Building Your English Brain

1. Course Introduction: Hi there. My name is Luke and I'm an English teacher from America. And for the last five years, I've been helping English learners from all over the world improve their English skills and become more natural and confident English speakers. I'm also the founder of cloud English and the co-founder of a language learning platform called Jolie. In this course, you're going to learn how to start thinking in English. Now, why do you need to do that? If you want to become a totally fluent English speaker, you absolutely have to start thinking in English. There's no other way to do it. You cannot be a fluent English speaker if you're not thinking in English as you speak English, very simple. This course will guide you with exercises and different techniques to learn how to start thinking in English, build really strong English habits and get well on your way to English fluency. So this course is an absolute must for those of you who are very serious about becoming totally fluent in English. So check out the preview of the course and signup. See you there. 2. Tips: All right, So in the last video, the first video, we just introduced the idea of an English brain. What is it? And talked about the things that we're going to be doing in this course. Remember an English brain, simply, what I call an English brain, is just your ability to think in English. And I want to, in this lesson, just talk about a few things that you should remember on a few basic tips for this course and after this course for all of your English studies. Okay, a few things to keep in mind. Few things to keep in mind. So let's go over a few things. The first thing to remember is that you're going to have to work hard. If you want to be fluent. If you want to be a great English speaker, you've got to work hard. You may be asking for or wanting a very fast little trick to become an awesome English speaker. Well, this depends on the students. Some students can improve really quickly. But generally, I can tell you if you want to be good at something, you have to practice it. This is obvious. So I hope you don't think that at the end of this course you're going to magically be a fluent English speaker. Of course not, probably. Okay. Now, I hope you can take the things from this course and then practice the ideas from it again and again until you do become a fluent English speaker. That's the idea. So I just hope that you keep in your mind that practice is the thing that gets you to fluency, not just learning. Learning is the first step. I see. That's how I should do it. Now I'm going to take that idea and do it many, many, many times. So learning something is often not enough. You have to learn it and apply it, do it, practice it. Many times. Practice will get you to where you're going, but you have to practice in the right way. Now, some students say, Well, yeah, I know I should maybe learn to think in English when I'm speaking, but that's not the only way. I can also do it. Another way I can learn by or through my own language, right? I'll think in my language and then speak in English and then I will become fluent. Both ways are okay. No, you will not meet. And you cannot meet a person who thinks in their language and at the same time speaks in another. It doesn't happen if there's a perfect speaker of this language. Or maybe they learned that language when they're speaking that language perfectly, they're thinking in that language. And if they change and speak in another language, maybe their own language and their thinking in that language. The only way the only way there's only one road. There aren't two roads. Both are not. Okay. The only way is to learn to think in English. If you do not do it, you will not be a fluent English speaker. It's that simple. If you do not do it. If you do not learn to think in English, you will not be a fluent English speaker. I can promise you. I've asked a lot of successful students. I've talked to a lot of successful language learners. I've had a lot of experience teaching students. And the ones who succeed, the ones who do it well are the ones who changed their way of thinking. Start thinking in English. It's the only way. So both ways are not. Okay. Another really important thing to remember is that time does not equal success. You can spend a lot of time doing the wrong thing, doing things the wrong way. And one of the perfect examples of this is the way to study words. Now we'll be talking about that very soon. In another lesson, we'll be talking about that the time that you put in plus the methods that you use. Together, these things can make you successful. This is a way to improve English effectively. And you can spend a lot of time learning words an incorrect way, and did not see much progress. I've met students in the past who studied for years, two years studying every day. Almost nothing, almost no progress. It happens. So time is not the only thing. It's also about the way you do it. Time is important. You need time, but it's not the only thing. Now you see three words here. Play, jump, swim. Why did I put these three words here? All right, Well, it's simple. Don't think of English as this very, very hard thing like science, where this is this, right. If you do this, you will get this. And this is the only way this can be. Don't think of it like this. Because if you do that, you won't really challenge yourself to think creatively in English. So you have to be able to think creatively in English, to be able to do well, to be able to improve. So play with the language, play with it, have fun with it. See if this and this works together, right? If you learn two things or you learned something new, try to see if you can make it work in this way. And then maybe ask, is this right? Ask someone who knows, Is this the right way? Don't only follow what someone teaches you, write someone teaches you this is right. Well, that might be right, but something else might also be right? So when you learn something to play with it, and by playing with it, you explore more about that thing. You learn. This is a really great way to understand more about the language, how it works, and what you can do with it. Also, I have the word jump here. Jump means not to have any reservations. That means don't be shy. Don't be shy. If you have the opportunity to speak in English. It's speak trying. You might think, well, I'm not I'm not good enough, right? I I don't know exactly how to say it. I don't know the right words to use. Just tried. The ones who improve more quickly are the ones who just try. Okay. Maybe you don't know the right word. Is there another way to say it? Can you describe it instead of saying the word? So jump into it. Be more enthusiastic, energetic, use every opportunity or chance that you have to use and practice English. And by doing this, you will be around English more and you will find out where your problems are. Ah, I tried this, it didn't work. They didn't understand that. So next time maybe I'll try this way. That worked. Okay. I got it. But if you never tried, if you're just sat back and say, well, I'm not good enough, I don't know the right words. You'll never know this wasn't right. You'll never know this was weird, right? Being wrong, sometimes sounding strange, sometimes sounding incorrect or being incorrect sometimes. That's okay. That is okay by making mistakes. By jumping in and making mistakes, you will actually improve. So don't be afraid. Don't be shy. Just try. There'll be afraid. Don't be shy. Just try. It runs. Good. Swim. Swimming basically, what I mean is immerse yourself. Immerse yourself means to surround yourself with the language. If you want to learn a language, how can you learn it just by looking at little pieces of the language, say English from your own language. If you learn English through your language only. And you learn the meaning of that word with your language rather than that language. Maybe, okay, you might learn something, but it won't be very deep. And you won't be able to really, really get a feeling for it, right? And it also might be a little bit slow, and it certainly won't help you to think in English, which is what this course is about. So immerse yourself, be around English as much as you can. The best way to do this is to go to an English-speaking country and live there. But not everybody can do that, right? So there are many ways to surround yourself with English. And I'm sure you know some of those movies, tv, radio, reading, articles, literature, poetry, listening to a lot of different things. All of these are ways to immerse yourself to swim in English, okay. Don't be afraid to surround yourself with the language you're trying to learn. That's called immersion. And if you do it, you're more likely to improve more quickly. And you're more likely to be able to think in English. And you're more likely to be able to get a feeling for English. Okay, So play, jump, swim. I have a 30 minute rule for anything you want to learn. You can't just do it sometimes and not others. You need to do it regularly, right? Just like if you want to be strong, you want to build muscle. Well, you won't be able to build muscle. If you go to the gym once every two weeks, you'll maybe build a little muscle and then lose the muscle. And then you go back to the gym two weeks later, you build a little muscle, you won't see much improvement. What's the same for English? So you need to make clear rules for yourself. I mentioned that you need to spend time, but I want to be a little more specific now. Every day you have to practice English. You have to keep English in your mind every day. And I have a limit about how much that should be. At least 30 minutes. Okay. So you have to spend at least 30 minutes, seven days a week For as long as it takes to become really good at English. Okay. It's not asking a lot. 24 hours in a day. 30 minutes is not that much. I think spending more than 30 minutes is better, of course, but no less than 30 minutes. At least challenge yourself. 30 minutes a day. Make time. If you're serious about it, you will. Okay. So 30 minutes a day and get into the habit of practicing or doing something with English 30 minutes a day. And you will see results. You want to be good at something. It's often difficult to see what your own problems are. So you need some kind of feedback. Now, this is really the reason that teachers exist, right? Teachers exist mainly to give you feedback about what you do to help you improve. Whether you're at the gym with your personal trainer or whether you're in a class where the teacher, so the teacher is there to guide you. This is one way to do it. You need some kind of feedback. So taking a class is good. As long as you can get feedback. So you can know what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong, which direction you should be going if you can't get a teacher, there are other ways to get some feedback. You might find a forum or a place where you can ask questions and get answers to your questions, okay? Now, there are many different places where you can do this, but this is another idea. There are other ways maybe your friends are also learning English and you can use them as a way to get some feedback about what you might be doing, right? What you might be doing wrong, could form a group and practice together and give each other feedback. This is a good way as well. It's not bad. So in any case, it's important to have some kind of feedback, some way to find out how you're doing, right, because you might be doing something really, really wrong. And then you make that wrong thing a bad habit. And then it will be really difficult to change that bad habit. So some kind of feedback is pretty important. Some way to ask questions, at least, at least. Now, the first of these is, okay, most people can handle that idea. The second is a little more difficult for some. The first is to make English a part of your lifestyle. I had mentioned, you should spend 30 minutes a day at least doing something with English, doing some of the things that we'll be talking about in the rest of this course. So make it a habit that's making it part of your lifestyle, right? But another aspect of that lifestyle thing is that you don't really think about. All right, Now it's time for me to study English. Now it's time for me to spend 30 minutes, which I hate practicing English. So this isn't the best way of doing it. I wouldn't consider really lifestyle. Lifestyle. English means you just do it and it's part of your routine and you don't hate it. It's just something that's there. And actually it's better if you can enjoy it. So the next part is to try to enjoy the process of learning English and trying to become more fluent. The students who are most successful usually are the ones who really, really enjoy learning English. They actually like learning English. If you like doing something, you're much more likely to be successful at it. If you hate doing something, it is less likely that you will be good at doing that. So try to find something about the language that you enjoy. Okay, you can still improve. You can still get better if you don't really like it, but it's certainly ideal if you can find something about it that you really like, that is the best situation, okay? So try to enjoy it. Make it part of your lifestyle, okay? And that's, that's really important. So in the next lesson, we're going to be talking about how we can learn and practice by reading the importance of reading and how we can read in the right way to develop our English brain. So I will see you in the next lesson. 3. Reading: So in the last video, we talked about some general ideas, things to remember, to help you to learn how to think in English, very general things. So in this lesson, we're going to really, really start actually doing some real practice, some real work toward being able to easily think in English. So we are going to be talking about reading that I, and the importance of reading, by the way, reading is really important. Okay? You may be thinking, reading, boring. I don't need to learn to read. I wanted to be a good speaker. You might be thinking that, or you might think, well reading, of course, reading, but, but I already know how to read. I know what reading is. Why are you talking about it, luke? I'm Luke. Well, I'm talking about it because I wanted to show you how to read. And for those of you who think reading is not important, in fact, it is important. Let me give you a simple example, okay. Nobody would say, I want to have the fruit and the leaves of the tree, but I don't want there to be any tree. The leaves. Let's use the leaves as an example. Leaf. A leaf here. Not that great. That's elif. Okay, I want to have the leaf of the tree, but no tree please. Well, this is a similar idea. I wanted to be a great English speaker. I want to be able to think perfectly in English and express myself about everything, but I don't want to understand English. Doesn't work like that. Okay? Reading is like the tree. In some ways it's not the only thing like that, but really reading literature, newspapers, magazines, books, novels, write. All of this gives you a foundation. Foundation is something strong that holds everything up. A foundation, a deep understanding of English. 