching from Spanish to English and you will see your progress. Now will you see your progress day 1? No! But things add up. Day 1 Day 2, Day 10, Day 20, Day 50 Day 60, Day 80, Day 90, that's 3 months of searching in English and then you'll know where to search you'll find different things. In English we say the rabbit hole. You know the rabbit hole is like let's say you search something right here and it brings you here, here, here, here, here here. 10 days ago you searched this thing but now you've gotten here and it's like wow how did I go down the rabbit hole how did I start learning this or that so search in English whatever you want to do. It's going to help you a lot Te veo en el próximo video. Hasta pronto Ahora quiero hablar de mis trabajos anteriores so let's talk about the jobs I've had here in the United States I've had a lot of jobs. I've had maybe 10 to 15 different jobs during my time. The first one I had was just holding up a sign for an apartment complex for 2 hours every Saturday or every Sunday. I think it was making $20 an hour which is not that much. You're only making $20 a week. It was in the cold weather in Chicago for an apartment complex. Another job I had was an umpire for baseball. So umpires are the people that like the referees, los arbitros, but for baseball and call the balls and the strikes and it was for maybe the kids who were 10 or 11 years old and I might have been 18 or 19 at that time and yeah it was a great opportunity and we got paid at the end of the season and so that was fun The other job I had was a fast food restaurant and this was the opportunity where I had the opportunity to speak in Spanish with multiple people from Mexico or Argentina, Central American countries and I spoke to them in Spanish. A lot of them only spoke Spanish or spoke little English So how can this help you with your English speaking journey? Well, try to find a job where you can use the English language on a daily basis You may not use it the whole 8 hours, but even if you have a job where you're using English one hour of the day, that's great because that's why you're here to better your English language skills. Now, it's even better if you have a job where that's all you use is English and it depends where you live. Every country is different. If you work in tourism, you may be around English speakers because you may meet somebody who's from Denmark or who's from China that's visiting your country and they may not know Spanish but if they know English and you know English, voila! Now you two can speak English together I know there's different jobs out there. Call centers where you're on the phone speaking to someone in English or Spanish. There's other jobs maybe as a waiter or a waitress or a server. In the United States we say waiter, waitress, server, those words are interchangeable or a host. A host is a person that seats you to where you want to sit or at your restaurant So there's different jobs, different opportunities. Now another job that I had was working in adult education for ESL which is English as a Second Language and GED which is for a high school diploma and that's for students who didn't finish high school but they went to earn their GED. So English as a Second Language that was fun because I had the opportunity to speak with people from all over. There were Russian speakers, Polish speakers, Spanish speakers, French speakers Spanish speakers were the most, obviously because most of the foreign languages in the United States most of the people are from Spanish speaking countries. So I was able to use my Spanish day in and day out just helping people and it was to the point where they would just come up to me and say Oh, I'm Alexis Payon and I would just say si and we would continue just talking Spanish and I would help them Now some people did know English but a lot of people felt comfortable in their own language. So that's the same with you with English. So you may feel that you don't know that much English but an American or a Brit or a Jamaican, if they visit your country they may not know that much Spanish at all. Not every American is like me that knows how to speak Spanish. Confluencia Oh, si. Confluencia rap, right? So not every American speaks Spanish like me. Confluentes So not everyone speaks Spanish like me but they may only know a couple words or they may not know any Spanish at all. So at that point it's up to you to speak English and you can use your English speaking abilities that you've learned in life in different classes in different TV and internets like I mentioned earlier books. There's so many opportunities for you out there to use the English language I also worked in another role where I would give speeches in Spanish and I did a PowerPoint presentation in Spanish. I would go to Spanish speaking churches here in the United States and I would talk to them about our organization to persuade them to want to go to our schools so they can get a better education. So I suggest if you want to improve English, take the necessary steps and try to use it at your job. I'll see you in the next lesson Hasta luego. Hola, hola. Quiero hablar sobre los idiomas aquí en los Estados Unidos. Let's talk about languages in the United States So besides English, which we know is the main language in the U.S., what do you think is the second biggest language in the United States? I'll give you three seconds. You guessed it, Spanish If you speak Spanish though, you will have no problem speaking Spanish in certain areas of the United States. Not everywhere, most places, most big cities I would say like the Chicago's, the Los Angeles we say L.A., the L.A.'s, New York's, Miami definitely, South Florida, you have no problem speaking Spanish maybe Houston, maybe other places also So there's other languages in the United States, especially in Chicago we have Polish, Russian, Greek, Italian I think the people from the Philippines speak Tagalog and yeah, in Massachusetts and South Florida there's a lot of Portuguese speaking people or Haitian Creole in South Florida, Cape Verdean Creole in Massachusetts and Rhode Island Hebrew in New York, Arabic in certain areas of Michigan, Armenian in Southern California Cantonese, Mandarin in California and San Francisco area, so there's so many languages How can that benefit you when you come to the United States? Well, you can be around people that speak English as a native language or people that are from other language groups and that will speak, they speak their language but you can speak English with them. Now, don't become discouraged about the fact that there's so many Spanish speakers in the United States There are a lot of Spanish speakers in the United States but there are way more English speakers in the United States So come to the United States and use the English language Now let's say you're one of those people who's uncomfortable with using English, well luckily for you, for Spanish speakers we have Univision and Telemundo, I'm sure you've heard of them, they are two Spanish speaking TV networks, they show television from Mexico and other countries, most notably Venezuela also, but we have our own productions, I think Telemundo has their own productions in the United States but with Spanish speakers and there's so many, so much content to watch and even online now streaming, you can stream different programs that are there in Spanish So that's great for you if you want to still be around the Spanish language, some people say homesick, homesick is when you're not sick but you miss your home, you miss your country of origin So let's say you're from Colombia and you miss Colombia, you can watch Univision from Mexico, you can watch Univision Telemundo, even radio stations have Spanish speakers here in the United States, even concerts, let's say you're interested in watching a certain musician perform, they do tours in the United States where you can watch them and you can feel like you're back at home to a certain extent Now the food may not be 100% authentic as it is in your home country, but you still have options to eat the food, and that's another thing with languages in the United States, there's so many different people from so many different places, if you want Chinese, if you want Eastern European if you want Brazilian there's a Brazilian churrasco, there's so many different places that you can go and get different types of food. Definitely if you want to just enjoy the American diet the pizza, the hot dogs, the hamburgers, the fries you can definitely do that. So as far as the languages going in the United States, the main languages I would say English and Spanish are the top two and depending on where you live, there are other languages. If you want to live in Chicago then you'll be exposed to Polish, Russian, and Hindi I think some Indian languages, Arabic. There's a street in Chicago called Devon Street, and it's where all, not all but a lot of people from India or the Middle East live and you'll see signs of restaurants in their language even in other areas of Chicago, there'll be Cyrillic. Cyrillic is like the Russian or Ukrainian alphabet. So you'll see the Russian alphabet in some stores. That's how immigration here is in the United States, and I'm sure that's how it is in other major cities in the United States, not just Chicago where you'll see different languages, not just English and of course if you're somewhere like Miami or Chicago or Los Angeles you will see Spanish. So don't be alarmed when you see your language in the United States. It's a cool thing, but if you do want to speak English, be sure to befriend different people go to meetup.com, go to their app and find someone that you're interested in, and be sure to meet up with Americans who speak English and who have the same interests as you I'll see you in the next video.