Intro
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| Kyejin: Welcome to the inner circle. |
| Peter: This is the monthly no-holds-barred newsletter giving you tried and tested learning methods to help you reach your language goals this year. |
| Kyejin: I'm Kyejin, and I'm joined by my co-host, the founder of Innovative Language, Peter Galante. |
| Peter: Hi everyone, Peter. Here. |
| BODY |
| Kyejin: Last time you learned about the power of integrated learning… |
| Peter: …where instead of learning words with one resource and grammar with another, you get to learn, practice what you've learned, and get assessed all in one place so that you can improve faster… |
| Kyejin: …because you're not all over the place… |
| Peter: ….but your learning is integrated. |
| Kyejin: So that was last time, Peter, and now we just have one month left in the year. |
| Peter: Yeah, this was a fast year, and Kyejin, you know, I have to say this was your year. I was excited to compete against you, but I was crushed. You already passed your goal, already achieved your goal. I was supposed to achieve my goal this month, but my test was pushed back to next month. So, man, this is your year, but I'm looking forward to next year, and there's still time this year for me to achieve my goal. So, let's take a look at what we promised for this month. |
| Kyejin: Ok. So Peter, what do you mean you have to push your goal to the next month? Did you hit your November goals? |
| Peter: Yes, I hit my November goals. However, the test... they were not able to schedule. It's kind of a unique request, so they needed more time. So, I'm hoping that they can help me schedule it. But I have some interesting things to talk about for the test prep and centering around cramming and how I used… that cramming time. So we'll talk about that in just a bit. But how about your goals? |
| Kyejin: Hm. That sounds very interesting. For me. I achieved my goal. I was supposed to have two different five minute presentations, but I did three presentations and I reached 18 minutes. Five minutes was too short for me. |
| Peter: You know, I like, Kyejin, that together on average. We achieve our goals. You overachieve, and I underachieve, but together, we achieve. |
| Kyejin: Yes, on average, |
| Peter: On average. Wow, we, we need to… Would you like to start Kyejin and tell us about how you achieve these goals or would you like to hear about cramming and using assessment to study? What would you like to do? Your choice. |
| Kyejin: OK, then let's talk about mine first. So, I did three presentations. The first one was normal. The topic was my dream when I was a kid and I did a five minute presentation. |
| Peter: So Kyejin, very quick, when we say presentation, did you have a PowerPoint? Did you have some material associated with it? Did you just talk for five minutes, or was it back and forth questions? |
| Kyejin: I did a five-minute presentation myself without any visual asset. So I was just talking alone and after that, the teacher gave me some follow up questions. |
| Peter: Wow. So, five minutes, what does that look like? Is that about two pages of material or three pages of written material? |
| Kyejin: Actually, I didn't write down the whole sentences, but I only put the important points. So, well, I don't know the exact number of the pages, but I guess it's 1-2 pages. |
| Peter: Wow. So one or two pages that's very, very impressive. And the grammar behind that is the past. So, very tough. |
| Kyejin: Yeah, it was about the past tense, and I also tried to use some conditionals. |
| Peter: So how did you go about preparing? You knew about the question beforehand? So you had about a week to prepare. |
| Kyejin: Yes, I had a week to prepare. So I just made a very quick outline like my dream job and why I wanted to do that job and also some stories behind that. |
| Peter: So, create the outline that was on. So, let's just do some simple stuff here related to time. So basically, say your class was on a Monday. You got the assignments. So you had one week to prepare. When did you create the out? When did you create that outline the next day or? |
| Kyejin: Yeah, outline 2-3 days later? |
| Peter: OK. How long did it take you to create the outline? |
| Kyejin: For the outline, it takes like 20 minutes or so? |
| Peter: OK. What did you do next? Did you start to think about that? Did you give some time, or did you do all the work and then practice? What did you walk us through? So you had your class, took a two day, two or three day break, then you did the work 20 minutes? What did you do from there? |
| Kyejin: After that, I searched for some vocabulary that I want to use, and also, sometimes, I don't know how to make the sentences using conditionals or the past tense. So I used the translator, and I tried to memorize them. |
| Peter: Wow. And when you did your outline originally, did you do it in the target language? French or did you do it in Korean, your native language, or English or… |
| Kyejin: I wrote in English Just some words. And sometimes I mixed French words too. So, I just put the words that I remember first. |
| Peter: Smart. OK. So, there was the initial planning stage. Then there was the research stage, where you're gathering all of this material, compiling it. How long was that phase? |
| Kyejin: it takes around 30 minutes. |
| Peter: OK, same day. Was it a different day? |
| Kyejin: Different day |
| Peter: OK. So you're about 30, 20,30 minutes in, and then you compile it all. How did you practice it? |
| Kyejin: Well, before the lesson, I just try to make sentences myself. So I don't write the sentences for the presentation, but I have only a few keywords. Then, I just try to make the sentences while looking at the outlines. |
| Peter: Interesting. Now, when you're thinking about these sentences and kind of working on these different things, looking at the keywords, are you just thinking in your head? Are you writing something out? Are you doing something productive? Meaning writing or speaking or going through it in your head? |
| Kyejin: I just try to make the sentences verbally. So through the speaking, I try not to write so much because once I write the sentences, I tend to read what's written there. So, I don't write the sentences, but I only put the keywords, so I remember what I can talk about, and I always try to make the same sentences that I made previously. |
