This is an all English podcast, episode 1496, Three Ways to do self study as a business English student with Skip Montereau.

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Today our guest skip from down to business English shows us three tips to maximize your self study. If you want to improve your business English, listen in for some great resources and strategies today.

Hello, Skip, and welcome to All Ears English. I'm excited to have you here today. How are you? I'm very good. Thank you very much, Lindsey, for having me on the show. Awesome.

So, guys, today I'm really excited to introduce to you our guest for today. We have Skip Montereau, who is from Canada, but living right now in Japan. Is that right, Skip? That's correct. OK, Japan. Yeah. How long have you been there?

I've been here a long time. I came over here in 1997. Oh my gosh. I guess that's I'd have to do the math, but around 20 to 23 years.

OK, that's amazing. So, guys, today we're going to talk a little bit about business English. But first, before we get into it, Skip, we do talk about Japan a fair amount on this show because I lived in Japan. Michelle has visited Japan. We've done live events in Japan. Tell me, what is the most surprising thing for you as a Westerner living in Japan? What has been something that's just been really bizarre or surprising for you?

Well, that's a question I get asked quite a bit.

Yeah. So, I mean, I have lots of standard answers. But honestly, the the most surprising thing for me, when I first came here, I'm from Canada.

I'm from the western part of Canada. Yes. And the population is very, very low.

And I was just freaked out by how dense the population is. I did a little research on it way back. And you know what the population density of Tokyo is?

I don't even give us the number. I can imagine. It's it's like something like three hundred and eighty people per square kilometer where I am from.

It's any idea what the population density and I mean five per square kilometer.

You're close, you're close at seven point eight. Oh. So I guess the incredible density of human beings is the more surprising thing to me.

I'm quite used to it now, but that would be my answer. Absolutely.

That's a great answer. And I'm sure that's not just limited to Japan. I mean, a lot of our listeners all over the world do live in cities that are really densely packed. That's that's fascinating, Skep. So let's dive in then to business English. That's why we're having you on today. We've been talking more and more about business English on all issues, English. And do you specialize in business English yourself, Skip?

Yeah. For the last 15 years, I have focused primarily on corporate language training or business English.

So that's that's what I do. Yes.

Awesome. Awesome. So today you're going to show us three tips to be more successful when we do self study. And how does this compare to like is it quite different from learning in a classroom in your mind?

Well, in my mind, I think self study is extremely important and it could be something that a student or an employee does completely independently of a classroom or in tandem with a course that they're taking.

Awesome.

I'm always most of my students are taking a class to our class once a week, and I keep telling them there's no way you're going to make progress unless you are putting in the time between classes to do self study.

It's very, very important.

That is so true. We find that a lot of our listeners here at English are really self driven, independent learners, and it's always good to supplement self study with a class. But many of them don't necessarily have that option.

They're busy, they have families. So let's get into those tips here, Skip. So what is number one? What's the first tip that we should follow with business English self study? What would you say?

OK, OK, well, tip number one, and these are no particular order, but tip number one is make self study part of your daily life.

I mean, it's so important.

And, you know, students come to my class and I ask, did you study this week? And they said, yes, I studied for three hours on Sunday.

And I said, great, great. But I would prefer it honestly, if a student would be studying four or five times self studying four or five times a week in anywhere from 15 to 30 minute sessions, I'm really focused review and acquisition sessions on their own.

I think the repetition is very, very important.

Yes. Tell me a little bit about acquisition balancing out. So one of your key tips here is to balance out acquisition and review. Tell me a little bit about the idea behind that for our listeners.

Well, the thinking behind that is, of course, if you're in business English, you are very concerned with finding vocabulary and phrases. Right, listening to language related to your field. But, you know, it's very important to to review a lot. And part of that review is output review. OK, speaking out loud and just the repetition, like an athlete going to the gym, working out, you know, that sort of thing. Of course, you need to acquire things, but there's.

A certain point where you have enough passive vocabulary and the understanding of grammar concepts, you just need to do it.

Yeah, OK, so you're saying that self study shouldn't just be, for example, listening to a podcast alone, it should be using what you've heard on a podcast or the words you read in a book and using them somehow, is that right? That's right.

And it could simply mean I could simply just be speaking.

If you have the audio script of a podcast or newspaper article downloaded from the Internet, it could just be, you know, looking at the paper, taking your eyes off the paper and producing that language very loudly.

I shouldn't say I shouldn't say very loudly, but aggressively working those mouth muscles and working on your pronunciation.