98% of native English speakers, perhaps more, maybe 99% of native English speakers like myself, had a very deep, or have, I should say, have a very deep background in literature, in reading their primary school, middle school, high school, and continuing into adulthood. Now, I often read. Reading gives you a deeper understanding of the language. And there are many different forms of literature. All right, there are many different styles of writing. All of this helps you figure out how you can best express yourself. What is the reason that someone who learns every English idiom expression and maybe 30000 English words still can't speak like a native speaker. Well, there are a number of different reasons. One reason haven't read very much literature. They don't have a deep understanding of the language. This is one reason. So think of reading as the trunk, the main part of the tree, okay? And then you can get the leaves more easily. Reading is really important. So now we're going to talk about how to read, but it's the best way to read. And then we'll talk about some different resources, some things you can read. So let's continue. Okay, So we're now going to look at a short, actually single sentence. And I just want to give you a feeling about what reading can do for you and how you should do it when you're actually, when you're actually reading, if you want to get the most benefit from that. Okay, so let's look at this sentence. And I've just written this. This might be something from an article. Maybe you're reading an article about French wine or an article about red wine, maybe you're reading something online, okay. And you read the following sentence. While red wine is produced in many different regions around the world, each of these regions share common features. Okay, now for some of you, I'm sure you understand this completely. For others of you, perhaps not. Okay. So I'll talk about the meaning and how to look at it. But first, if you do understand this a 100 percent, that doesn't mean this is useless to you, still useful to you. Now you've seen a common way that a person who understands how to speak and write probably pretty well, right? Naturally expresses themselves about a certain idea. So you've seen how it's done, this kind of thing. Just reading like this can give you a basic foundation, a general feeling. General feeling. That's an I, who, who, who, that's an I, a general feeling for the language. This is one very good way to express this particular idea. Not the only way, but it is one way high. And so the more you read, the more you get a feeling about these things. Now, let's actually look at this and see if we can figure out how we can learn more from it. Okay? Now, let's say for example, we know the word produced to produce something means to make something, right? But maybe we don't know in what situations produced is used. When do we use produce? When do we not use produced, right? We can't use produce in every situation. We wouldn't say, oh, that woman produced a baby. I guess you could say that, but most people don't say a woman produces a baby. Technically, she does, but we don't say that. Why not? I don't know. I don't know why not, but I know that that's weird. Okay. And you can get a feeling for what's weird and what isn't weird. Weird means strange by reading. So this is great. We can see here that red wine can be produced or made hurray. So we know another situation in which this word can be used. Good, good. Now we might see produced in another place about a factory. A factory producing bicycles. Okay, we can use produce there. We might see something about a movie. This guy is producing a movie. Oh, great, I understand that. Now that might have another meaning, produced means to provide money for and arrange the movie. Okay, so I can get a feeling about that. So the more you see words like produce in these different situations here and the situation of talking about red wine in an article. The more you can get a feeling for this word. And the more you get a feeling for it, the stronger that tree will be, the depth of your understanding of English would be, and you'll be able to use this in the right places. And I think with this word, rather than just using it where you guess it should be used, but you're not sure. All right, So this is one aspect. Okay, let's continue here. Read, while red wine is produced in many different regions around the world, okay, Here, regions, regions, let's say for example, we don't know the word region. Let's say just for example, you don't know region. What does region me? I don't know. Well, Let's just look at the sentence here and see if we can have a guess. See if we can figure it out. Okay. Well, red wine is produced in many different regions around the world. From around the world. Okay, in interesting and many different could be also quite important in, I think is a keyword here. And around the world, I think is a really, really important phrase here. Okay? From these two things in, can't be that many things. It could be in the factory maybe. Okay. Maybe around the world. Okay. That can't be factory, that can't be winery, that can't be the place where it's made, the company where it's made. So it must be something else around the world. World is a big place. So in that the, around the world. So what could regions B, you might be able to figure it out, or at least get the feeling for what this word might mean, even though perhaps you don't know the word. And this is just an example. Maybe you know this word, but sometimes you will find a word you don't know when you're reading. First thing you should do is try to figure it out. Okay? So I'm going to guess that regions because I'm talking about around the world and in, I'm going to guess that this is similar to the word areas. I know the word areas. I know the word places. Many different places around the world that works. Many different areas around the world. That works. Okay, I'm gonna guess this is the meaning. Now once I've guessed it, maybe I will go and look it up or check it in the dictionary. Now, you should probably be using all English dictionaries. I recommend using an only English Dictionary. It's a good website. You can use vocabulary. Dot com. So c.com, pretty good. You can look it up there and get a feeling for the word even more. So that's a good one. But the first thing we did is we looked at the context. We looked at the context of the word. The context means how it's used, the sentence around it, the grammar around it. This is the context of the sentence. And by checking out the context and trying to figure it out, we are thinking in English. We are forcing ourselves to think in English. And this is a really, really important point here. Okay, So this is one of the reasons that reading is really powerful. You force yourself to think in English. You gain the ability to guess and figure out words when you're reading. And so you increase these abilities over time. And you learn more words while reading. And not only learning more words. Now because you're reading it, you see it in the situation. And so you know, when this kind of word should be used and when maybe it shouldn't be used. And I've seen the word produced here. I know it can be used to talk about wine, okay, I know that now. Okay, I see regions here, regions of the world. I know now that that can be about big places, big areas, or regions of the world that must be a pretty big area, a pretty big place, okay, so we can begin to get a feeling for the right situation. And then when we're speaking, we can start using those words correctly in the right situations so that other people don't feel move. Why did you use that word in this situation? Okay. So these things together, all of these things together, the ability to learn new words in context, the ability to figure things out. Thinking in English, the ability to understand why words are used in the places where they are used. Awesome, awesome tools, okay, can really deepen your ability to learn English and definitely can expand your knowledge of English. Okay, let's just go on really quickly and look at the rest of this sentence. Each of these regions, we have regions again, share common features. Share common features. So let me just tell you what common features means. Common could mean several things, but one is the same between two or more things. Maybe you can guess that from the context. The same between two or more things. We have something in common. We both like animations, so we have something in common. Common features. What are features? Well, we can look up the word, maybe we can guess it from the, from the context, right? We have different regions here, but we know because we have wild here, that this is going to be a sort of but similar to a but clause, right? We're going to use part of this sentence to explain that something is different than the first part of the sentence. Okay? Each of these regions share common features. So maybe we can guess that features means characteristics or things about those places, things about those places. And if we go and check it in a dictionary, we will find that that is true. Okay, so first, look at context. Try to figure it out. I think make things start going on here in English, then go look it up. And when you do, I really suggest that you use an only English dictionary. This is the way to read. This is how you should be reading. How about resources? What should we be reading? Well, let me just give you a couple of quick suggestions. If you're looking for a general materials to read, I would recommend a couple of different websites. Interesting stuff here, and you can learn a lot. So reddit.com is a website, that's a community website and they have tons of different topics that you can read. These are called subreddit. It's subreddit and there's one about news. There's one called Reddit funny. There are many different categories or topics that you can read, different articles in. And it's really interesting and there's always new stuff coming out. So I would recommend this one as a way to get the feeling for English and to practice your reading everyday. Wikipedia.com is a little bit more serious. Wikipedia is basically an encyclopedia. It has articles about everything, basically, almost everything in the world. There is a Wikipedia article about. So you can search things that interest you. I usually search things about space or dinosaurs. And you can read articles about those things. And I find myself reading articles for two or three hours at a time. I can't stop myself. It's so interesting. So reddit.com, wikipedia.com, these are great internet resources for reading endlessly. There's always something to read on these two sites to check those out. Some people, on the other hand, don't really like reading articles. They feel once something that continues from the beginning to the end, the real story, something I can follow and stay interested in for a long time, something that will always make me want to keep going. I understand that. I understand. So how about this For fiction? If you really like Fiction, depending on what you're interested in, find a short simple novel, I can recommend one that I like, That's fairly easy. Harry Potter. Great series of novels. They're not too difficult. The language used in Harry Potter, not too tough, but there's still enough there that you can definitely learn a lot. And the stories are fantastic, they're interesting. So if you'd like fiction, that means a story that's not a true story. Then check out Harry Potter. Or if you're not really interested in magic and this kind of thing, fantasy, then there are a lot of other really good novels out there. And I'm sure you can find something that you like. For non-fiction, I might recommend who is and who was. So for example, who was, who was Steve Jobs? Question mark, this is a series where they have many different famous people in the series and you can read about their lives and the language that they use is not too difficult, pretty simple. And this is non-fiction. It's about true real people. Okay, So who was Steve Jobs? Who is Bill Gates? Many, many different people. You can read about them. They're short biographies. Biography is a story about someone. And so these are interesting and useful for those of you who don't really like fiction, things that are made up. And I also understand that I often don't like to read fiction either. So these are a good resource for you if you want to read something longer than Reddit or Wikipedia, that's continuous but don't really like fiction. I would recommend the who is who was dot-dot-dot books? Pretty good. All right, so in the next lesson we're going to be talking about how to learn new words. We, we did this a little bit before when we were talking about how to read, write, looking at words and contexts. But we're going to be in the next lesson really focusing on the best way, the right way to learn new words. So I will see you in the next lesson. 4. New Words: All right, In the last lesson, we talked about reading why it's important and how we can do it, right? In this lesson, we're going to do something which is related to what we talked about in the last lesson. But we're going to be focusing on it much, much more. We are going to be talking about learning words. How we can learn words, the best way to learn words. And I'm going to explain it a little bit. And I'm also going to go over a couple of examples to show you the best way to learn words. So let's just begin. Okay, so just a couple of things. At first. One, I mentioned in the last lesson, if you're going to learn words, I strongly suggest, and it's really the best thing you can do to learn words in an all English dictionary. Dictionary is what you use to find the meaning of a word, find the definition of a word, okay? All English dictionaries show you the meaning of the word in English as well. They explain the meaning of the word to you. And now, why should we look up the meaning of a word in English rather than our own language, as long as I understand the meaning, isn't that all that matters? Well, think about this for a second. If you learn an English word and I know the word, okay. Pickle. Okay. But the understanding of the word is back in my old language, my language that I speak naturally, not English. Then every time that word comes up, you first have to think of your language and then you have to speak the word or you have to understand the word. If someone else says it, you think that's fast? Is that thinking in English? No, not really. So the first thing is it can slow you down doing it that way. Okay, The second is, it's hard to really understand that word because in one language, there might be a slightly different meaning to that word. Maybe the dictionary in your language didn't quite get it or didn't get all of the different meanings. That's one of the biggest problems is that many dictionaries between languages aren't perfect. And they don't show you the feeling of the word, how the word is used. Okay, So better if you can use an all English Dictionary, much, much better because when you're doing that, you're learning the meaning in English and you're thinking about the word in English so that when you hear it, you'll understand the meaning very quickly. Because the understanding is in the same language that you heard it in. When you need to use it and you need to speak it and you