| Peter: Awesome. Very, so interesting. My son has a kind of a presentation very similar to this. It's a very popular way to test things. So he was doing this for Japanese, and what we did was we did something similar, and then what I had him do was use the voice recorder on his phone to record it so that he could listen to it… once in the morning, once in the evening. Although without a prompt from me, he doesn't really listen to it. But, the tool is so convenient. The tools that we have on our phones are so convenient if you use them for productivity. Were you using the tools like this in any way? |
| Kyejin: That's very interesting. Yeah, definitely. I would love to try. And also I recorded one of the presentation and I tried to listen after that and I realized, hm, my intonation is not very good. It sounds very Korean. |
| Peter: Yeah, it's always so interesting the first time you hear yourself recorded or speaking another language; I need to, I should do that more, right? Reflecting time. And now it's so powerful. The reason I asked about the text was… rightt just before this class, I purchased the AI speech to text. So you can actually write out your answers, then you can run it through and actually get an AI voice that's much, much better than your own, right? So, obviously, you want a native speaker, but if you can't have access to that native speaker, you can at least record the AI instead of yourself to get a bit better. And then, finally, model the native speaker that you like. |
| Kyejin: That's interesting. Actually, I use Google translator's voice a lot when I want to know the accent or the pronunciation of some words or sentences, they also read the sentences too. |
| Peter: Yeah, it's so nice. |
| Kyejin: Very useful. |
| Peter: I guess I could have done that. And the AI, alright Kyejin, I'm gonna go with that money. That company just lost it. I'm gonna go refund that money. |
| Kyejin: Yeah. Google's voice is pretty good. I guess the paid person is better, but still… |
| Peter: I'm going to try this way. I'm going to try this way for a bit just to kind of see the possibilities. It's quite nice, too. I can even now do conversations. |
| Kyejin: Oh, wow. Please let me know later. I want to see how it works with your study. |
| Peter: Yeah, I was thinking about to keep sharing and collaborating with you. But man, I don't know. I think I need to see you as a competition now. You're so good. |
| Kyejin: …and you are actually really busy this year. |
| Peter: Yeah. But you know, excuses, excuses, right? When push comes to shove you completed your goal and I'm down to the last minute, which could be a good transition to my topic if you would like or would you like to talk about the other presentations? |
| Kyejin: Yes, I actually want to add something else too. |
| Peter: Please go ahead. |
| Kyejin: Yes. For the second presentation I talked about where I live and I did just a five minute presentation again and the teacher had follow up questions and she gave me some corrections and I noticed she misunderstood something. I told her that my town is in Tokyo inside Tokyo, but she understood that my town is near Tokyo. So, I decided to give her another presentation with some visual assets. And I made the presentation look a little better. I tried to use the corrections she gave me. So in the end, I gave 18 minute presentation on my third try. |
| Peter: So you went from 5 to 5 to 18. |
| Kyejin: Yes. Because for the third time, third presentation, I talked about the same thing, where I live. So I already gave the presentation. So, it was pretty easy to talk about. |
| Peter: Can I make a guess about this? When you had the visual assets? Maybe your teacher is more engaged and asked more questions? |
| Kyejin: Hm. She didn't ask me more questions. She let me talk more actually because there's a visual asset. So, I was so excited to share all the details. I couldn't talk previously because she didn't really understand like the location, all the stuff. But now I have the map so I can say, hey, look at this, this is a station I mentioned last time and here there is a Korean town. So it's not very far from my place, so I like it. So I could talk more. |
| Peter: When you have something to look at, there's communication already happening. So previously, if it's just all words in a vacuum, like when you're taking the test and no visual cues, it's hard to fill in some of the blanks. Right. |
| Kyejin: Exactly. |
| Peter: OK. That's really fascinating. |
| Kyejin: Yeah. Indeed with the visual asset I can talk about like look at this, this is a place or this is the shrine that I often go. Like there are many topics that I can also talk additionally. |
| Peter: Yeah. So that might be a really interesting tip for people when they want to talk longer, they can bring some visual assets, or that's why meeting in person is so powerful. The internet is still very, very good. But meeting in person is quite powerful. It's the reason I prefer to do my lessons at a lunch because you have people interacting around you, people interacting with you, the food, the different things that you can change topic to and that you're very, very familiar with. |
| Kyejin: So, yeah, and also talking about the same thing works very well, too. So, instead of choosing a different topic, I was very happy that I chose exactly the same topic to talk about. |
| Peter: So if you have a teacher, you're doing online lessons with a tutor, having a visual cue, and yeah, maybe premium plus, we can share visual cues with our teachers and make the conversation last a bit longer, right? |
| Kyejin: Right. |
| Peter: Hm. Wow, Kyejin. Very interesting. |
| Kyejin: Thank you. So, how about you, Peter? |
| Peter: Yeah. So my lesson for this month is a little different. So, I was in a bit of a cramming phase. I thought that I would take my test this month. So whenever there's a deadline, I'm quite motivated. So that's why deadlines are so powerful, right? Without these deadlines, it's the way we're trained from when we're very, very young, there is a deadline and you have to finish by then. Very important for productivity. |