A sense when we do that, we're kind of retraining. I think a lot of us, if we've learned a language, a second language, we've kind of shied away from it over our lives. Maybe we've been afraid to speak out loud. Right. And speak loudly. And the chance to speak loudly by yourself in a new language will break down those old habits of shying away and being afraid.

Right. Yeah, absolutely.

So good. Yeah. Go ahead, Skep.

You know, I was just going to say, I cannot tell you how many times I have had a new student join a chorus and with, you know, a fairly good talk level.

And I don't really teach them anything. I just give them the opportunity to speak when speaking opportunities.

And within a month or two months, they're much more fluent. Oh, my gosh.

I love that it's already in them, right? For you guys, it's already in you. You guys are at the upper intermediate level to advanced level. You have what you need. It's a matter of starting to speak. So this is so good. So let's go to number two then. Skip, what is your second tip for our listeners?

OK, the second tip is every student needs to create or and maintain some kind of vocabulary activation system.

Yes, this is the very personal thing. I know there are a lot of apps available out there, the vocabulary learning apps. But, you know, I really recommend students create some kind of system and it's up to them. How will they make it? It could be a notebook. It could be.

You know, a lot of my students use Excel Simple Excel spreadsheet, you know, a column for the key word, a column for the translation. Yeah.

With an example sentence and then a column for the source. Where did they was it something their teacher had written on the whiteboard or something they saw in a news article or in the video?

And they can sort that Excel sheet and review it and again, produce it out loud. Yes.

So good. Yeah, I like that you said it. You know, Excel is one option, but it doesn't have to be on Excel. I think it's about finding the the medium where you're likely to go back to, you know what I mean? It's the same with time management systems or calendar tasks type things. Right. What are you always going to come back to? What's going to work best for you? So, guys, whether it's a physical notebook, that's fine.

If that's easy for you to grab or whether it's an Excel sheet, right. On Google documents or something, it depends on how you act in the world. Right, right. Skip the. Absolutely.

One of my most successful students I looked at is look at his system. And it was a notebook and it was just chicken scratch.

I couldn't make heads or tails of it, but I was able you know, everything's were highlighted and it worked very well for him.

I love that. And so you said on in his vocabulary notebook, we are focusing on useful language and passive language. What do you mean by that?

Well, I don't know, but the rest of the world.

But in Japan, you know, everyone has studied at least six years of English in school, and they have quite they've studied a lot of words, definitely.

And so but they don't you know, a lot of learners don't use those words.

So I encourage students to to pay attention to words that if they see it on the paper, they know it, but they know they never use it. You should go into their activation system.

And and even if they encounter that word several times over a period of two or three weeks and different sources, they should put it into their system again, for sure.

As they are reviewing, they will it will slowly become part of their active vocabulary.

Yeah, I think that really is one of the biggest struggles for our listeners, is that they know the words they're out there. But how do we it's really a flipping it into making it your word and making it available immediately in conversation. So there has to be this intermediate step. And I like Skip that you're calling this the activation system. It's so good. It's it's motivating.

I think so. Yeah. So active vocabulary and useful vocabulary. Yeah. Pertaining to your industry. OK, so let's that leads us into the third tip, right, Skip? So what would be your third tip in terms of how to self study with business? Engler's is really going to get into resources, I think.

Absolutely. So the third tip number three is to expose yourself to authentic language.

And, you know, it'll vary depending on what you need. But, you know, if you are in the pharmaceutical industry, you should be reading and listening to topics related to the pharmacies. Yeah.

Or if you're an engineer, you know, it should be related to to what you do. And, you know, we live in you know, I'm sure students have heard this everywhere.

And it's not a cop out on teachers part, but the Internet is such a great resource.

Yeah. And I really have a lot of success with students who spent a lot of time on YouTube.

Yeah, interesting. Tell me more about that. Well, I, you know, Google a topic or go to YouTube and search a topic and see what comes up. But there are some you know, I really like the Business Insider channel on YouTube.

Yeah.

They have very, you know, five to 10, 15 minute news reports on business. And they're quite current. And in YouTube, I'm sure. Well, maybe not everyone is aware, but closed captioning is a fantastic resource. So I encourage students to find something on YouTube, listen to it, watch it without any closed captioning time, and then watch it again with the closed captioning on using the pause button, taking note, using their dictionary for to if there are words or phrases they're not sure sure of collecting them in their activation system.

Right. OK then watching it again. Yeah. So good.

I love this idea because it's true. Like teachers can't provide all this specific knowledge in these specific industries like you listed here, engineering, pharmaceuticals, technology, finance. There's no way that ESL teachers can provide that insider vocabulary and knowledge, right?

