Roba English Podcast Ep. 3: How to make good language mistakes.

英語の後に日本語が続きます！

Are you an English learner? I'm glad you landed on my channel!

My name is Roba and I'm from the UK.

This podcast is perfect for those who want to learn British English and who want to do it the natural way - by listening to natural, native speakers!

I live in Japan and I've been an educator since 2018 and I'm fascinated by languages. I'm a native English speaker and I'm fluent in Japanese, and I'm learning French and German! Learning languages is all about meeting new people and in learning Japanese, my life has changed in so many ways, so I started this podcast because I used Japanese podcasts for learning and I found them incredibly helpful.

This theme of this episode is how do we make good mistakes as a language learners?

It's also a chance for you to contact me! Please comment below or send me an email! Please let me know in the comments about the channel and what you would like to hear about next. —------------------------------------------

みなさん、こんにちは！自然な英語を聞きながら英語を勉強したいですか。私のチャンネルへようこそ！ イギリス出身のロバです。

英語圏の自然な英語で、異文化や僕の経験など、面白い内容を楽しみながら英語力を身につけたいという方にとって、このポッドキャストはぴったりの内容になっています。

２０１９年から日本に住んでおり、その時からも教育業界で働いています。外国語がめちゃくちゃ面白いだと思い、日本語ももちろん、フランス語とドイツ語も独学で勉強しています。だからこそ、言語学習の大変さの溝と楽しみの波をよく理解できますし、そのポッドキャストを作ることで、みなさんとその経験を共有したいと思っています。

僕は日本語を勉強し始めた時に僕と違う背景の人に会いながら楽しく話すというモチベーションで勉強し、日本語のポッドキャストをよく聞き、人生が変わった実感があったので、僕と同じような道を歩んでいる人の役に立ちたいと思い、このチャンネルを始めるようになりました。

今回のエピソードでは、外国語学習としてどうやってうまく失敗すればいいのかというテーマです。

リスナーのみなさんと繋がれるのを楽しみにしています！　コメントでもメールでもご連絡をお待ちしております。ご意見や感想を共有してもらえれば一緒にこのチャンネルをより良いものにしていきましょう！ 宜しくお願いします

Contact: [e-mail]

Find the transcript for this episode here!

Sign up to HiNative here!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
[Music]

(00:13):
Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Roba English Podcast.
I'm your host, Roba and the time is 4:21 and the date is the 30th of July,
2025.
Thank you to everyone who listened last time.

(00:36):
Comments were also appreciated.
Thank you for all the feedback.
We are now live on YouTube as well, so you can get your podcast on YouTube now
if that's your preferred platform.
Soooo today's theme is about how to make the perfect language mistakes.

(01:02):
As language learners we're going to make mistakes, it's inevitable,
but this is how to make the perfect mistake because I think many times I have not made great mistakes
or I just ignore the mistakes.
And so recently I'm learning French, I'm very beginner.

(01:27):
I'm very beginner, I'm doing it by myself and I've been trying to learn through music and poetry.
Now my favourite poem at the moment is "Déjeuner du matin" by JJacques Prévert.
And it's about a soldier who returns from the war and it's about how his relationship with his wife has changed since he came back from the war.

(02:00):
Now for practice I started translating the poem.
Now my skills are not good enough to translate French quite yet and so I made a lot of mistakes.
And I kind of lost my confidence a little bit.
And I thought about these mistakes as maybe chances to learn rather than chances... rather than things to get worried about.

(02:32):
And so then I started thinking about, well how can we as language learners,
how can we make the perfect mistakes?
I'm sure you all want to know how to make the perfect mistakes, so let's get started.

(02:59):
Mistakes are not bad, but they will happen and our goal I think as language learners is smooth communication.
And so in order to have smooth communication we need to somehow limit mistakes.

(03:21):
But limiting mistakes is another episode, but here I want to talk about how to make good mistakes or perfect mistakes.
And first I want to talk about why do we make mistakes when we are speaking a language or writing in another language?

And I guess there's three things that mean we make mistakes and the first one is (03:47):
that we push ourselves beyond our ability.
And so the first way that we can limit mistakes is to be in our comfort zone when learning a language.

And the second one is (04:13):
we have gaps in our knowledge.
And... if we are beginner there are many things we don't know and so we make many mistakes.
If we are high level, then there are more things that we know and we should make fewer mistakes.

And the last one, the third one is that (04:34):
because we are trying to communicate in a meaningful way,
And what that means is we are trying to communicate in real life.
This is not a classroom where everything has been made ready for us.

(04:58):
It's in real life and sometimes communication is messy.
Sometimes it can be very messy, even between native speakers.
But hey, the biggest problem is that, you know, we never know when we are making mistakes because when we are speaking or writing we are not always thinking about if we are making correct sentences.

(05:27):
And so how do we know if we are making mistakes?
And I guess there are three things that are essential for understanding if you are making mistakes.
And so the first one is really important.
It's get a language teacher or a friend who is willing to teach you if you are making mistakes.

