Joe's Intro Video

Hi. I'm Joe Weiss. I'm one of the directors and teachers at Learn Real English. So first I want to say thank

you for joining me for this video. And I also wanted to say welcome to the Learn Real English family. We're

really happy to have you with us. So, I'm only one of the directors and teachers at Learn Real English. We

have two others. One is AJ Hoge and the other is Kristin Dodds. And we each thought it would be a good

idea to have a short film for each of us where we introduced ourself to our students. So this is mine and you

may have already seen AJ's, you may have actually seen Kristin's as well, but if you didn't you will see them

shortly.

Okay, so I think the best way to introduce myself is to maybe talk about some of my interests. And I think

you'll see that my interests are kind of connected. They're all related. So, obviously one of my interests is

teaching English and I really love doing that. I love watching my students become better English speakers

and I just love it when they succeed.

But when I'm not teaching English one of my interests is cooking. Actually I guess I should say one of my

interests is foods from all over the world. And I guess I first started to be interested in this because of my

father. First off, my father is a great cook and he used to have to travel a lot for his job. So whenever he

would come back from another country he would make us a dish from that country. So let's say when he

went to Japan he would come home and he would make a shabu-shabu. Or when he came back from India

he might make us dal or lentils. And I would watch him cook and I would eat it and I really loved it. And that's

when I first became interested in the foods of different parts of the world. Some of my favorite food is from

south India. I love Indian food. I love Thai food, Burmese food, Cambodian food. Oh, it's making me hungry

just thinking about it. I also love Middle Eastern food like falafel and hummus. I guess I just like a lot of foods

from different parts of the world.

So, another one of my interests is music. I've always loved music since I was a small child. I used to listen to

a lot of rock and roll music when I was younger. I still do. But now I also like a lot of jazz music and I also

like a lot of world music, music from different parts of the world. Like I love African music and I love all sorts

of music.

So, one other of my interests, and you can see how this is connected, is traveling. And I love traveling

because I love to have the food when I go to these places. I love to actually hear the music in other parts of

the world and I love to learn about the cultures of different parts of the world. And one of the things I love

most is meeting people from different parts of the world. I think you really get a chance to see what a place is

like when you meet people from that area. And a lot of the time when I've traveled, I've noticed that people

have always asked me, non-native speakers...non-native English speakers I mean to say...they've wanted to

practice speaking English with me. And of course I can never say no.

I always say yes. Because I'm a nice guy, but also because not only do I want to help them but I want to be

their friend and I want to learn about them. So, I always like try and make an effort to speak with people and

help them practice their English. Also because I'm an English teacher. So I usually ask them about their

families. Ask them if they have any kids. I'll ask them what type of food they like to eat. I'll ask them what

they normally do during their days. And a lot of times I'll also ask them how they learned to speak English.

And when I first began traveling I was really surprised to hear that most people told me that they hadn't

learned English in school. They hadn't learned by reading textbooks and memorizing vocabulary words and

grammar, no.

They actually learned to speak English by listening to other people speaking English. And at first this really

surprised me. They told me, well I hear other travelers who are speaking English. And I listen to movies. Or

I listen to music and that's how I learned how to speak English. Like my friend Dipesh, in Nepal, is a great

example of this. He never went to school to learn how to speak English, yet he speaks perfect English. So,

being an English teacher this really surprised me. Because I was always using textbooks to teach my

students, and I often found that even when they performed well on their exams they had a difficult time

speaking. And that's really the goal...you want to be able to speak quickly and confidently.

So I began to think I must be the only English teacher on the earth who believes that textbooks aren't good

for teaching English. That's actually what I thought. But then I started to do some research on the internet

and I actually found that there are a lot more people who have this same thought. And there's a lot of

research that shows it's more natural to learn to speak English by listening...listening to other people talking

in English. So I began not only to read this research but I also began to meet other people, other

teachers...other English teachers...who believed the same thing. A good example is I met AJ and Kristin and

we found that we had a lot in common, especially the fact that we were teachers and we were all frustrated by

the old teaching methods that used textbooks. And ones that made students memorize grammar rules and

memorize vocabulary words.

So we all believed that there were other ways to teach English and the main way was through storytelling and

asking questions and listening to real conversations. And actually that's how we got the idea to start Learn

Real English. We decided that we wanted to start something...we wanted to start Learn Real English

because we wanted to teach people using these other methods. Where listening is stressed and where

storytelling is stressed, because we'd seen such great results that we have had using these methods. So we

are really excited about Learn Real English. And we're really happy to have you with us here today.

Okay, so I said that I wanted to make sure that this wasn't going to be a long video so I think I'm going to

close now. So, before I do, I want to thank you again for joining me and I want to welcome you all to the

Learn Real English family. We're just really happy to have you with us.