need to say it. That comes out in English. You never need to go over to your other language, your native language. You don't need to. Why should you write? What's the reason? Is there any benefit from that? No, no, there's no benefit. So. Really important. Learn words in one language, the language you're trying to learn, Okay? So some people say, well, the dictionary definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, I can't understand it. It's too hard. I have to look up all the words that it uses to explain the word. All right, Fair enough. Fair enough. I understand that. But there are alternatives. There are simpler dictionaries that can give you the meaning, explained the meaning more simply. One that I really like is vocabulary.com. And they, they don't pay me vocabulary.com, So OK. That they're not giving me money to say this. I actually think it's pretty good because the explanations that they give and the examples that they give up the different words are pretty clear, pretty simple. And I particularly like the examples, okay, now they don't have every word that you will need to know, right? So they are a little bit more limited. But for the majority of words that you will use everyday, common words, they have them and the examples are quite good, so I recommend that one. There are others. Dictionary.com is pretty good. There are a couple of other dictionaries, a couple of apps you can download on your phone. These are also good. Just find a way to learn words in English with an English dictionary. That's the key, That's the point. Now connected with this is forms. Some words have only one form, right? But most words, many, many, many words have more than one form, right? Learning. For example, this word has more than one form. Learning. Learn, learned, right? So we have to learn all of the forms when you learn a word, when you see a new word and you want to understand it. Don't only try to understand that one form that you see. In the last lesson, we talked about the word produce, right? Look up all of the meanings of produce, how it's used, the examples, try to completely understand that word. Okay, So it's better that you do that one time then having to look up each of the forms every time that you see it. It's kind of a waste of time. Better if you, when you learn a word, find all of the forms of the word, study all of the meanings of all of the forms, and then have a good understanding of it so that you can use it in the future and so that you can actually understand the other forms when you hear the other forums. Okay, So that's a pretty key point. Now, one of the things I talked about in the last lesson was context. And remember, context means the situation that something is in, what's around it. That's the context of that. And it's really important, I believe, to learn words in context. Because in life, we don't just speak single words. We have to speak words in sentences to explain ideas, right? We use words, we need to use words, whether it's writing or speaking, right? And so if you learn words in natural situations, like we did in the last lesson, right? In Reading, we learn a word in a sentence and we understand it is in this whole sentence, it can be used to talk about red wine, produce red wine. Okay? When you learn things in context, you can see how it's used and when it is natural to use it, and maybe when it is not natural to use it. So learning words in context is really, really important. And now I would like to actually practice learning words in context. Okay, so let's do that. Alright, so here we have a sentence, okay, we've come across this sentence in an article online. Non, I don't know. Wikipedia. This is not actually on Wikipedia. Okay? So just for example, we've read it online and we see a word that we don't understand. Hmm, what to do. There seemed to be a direct correlation, correlation, correlation between the number of babies born and the health standards in that area. Okay? Now, maybe you understand how we know what health means to be healthy, right? It's the No, that's sometimes it's a noun, sometimes it's an adjective. Okay. Let's say we know standards. Standards are certain levels that we have in a stand certain levels I have certain standards or requirements sometimes. Maybe it means requirements sometimes. Okay. Maybe it means this one. I understand that area we know. Okay, area same as place. Region C is the same as region, alright, babies, I know babies is a small human. Direct, okay, Direct is the opposite of indirect. Direct means without anything Between, without any of the things that anything between. Alright, alright, I understand that. But correlation, I don't understand correlation. All right. So we look up the word correlation. What do we get? And we probably get a few different forms, but we will find correlation is a noun, okay, so we know it's a noun. All right, great, That helps us. But we also find that it's a verb. We find that its verb form is correlate. Okay? It's verb form is correlate. Okay? All right, that helps me a little bit. There's a noun form is a verb form. Now we also find when we look it up, has an adjective form. Has an adjective form. Wonderful, great, amazing. Correlated. Okay, good, good. Well that's really messy. Sorry about that. Correlated correlate correlation. Okay? Okay, I know we have these three main forms. Great. And what does it mean? So I look up the definition. Definition is the meaning. And what I find is basically correlates or correlated. Or correlation means a connection or relationship. And one thing that can help me is to look at synonyms. These are words that have basically the same meaning. There's some difference in some cases, but essentially very similar meaning. I see it means kind of a connection, a relationship. Now maybe I've already figured that out from the context. Context, remember, is the situation there seemed to be a direct correlation between the number of babies born and health standards. Babies born and health standards. There's two things. Direct what between two things? Well, are there many possible meanings for this word correlation? If we really understand the rest of the sentence, not really. There aren't many possibilities for what correlation could mean. So we might be able to figure out the word just from the context. We might be able to guess that correlation means relationship. So maybe we have a guess, we look it up, we find the three main forms, correlated, correlate, correlation. All right, so that helps us to understand it a little better. Now, we look up the definition, synonyms we find it's similar to a connection relationship. This helps to confirm what we thought, our guess about the word, okay, So now we're beginning to feel this word, what it means, have we looked up the word in another dictionary, our language dictionary? No, we have not. And we need to know we did not. Okay. Now, if you are a beginner and you don't know any English at all, probably a good idea to have a dictionary that's in your language. But if you understand 80% of what I'm saying in this course, if you're taking this course, you probably do not need to use a dictionary in your own language and English. Okay, so we've looked at up, we understand it now let's go back to the sentence and see how it works in the sentence. There seemed to be a direct correlation. Can we put in the word relationship into the sentence? There seemed to be a direct relationship between the number of babies born and health standards in the area. Yes, that works perfectly awesome. There seemed to be a direct connection between the number of babies born and the health standards. Yeah, pretty well. That works pretty well. So we're beginning to get a feeling for this word, how it's used. And we might even be comfortable enough to try to use it in a couple of situations. And now that we've got a feeling for how it's used, now that we understand this word in context. So let's try that. Let's see if we can make a couple of sentences with it now. All right, So here we've come up with a couple of sentences that we can use to practice the new word we've learned, correlation correlated, correlate. Okay, Let's see. I wonder if there is a correlation between happiness and income. We noticed in the sentence that we learned the word from that between followed correlation, right? We had originally direct correlation between the number of babies born, right? So. We'll use this after correlation because that's typically how it's done, at least in our experience, right? We shouldn't do anything out of our experience unless we want to play with the word which we can, we should always have a way to check that. I wonder if there is a correlation between happiness and income. We have two things, a and B. And we want to know if there's a relationship between a and b. So why not use the word correlation? And I wonder means I'm thinking about, okay, so this works. This is a sentence that helps us understand how to use it. And once you've learned the word, make a sentence, Let's try another form. Remember we learned another form when we looked it up in the dictionary. The other form is correlated. Okay? So let's see global warming. Global warming means the earth is getting hotter and the natural disasters, like typhoons, hurricanes, write this kind of thing. And natural disasters are obviously correlated. Obviously means easy to see, clear, clearly. Easy to see. Easy to see that obviously correlated, okay, we've used it in another form, but it also makes sense here, right? Because we know that correlated is having a connection between, here's one thing, natural disasters, Here's to global warming. These things are related. These things have a connection. So why not use the word correlated? Sure, we can. Now, one thing you can do to check this is ask someone who knows if it's right or wrong, your teacher, right. Or maybe a forum online that you could use. For example, on Cloud English, dotnet, which is a website you can go to one of the pages and ask a question, is this right? Is this meaning right? And get an answer. It's another way you could do it. So yes, correlated works in this one as well. Now we're beginning to build the tree a little bit more, right? The deep understanding of the language, not only do we know what this word means in our language, no, we understand it in English. We've thought about it in English. We've learned it in English. We understand the situation. It was used in English. Now we understand basically how to use it in English by thinking. So this is how to learn words. This is the process for learning a new word. Do this every time you come across a new word, it's a struggle. It's harder. But the struggle, the difficulty is what makes it stick in your mind. Okay, So always go into struggle. Don't run away from struggle. Struggle is good. Struggle can help you really, really learn something deeply. Okay, this is how to learn words. All right, In the next lesson, we are going to be talking about idioms. And we're going to be talking about expressions, Idioms, how to use them, when to use them. We're not going to be learning many, but we're going to be talking about this and how this relates to building the English brain. So I will see you in the next lesson. 5. Idioms: Welcome back. In the last lesson, we talked about words, vocabulary, how to learn words. And we went through a couple of examples about how to figure out how to learn a word in context in the right situation so that we deeply understand the word. Today, in this lesson, we're going to be talking about idioms. So first I should tell you what an idiom is. What is an idiom? An idiom is a special phrase. And usually this idiom is used culturally. So one culture may use a certain special phrase. Another culture may not. Even among native English speakers, there are different idioms, are different cultures. Now some idioms or expressions or phrases are so common that every English speaker will know them, but some are not. So what's an example of an idiom? First one, and I'll just give you a very quick idea about it over the top. And this one is so common that pretty much every native English speaker will know it. So some of these you really need to know. We can say those are basic idioms. Basic idioms pretty much everyone knows it and uses it. This one. And these idioms like this one all the time. Okay, over the top, what does it mean? Over the top means too much. You do way more than you should do. For example, someone's wearing a very, very nice suits to a job interview. But it's not just a suit, it's a tuxedo. A tuxedo is a kind of suit you would wear to a wedding. This is way, way too formal for a wedding or sorry, for a job interview. So we would say, whoa, whoa, that suit is over the top. You're wearing something way too formal. For a simple job interview, you should be wearing a normal suit that is over the top. It's too much and more than enough. And so it's a very common idiom and it's great to know, it's useful to know, you need to know it. But in this lesson I want to talk about something really, really important about idioms. When you learn idioms and words actually as well. You have to also learn the way that those words in idioms are used. Who uses those words and idioms? Right? And should you be using those words and idioms just because you learn something doesn't mean you should be using that right away. Some words and idioms, phrases are used by a certain kind of people. Like my grandma might use certain expressions, idioms, phrases that I might not use. So you have to be able to get a feeling for these different things to be able to know what you should be doing, right? If you want to sound natural, not weird. You need to be able to get a feeling for these idioms. How can you do that? Well, it's difficult to do it just by learning the idiom itself. Because when you learn an idiom or a word, you just learned the meaning. But like we did in the last lesson, we talked about a word in a situation in, in a whole sentence. And we got a feeling for that word and how it was used, in what situation. So we can do the same thing with idioms. Okay? We can do the same thing with idioms. When you hear an idiom, pay attention to who's saying it. Does it sound like something that's very local? And how is it being used? And if you pay attention to this kind of stuff, when you hear and listen to new idioms, you should be able to understand, or at least starts to feel if that one is good for you and how often? That is normally said. Let me give you an example. In London. There is a city in England. In London, there is a special kind of dialect called cognate. And they use very specific expressions to say certain things. So if you say, I'm going to get some Brittany's, Brittany's, I won't write this down. Means beer. Why does it mean beer? It well, it's a little complicated. So if this specific person who speaks this specific dialect, kind of English, local pronunciation, local dialect says this thing, that will be normal. But if I go to London and say, Hey, let's go get a couple of Brittany's. People will look at me like I'm crazy and weird. Now, I know the idiom, I know the expression, but I won't use it because I know if I say that I'm an American, why would I say a local London specific dialect phrase? Why would I do that? I wouldn't. So you have to be able to pick up on