Español con Juan – 1001 reasons to learn Spanish

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Introduction / Intro before the interview

Thank you for tuning in and this is Daniel Goodson you’re listening to my fluent podcast on this podcast we try to figure out ways on how to become fluent in any language and the interview series on how to become fluent by interviewing others goes on!
I had the pleasure to interview Juan from spain is the house of the wonderful podcast called espanol can Juan and he has a website called 1001 reasons to learn spanish as well and i wanted to know from him how his journey began. I mean, before he began with his podcast and who is the person behind the person? Who is Juan as a person? How is it going with his English and so on.

The Interview

Hello. I’m fine. Thank you very much. It’s so nice having you here on my fluent podcast. “El professor mas guapo del mundo aca on my fluent podcast” it’s okay. It’s an honor. It’s an honor. Thank you. Thank you for your invitation! Okay yeah well my name is Juan, I’m a Spanish. I am from a small city in the South of Spain called Granada. I started to learn English when I was about 19 or 20 more or less or very late when I was about 29 or something like that, I decided to come to England to London to improve my English because, as in your situation, I didn’t have anybody to talk to. I was reading , watching movies and so on. So I decided one summer, OK I went to the UK to London for three months. I was sure that in three months my English would be very, very good. I would become fluent bilingual and every time I have high expactations, um, and then I came here and after three months I realized it wasn’t enough. So I decided to stay for another three months and then another three months, like that, you know, because I was never happy with my English. So, eventually I found here friends, I made friends, I found a job, so I stayed here and I’ve been here for 23 years now. My English is still not good enough. So I have, I have to stay there. And you were a professor at the university is that right? I studied psychology in Spain. When I came here, I wanted to work as a psychologist but my English wasn’t good enough to do that. So, I decided to become a language teacher. I could teach French and Spanish in the schools and then I did different things always related to languages until I found a job at the university London, which is a very good place, a very prestigious university. And I’ve been teaching there for maybe 15 years. Until last year, last year, I quit my job and now I’m working full time on the internet. I have a podcast and a youtube channel. It has been a long trip. Yeah.

When did Juan started with his Spanish teaching podcast?

I think I started like seriously in 2017 I have been doing other things before similar but it wasn’t really a podcast because I mean, I’m not very young now, so, I didn’t know how podcasts or Youtube work. I had to learn how to use them teach languages. So at the beginning I was doing like it wasn’t a podcast it was more like audio activities. I was working out in university, so I wanted to create a listening practice for my students. So I created some short dialogues or I interviewed some of my colleagues, taught university in Spanish. I was creating ike listening activities for my students basically for a couple of years. Then in 2017 I did a little bit of research and I discovered that I could do other things. So I started with the podcast yes. Three years ago. Yeah.

Who or what inspired Juan to make the podcast

So was there anybody or anything that inspired you. To do the podcast or was there any idols or Do you like listening to other podcasts?

Maybe Yeah Well, I remember that I was listening to this podcast maybe, you know, coffee break English, Spanish coffee break, French. They have different languages. You know it? Yes. I know. I know it. I have listened to it but it has been quite a while. Yeah. I don’t listen to it anymore but I remember that, I liked the, you know, the, the boys of the guy who was doing it and I liked the atmosphere they created in the podcast because I thought I could do something similar. I didn’t like the fact that it was everything in English because for example when they are teaching in French or German they are speaking in English most of the time. So because I didn’t like that. I liked the atmosphere. The guy is it comes across very nice very closely. I was trying to learn German for a while. I was listening to them until I realized that most of the time was , They were talking in English. I understand why they do. I understand why they do it, but no, that didn’t work for me.

And speaking about atmosphere, I must say when I came across your podcast for the very first time. I was so impressed because I remember, I think you were washing your…. doing the the washing machine, I think. And you were doing, small tasks, daily tasks, and to me it was like a friend was talking to me and talking about life. And that was so amazing because it was absolutely not the typical language podcast. You know, without a lot of grammar, no, like a conversation, not a conversation, but like a friend talking to me. And that’s the reason why I really, I love your podcast the way you communicate and also your emotions when you are speaking. Sometimes very loud or so it’s just amazing because I can feel the energy. I can feel the passion behind all this and yeah. Thank you yeah. Many people, many people tell me something similar it’s actually what I have been trying to do because when I started even nice, I’ll tell you what a little bit. I knew that I didn’t want to go the traditional grammar podcast explaining grammar points or vocabulary. No, I felt that podcasts could have a lot of potential and it could be used in many different ways, but I don’t know, I don’t, I’m not a specialist, but little by little, I’ve been discovering different things that you can use, like storytelling telling stories or different things that you can use with a podcast. And lately in the last year, I’ve been doing this kind of thing. Yeah. Just walking down the street, for example, commenting something that I see or something that happened to me or maybe like you, the one you mentioned in my house washing the dishes or putting my clothes on the same time, talking Yeah.