(05:59):
When I was studying Japanese I used italki and the teacher that I used, I would speak to him.
I would choose a topic or a news article and I would speak to him and he would ask me questions.
As I am speaking he would write everything that I was saying.

(06:23):
And then we could both look at what I had said together and look at the mistakes.
And this was really helpful for seeing where I would use wrong words or maybe my pronunciation wasn't right.
It was a really valuable tool for helping me understand when I was making mistakes.

(06:50):
and so if you... I think if you are at an intermediate level I think getting a language teacher who is strict, who will teach you everything, all the mistakes that you are making, I think is really important for you on your language journey.

(07:13):
The second thing that I think is also really important is we don't always have access to a tutor.
You know, sometimes we only have a tutor one hour a week.
It depends on how busy our schedule is.
I think if we really want to use our time recording ourselves speaking is something which can really boost your English or your language ability.

(07:48):
Now goodness, when I started recording myself I really hated listening to my voice.
Even when I am making podcasts and I have to listen to my voice I really don't like listening to my own voice.
But as I started doing it more often I got used to it.

(08:12):
And I think it is really good for you understanding the perhaps bad habits that you get into when you are speaking.
For example, when I started recording myself in Japanese I would always be like eh...eh... between every single word and it made my communication very difficult to understand even though the words and the sentences were perfect.

(08:45):
Now there is a really good tool called HiNative which I will put a link in the description below.
But it was really great for my Japanese. It was really great for pronunciation because you record yourself either reading something or speaking from your own words.

(09:12):
And you upload them onto this HiTalki (?) and this HiNative website where native speakers will grade your pronunciation and tell you where you might be getting things wrong.
And that is a really scary thing to do to record yourself and put it on the internet. But I think it is really great for you.

(09:39):
And you can also ask the people who are grading you. You can ask if there is something specific that you want to work on.
For example, your intonation or the pronunciation of this word. It really is up to you and it is flexible. It is a fantastic tool.

(10:00):
So I think if you are serious about making less mistakes or thinking about your mistakes, then it is a really great tool for that.
The last thing which I think is great is for your writing. And I have recently started using AI to grade my writing.

(10:26):
And when I am producing a piece or when I want to... I am not saying AI to write for you.
I'm saying when I want to write something I look at similar pieces of writing and I think about the language, I think about the grammar that they have used and I try to copy it.

(10:51):
Then I put that into AI and I ask it to check it for me.
I will also ask the AI to... I use ChatGPT. I ask ChatGPT to tell me what mistakes I am making.
And that is really great. I mean you don't have to use AI. I use AI because I don't want to ask my friends or my wife to check everything that I am making.

(11:25):
But I think it is really important if you use AI to make sure you are taking a log, you are taking a record and you have a book or I don't know something electronic where you are recording your mistakes.
And I think if you do these three things you will make absolutely perfect mistakes in your language learning.

(11:49):
Now the last piece is just a bit of bonus information and I think mistakes are not wanted. We don't want them in our language learning but they will happen.
And I think in order to reduce mistakes we have to first start with good input. Now I love flashcards. I do it every day. I do many every day.

(12:24):
And I only use native sentences in my flashcards. That means that my brain is getting used to native sentences. And if I make a mistake and I make a bad sentence, I am more likely to realise I am doing it.

(12:48):
And so I think if you are reading a book you see a sentence that you don't understand or that you think is great or anything. Just take it and put it into flashcards.
I think that makes a really really great way for your brain to understand what a good sentence is like.

(13:11):
You don't have to be creative, you just have to copy native speakers and native writers as well.
And so that means you can take this podcast, take the transcript and you can study it, you can see what I am saying.
And also you can find the flashcards, you can copy my way of speaking. Use the transcript because I think it is really valuable information for you guys who are trying to learn languages.

(13:46):
That is what I did when learning Japanese.
Yeah, I basically took native podcasts and I took sentences and I didn't memorize them, but I studied them and studied why they are made the way they are.

(14:07):
So that is my last bonus tip for you and if you have any other tips or tricks that I haven't mentioned here then if you are listening on YouTube, you can put them in the comments below.
If you are listening on your podcast please get in touch with me at [e-mail]. Thank you very much guys.

(14:36):
So what do you think? Are you guys ready to make mistakes? How do you feel about making mistakes?
If you want to let me know in the comments below, if you are on YouTube, if you are on your podcast you can let me know at [e-mail].

(15:07):
Yes, language, learning is a journey where going to make mistakes even if you are at high level, probably still going to be making mistakes.
The goal is smooth communication so depending on how high a level you want to take it, you are going to have to limit mistakes.

(15:33):
If you want to be a high learner, if you want to be an intermediate learner, you don't have to worry about it, I don't think so much.
I don't think you should worry so much about mistakes that you make language learning not fun.
Language learning is probably the only thing where doing it poorly is still worth it.

(16:01):
Even if you can only say a few sentences in the language, you can still make bridges with other people.
Don't get too stressed on mistakes at the beginning. If you want to be a high level learner, definitely go for it.
Try and limit your mistakes. Please let me know what you think about the podcast. Please let me know what you think about the content.

(16:29):
And I'll see you in the next one. Cheers!
[Music]