Absolutely. And another part of it is, you know, and this is where resources such as, you know, I don't mean to plug you, but, you know, I'm all ears. English is great. You offer transcripts.

I mean, that's a that's a great, great resource. Your students can listen to, you know, authentic speakers interacting with each other. Yeah. Then they have they have an audio script that they can refer to. And I'm sure you're well aware of how students will understand it completely in written form. But when they listen to it, they can't catch it. Exactly. Great place to focus on, you know, connected speech and really become more accustomed to it.

For sure.

For sure. And then what are some of the other channels on YouTube that are just to throw out a couple of names that our listeners can go and look for. Skip, you had a couple listed here. Yeah, yeah.

So Business Insider is one another.

If Bloomberg has a channel financial industry, CNN Money is there.

OK, the CNN Ten, which is aimed at ESL students or. Oh, I didn't even know about that.

Interesting. They it's like they take they have a host and they use CNN reports.

It's very good.

Wall Street Journal has a has a great channel. And you know, I'm not a fox watcher, but Fox Business is very, very good.

Yeah, awesome. I'm sure it is yabbie aspects of Fox.

I'm sure our far fine guys Fox Business with Fox. Yeah. Maybe we should say the back story for our listeners. Guys, we're laughing because Fox News is a very it's a very conservative channel and it's a very partisan channel. But everything nowadays is very biased. We've talked about this on other podcast, another episode, skip that. The news right now is very, very biased. But you did.

I did. I mention CNN Money. So there's a balance.

There you go. Or balancing it out, guys. You can hear the undertones of the conversation. I love it. So good. You guys write down those resources and check those out. Now, one last question, Skip, in terms of reading now, is there anything that we should be reading? Can we throw out any resources or ways of doing this for our listeners?

I recommend making use of news websites and one one tip I have for reading resources.

I in Japan, there are a couple of websites, Japan today and times. And what is a. Actually, good about those sites is that a student can read about domestic news, you know, news stories that are happening in Japan. Yeah, and they're already aware of the story in their first language. And then they get to read it in English. And I did a little poking around. I think wherever a student is, wherever they live, there are English resources that the language is for.

Sometimes The New York Times will become very idiomatic and very inside baseball, and it's a lot to consume. Whereas, you know, reading about domestic news on an English website tends to be a little bit less frustrating.

Yeah, that's a great idea because we already have the context for things. Right. A big part of being able to understand English is knowing the context. Right. And you already have the context, guys. If you're reading Japan today or or any local newspaper in English about your country, you are the half. The battle is already there. Right? You're already there. I love it. Oh, this is fantastic, Skip. So thank you so much for coming on the show today to let us know how to kind of make business English our own.

There is so much that we do need to be doing on our own. But that's empowering, right? In a sense. Absolutely. Make it into our own hands or I skip the ball is in your court.

I love it. That's such a good way to end it. So, Skip, could you let our listeners know where to find more from you, where to find you online, what you're doing and some resources on your end? Tell us about your podcast, too. Well, sure.

Our part my podcast, the title is Down to Business, English, Dotcom and each of our shows we take a business news story from that's happening somewhere in the world. One of our recent stories was on the Gaffar group Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple.

Interestingly, you hauled in front of Congress recently and myself and my co-host, I have one co-host, Samantha Vega, who is based in New Zealand and another co-host from the UK. He's based in Edinburgh, Scotland. At the moment. We discussed the story and then we have a little section at the end called DTV. We're down to Vocabulary where we review some of the vocabulary that had come up in our conversation.

Oh, very cool. So and, you know, listeners can visit our website at down to business English dot com. And for every episode there is a free audio script that you can download.

Cool. And so when they look for your podcast, too, it's written D to be on the cover, is that right? That's right. OK, so that's important for our listeners to know.

Yeah it's. Yeah, that. Thank you.

So it's a blue artwork and as the letters D to be, I love it.

So guys, I recommend you go over and check out Scheps podcast and website because it sounds like a very unique and interesting format that you have and something that our listeners would definitely be interested in. A modern business. Issues are fascinating. What's going on with those tech companies? We want to know, you know what I mean? And we want to know from you and learn English through it. That's awesome.

If if anyone has a topic they would like to hear us discuss so they can shoot me an email down to business English at Gmail dot com.

OK, tell me what you would like to listen to and which topic and we will do our best. Awesome.

All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been good. I'm going to check out what you're doing over there to myself.

OK, thank you. All right.

Take care. Have a good one. OK, you too, Lindsey. Bye bye. Bye.

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