these things. Pick up on something means to notice something that's really important. Okay? And it's the same basic idea as learning words. You have to be able to pay attention to the situation and who's using it. So, so do that. Okay, now we're going to be talking about an idiom. And I'm going to be explaining how it's used, what it means, and when we shouldn't use it. And from that, I hope you can begin to get a sense of how you can be learning idioms, how you can get a feeling of idioms and how idioms are useful. But that doesn't mean you should try to use them in every sentence. And that doesn't mean you should use every idiom that you learn. Learning idioms is great. It's useful if you learn lots of idioms, you can understand what everybody is saying. But that doesn't mean you should use it, not everyone, right? Because it might make you sound strange. I know I have a friend. I know a guy who knows lots of English idioms, not a native English speaker. And he uses them in pretty much every sentence. I cannot stand. I don't like really talking with that person because I feel uncomfortable. This person is using idioms in basically every sentence. And it gets weird. And maybe this person hasn't got the feeling for the idioms, rather has just learned them in a list. Okay, this one means this, this one means this. This means this. And when I wanted to say this meaning I'm going to use this idiom. That's not how it works. That's not how language works. You need to get the feeling for when it's right, when it's wrong. And this is part of your English brain. This is part of your ability to understand and be able to think in English so that you're able to make the right choices so that when people hear you, you sound natural. So let's learn. Let's learn in EDM. Which one shall we learn? We're going to learn the idiom, one in a million. One in a million. All right, now I think you can probably see what this means. One single thing, million, a large number, okay? Now, if we look at this literally, we can understand it in a certain way. What's does literal mean? Literally means the words you see are exactly what it means. Okay? If someone says, You are such a turd, you're such a TRE to turn his head poop. This person is actually uttered. No, no, of course not. So if we said everything was literal, that means everything means exactly what we say exactly the words, but not everything is literal. This is not literal. If you call someone a turd, it means that they're stupid, right? And so not everything is literal and idioms are not literal. That means the words you see are different than the actual meaning. And you often can not get the meaning of the idiom from just looking at the words. Okay, and so this is, this is something that's very important about idioms. Let's talk about this one in a million. Basically what it means is unique, special, rare. And I would say that this one is the most important, meaning rare, very rare, precious, maybe even sometimes precious. And I want to look at an example where we could use this idiom in a situation that's natural and normal. And then we'll look at an example of when not using it is better and choosing another phrase would be much better. And we'll talk about why. And that can give you an idea about idioms in general. I hope. So. Here we have two ways of saying the same thing. And we're going to look at which one is better in this case. And y, here we have, my wife is one in a million or wife is unique. Well, one-in-a-million is obviously much better in this case. Why is that? It's better in this situation? Because we're focusing on the wife, my wife being so different from a large number of people. And not only so different, but different in the way that I like, right? Very important for me, one in a million focuses on the fact that this person is very special to you, very important to you, to me in this case, right? We just say this one, my wife is unique. This doesn't tell us very much, just means she's not like many other people. It's not really focusing on her relationship. To me. It's not really focusing on how maybe I feel about it. And it could be another meeting. It could be a bad thing. Sometimes when we say someone has unique, actually what we're saying is they're strange. Just strange, unusual in a negative way. And so unique could have several different meanings. And it might be unclear which one. I mean, if I just say my wife is unique, right? Could suggest other things. This can have different connotations. Connotations means not exactly the meaning that it is, but instead suggested meanings. Maybe it might have a different feelings according to who's listening to it, according to the situation, right? And so this one is a little bit dangerous. We want to be careful about using this one. But if we say my wife is one in a million, what we're doing is focusing on how I feel about this person and how I think this person is special, related to me. Write my personal feeling, subjective feeling. Subjective feeling means my personal feeling. Okay. That's what one-in-a-million means. One in a million doesn't mean there are exactly a million people. It's not about that just means this person special to me. Okay, Now, let's look at an example when perhaps using unique or even special would be better than using one and Emilia, your accent. Your accent is the way that you speak, your pronunciation. A British accent and American accent, Chicago accent. Your accent is one in a million. Your accent is unique. This one is better in this case, and it would be a little odd to say this one. Why is that? This one creates the opinion or the view of it being a personal thing to me, as I mentioned about my wife, my wife is one in a million. And it also focuses on the fact that among many people, this person is special to me, right? It's talking about the relationship between the number of choices I have on the what I have chosen, or the number of possibilities there are. I'm this thing that we're focusing on. And so that's kind of strain for this one because it creates the wrong image. If we say your accent is one in a million, then we start thinking about all of the other different possible accents there are, but that's not really important. In this case. It might have been for the other case, but in this case it's strange. Whereas if we say your accent is unique, it just means, I think it's special in a way which I haven't heard before. Not about how many I've heard before. Just means I haven't heard something like this before. And before we talked about how unique. Could have connotations, other possible meanings, maybe negative, could this one. Yes, of course. So if I say your accent is unique, someone might say, Well, he said, is that good or bad? That's possible because it could be good, it could be bad. And maybe I think it's good. Why? It's unique, it's very good, very interesting. So here, Unique might just mean interesting. It doesn't exactly mean that, but it could be suggesting that it's interesting. Or I might be laughing at this person who your accent is really unique. Then it means that I'm sort of being too nice to this person when in fact, I think it's maybe a silly accent. Something that I think sounds funny, right? Your accent is unique. That means I think it's funny. So this could have several different meanings and it focuses on the fact that it's different than what I'm used to. It's different than my experience, not about how many others there are. The other one might be about how many others there are, right? One in a million. It's talking about not necessarily a million, just this person is so special among many, many other possible choices. That's that one. This one is better in this case to use unique or special. Now, let's take this idea and talk about how we can apply it to idioms in general. As we did with words. When you learn a new idiom, don't just learn the meaning. Learn how it's used to figure out stuff like this. Which one is better? Should I say something is interesting, unique? Should I say something is one in a million? Well, it depends on the situation as we've learned. And so always be thinking about this when you're learning new things. Look at the situation that you heard it in. If you heard it in a movie, when did they say it? Why did they say it? Who said it? Where are they from? Okay. And these things, these different elements, these different elements can begin to give you a better picture of this expression of this idiom so that you will know how to use it naturally. And you don't need to worry about if you sound strange, right? And I know that's a difficult process and it's not a very clear process, but it's the right way to do it, okay? I think it's the wrong idea to just learn an idiom, learn the meaning and say, Okay, I got it. And then every time you want to say that certain meaning, you use this idiom that will make you sound strange. Okay, So if we truly want to learn natural English, we can't do it this way. We have to get the feeling for everything that we learned, especially idioms. Okay, In the next lesson, we're going to be talking about and practicing a certain exercise and exercise I've developed to help you use and begin to think with the vocabulary that you already know, okay, to become more creative with your vocabulary. So we'll do that in the next lesson, and I'll see you then. 6. 4-Word Exercise: So in the last lesson, we talked about idioms. And we talked about that when you learn idioms, you can't just learn the meaning. You have to try to get a feeling for it. Just like when you're learning words. What are the different possible meanings? What feeling does this give when I use it? In which situations is it better to use? And who uses it? Is it Local for one place or another place? And that these things are very important in being able to use it correctly and knowing when to use it. In this lesson, we're going to go on and talk about an exercise, a specific exercise that I've developed to help you really, really focus your ability to think in English, to give you an actual practice that you can do, to begin thinking in English seriously, okay? And this one is impossible to do without thinking in English. So you have to think in English when you do this exercise. It's called the forward exercise. And it's very simple. And you can do it pretty much anytime very quickly. Just as a way to practice keeping this in your mind and to explore and work with the words that you already know, not new words, words you already know. One of the problems with the ability to speak English well is that a lot of people know many words, but find that when they want to speak, that can't find the words that they're looking for. That the words that they're looking for are buried deep down and they're unsure how to use them. Well, one of the things that we can do to improve this is to begin to use the words we know in different ways. Creatively. Creativity is a very important aspect of being able to use language and speak clearly, express your ideas. Creativity is really, really important. Creativity just means the ability to come up with something new, something you haven't done before, right? So you have to be creative with the words. You know, you're not just repeating words that you learned. No, you have to think about how can these words work together? How can I make them fit? What I wanted to say? So that's what we're going to be doing now. Okay, so let me show you this exercise and I hope you can practice it at, at least a few times a week. And this can really help you to think in English. So let's begin. Okay, so this is what we do. We first write down four words. What words should we write down? Well, we can say generally any words are okay, but I would recommend writing down a few different types of words. There'd be a few nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs. So just write down forwards. I just wrote down forwards here. I didn't think about it too much. I just wrote down the first four words I thought of. Now, why are we writing down forwards? What we're going to try to put these four words into. A single sentence? Yes, all of these forwards need to fit into a single sentence, but the sentence that we make has to make sense. It has to be clear. The grammar has to be good, everything has to work. And so we're going to have to think about these four words and how to fit them together in English. If we don't think about it in English, how can we do it? How can we make them fit together for thinking in another language and changing it to English, we must be thinking in English to do this really well. So first, we need to look at the forms. A stable has a couple of different forms. Stable as an adjective, and it means something that doesn't move easily. Stable can also be a noun. The noun stable is a place where horses live. Horse lives in a stable. Now, I would also allow you in this exercise to use different forms of each word. So if I wanted to change the word stable to stabilize. Okay. Do it, no problem. Change stable to stabilize. That's another form. Stick could be a verb to stick one thing to another. Okay. So also a stick could be something like this that you hold from a tree, for example, sticky with a y could be an adjective. We can change it to that common adjective. Something that's common. Commonly could be an adverb, right? We could use commonly. Commoner could be a noun right? Across, across can be a preposition. It's a good one to use. It could also be an adverb. We can say go across for example. So preposition adverb, These all have different forms. And the first thing you can do is just look at the words and see how many different forms can you come up with for each of the words. All right, now, what we need to do is try to think about how we can fit these together. We can put them in any order that we want. We don't have to say stable first and then stick and then common. We could say stable last, common first, stick second to last. Okay, All okay. So this is the challenge. Now I want to give you a couple of examples of different sentences that I've made that I've come up with. And this can give you an idea about how you might do it. Now, just because I give you a couple of examples, doesn't mean that those are the only examples that would work. You need creativity to be able to come up with many different examples. So let's look at my examples. All right, so now let's look at an example that I've come up with for these forwards. And again, not the only possibility. As a common one rule, I'd say sticking. Sticking is a form. Sticking to your plans will make you come across, come across, come across. In this situation means what other people think about you. Other people will think this about you will make you come across as a stable person to others. Stable person. Basically means someone who doesn't just change their mind, suddenly stable person, someone who does what they say they will do. So there's a common rule I'd say sticking to your plans will make you come across as a stable person to others. Now, this is one possibility, but I would like you to do now is stop the video. Pause the video. Take these four words, try to now come up with another sentence. So stop it right here. And come up with another sentence that includes these four words. See if you can do it. Don't get stuck thinking that the way