The idea ist like talking to somebody as if you were here with me. Something very natural or very spontaneous. And that’s what I’ve been doing lately. I don’t know if It does work. I guess, so, it works quite well. yeah, it’s great. And I’m wondering if these episodes are always spontaneous or do you also have like a script or some points you want to talk about how do you go about it or how do you get the topic in general?

Yeah. Well, it’s a mix of situations. Sometimes it’s very spontaneous, very, very natural. Well I have in mind before something I want to say I want to talk about something. Yeah. Like a topic but in the middle of another task, you know, maybe doing the dishes or, you know, I’m, I’m walking down the street and I’m making some comments a very natural way at the same time that I talk about something that is worrying me. That day or something I have in mind. But the result is very, very natural. Yeah. Other times I have a script, I write it because it depends sometimes I want to make sure that I mentioned a few things. I want to use a particular vocabulary.

Yeah. And you provide the transcription as well for the listeners, which is a great way to learn

…And very time consuming because when you are talking, you know, like that, off your mind, anything that’s come up, yeah. In your mind. So you transcribed for yourself the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah I use, a software that makes most of it automatically, but there are a lot of mistakes I have to go through it to correct, to polish it up a little bit to correct mistakes. Yeah, that that’s the most boring part to write the transcription.

How podcasting changed Juan’s life

Somehow, yes definitely because what I was teaching at university I have to use the methodology. Yeah. The kind of teaching that they asked me to go.

I was a Spanish teacher like the rest but here with the podcast, I do what I want. I discover what works, what doesn’t work, what people like, what I can do best for me. So that’s very important because you know yourself a little bit. People tell me, for example, I like what you do.

I like what you do. It’s very nice you have a lot of sense of humor and I like your approach. So my self esteem is very high now, compared to before, because when I was teaching Spanish, Yeah, nobody says to me all the time. Oh, I love you teacher no, Sometime some students congratulate you thank you yeah. But it’s not that common and here online everybody is telling me, Oh, you are a fantastic teacher. I know I’m a fantastic teacher but people keep telling me that. So. Eventually it becomes something that you get used to my brain. I don’t know, I like this kind of thing.

What do you like more being a professor or being a podcaster?

I don’t see myself anything like that as a professional or a podcaster or not. I am Juan, you know, I do different things. And at the moment I’m doing the podcast and I suppose for you it’s the same: you discovered yourself, you know, you were not aware that you could do it now. For example, I discovered that I can make jokes and people laugh at my jokes and I can kind of integrate humor in my videos and my podcast. I didn’t know that before, you know, I do. You’re telling me that you like this kind of a natural podcast, you know, I do the washing machines I didn’t know that before, so it’s something that’s it’s it feels good. It feels good right now. so it comes to mind, which you did, it was called something like where, when sir, and you were talking about yourself , and you consider yourself as a rather shy person. And I think you mentioned also that you didn’t like tospeak in public. I think, at any rate it was, yeah, it was great because not only in that episode, but in general, you talk very openly. I think so we can, have like an insight of your life or your person. And I think that’s also the reason why your podcast is so great. And yeah, it makes you human. It’s yeah. It’s like you said before, it, you are, you are, you’re not a podcaster. You’re Quan. That’s me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2. Part of the interview

It’s like you said before you’re Juan you’re not a podcaster. You’re Juan. That’s me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah. Yes, you’re right when I was starting, for example, with the videos on YouTube like six or seven years ago. I didn’t like to have my picture taken I din’t want to create videos or to make videos on YouTube. When I said that, I was very embarrassed about all that. And my first video was very difficult. I was sweating. It was funny. I didn’t like it at all, but then the reaction from people was so great. Okay. if they like it, why not? You know? And now it’s something natural, but yeah. Yeah.

And in one of your last episodes, you mentioned that it’s time for a change as well. And I think that you are thinking of doing new stuff proceeding, you know, things I guess. So maybe you could talk about that. What ideas do you have in mind for your future?

I don’t know. I have been doing the same kind of material for three years, so. I think, sometimes you have to change, I want to give him work in the line. I want to keep the channel and the podcast but they want to change the format because I think you have to change, in Spanish, we have a saying which goes something like, if you don’t change, you have two possibilities or change or die or you change or you die. and I think it’s true. You have to, you know, uh, create something that is working for a while, but then you cannot do the same thing for forever. Yeah, I want to make some changes. The problem is that I don’t, I’m not sure if really what to do next. Maybe I was thinking too, to use the podcast to talk about culture, about, you know, the, the Spanish culture, maybe the History, or, something about, , you know, films or something, that students of the Spanish may be interested in. The problem with that is that it is very time consuming because I will need to, you know, to research the topic. Yeah. I dunno. Maybe I, maybe one possibility is to make only one episode, for YouTube and at the same time, the same material using it as a podcast.