| Kyejin: Exactly. |
| Peter: Well, you know, first, it's much better to learn spaced out, right? To learn something over an extended period of time. However, when you don't have that luxury, that's when the cramming comes in. So there's a nice way to study on our site, and we spoke about this before - taking just the assessment. So you go to a learning path, and you take the assessment, and jump from assessment to assessment, and you're going through all the questions, and it's very powerful to try and recall the information you need, right? We speak about that, that memory recall. So, trying to remember a word is one of the most powerful… or a grammar point or something you say is one of the most powerful ways to learn, right, Kyejin? |
| Kyejin: Right. Exactly. |
| Peter: You did a very nice job with your presentations, you did the outline, but still, you're trying to pull that information out when you need it. And that's what the assessments were able to do for me. And I prefer to go through the tests to… it is such an interesting way to learn. You're basically taking multiple choice tests from the start of your study session to the end of your study session. Have you ever done that, Kyejin? |
| Kyejin: Of course. And sometimes I thought I understood some concept very well, but after the assessment, I realized oops I misunderstood some parts. And also it was very motivated to see the result better after the test. So in the first test, my results wasn't good. But in the second test, my result was better. That was very motivating. |
| Peter: Yeah and you know, the beauty of these multiple choice questions are they're so powerful and helping you and having them available, you pick a pathway and you just go from assessment to assessment to assessment, to assessment. It's really, really great. I did notice one weakness for prepping for the French exam. |
| Kyejin: What's that? |
| Peter: So it's very good for this receptive side, right? Listening, our site, the assessments are very, very powerful, and for the reading, very very powerful. However, for speaking and listening, there are some limitations because there's a small amount of portfolio work. And what I mean by that is your premium plus teacher can assign you a task to introduce yourself or talk about where you come from. And that's quite nice. But we don't have to level where Kyejin was going after the basic introductions. So we need some more material there because there is something I can introduce myself, record myself and send it to my teacher and get that feedback, which is excellent, but it's not organized in that same accessible way that the assessment is, I can go and take assessment for 30 minutes, 60 minutes all week long. But on the productive side, speaking and writing it's much more limited. So that's something that we as a company need to think about and address, right? |
| Kyejin: Actually, I don't know; it's very related, but for Korean, I made a refresher course myself for KoreanClass101, and it has lots of presentation time. So if you took the Korean course with me, yeah, you could practice more. But well, hopefully we can implement this some presentation ideas to other languages too. |
| Peter: How about next year? That sounds like a good goal for 2024. |
| Kyejin: Yep. Sounds good. |
| Peter: So for Korean, that's amazing, Kyejin. And that's why you're such an in demand teacher and you could tell by the work and effort you put into everything you do. That's why the results are so good. Yeah, maybe as a practice, I can take a look at some of the French ones and practice some presentations for the French ones, adapting them to French based on the Korean. |
| Kyejin: Yeah. Sounds very good. |
| Peter: So again, the site is very powerful for self-testing. It's not organized exactly what we want. And now that we hear about what Kyejin has, there is some basics you can do to practice your speaking and writing with teachers right now, what we need to do is implement some of the things occasion that Kyejin did to give it that more and more. And Kyejin, how did you organize it? When you talk to your students, you have it but having a place on the site where it's organized where people can go through it, I think that's very powerful, right? |
| Kyejin: Right. So before each class, we give some materials for them to study, and I got some relevant topics using the target grammar or vocabulary and have students prepare for them and during the lesson, group classes, they talk about the topic, one of the topic was their dream or when they want to visit Korea, what, what do you want to do or if it's a past tense related? Yeah. What did you do in the past stuff? So, it was very interesting. It's very interesting for myself too, to hear other students or talk about the same topic. |
| Peter: Yeah. So, right now, we have many interesting things going on in different sections of our innovative universe. So, but centralizing them in a place like assessments, that's why assessments are so good. You can skip from assessment to assessment to assessment, to assessment and there's only a limited amount of these productive practice things available in an organized way. So that's going to be a very powerful thing for students if we can roll that out in 2024. |
| Kyejin: Yeah, actually we implemented some of these ideas to the future group classes already. So they are some included to the slideshow. |
| Peter: OK, Kyejin. So, December goals, so my December goal will be to pass the A2 practice test at the school. |
| Kyejin: Oh, good luck. On my side, my goal for December will be having two different 20 minutes presentations for different topics. |
| Peter: Wow, that sounds very good, Kyejin. All right, the deadline is December 31st, 2023 |
| Kyejin: listeners. What about you? Let us know what your small measurable monthly goal is. Email us at inner dot circle at innovative language.com and stay tuned for the next inner circle. |
Outro
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| Peter: Bye everyone, everyone. |
| Kyejin: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time. |
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