📘 Part 3: Skills and Learning

This episode's vocabulary

Somewhat (adverb) - to some degree.

Trait (noun) - a particular characteristic that can produce a particular type of behaviour.

Muddle (noun) - an untidy or confused state.

Soft skills - people's abilities to communicate with each other and work well together.

Resistant (adj.) - not wanting to accept something, especially changes or new ideas.

Adept (adj.) - having a natural ability to do something that needs skill.

Hardship (noun) - a condition of life that causes difficulty or suffering.

Emerge (verb) - to appear by coming out of something or out from behind something.

Replicate (verb) - to make or do something again in exactly the same way.

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Questions and Answers

M: Rory, what kind of people are good at teaching?

R: Well, in my experience, people who are organized, knowledgeable, somewhat creative and who can relate to people and make connections with them. It doesn't have to be all four of these things. But at the very least, there should be at least three of them. And all this helps determine what is to be taught and how in the best way possible.

M: What qualities should teachers have?

R: I think probably in two words, patience and confidence. Learning anything takes a long time, and students need someone who's sure about what they are doing in order to succeed and feel encouraged. And both of these traits are useful in these respects.

M: Which do you think is more important? Practical skills, or academic skills, or so-called soft skills?

R: Well, soft skills help you deliver the content you're expected to provide, but there has to be some actual content there. So I think all three have equal weight, to be honest. If you forced me to choose, I would probably say soft skills because people can usually muddle through things together, but only if they actually can work together. And you need soft skills to do this.

M: What things can young people teach older people?

R: I suppose the most obvious example is how to use technology since it tends to catch on with younger people first and fastest, because they're so flexible and open to all of this new information. Older people tend to be more set in their ways and therefore more resistant to change.

M: Which age group is the best one at learning new things?

R: Oh, I've, oh, this thing again. I don't think there is such a thing. I've, sorry. I've been part of debates about this. They say young people are better at learning in general, but is that because they are the only age group sat down in a room and forced to learn things for hours on end or because they're naturally adept at this? And I actually think that it's because they're forced to do it and they also have more free time. Whereas adults have jobs and families to consider, adults are more critically aware and can organize their learning time more effectively and efficiently. So each group has its advantages and disadvantages in terms of when the best time is to learn. I don't think there is one universal standard that's acceptable here.

M: What skills do people take a long time to learn?

R: Oh, I think... Well, if I think about my own case, probably ways to deal with stress and everything else that life throws at you. And that's usually because it relies on people having negative experiences going through them and then reflecting on them. And it's hard to prepare for. And it involves a lot of hardship. But roughly, by the time you're between 25 and 30, you should be able to master your emotions in such a situation or such situations.

M: What skills should children learn before school?

R: Well, maybe not completely, but how to make friends and how to cope with difficulties emerging from working with others. I'm not saying that they have to be like fully trained diplomats, but they should be able to work through problems and handle themselves in a disciplined way, or at least a reasonably disciplined way. Making friends is important for being able to get on in life in general. But in particular at school, I suppose being able to read would be a close third option that opens up so many doors for people.

M: How do adults learn a new skill?

R: Getting someone to show them how and then trying to replicate that effort as best they can? It's the same as kids, really, when you think about it. Only kids tend to have more fun doing it. Adults are a little bit more sensitive and serious about these kinds of things.

M: Is the Internet good for learning new skills?

R: Maybe those involving your mind, I would say so, but perhaps a few practical skills too, since there are videos for like visual demonstrations of things. Although I maintain my position that having another human being to work with is one of the most essential elements for this. I think there's something sort of magical almost about human interaction that can't be translated into a machine, but I'd be willing to be proven wrong about that.

M: What do you think about the future? So will people continue learning different things so they'll just get lazy because all the work will be done by robots?

R: Oh, no. People are addicted to drama and making things complicated. I don't think even if robots are helping us, we'll be through with needing to learn how to do things.

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Discussion

M: We'll find something to get drama all other. Okay-dokey, let's talk about sexy vocabulary and even sexier grammar. So creative, you said somewhat creative.

R: Yeah, so it's important to point out that not everything has to exist in an absolute way. So when you say somewhat, it's just like a little bit, but somewhat is more formal and higher level word.

M: Yeah, so you can be somewhat knowledgeable, somewhat organized, but you can't be somewhat pregnant or somewhat dead.

R: Well, you can be somewhat dead on the inside.

M: Somewhat dead on the inside. Oh, God. On the outside.

R: Why are you looking at me when you say that?

M: No, I'm just like thinking. I'm getting all philosophical.

R: Thinking that I look dead. And I do.

M: No, you look fine. I like your hair.

R: Thank you. I like my hair.

M: Good. Now that we've exchanged compliments. So we can have practical skills or academic skills and also we have soft skills. Could you give us an example of soft skill?

