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Learning a language? Speak it like you’re playing a video game | Marianna Pascal | TEDxPenangRoad
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Transcriber: Phuong Cao Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
For the past 20 years,
I've been helping Malaysian and other Southeast Asians
to speak better English.
And through training thousands of Southeast Asians,
I've discovered a very surprising truth.
I've discovered that how well somebody communicates in English
actually has very little to do with their English level.
It has a lot to do with their attitude towards English.
There are people out there who have a very low level of English,
and they can communicate very, very well.
One of them that I remember was a student, a participant of mine named Faizal.
He was a factory supervisor -
English level very, very low -
but this guy could just sit and listen to anybody,
very calmly, clearly,
and then he could respond,
absolutely express his thoughts beautifully,
at a very low level of English.
So, today I want to share with you
what is so different about people like Faizal?
How do they do it?
And second of all,
why is this so important not only to you,
but to your children, to your community, and to the future of Malaysia?
And third of all,
what's one thing you can do, starting today,
if you want to speak with that calm, clear confidence
that people like Faizal have.
First of all,
what is so different?
How do people like Faizal do it?
To answer that question,
I'm going to take you back about 10 years, okay?
I was training staff at that time,
and my daughter, at that time, was taking piano lessons.
And I started to notice two really strong similarities
between my daughter's attitude or thinking towards playing the piano
and a lot of Malaysians' thinking or attitude towards English.
First of all, I should tell you
my daughter absolutely hated piano,
hated the lessons,
hated practicing.
This is my daughter practicing piano, okay?
This is as good as it got.
This is the real thing.
And she dreaded going to piano lessons
because to my daughter, going to piano lessons,
she was filled with this sort of dread.
Because it was all about not screwing up, right?
Because like a lot of piano students,
to both my daughter and her teacher,
her success in piano was measured by how few mistakes she made.
At the same time,
I noticed that a lot of Malaysians went into English conversations
with the same sort of feeling of dread.
This sort of feeling that they were going to be judged
by how many mistakes they were going to make,
and whether or not they were going to screw up.
Now, the second similarity that I noticed was to do with self- image.
My daughter, she knew what good piano sounded like, right?
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