IMPROVING YOUR ENGLISH SKILLS WATCHING FORMULA 1

Rayssa C. Moraes.

Some people say that learning a foreign language it is boring or they just learn for obligation, but it is not true at all. These people just lack motivation. According to Harmer (2001, p. 51) motivation is "some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something.” In this specific case, motivation I found in the Formula 1, the most popular and advanced form of world motor racing. Through this essay, I will show how Formula 1 can be useful to improve your listening and reading skills.

Formula 1 (F1) is a sport that involves people from all places around the world, so, to avoid misunderstandings between teams, engineers, mechanics, and other participants, a official language was chosen for the sport, and then the selected was English language. And because everything in F1 is in English, watching it can be very useful for improving your English skills.

Figure 1. Drivers during a press conference

To improve listening skills, in each grand prix (GP) you can listen to the press conference in the days before the races. In the press conferences, all the drivers are together and answer questions for reporters from around the world about that GP, the cars, the championship, and other topics. And, as the drivers are from different countries, you can perceive the accents and the different levels of English and practice listening. During the races, the engineer is always in contact to the driver and the teams allow us to listen parts of these conversations. It is hard to understand because of the engine roar. However, this difficulty is similar to situations from daily life, such as is when you receive a call in the street and, the sound is not clean but you need to understand. This is different from some traditional listening activities used by language school in which, the audios are clean and do not demonstrate the realities learning a foreign language. Besides that, after the races, the drivers usually give interviews and some of them are tired, pretty happy, angry or disappointed with the result of the race and this influences the way they speak.

To improve reading skills, students can read about the sport on the official F1 and Teams/Drivers websites where, it is possible to read news, curiosities, technical information, watch videos, and purchase gear. It is excellent practice because everything is written in the formal English language. For practice in informal English writing, fans can read the blogs about it. Both readings are perfect for learning a lot of expressions from the F1 environment.

Most of the people are shocked when they realize that I am a F1 lover and that it provided motivation for learning English, maybe because it is not a common sport for girls, but I really do not care that they are shocked. So, why do I like it? When I was a child, my father usually took care of me on the weekends but every time that I asked him to play with me he could not because he was watching F1 and I was really angry because I could not get his attention. However, some time later, he started to work on the weekends and I noted that he was sad to lose the races, so I started to watch it to give him a summary about the race when he came home. This has made become closer and soon I realized I could not imagine my weekends without watching F1. 

Figure 2. Kimi Raikkonen's official website

Ever since I started to watching F1 I was curious to know what the graphics and the notes that I saw on TV meant and, what they were talking about on the radio. I often visited the official website of Kimi Raikkonen, an F1 driver, to find some images of him but I could not read the news and understand the interviews because everything was in English, which was disappointing. As a result, I started to learn English to understand, because I like F1 so much, learning through it never was boring. I was always excited about English and, because I studied English in my school, my father always asked me about things in English that appeared TV during the GPs. Understanding the meaning of these things and explain to him was a great inspiration for me.

In summary, learning English with F1 can be very useful for a person that likes the sport. But more broadly, learning a language with something that you love is the best way to acquire it because there is an intrinsic motivation that makes a person want to learn more. Through passions the internal motivation increases during the process of learning.

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH SKILLS THROUGH INTERVIEWS AND MAGAZINES.

Raquely da Silva Caldeira

When I tried to study English by myself a long time ago, it was not a successful way to learn. In my mind, the only way to learn a foreign language was to have classes in a language school. When my classes started at the university, everything changed. Through a class “Learn How to Learn”, I discovered autonomy and motivation and how to use learning strategies.  As I like to read magazines and watch interviews, I used the things I learnt to improve my reading and listening skills. One of the things I always keep in mind is how I can combine English with my favorite things. In short, preferences plus learning equals good results.

To achieve results like this autonomy and motivation are necessary. According to many authors, autonomy is the act of being in charge of your own learning (HOLEC, 1981; LITTLE, 1999), but that does not mean that you cannot have a teacher’s help. Many learning strategies helped me to improve my language skills. For instance, I attempt to be reflexive about my learning and evaluate this process. I keep a learning diary and I write about my experience in a blog.

During the learning process it is necessary to understand that motivation is the effort given to a task. Brown (1997 apud MATOS, 2011). It is the strong impulse to achieve your goals. I learnt that motivation could have lows and highs. To keep my motivation high I selected short-term goals to achieve. So instead of watching a documentary with a formal language vocabulary I watch a 2 minute interview. Instead of reading an article with formal English, I read a magazine. This attitude improved my language skills substantially and kept my motivation high. 

I understood how much I improved my English during this personalized learning process when I watched a Live Stream Google Hangout conference with Hunger Games – Catching Fire cast. The video available on youtube was a huge challenge because it was without subtitles. However, it was also a trigger to increase my motivation to keep watching interviews without subtitles. After this one, I started watching interviews about many subjects.

Other examples were Once Upon a Time 2012 Comic Com and Downton Abbey cast interviews. The first one was easier to understand and I could perceive how my listening skills improved. The second one helped me to learn more about the British accent because the actors are all Britain. In addition, I could learn about the vowels and consonants sounds better than with some books. Watching to these short interviews help me in my speaking skills and increase my vocabulary without having to take notes.  Therefore, the feeling of understanding what the native speaker said to every language learner is a reward.

Once Upon a Time 2012 Comic Com cast interview.

Downton Abbey cast in Good Morning America

The genre written interview was also an important tool to overcome not interesting texts from the language book. So I had to find another way to keep reading in English and do not think that reading is boring. That was why I research for sites and apps for android. They can easily give me magazines to read wherever I am. In sites as http://www.pdfmagaz.in/ you can download any kind of magazine. For instance, games, fashion, fishing and so on. I found, “Hello Canada” and “Mcleans Magazine” that talk about gossips and entertainment. These two issues were about my favorite Canadian Ice dancers Tessa and Scott. And the language used in these magazines was for many English multilevel students and in fact more appealing too.

Hello Canada magazine and Mclean’s magazine

As I spend much more time with my cell phone I thought it would be more interesting if I read magazines there. So, I downloaded Issue app that allows me to read, for instance, The Regard Magazine about Lana Parrilla, one of my favorite actress. This fashion magazine has many pictures and clothing vocabulary. During this research I found other apps to android as gossip magazines, all magazines, and fashion magazines. The interesting fact of magazines is that the texts have many unknown words for language learners. And you can use this to enrich your vocabulary in many subjects, or in the theme that you prefer as music, movies, fashion, gardening and so on.

Regard Magazine

After these language-learning experiences, I became aware that when you are in control of your learning, using your preferences to find a delightful way to learn your language skills become better.  In my case, it is now a habit to read magazines and to watch interviews in English. In addition, the interesting fact that I perceive is how this exposition to the language develop my confidence when I speak and write also. What I learnt from strategies handout, motivation and autonomy is that the students need to be organized, motivated, and persistent because this is the best way to achieve their goals.

REFERENCES:

MATOS, M.C.V.S. O professor e o processo motivacional na aprendizagem de língua estrangeira. 2011. 160 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Estudos Linguísticos) – Programa de Pós Graduação em Letras, Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, 2011.