R: Yeah. Being able to control your temper. Or being able to relate to other people, you know. Being able to make friends or handle communications effectively.

M: And you can say that these skills like practical skills and soft skills have equal weight.

R: Yes. Which means they're the same. If you don't think they have equal weight, then, well, you're wrong. But more importantly, if you don't think they have equal weight, then you could say this one in particular has more weight than the others.

M: And then the second conditional. Are you already? If you forced me to choose, okay? Yeah, and that's kind of the answer to any question. If you don't know the answer, you start if you forced me to choose or if I had to choose.

R: Yeah. Any question where you're given more than one option, just like... Well you can actually, you could probably do this for every single question like that. Just say, well all of these things have equal weight. But if you forced me to choose, I would choose this one because yada yada. And there you have it, two sentences, high level piece of vocabulary and a high level piece of grammar for a band nine score.

M: Bob's your uncle.

R: We can go home now. We've solved the IELTS problem.

M: Another phrasal verb is muddle through things. So people can usually muddle through things.

R: So if you muddle through things it means that you do the job not particularly well, but you do finish it in the end. And people can do that when they work together. When they don't work together, nothing gets done.

M: Yeah, we work together and we muddle through things.

R: We muddle through this podcast somehow. Actually no, it's not somehow, it's on a diet of energy drinks and sarcasm.

M: Because we are somewhat creative and funny.

R: Somewhat.

M: Somewhat funny.

R: And somewhat modest.

M: Technology catches on or it tends to catch on with younger people.

R: Yeah, usually we use this to talk about ideas, but being able to use technology or the ability to use technology catches on. And when something catches on, it just means that it's, well, it starts...

M: Being popular.

R: Yeah.

M: It starts being popular. Different gadgets are catching on or this clubhouse is catching on now. This is a good example. Rory, you've used to be naturally adept at something.

R: Adept just means to be good at doing something.

M: So I am adept at making jokes. That means I'm good at making jokes?

R: That's a good example sentence, which doesn't apply to you.

M: Ha ha ha ha ha.

R: Do you like some Aloe Vera for your burn?

M: Oh wow. Two jokes. Not funny.

R: Two jokes. None of them funny. Neither of them funny, I should say.

M: Just explain the vocabulary, Rory.

R: Just explain the grammar and get out.

M: OK. And what else can you be adept at?

R: Explaining grammar and vocabulary.

M: Rory is adept at explaining conditionals.

R: No, I'm not adept at explaining conditional.

M: What's the mixed conditional? Give us an example of a mixed conditional.

R: If I knew the answer to that, I would have told you. Is that a mixed conditional?

M: That's the third one.

R: Oh, hell.

M: Oh, no. That is.

R: There we go, see. I don't know how to explain it. If I knew, I would have used a more effective example. There you go. How's that for irony?

M: Right. Hardship or hardships? A lot of hardships. A lot of difficulties, challenges but hardship is a more advanced word.

R: It's also one you can use when you start running out of words to describe difficulties, and problems, and issues.

M: Yeah, like acquiring new skills is difficult. It involves a lot of hardship. You muddle through, blah, blah, and then you are able to master your emotions.

R: Yeah. So mastering something just means controlling it. You can master your emotions. You can have mastery over a subject which just means you know a lot about it.

M: And then you say you cope with difficulties emerging from learning.

R: Yes. Well emerging from working with people being around them.

M: Yeah. Difficulties emerge like they appear.

R: But appear is a more general term, emerge means like start to come.

M: When we talked about how adults learn new skills, you said they replicate.

R: Yeah. Replicate. It's just copy.

M: Yeah. Copycat. Mimic. No, mimic is about a face, right? So we replicate, we mimic, we copycats. What else do we do?

R: We dont copycat. We are copycats.

M: We are copycats. It's not a verb to copycat? Stop copycatting me.

R: No it's always stop copying me.

M: Copying. OK.

R: I think you could probably use it informally but I wouldn't use it in an IELTS exam. It's not. It's too not on the standard.

M: So you can say like oh people are copycats, we replicate each other, we copy what everybody else is doing.

R: We replicate each other's ideas. We don't replicate each other.

M: Yeah, we replicate the efforts. We replicate our ideas. You can replicate some of our ideas.

R: By reading our transcripts. They're available on our website, which is successwithielts.com. Holy heck, I've remembered the name of the website.

M: Well done. I keep forgetting the name of our podcast sometimes.

R: I keep forgetting my name. Who are you?

M: I know your name now. Wait, I wrote it down.

R: You do forget my name.

M: Rory Fergus Duncan Goodwilly. Yeah, but I'm reading now, the next step is going to be like to actually remember it. Thank you so much for listening and your attention. We really hope it was useful.

R: We hope we managed to teach you something new. And it's a good pun because we were actually teaching this time. We were talking about teaching, which is something I like to do. So there we go.

M: We are boosting your English skills. Bye!

R: Bye!

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