that I've used these words is the only way, it certainly is not. And when you come back, I'll give you another example to prove that to you. Okay? So how did you do, Where are you able to come up with at least one sentence with these four words? I hope so. If it was really challenging for you and you found it impossible, change the words, come up with four different words, and I will give you four more words, but don't be limited to these words that I give you. You can choose any words you like. Maybe you'll use the name of a city. Paris, yellow, windy. Okay, fine. Use these words. Okay, now I've got another example here that I'd like to share with you. I thought I had or I had I thought I'd come across just a common stick. But it was actually part of a fence used in prehistoric stables. I thought I'd come across. This meaning of come across is to find something. Okay. I thought I'd come across just a common normal Stick. Stick is a thing that comes off of a tree, right? A little piece of wood stick, but it was actually part of a fence used in prehistoric, that means long, long ago, long long ago. Stables, stable in this situation means the place where horses live. So place where horses live long, long ago. Okay, so this is another possibility. So I hope you've come up with something interesting as well. Okay, now I'm going to do one more example. I'm gonna give you four more words and we'll look at a couple of other examples that are possibilities. But again, don't limit yourself to those ideas. Come up with your own ideas. If you find my words a little too difficult, change them. Try some more words, try some different words, play around with it. This exercise is about play shouldn't be terrible and difficult. It's playing with words, playing with language and playing is a really important, especially when you want to learn to think in English, to have an English brain. Okay, So let's go on. Okay, next four words. Sine ship, strange beneath, sign ships strange beneath. Okay. Sign could be a verb to sign something. Sign could be an indication or something that tells you something. Ship could be a verb to send something, or to send maybe yourself, you could ship to somewhere. Ship could also be a thing, right? A big boat, strange, unusual, common, uncommon, strangely, we could also say stranger. Again, we can use different forms of the word and beneath is similar to under. Okay. At the first sign of something strange going on, we shipped off where we went, we left to America and escaped beneath anyone's notice. So we can say beneath someone's notice or escaped under someone's notice, right beneath someone's notice. Okay. So this is a possibility. Now, I want you to try this again. Take these four words, stop the video. Pause the video. Come up with your own sentence, see if you can come up with something that works. Okay, it has to make sense. Try. Okay? So here are some examples of how we can use these four words in two sentences. First, beneath, under the yellow sign, this is a physical sign of thing on the ship cabin door. The cabin is where you go into the ship, was a strange marking. A strange marking. A marking is sort of a thing maybe in the wood of the ship, maybe like a symbol that could be a strange marking. Another one, shipping company managers, the kind of company, shipping company. Shipping company managers have to sign. This sign is a verb, as in sign your name, sign their names on packages. Sign their names on packages beneath or below a certain weight. So maybe under 70 kilograms, for example, beneath a certain weight, which I think is strange, which I think is straight. That means I think this idea of having to do this, having to sign their names is strange. So we've used all of them again. So I hope you can come up with a couple of examples. Don't use only one sentence. Try to come up with 234 sentences to do this. And this can really, really push your mind to be using English creatively. Thinking about how you can fit these words together, change them, adjust them, play with them. This can really help your English brain. Now, once this is easy for you and you're able to do forwards automatically, naturally, easily come up with three or four sentences. Then make it five words, six words, seven words. Keep going up, keep pushing yourself. If it isn't difficult, then you're not doing it right? Okay? If it's very, very easy, then you're not going to be improving very quickly. It has to be difficult, difficulty, struggled. These are the things that push you to get better, okay, So always challenge yourself. Do this exercise as often as you can. It's a great and simple way to practice and build your English brain. Okay, now in the next lesson, we're going to be talking about another exercise that we can do to improve and work on our English brains. And this is variations. Variations also really important, really useful, and a great way to work on creativity. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Variations: Okay, So in the last lesson we talked about the forward exercise and how this can help us with the words we already know. This can help us to improve not only our understanding of the words we know, but also help with the creativity, the ability to think with the words we know. And of course, that means the ability to speak more quickly and more naturally. Or why are we building our English brains? What's the reason? Well, if we're able to think in English, were able to speak easily in English. And it's really that simple, okay? You have to be able to think in English if you want to be able to speak naturally in English. So in this lesson, we're going to be working on variations. What's a variation? A variation is basically a change. We tab something as it is, and we change it. And now we have a variation. Now we shouldn't change it so much that it's totally different than what we had before. Usually a variation is very similar to the original and has the same general meaning. Has the same general form, is generally the same, but looks different. So we make a change. What we try to keep what was there before. Now, when we're doing this with sentences, that's really what I mean, are going to be taking a sentence and then looking at the different ways that we can change it. That we can say that basic same thing in slightly different ways, different forms. This is a kind of play, really. This is a kind of play. And as I said in the last lesson, I believe that play is a very important part of your language ability. Just like it's important to read, reading is a very important part of your language ability. Writing is a very important part of your language ability. Play is a very important part of your language ability. What do I mean by play though? Play basically just means using things in new ways. And not necessarily focusing on being a totally 1000% correct. But instead, trying to be creative with the things that you already know so that you can find new connections, right? When a child is learning how to do something, basically that's play. And through their play they can learn how to communicate. Learn how to use things in the world, understand things better. But we can do the same thing with language. We can do the same thing with English. So play can really help us a lot. So let's now go into what we're going to be doing. Let's go into this and actually do it. I'm going to write down a simple sentence, okay, here's the sentence. I think it might take a few days for me to help you book your tickets. Think it might take a few days for me to help you book your tickets. Here's our original sentence that we're going to be using. Okay, now we're going to be making a variation with this. We're going to be changing this. We're going to be saying it differently. We're going to be. Trying to keep the same basic meaning, but trying to see how many different ways that we can say the same basic meaning. So what I want you to do right now is I want you to stop the video. Pause the video. And I want you to try to write this basic thing, but use different words to do it. You can use some of the same words, make some changes. Don't only change the words around. See if you can come up with a completely different way. That's also correct. Basically, to save this, to say this simple meaning, and this is pretty simple, right? Take me a few days to help you book your tickets. Pretty simple. I think you can understand it. So stop the video. Do that. I will wait for you. So have you got a variation? Does it work? Is it basically the same? If yes, congratulations, Nice job. Keep doing this, keep practicing this. What you can do is look at a sentence from say, a book you're reading and just write down the sentence at the top of a piece of paper and then try to write the same sentence many different ways, basically the same meaning. Now let's do that. Here's my first variation. I think I can have your tickets booked in a few days. What's the difference between these two? I think it might take me a few days to help you book your tickets. Well, we didn't say help you to have your tickets booked, to help you book your tickets. But we can say that basically this is the same, right? If I am booking your tickets to have your tickets booked, that means I'm helping you. We didn't say I'm helping you, but it means that basically the same. Okay. Now, basically, I think it might take, I think I can have well, might is different than can have. But we're saying we're not sure because we're using, I think actually in the first sentence saying it might. I think it might. That's like saying I'm not sure. I'm not sure two times. So the second one might be a little bit better. I think it is a little bit better. Okay. How about yours? Is yours simpler, more complicated. Did you just move the words around right? Now I want to go over a couple more variations of this. How about this one? Give me a few days to book your tickets. Well, if this one is more different than the original, but we still have the same basic idea in the first and we said, I think it might take me that's letting the other person know how long it will take you. This one give me a few days, is saying basically it might take me a few days, but instead requesting that this person wait for you. It's the same basically, instead of me telling you, it will take me this many days. I think I'm asking you or I'm I'm asking you to allow me to have a certain number of days, okay. So essentially it's the same thing. And this one is really simple. This one is incredibly simple. Now, one difference in the feeling of these two. Remember we talked about the word connotation. Connotations sort of the suggested feeling of something, not exactly the meaning, but how it feels in the situation. Give me a few days. Sounds like you do this, right? You have no choice. Give me a few days and then the other person will have to say, okay, okay. I think the first one is more polite and the second one give me a few days, is more like a demand or just saying what will happen, rather than focusing on making the other person feel really comfortable. Okay, the next variation of this original sentence, I can reserve. Reserve means book, same meaning I can reserve your tickets if you like. It might take me a few days. What's the difference between this one and the original? I think it might take me a few days for me to help you book your tickets means I'm going to do it, but I'm just trying to tell you how long it will take. This one. I haven't agreed to do it this way. Maybe I'm just offering to do it. I'm saying I can do it. I can reserve. I'm offering to do it. I don't mind doing it. If you want me to do it, I will. But then I wanted to say if I do do it, then it will take me several days. It will take me a few days. And so this one has a different feeling and actually has a different meaning because could be that I'm just offering rather than having already agreed like the first one. All right. I've already agreed and I think it might take me a few days. This one, I can do it if you want. Is the real meaning here. Probably doesn't always mean that, but it really could mean that. All right, so let's look at one more variation of this one. And this one is similar to one that we had done before, but it is a different form because we're using if if you give me a few days, I can book your tickets. Okay. So this one is kind of the opposite of what we had said, not the meaning. I mean, the form is the opposite if you give me a few days. So first I'm asking for the time. Means you could or could not. If you don't, I want to do it. If you do, I will. If you give me a few days, if you allow me to have a few days, I can book your tickets. This one, again is not agreeing to do it. It's offering to do it. I will if you want me to write, but I need some time. So if you give me a few days, I can book your tickets. We could add for you, but we don't need to because we said book your tickets. If we said book your tickets for you, no problem. Fine. Some people would say that's a little bit redundant because it kind of has the same meaning. It isn't necessary, but you could still say it. I could book your tickets for you. I can book your tickets for you. So this is another possibility. All right, now, this exercise is so simple, just like the forward exercise we did in the last lesson. All you do is get a sentence, okay? From the Internet, from a book, anywhere. Find a sentence, find a good one with some interesting stuff in it. Okay, now, ask yourself, how many times can I write this sentence in different ways and still keep the original meaning? Well, here we've done several, we've done quite a few different variations of this and we could do more. I'm not saying these are the only ways to write variations of this sentence, right? It would take me an hour or more to talk about all of the possible, reasonable variations of this sentence. The idea is basically that you have to play experiment with grammar with the words you know. And you should understand the sentence that you choose completely so that you can do it Well. This play allows you to be thinking in English as you come up with new ways to express the original main idea, the idea of the original sentence. And it frees up a new ability. So instead of just repeating all of the phrases that you've learned before, instead of just repeating the things that you've heard before exactly, You now have a deeper awareness of language and ability to think in the language and use it creatively. And that is an incredibly important skill. So practice this whenever you can't practice this when you have time later in the course, I will give you a plan that you can use to improve your English brain and you can include this exercise in that plan. So I think you should do it regularly, just like the forward exercise that we talked about in the last lesson. And it can really, really help you with your English brain and your ability to think in English. All right, In the next lesson we're going to be talking about another kind of variation. Variation of whole paragraphs, long variation. And it's different. So you'll see, I'll see you in the next lesson. 