87- How Living in a Home Stay or International House Can Help Your English
Lindsay: This is an All Ears English Podcast, Episode 87: “How Living in a Home Stay or International House Can Help Your English.”
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Gabby: Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, where you'll finally get real, native English conversation with your hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the ‘English Adventurer' and Gabby Wallace, the ‘Language Angel,' from Boston, USA.
Hey guys in this episode, you're going to hear from Lindsay about how she lived in an international home and how it really helped her to learn her target language, Spanish, and you'll learn how living in a similar situation can help your English.
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Lindsay: Hello Gabby.
Gabby: Hey Lindsay. What's happening?
Lindsay: How (are) you doing today?
Gabby:
I'm good. It's warming up a little bit.
Lindsay:
A little bit
Gabby:
I'm happy, I'm happy about that.
Lindsay:
Yeah, you're happy. Okay. Very good.
Gabby:
“Happy.” Get it? Remember our lesson?
Lindsay:
I get it.
Gabby:
Remember our episode on Monday and Tuesday?
Lindsay:
Yeah.
I'm still feeling the happy glow after that.
Gabby:
Cool. Yeah today we're talking about something different, right.
Lindsay:
Yeah.
But before we get into it, I want to start by just thanking just some of our reviewers.
Gabby:
Because we're so happy about our reviewers.
Lindsay:
Yeah.
And we just want to say “Thank you so much for leaving these reviews.” Let's start with (um) some views from the Italian iTunes store. We want to say “Thank You” to Mnnt76, Fuffy 28, Liverpaol, MardiGras28, JianLucaRizzeto, Roy345. Thanks also to Giuseppe for being a loyal listener to All Ears English. Thanks guys. If you haven't left a review yet, please go ahead on over to your iTunes store and leave us a review so we can keep All Ears English going, keep it up in the rankings and let us continue to provide awesome content for you guys. Let's build our community.
Gabby:
Yeah, we listen and we love it. All right, so today we want to talk about how living in a home stay or international house can help your English. (Um) we've had some experience with this. We've also had listeners, students asking about this, so we think it's a good topic for today. (Um) we also have a quote that we wanna (want to) introduce.
Lindsay:
Yeah, let's start out with the quote. Do you want to read that Gabby?
Gabby:
Sure. So Christopher Columbus said, “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” So the shore is the land, right? And when, when you're in a boat like Christopher Columbus was, (um), you're sailing away from the land, you're sailing into the ocean, the huge, big, wide ocean and eventually, all you're going to be able to see is water and that's a little scary ‘cause (because) you don't know when you're going to hit land.
Lindsay:
Yeah, there's no turning back.
Gabby:
No turning back right?
Lindsay:
Yeah.
Gabby:
Yeah.
So we want to relate this to your English learning, right? Sometimes you have to lose sight of land, or the shore or your, your native language…
Lindsay:
Yeah.
Gabby:
…native culture.
Lindsay:
Absolutely. And I can give a good example of how I tried to do this when I was learning Spanish. I spent three months – I spent a year backpacking through Latin American and stayed in Argentina for three months, specifically in Buenos Aires and I ended up…
Gabby:
Awesome.
Lindsay:
…(um) I really knew that I needed to live in a Spanish-speaking house to really take my Spanish to the next level. There was no doubt about that. I didn't want to live in a hostel where everyone was speaking English. So I went out, I found a house in Palermo Viejo, and a nice little home with (um) two Italian students, two French students, (uh), there was myself and another American student and I think (uh) an Argentine guy. And, (you know), the six or seven of us lived together. We had dinners together and the language of the house was Spanish. When I moved in and I interviewed for the room, they said “We don't speak English here.” And…
Gabby:
Que Bueno (that's good).
Lindsay:
Yeah, buenisimo (that's very good). So it really helped a lot. (Um) after three months of living with those guys, I was much more comfortable in Spanish. It made a huge difference. So I allowed myself to lose sight of the shore by diving in and just giving myself no other option, but to live in Spanish.
Gabby:
Yeah.
Literally immersing yourself in the ocean of Spanish.
Lindsay:
And it wasn't so scary. (I mean) people were nice.
Gabby:
Right.
Lindsay:
(You know), (I mean) in the end, people are people.
Gabby:
Well, and I like that (uh) situation, living in an international house or a home stay with other international students because, (you know), to use kind of a pun with, (you know), Christopher Columbus, you're in the same boat, right? You're in the same situation, right? You all want to learn Spanish or you all want to learn a certain language. So you're all in the same boat. (Um) you want to help each other and, (you know), as long as your, your roommates (um) are, (you know), on the same page, they want to learn the language, it's a really great bonding experience, right?
Lindsay:
Yeah.
So think about what you can do. So if you're here in Boston or in New York or in LA, or San Francisco and you're here to learn English, if that's your primary goal, think about finding a homestay, (um) finding just an international apartment where your roommates are from here or other international students.
Gabby:
Yeah.
Yeah (I mean) even if you're in the US living with family (um) – I, I'm working with a student now who's living with family and he really, really wants to spend more time with English speakers, so he decided to stay with a homestay family and three other international students for a few weeks.
Lindsay:
Cool. That's a good option.
Gabby:
Yeah, yeah. So I really admire that because it is brave. It's, it's really, (you know), leaving the shore behind and going into uncharted territories. I'm sorry. So many puns. I'm on a roll. (Um) yeah, but it's just, it's a great way to immerse yourself in language.
All right. So good luck guys if you decide to go for the international living situation and (uh) lose sight of the shore.
Gabby: Yeah.
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Lindsay: If you want to put your ears into English more often, be sure to subscribe to our podcast in iTunes on your computer or on your smartphone. Thanks so much for listening and see you next time.