Now I’m going to quickly show you, a picture. It’s an ad, which I receive every day when I, am on Facebook. It’s because I have switched the language to English. So maybe, maybe Italki , thinks that that I want to learn German. But as a matter of fact, I am a Swiss German, so I can speak German, but it says you speak German fluently in a month.

And then it goes on 19 hours equals one semester. And I was wondering, what do you think about such a picture? What comes to mind?

Oh, I think I don’t really like this kind of thing. I didn’t know that Italki was doing this kind of publicity because I collaborated with them for a while but I didn’t know that they were doing this kind of things because when teachers or companies make these kind of promises it’s very silly because you cannot get fluent in any language.

That’s at least not in a a month. No. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I totally agree with you. But the ad is, uh, very catchy don’t know why. I don’t know what they are doing this because they didn’t used to do this kind of things. Yeah. I’m not sure why, because I think that a lot of people know about italki and they are very, popular. no, but I think Italki it’s a company where you can find online teacher. There’s nothing wrong with this. I had lessons there and yeah. And it was great. Yeah. It’s like Uber for language teachers more or less. all the companies promise three months get fluent in three months and now they are promising one month. Nah, if you know, if you are interested in languages, you know that it’s impossible, you cannot. So. Yeah, you can, you cannot learn a language in a one month, three months, or ever 3 years. Okay, great. that, like, uh, you know, when you say like that, so then I want to thank you very much that you took the time for me and my fluent podcast. It’s, it’s really a great podcast and I hope that you will be doing this for, forever. Yeah. It’s a great way to learn Spanish and that way I can brush up my Spanish as well. Thank you very much. Daniel can I ask you something? Yes. Yes, of course. Go on in your podcast. So you interview English learners to talk about their experience with language, with learning English?

Mostly yes, but not, not only English because my podcast is about becoming fluent in any language. But, yes, because I am in touch with different people and they talk with me in English but I also had other podcasters from, English podcasts for him from example, Luke’s English podcast.

Maybe you, you know, Oh, well, now that you mentioned it, yeah, it that’s one of my. No, he’s not a hero. uh, yeah, I watch it. I listened to it. sometimes I think I tried to learn a few things from him. Yeah. And Tim was on my show as well, because he was my favorite podcaster once. So I invited him. And there is, for example, Kris Broholm (from Actual fluency, Ep. 22) yeah. I haven’t listened to it for a while, but I used to listen to it to him a few years ago. Yeah. So he’s from Denmark. Yes. Denmark. Yeah. And so I, sometimes I have different topics. I have also ideas how I can improve my English. So let’s say this interview is also a way for me to improve. So in one episode, I talked about how to become a better English speaker by interviewing other people (Ep. 11 get fluent by interviewing other people). Or for example, I had the idea how to learn with music and then I talk about it (Musixmatch ep. 22). Or how to learn English by reading out loud and making audio book. Yes, because you know, there is a website called Librivox and over there, there are a lot of people who are reading out loud a book and so there are volunteering and I did that. And then I explained in one of my episodes how it went and how I could improve (E10- Poison Island – read out loud to improve your target language (for libriVox)). So there are a lot of different topics. It’s not one thing. It’s, it’s really like a language journey. Yeah. Very interesting Daniel because actually I was thinking to do something similar myself, I don’t have time. I never have time, but I thought maybe I could do like a podcast or a YouTube channel in English, mainly for myself. Mainly to talk about language learning in English, because I don’t have the possibility to speak in English that much. So I thought maybe if I do a channel in English, just to talk about basically what you are doing. And I think because you are right, I think one of the best ways to practice a language is using the language with a real purpose. I think what you’re doing is great because you are using English to talk about languages and you’re creating apodcast and interviewing people as well. You are using the language for something, you know, objective and it’s fantastic. It’s great. Great. And on my very first episode, I had to jot down everything. I had to write down everything because I couldn’t make a sentence on my own. I couldn’t speak freely. And by producing this podcast, I got better and better, I could improve drastically my English and also become more confident because, usually I am very shy, but I think I’ve lost a lot of my shyness because I had to contact people as well and you get better by, by overcoming your fears? I think. Yes, that’s it. That’s it? Yeah. You learn, you learn things by, by doing, uh, you learn to speak a language by speaking their language, basically. So it’s better if I have time, I will, I will do something similar. I will become, a competitor of your podcast Yeah, go on. I would be honored to have a competitor like you. I am very interested in everything about language is about how to learn a language, all the different methodologies. I like to talk about this kind of thing a lot. So I was thinking maybe I, if I can, I can think about all the things aloud, you know, at the same time abd make a podcast or something like that. So. Yeah, one, one thing is for sure. , you would have one fan already because I would definitely, subscribe. Okay. Like I said, if I start, like I send you the link. Yeah. So thank you very much.