8. Full Variations: Okay, So in the last lesson, we went over some variations of a single sentence. Talked about how playing with that, with different ways of saying basically the same thing as a great way to improve your English brain, your creativity with English. Now, in this lesson we're going to continue with the idea of variation, but we're going to go to a different level. You could say higher level, a more challenging level, and do full paragraph variations. Now paragraph, I think you probably know, is a group of sentences together with a certain structure that expresses an idea. It's a separation in writing traditionally. All right, so we're going to be talking about in this lesson, how we can take a paragraph, take the main ideas from the paragraph, and then re, say or rewrite that whole paragraph in our own words. Now this is slightly different than the last lesson. And the last lesson we were focusing on making variations on that single meaning. And this one, we're going to be focusing on deeply understanding the original, the first one, and then trying to forget the original. Say all of that important information that we need in our own words, with our own words, with our own vocabulary. And we only need to do it once. You don't have to do it five times like we did in the last lesson, in the last exercise. So the main idea here is that we will be trying to forget and rewrite. Forget. When I say forget, I don't mean forget the meaning. I mean forget the original way it was written, right? Once we understand it, try to forget the different sentences that we had exactly in the original and tried to come up with our own unique way of saying that. Okay, using vocabulary, expressions, phrases that we feel comfortable with. Okay? So this is like creation. This is like writing something by yourself. Only. You're using the information that you just read from an original paragraph. So let's do this as an example. I'm gonna give you a paragraph. We're gonna talk about the meaning. And then we'll talk about a variation of the paragraph. Okay? And I will ask you then to practice doing one by herself. Okay. So let's look at this original paragraph, our first paragraph. And then after we go through it and understand it, we'll do a variation of it. So let me just read through it first and explain The meaning. It's a pretty simple paragraph. Adele, it's a girl's name. Adele had been living on the West Coast. West Coast is in America, on the west side of America by the sea in California for about six years. So when she finally decided to come home, finally means after a long time, there was a huge reception. Reception is a gathering of people to receive or to see someone write a reception is a big gathering of people are usually about some particular thing in this case to see her. Okay. So when she finally decided to come home, there was a huge reception party. It seems strange to her that even though so much time had passed, nothing much has changed. Nothing much had changed. So everything is the same as before. The old house. The old house and probably her childhood house. The house that she grew up in when she was a little girl. We can assume we can guess. It's something like that. The old house looked the same. Okay. It seemed the same. Look the same. And so did her family. What does that mean? Our family look the same. They're wearing the same clothes? No. It means they don't look a lot older than they did before, even though many years, Not many years. Six years had passed. Maybe her father or mother or grandma. They don't look very different. Okay. And so did her family. She spent a week catching up. Catching up means talking to people about what they'd been doing in the last six years, telling other people what she had been up to, what she had been doing, talking about her life, having conversations, chatting, this is catching up. She spent a week catching up visiting relatives. Before going back to California. Catching up visiting relatives before going back to California, relatives are family members, extended family members. Extended. That means not mom and dad, not brother and sister. Extended family, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandma, grandpa, ME. Before going back to California, she told herself when she was in California, she told herself she wouldn't let another six years passed before seeing them again. So six years had passed. And she didn't see them in that period. She visited them and then she told herself after she got back into color glue that California, that I won't do this again, I will see them sooner than six years. That's the meaning. Okay, So this paragraph, it's pretty simple. Now, what I would like you to do is take this basic meaning. You understand what happened. You get it. She came home from being in California for a long time. She visited her family. Everybody looks the same. Nothing had changed or it seemed she visited people. She talked to them, she went back. She said to herself, I'm going to go back and visit sooner than I did last time. Simple, pretty easy. Forget the sentences now, try not to remember how this is written. And go and write a paragraph that is basically the same as this that says basically the same thing, the same story. Just keep the events in your mind. Remember the events. Remember what happened. But don't remember how it was written. You don't need to remember the form of the sentences. Now there are some things that you need to remember exactly. Adele is her name. She lived in California on the West Coast. She visited or family. You can't change this. This is information that needs to be here. This is important information, but you don't have to write it in this way. Okay, so stop the video. Write a paragraph. Tried to separate yourself, your mind from the original words that you see in this paragraph. And then come back. And we'll look at a variation that I've done of this paragraph. And we'll see in what ways it's different, in what ways it's the same. So we'll look at that and then you can compare your paragraph to mine. All right, so I'll see you after you finish your paragraph. Go finish your paragraph. Go write a variation of this short story. Okay, so I hope you've come up with good variation paragraph. And now I would like to look at the paragraph that I've done as a variation to our original paragraph. So let me just read it for you. Okay. Six years had passed in California since Adele had last seen her family, and at last she decided to go home for a visit. She was totally shocked, surprised when she got there. Shock means surprised. Her whole family. Entire family had a gathering to welcome her. 9. Listening: In the last lesson, we talked about full paragraph variations. How we need to be creative, think creatively, play with language to come up with new ways to express ourselves. Think in English, right? Now, we need to talk about listening. Why is listening important? Well, I'm going to talk about why it's important first, listening skill is so important. And then I'll actually give you something that you can use to practice how to practice listening skill. And an example. Listening ability is incredibly important when it comes to basically communicating with other people. Most native speakers of English and people who speak English as a second language from other languages other than yours are not necessarily speaking so that you will understand them, right? Most native speakers speak really quickly. I'm speaking pretty clearly. I'm not speaking really, really slowly. I want to challenge you a little bit. I hope you can understand at least 80% of what I say. But most native speakers are speaking to each other. Vacant understand each other. They're not speaking for you to understand. And so when you watch a movie and American movie and you think God so difficult, I kinda understand, well, maybe it's because they're not speaking so that you will understand. So this is one reason why listening abilities really important to understand what others are saying, okay? Especially people who are not trying to make you understand. I'm trying to make you understand. Okay? I'm not speaking crazy fast. Okay. What about other speakers of other languages who are speaking in English? English is the international language. I don't know why. I do know why, but it's the international language of business is done usually in English. International business is done in English. International travel is done in English. Okay? If you want to travel to other countries, often need to use English, even if you're not traveling to an English-speaking country. At least in airports, you'd be able to see English everywhere. And science, science uses English only English. But do you might be speaking to someone who doesn't speak the same first language as you. Chinese English speakers, Japanese English speakers, Thai English speakers, Indian English speakers, Canadian English speaker. So that's a joke. So the ability to hear different pronunciation that has actually incorrect. It's also really important. So you have to have an incredibly sharp ear. Okay, That's why it's important. Now, what can you do to make your ear sharper? Well, I would normally just say, Well, listen to more things and you improve. That's generally true. Studies have proven that if you listen more. You'll be more likely to learn faster. So if you listen to a lot of Spanish radio and later you want to learn Spanish, even if you didn't understand that Spanish radio before, that, we'll have helped you get a feeling for the language and learn it more easily. So yeah, yeah, that's good. But some people want to improve more quickly. Some people want to have a really focused way to improve English listening, to improve their listening skill. And I would like to give you one way, which is very simple, very boring, very useful. And a lot of students who have become very successful in speaking and listening to English very well, very fluent, can think in English. Who can hear anybody, any accent, any pronunciation in English? Have done this exercise. So what is the exercise? It's very simple. You take a 30 seconds, 40 seconds, okay, one minutes at the most. Clip of audio and not video, only audio. Okay. Audio clip. It's an MP3 and be an MP3 file. Okay. Only audio. And you listen to it again and again. You put it on repeat. Use your phone, put it on, repeat, listen to it again and again and again. Make sure you choose one which is too hard for you. When you listen to it the first time, you should be able to understand only around 20 to 30 percent. That's good if you understand 80%, maybe it's not difficult enough. I hope you can understand 80% of what I'm saying. And that's what I hope. But for listening practice, 80 percent is too much. You need to be able to only understand 20 to 30 percent, okay. The first time you hear it, then repeated again and again, and have a piece of paper and a notebook by a special notebook right on the front of the notebook. Dot-dot-dot listening notebook. Luke's listening notebook. Okay. I've got my first one. All right. Week 1. And then I'll write the title of the mp3, the audio clip. You can call this a clip. Audio clip that I'm going to listen to and then I will put it on. Repeat, get my headphones on, got my headphones on. Ready to go? Listen. What? Second time? Whoa, what? Try again. Try again. Begin. Just getting down the first words of what you hear. Write down the first words. It was the it was the okay. He said it was it was it was the it must be it was the sounded like it was it was it was it was it was it was it was the it must be it was that. Okay. Now, you won't be able to probably hear every single thing that that person is saying. Maybe it's a news report. Okay. Maybe it's someone talking about a certain topic or maybe it's a dialogue, conversation between two people. You might not be able to probably won't be able to hear every single word that they say. So you will have to guess what they're saying. In certain places using the context, using what you know or think the sentence means. And this one is a really, really important point about the English brain, about thinking in English. Because if you're both trying to write down every word of what you hear, one word, one word again and again. And at the same time, thinking about what these words mean, what might this word be? Guessing? What this could be in this place? I can't hear it. It sounds like this maybe, but because of this word in this place with this grammar, it could be this one, probably 90 percent, it's this one. Okay? By doing this, you're forcing yourself to think more in English. You're forcing yourself to sharpen your ears. And this is a way to improve incredibly quickly. Now, some people think it's really boring. Maybe it's boring. I don't know, different people think different things are boring. I think it's incredibly useful. And so I hope you will do it often. Spend a week working on only one, spend the whole week working on one listening. If it's too easy for you, then you're doing it wrong. It should be very difficult to find one which is very challenging. If Indian pronunciation of English is difficult for you, choose one. Okay? Keep working. Work through it until you finish it. When you finished it, you will see now you're able to hear the whole thing. How amazing is that? You figured it out by yourself. You couldn't understand 20 to 30 percent by the end you can understand 98%, maybe one or two words you're not sure about How awesome is that. That's great. If you can do that, you will see your progress very quickly. Okay, so now what I would like to do is actually read something very quickly for you to practice. Okay. I'm not suggesting that you only listen to me. I think you should listen to a lot of different people speaking, practice a lot of different things. You can find a lot of resources online, mp3s, online to listen to. But I want to just give you an example. I'm going to put it in the next video so you can listen to it in the next video, listen to it again and again and again until you can understand it completely. The reason I'm putting it in the next one is because I don't want you to have to turn it every time, find where it begins in this video as a difficult, confusing. So I'll put it in the next video. After that, we're going to be going on and we're going to be talking about how we can think in English, thinking exercises, okay, to actually do things in our mind to improve our English brains. Okay, So go to the next video. The next video will be this clip that I'll be reading for listening practice. And then the next lesson will be about thinking. So I will see you in the next lesson and the clip, but it will just be a clip. All right. 10. Listening Practice: The dire American education system has spawned a wide range of proposals and half-baked solutions. The core of the problem, according to most, is a test oriented system, which has become increasingly narrow and stringent in recent years, the difficulty is finding an applicable alternative. Any viable model of teaching and evaluating students would have to be both inclusive and comprehensive, while at the same time recognizing individual achievement, whatever the case, most officials and leaders have concluded that the current problem doesn't lie in the hands of the teachers, but rather on the standards handed down by the Education Board. 