Barney

Teaching Style

Cambly is a great platform for learning and practice but no one no one can speak their way to English-speaking fluency by only taking Cambly classes. The key to effectively and consistently improving your English-speaking skills to an advanced level is listening to and reading English outside of Cambly and outside your job. Listening and reading are the keys to speaking, not just practicing speaking on Cambly. This is the core of my teaching style. The first and most important question is what do you like to listen to and read in English every day outside of your job? In your job if you speak, write, read and listen to English that is fantastic, but it is not enough. If you are not listening to and reading English every day outside of your job you must begin doing that. If you don’t, you cannot reach an advanced level of speaking English. If you listen to and read an extra 30 minutes of English every day outside of Cambly and your job, your English-speaking skills will always improve. ⚠️Most students do not believe this and ask common questions about why daily listening and reading are required to improve speaking. The four ‘arguments’ I have heard the most from students, listed below, are all wrong and false. Understanding why they are wrong and false are going to help you to understand and improve your English-speaking skills in the most efficient way. They are: ✳️ 1. ‘My job is too busy, and I have to take care of my family, I do not have any extra time in my day to listen to and read English.’ ✳️ 2. “I don’t like to listen to and read English because I don’t understand everything. It is too hard. I just listen to and read English on things I only understand 100% of but I find I cannot improve.” ✳️ 3. “My understanding of English is good, but I don’t know why I cannot speak it very well.” ✳️ 4. “I only want to speak about, listen to and read about my job in English. I am a (medical doctor, software engineer or developer, lawyer, salesperson, banker, accountant, financier, corporation CEO, businessperson, dentist, pharmaceutical employee, university professor, researcher, diplomat, mechanical engineer, industrial engineer, electronics engineer, or any other profession, etc…) You Cambly tutors say I need to listen to and read also fun and interesting topics outside my job to achieve advance speaking skills in English and just concentrating about English in my job cannot do that. I must concentrate 100% of my time listening, reading, writing and speaking in English only about my job to obtain English speaking fluency!" ⚠️ANSWER to 1. Camby Students have very busy jobs and families to take care of; you are misunderstanding what Camby Tutors are trying to communicate to you. Tutors are advising you can find extra minutes in the day outside of your job and your family responsibilities to listen to and read English daily, you just must discover those extra minutes. If you travel to work by car, train, bus, walking or picked up by a shuttle bus, no matter if it is five minutes or one hour, you can listen to some English. You can also listen to English while you are exercising at home or at the gym. At work if you have a few minutes during your lunch time, listen to or read some English on your smartphone. When at home if you are cooking, doing laundry, cleaning your home or apartment, listen to some English. Respectfully, to say you have no extra time is false. You can do it and it is being done every day by over one billion second language learners around the world. ⚠️ANSWER to 2. You are not supposed to understand everything you listen to or read in English; no one ever has. Historians estimate that people have been learning second languages for over twenty-five thousand (25,000) years. Like everyone before you, you must live with the fact that you will not understand everything. This is what is called ‘learning’, like you learned over years and years of study on how to be an expert in your present job. You start by listening and reading daily and do not worry about what you do not understand. The more you consistently listen to and read English, the more you will continue to learn and understand. Second Language Acquisition is a slow process and you should not have any anxiety about it. Cambly Tutors can help you with the learning process. ⚠️ANSWER to 3. This is where speaking on Cambly greatly helps but you as a student but you must understand first why you cannot speak well. The reason that everyone has difficulty physically speaking a second language, even though they have good comprehension of the language, is that the brain is a filter. Since you have listened to your native language all your life, your brain hardwires your ear to only care about sounds that matter in your native language. English has more unique sounds than all other languages in the world and it has sounds that do not exist in your language. When you speak English, your brain tries to substitute English sounds with the closest sounds your mouth already knows in your native language. If you don't train your ear through massive amounts of listening in how English sounds, your brain won't even realize your mouth, lips, tongue and how you use your breath are making the wrong sounds in speaking English. Listening calibrates and trains the ear, and the mouth, lips and tongue positioning calibrate or adjust the articulation muscles. But without listening and reading English daily, your mouth is ‘flying blind’. ’Flying blind’ is an English idiom that means you are ‘proceeding with a task or situation using guesswork or intuition because you lack necessary information, guidance, or data.’ Getting the necessary information, guidance and data from Cambly Tutors can assist you with physically speaking English. ⚠️ANSWER to 4. It is required you study English related to your job, but only studying English only about your job will not take you to an advanced level of fluency. You will only learn and master perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 specialized English terms and vocabulary about your job, but you are going to need another additional 11,000 – 13,000 English vocabulary words not related to your job for advanced English fluency. More importantly, you will not learn the main core of the English language. You will also need to learn thousands of common collocations, idioms, slang, phrasal verbs, discourse markers, linking words, how intonation and stress convey different meanings of speech, sentence patterns and structure, learning correct usage, of the English 'articles - a | and | the’, understanding how to practice shadowing and understanding cultural concepts used in everyday English speech. If you don’t learn all these different core skills and structures of English, which English only about your job cannot teach you, you can’t reach a level of fluency. Those who study and practice all the required structure and skills become the most fluent speakers of English in their jobs.

Preferred Levels

Language Skills Focus

Standardized Test Familiarity

Expertise