11. Thinking Exercises: In the last lesson and the short clip, we focused on listening and the importance of listening. And if you don't have a Sharpie or how can you understand others? How can you communicate with others? But also doing listening practice, sharpening our ear can force us to think in English because we have to think about what could this person be saying, right? What might they be saying forces us to think in English, very, very useful. Okay, In this lesson we're going to be talking about pure thinking in English. And above anything else, this needs to become a habit. The other things are exercises that you sit down and you decide to do, and you spend five or ten minutes doing regularly to improve. Great, awesome. You should need to do those things. But now I would like to share something with you about thinking in English purely. That is not necessarily an exercise that you sit down and decide to do suddenly, but something that you need to get in the habit of doing. Anytime, usually, often, whenever. Okay. Now, habits make or break us, right? If you have bad eating habits, you become unhealthy. If you have good eating habits, you become healthy. If you're in the habit going out for a run every day, you're likely to be more healthy. If you're in the habit of packing a very healthy lunch to bring to work rather than buying McDonald's or something, then you're likely to be more healthy. So if you have the habit of doing what I'm going to tell you in this lesson, are likely to be better at thinking in English. You're likely to be better at communicating in English. You're likely to be more comfortable with English. Pretty simple. Okay, So I would like to describe and talk about with you what you can do. It's really simple. You find yourself in a situation with, I don't know, nothing to think about, nothing to do, nothing going on. Right? Let's say you're in your office sitting down in your chair, your computer is here looking out the window. Well, why not? Starts to describe the stuff the things that are going on outside of the window. Why not start trying to describe these things in detail? Not only describing exactly what you see, but describing how you feel about what do you see, what might happen next? Why this person is here? What's going on in the background, right? All of these things, these connections, these visual images that we see, all of these things can basically be described. Now we could write these things down, but we can also think these things, thinking thoughts in English. It's not all that different from writing down your ideas in English. Yeah, it's a little different because you can write something down and check it and say, Oh, that's not right or that's right or that's good and look at it, right? So yeah, but thinking in English does force English words to go through your mind. I mean, when I look over there on the table, I see a cup. And the word cup comes into my mind. The word cup comes into my mind. Even if I don't say out loud the word cup. Is the word cup is there. I can see it in my mind. And the word Brown comes into my mind because the cup is brown and tea bag, because there's a tea bag in the cup. All of these things come into my mind whether or not I speak them, whether or not I actually say the words. So one thing that you can do is just describe your environment in English in your mind. And if you find it very easy, There's a cup. You'll find it very, very easy. So challenge yourself, add more detail. Make up stories, be creative. And if you get into the habit of doing this on a regular basis, you will find that you're always thinking in English. Constantly having English in your mind is really, really good. I always have English in my mind. I always have because of that. My English is pretty good, right? Most native speakers, pretty good English, right? Why English is always in their minds. English is all around them. They're surrounded by English. English, English, English, okay. So they speak English naturally. You maybe speak a language naturally to why you think in that language. Always when you're a baby, you learn that language very early. You connected things with that language very early, right? All around you. You have to do the same thing with English. You have to do the same thing. You can't just say, I'm going to learn some words from a book, a, B, C, D, right? This isn't how you learn language. This isn't how it works. This isn't how you learn your language. Why do you expect to get good at another language doing it with a list of words? Of course not. Okay. I'm not saying a list of words is bad. Sometimes it's useful. But having these thoughts in English describing things is a key, a key tool for you. So let's do this. Now. I haven't planned this. I haven't decided what I'm going to say. It's going to be pure and natural, okay? And I'm going to be speaking this because it would be pretty boring for you if I were just doing this for the next few minutes, you can guess what I'm saying. Well, that would be pretty boring for you and not very useful. I'm going to be speaking, I'm going to be saying what I'm thinking. To show you how you can do this and you can do this. Okay, so let's start very simply out the window. All right, looking at the widow's a big window here. I'm not going to say that in my mind. Big window there is one but I'm looking out the window. Okay. One mountain. Mountain. Alright. Well, there are a lot of different mountains. It's at Mount Everest, doesn't have snow on top. Is it like a desert? Is it dries it Brown? Is it green trees? What? A large mountain with two peaks. One to a large mountain with two peaks, has trees on it. A large tree covered mountain with two peaks. And some people doing exercise on the peak of the mountain. I can see them out the window. Okay. So some people doing exercise on the top of a mountain with two peaks, on the top of a forest covered mountain with two peaks. Tree covered mountain with two peaks. All right. Fair enough. Blue sky. Blue sky with puffy white clouds. A blue sky with puffy white clouds, and a few pigeons flying around in the sky. Okay, that's pretty simple. That's pretty easy, right? Okay, you've got English going around in your brain. All right. Let's see what else we can see. Over there. Some tall gray buildings. What kind of buildings? Some tall gray apartment buildings. Interesting. Okay. Nine tall gray apartment buildings in an apartment complex, complex is a group of buildings that go together. Nine tall, gray boring apartment buildings in a large apartment complex surrounded by some green trees. Better. Nine tall, depressing looking gray apartment buildings. In an apartment complex surrounded by green trees near a tall mountain with two peaks. And there are some people doing exercise on the top of the mountain. Alright, there we go. I could have put that together probably a little better, but I'm thinking in English. Ok, looking down, by the way, I live on the 20th floor. So I can see far down here. A little girl. Nope. That's a boy. A boy with long hair. A little boy with long hair wearing a striped polo shirt, writing wildly on his bicycle. It looks like he just learned how to ride the bicycle because he can't steer it very well and he looks very uncomfortable on the bicycle. But because he's peddling so fast, it seems like he's really, really excited to be able to finally ride a bicycle by himself, right? And so he doesn't care that maybe he's not very good yet. He just wants to write as fast as he can. And the little boy is riding along the sidewalk and his mother is trying to run after him to catch him because maybe she's afraid that he's going to hurt himself. Okay. The mother is wearing a purple blouse and a long skirt with flowers and sandals. She has brown hair. Okay. Beside them there is an old man with a white T-shirt, very dark skin, light gray hair, smoking a cigarette. And it looks like he's talking to himself. He might be talking to himself because he's deciding what he's going to do tomorrow. Or maybe something difficult happened today. And he's talking about what he can do to solve the problem. Why is he talking about it out loud to himself? Well, I don't know. Maybe he feels lonely, maybe he has nobody to talk to. Maybe he doesn't care what other people think. Okay. Now, I've said a lot of things. I'm just sort of going on and on and on about things that I see. I'm not really thinking carefully. I'm not planning anything. I'm not too worried about making everything perfect. I could make the description of the mountain in the apartment complex better if I worked harder. But the point is, I just got thoughts going on in my mind. All right, I got things happening in my head in English. And this is what you can do every day, all the time, make it a habit, get used to it. You might think it's weird at first, this is weird. I don't want to think in English, that's very strange. English is something that you've studied. English is something that you learn when you read. Not only, not only start thinking in English, do it or don't do it better if you do it. If you do, you'll see results. So that's simple. All right, So next time you're by yourself, you've got nothing to do. Your board. Just try this. Look around you. What do you see? Describe it. Go deeper and deeper. Give more and more detail. Wonder about things. Ask questions to yourself about, well, why is he talking to himself? Ask questions to yourself. Guess, make assumptions. Assumptions is where you get something but you don't know if you're right or wrong. Who cares? It's in your mind. Nobody knows if it's right or wrong, right? Alright, so practice this, do it. And in the next lesson we're going to go on and we're going to talk about writing. How we can use writing as a way to work on our English brain, on our thinking in English. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 12. Writing: So in the last lesson, we talked about thinking how we can describe things in our minds. And how that's a great habit to get into. How we should get into that habit. If we want to be good at thinking in English and good at speaking easily, naturally. But there's something about it which isn't so good. And it's that you can't really check yourself very easily. You know, you can't correct mistakes, things that are incorrect very easily. And so that's why in this lesson we're going to be talking about writing. Now, the usefulness of writing is similar because writing, thinking, speaking, it's all basically the same skill. It's not like you use different English to think, different English to write different English to speak. Well, there are different styles of English, but it's basically the same skill, right? It's all the same foundation of English that you're using. It's all the same foundation. Same basic skill that you have. All right, so when we're writing, the advantage of this is that we work on our ability to put words and things together to explain an idea clearly. And once we've done it, we can look at it and think about how to make it better. And so writing is another excellent practice to get into. Excellent habit, to get into, to improve your ability to think in English. So I would strongly recommend that you do writing every day. You need to practice writing for at least ten minutes a day. You'll have to. Whether it's a diary or some of the things that we're going to be talking about today. So what I would like to do is just explain a few important things that you should remember when you're writing. And then we'll talk about a few things that you can do to practice writing. And then I'll give you an example of the kind of thing that you can write. Alright, so let's just start with things to remember when you're writing. Okay? So a couple of writing tips, and actually these writing tips are good. Whether you're a learner of English were knots. If you are a native speaker and you're writing skill, isn't that great? Keep these in mind as well. These are general writing tips, things to improve your writing. Punctuation is key. Key means important, very important. So punctuation is the marks that we use. When we write this one's called a period, is a comma. And we have lots of different punctuation that we use. Well, you have to make sure you use it correctly, okay? If you send someone, for example, an email and the punctuation is wrong. Even if all of the words are right. The person will think you don't know how to write. And if they think you don't know how to write, they'll think you're not smart, even if you are smart. And it's really common for learners of English to think as punctuation. It doesn't matter and do things like, well, space, comma space I, this space can't be here, right? We need to have well, comma space I, because that's just correct. That is correct English punctuation. So you have to have correct punctuation. It makes you look smart. Okay? If you've sent someone a resume, you're trying to apply for a job. And the resume has bad punctuation. And we'll take your resume and they will throw it into the rubbish. I would shows that you don't understand the language. And it's very important. And the thing is, it's really simple to learn. Punctuation isn't that hard to learn? So you have to follow the rules, okay? Good punctuation, always, always, always. Okay? Next one, syntax. Syntax is basically the style of sentences. And when you write, you don't want to always use the same kind of sentences. He did this, it did this. I went here, always the same grammar. Simple, simple, beginning with a subject HE, it, I write always beginning in this way, not the only way to begin a sentence. Certainly, there are many, many different forms of sentences and styles of grammar to use. So remember when you're writing, tried to change the style of your sentences. Try to have better syntax. Some sentences maybe will be longer. And with a lot of adjectives to describe something, some will be shorter three words. Some will have the subject first and then the object. Some will have the object first and then the subject. So always try to change the style of your sentences to fit what you want to say. And to avoid being really boring, if someone reads what you wrote and it's just it was an aid wasn't an anti-Xa. He isn't always the same. Really boring, tough to read. Okay, So better syntax. Many different kinds of sentences play with different kinds of sentences, specific adjectives, instead of using words like good. Instead of using words like nice, bad. Instead of using words like better. What does better mean? Right? Be more specific. Better just means more good than another thing. But what kind of more good than another thing, right? For example, one person is better at speaking, then another person, right? You say you're a better speaker. Well, we could be more specific and we could say articulate. Might say more articulate, more articulate than the other person. Yeah, That means better at speaking, a better speaker. But it's more specific as an adjective. And so. Instead of using always very simple words to explain what do you want to say, try to use very specific adjectives that have a very specific meaning. And that takes me to the next point, which is to explore vocabulary. When you learn new words, writing is the best chance that you have to try to use the new words that you learn correctly. It's hard to do when you're thinking, right? It's a little bit difficult because you can't check yourself. The advantage of writing is the ability to check yourself to look at what you wrote and say, Okay, this is wrong. Whew, this is better, right? You can make revisions. That means to improve it over time, to change it and make it better, right? To explore vocabulary. You've learned a new word. You use it in a paragraph or a sentence. And it helps you remember the word, helps you understand the application of the word, right? And when you're speaking, then you'll be able to use the word and forces you, which is the purpose of this course to think in English when you do it. So try to use the new vocabulary you learn and importantly check it. Once you write something, don't just finished, I'm done. Throw it out the window. No, check it. Try to make sure it's right. Write another version of it. A version of something is another one. That's better. You attempt to make it better, you try to make it better. So there's a problem here. Maybe my syntax is not very good. All of my sentences look the same. I'm going to try to make some longer sentences, some shorter sentences, some different grammar. I'm going to try to use the passive voice, for example. Okay? Very good. Try to make it better. Try again, make it better. Check the punctuation. Is there a space before the comma? Yes, there is fixed that is the punctuation, right? Um, I used commas and periods and colons and semi-colons correctly. Okay, the punctuation, is it right? That's very important as well. Check the spelling of the words. Have I spelled words correctly? Okay, Now, maybe you don't know, everything, gets help. Maybe you know someone I have a friend who's also a learner, maybe a little better than you. Ask them to check your writing. And you can check their writing for them. And you can exchange your writing and do this regularly with a friend to improve each other, help each other improve. Or ask your teacher, as I mentioned before at the beginning of the class, the best way to get feedback right away is to have a teacher. Right now in this course, I can't give you feedback because it's a course, right? And it's for you to watch and learn. But you need to have or should have. I would recommend having a teacher who can give you feedback, look at something you wrote and say, maybe this isn't so great, you need to improve this. You could do a little better here and here and here. Not necessarily make all of the corrections for you, but to guide you, give you some guidance, direct to you, right. Show you where your problems are. Okay? So all of these things together are things you definitely need to keep in mind. Next, we're going to look at some prompts, things you can write about. What can you write about? All right, now, some of my students ask me, well, Luke, I want to practice my writing, but I don't know what to write about. Well, here you go. Writing prompts. A prompt is what makes you write something, what pushes you to write something, what you should write about, okay, so what can we write about when we practice? How about what's your plan for the week? Maybe you can do this once a week on Monday, on Sunday, right? What you're going to do for the following week. Okay. There's one describes something unusual that happened yesterday. Something unusual happens every day if you notice it and maybe you noticed it but you forgot it. Well, this prompt can help you remember it. Okay. Think about what you did yesterday. Anything unusual? If yes, describe it, use detail. Use the new words that you've learned, tried to explore the language, check your punctuation. Okay. How about describe a movie you watched recently? Describe a movie you watched recently. And we always watch movies, right? Describe what happened. Who were the characters? Why did you like the movie? Or a book, or a story? All okay. Tv show. All of these are okay. How about a diary? A diary is just to write down what happened every day or how you're feeling every day. And a diary is something people do on a daily basis. And it might be a good thing to do in the morning or at night, maybe before you go to bed at night, keep a diary. And lots of people keep diaries. It's a great practice because one, you can remember what's going on in your life, what you were thinking about that day, what happened that day, and you can go back and read those. But for English, it, it lets you see your progress. Or if you keep a diary every day for three months, you'll go back to the beginning and say, Oh my God, I was pretty bad at writing. Now, I'm getting better. I can see that it's better. Because every day when I write my diary, I try to focus on how to make it more clear. I try to focus on my syntax. I've tried to focus on making it sound better. I tried to focus on adding more details. I tried to focus on making it more vivid. Right. So you'll be able to actually see your progress. So it's a win-win, right? There's nothing bad about it. It's fantastic. So practice writing as often as you can, put it in your daily routine. Okay, so now an example of some writing that we could do, and I'm going to give you an example of something I've done just to give you a feeling of what you're writing can look like. Now I've, I've chosen to write about something interesting which happened yesterday. And I just wrote down the first thing I thought of. And by the way, interesting doesn't necessarily mean something great or happy. Interesting just means something that is unusual, that makes you think more. So it doesn't have to be a great thing. So I checked my punctuation, I checked my grammar, I made sure it was okay. The syntax, different types of sentences. Okay? But it's not amazing writing. It's not totally awesome writing. It's okay. It's okay. And that's what you need to really focus on just trying to make it clear and good syntax, good punctuation. Okay, here we go. I'll read it for you. Yesterday I was walking to my favorite restaurant from my home, taking photos along the way, which I always do. After a good 20 minutes of walking, I found myself beside a large shopping center. So I snapped a few shots, snap diffuse a few shots. Shots are photos. I snapped a few shots. When I turned, I noticed a very dirty looking man with long hair, goatee and a greasy jacket staring into the rubbish bin in front of the shopping center? At first I thought he was just staring perhaps for no reason. Then I realized he was moving his head slightly as though nervously searching for something to take out. I felt really sad for him and hoped he wasn't hungry. I quickly captured the moment with my camera. Okay. So just something I remember that happened yesterday and I've tried to make it pretty clear. If someone else were to read it, I hope they would understand what I was describing and I hope they would think, well, that's pretty clear. I can get a good image in my mind. This should be your goal as well. Whether it's a diary, whether you're describing your goal for the week, whether you're talking about something interesting or a movie, or a book or a story or whatever. Practice writing and always try to get better. Never be totally happy with what you've done. Never say okay, I'm finished, I'm finished English dun, try to make it part of your lifestyle. Okay, and the next lesson we're going to go on and talk about movies. How can we use movies to learn movies and TV shows? So I'll see you in the next lesson. 13. Movies: And the last lesson we talked about writing and how writing is a really great tool for us to practice English because we can check it. We can look at what we've done and try to make it better, right? With better syntax, better grammar, trying out new things, and using the new words that we've learned. In this lesson, we're going to talk about movies. Can Movies be a good way to learn English? Well, the answer is yes, they can. A lot of people who get better at English and are good at thinking in English and have good English pronunciation. Get the feeling of that pronunciation and that English from watching movies. Now there are two different ways to watch movies, and I'll talk about both of those ways. And when I say movies, I also really mean TV. Tv shows. You can say movies or TV shows. But in this lesson I'm going to pretty much say movies because I don't want to say movies and TV shows every time, right? So there are two different ways to learn from movies. One is called the more passive way. Passive. Remember how I mentioned earlier in the course that if you listened to Spanish radio, for example, for a long time, and then later decided to learn Spanish. You would be able to learn Spanish more easily, probably than someone who had never heard Spanish before in their life. So movies can give you the feeling of English. Pronunciation can give you the feeling of English expressions. Idioms like we've talked about earlier in the course, when certain idioms are commonly used and when they aren't, when they sound normal, when they sound strange, right? Can give you the feeling, the general sense of the language, how it feels, the tempo. Tempo is the speed of the language, right? The sound of some of the specific tones in English. So we do have tones in English, the intonation. All of this you can get just by watching movies regularly, relaxing and watching movies. Even if you're watching movies with subtitles. Subtitles means you have your own language, the words of your own language. Under perhaps the English words, or maybe there are no English words and you only have your language there, your native language there, and the movie, right, the English movie. So even if you're doing that, you're still getting something from it. It's slow. You can't expect yourself to be a great speaker suddenly from doing it. But it's part of the process. And a lot of great speakers again, like I say, said, and say to others who want to learn. Yeah, movies helped me. Movies helped me. But again, it's really slow and you can't expect yourself to be a fluent speaker or to think in English, or even to learn words this way. Because if you're only paying attention to your language. How do you really expect you're going to learn those words? Okay, so movies, fine. What movies should you watch? Well, for movies, I would recommend something that has simple language that's pretty clear, that can give you a sense for the real culture of say, America or England. So choose something that you're interested in. Obviously, if you're interested in it, you can like it, right? So that's good. Now, if you want my suggestion, I would say watching movies like Pixar films. Pixar is a studio that makes animated movies like Finding Nemo and cars. Monsters Inc. Monsters Inc, Monsters Inc. These kinds of movies from this studio I would recommend because the language is pretty simple, you can still learn from them. You can get a feeling of the natural pronunciation of English. So for films, I would recommend those. Again, if you're not interested in animation, don't watch them. If you hate this kind of movie, don't watch them. Find something else that you enjoy. Okay. For TV, maybe friends, friends is a kind of show called a sitcom. And it's a comedy, that means it's funny. Funny, funny, funny means it makes you laugh. Ha ha ha, it's a comedy, so it's funny. And there are things like ten years of this show that ran. And so it's a great way to practice and get a feeling for English. It's the most popular one for English learners. Friends is the most popular show and the most recommended by English learners. And so it's not only me saying that, right, this is the most popular, the most popular movie series is actually Harry Potter. So if you like that kind of movie, harry Potter is a good film series to watch, although some of the language will be a little bit tough for some of you, but it's pretty good. Pixar films, Harry Potter, friends, all good. Now, this is all just general stuff, right? Getting the feeling for English, yeah, okay, but I want to be really good at English now. I want to improve quickly now. All right. Now we get to the more active way to watch films. If you want to watch films more actively, what do you have to do? Well, step one. Choose a film. You know well. So if you've seen this movie, this English Movie many times, and you've seen the subtitles in your own language many times you totally understand this movie. Maybe it's Harry Potter or whatever. You've seen it, you get it. Then. Find that same movie without subtitles. No subtitles, no words in your own language, right? Watch it again. Okay, and try to really pay attention to what the people are saying. You should know the story of the movie. Now, you should know the, what's called the plot of the movie. You should know generally, the idea. Of what the characters in the movie are saying, right? Because you've seen it several times before because you like the movie. And so you can begin to now go to the next step and focus on the English. So watch it once. And when you're watching it, try to take a few notes. You hear somebody say something, What did they just say? Stop the movie, write it down, make a note, maybe a new word that you heard. Okay. I don't maybe you hear the word migrate, migrate, migrate. Oh, what's that word? Migrate? For example, you don't know this word, you hear this word migrate, migrate. You can try to spell it by listening to it or not that many ways to spell migrate. And you know the basic idea because you've seen the movie before and your language, okay? So you get the idea. Now, you can get a sense for the word. You've seen how it's used in the movie, okay, now if you need to, you can look it up in a dictionary. And we've talked about how to look up words in a dictionary, right? How to learn specific words. So look it up. Go back, watch that part again. See how it's used again. Get a feeling about the word for pronunciation. You could go really, really slowly and try to copy some of the pronunciation film. That is one way to improve pronunciation. Now, films are really long. You probably won't be able to do the whole movie, but you could take part of the movie and repeat part of the movie and practice reciting the pronunciation of part of the movie. That's one thing that a lot of good learners have done to improve their pronunciation. But about thinking in English, about the English brain, generally just watching the movie with only English, paying attention to what the characters are saying. Taking a few notes now and then we'll help you will force you to be thinking in English. What does that mean? What did he just say? How does that spelled? Um, I know what that means, but I don't know why he said it. Because I know the original. I don't know what I don't know why he said this exactly, but I know what it means. So I'm going to figure that out, write that down. So this process is actually a pretty good way to learn, but you have to be pretty active and you have to usually choose only one movie, okay? So don't give up on movies. Movies can be a good teaching tool, good, a good learning tool. But it depends on how you want to learn. Do you just want to get the general feeling of English, okay, watched passively. Do you want to learn specific things, word's pronunciation, phrases, idioms. Okay, watch actively. No subtitles. Be more active. Okay, so keep watching films, keep watching TV shows. Don't give up on that. I personally like watching documentaries like Planet Earth. About nature, though you can't see someone's speaking, but you can listen to it. And the speaking is pretty slow and pretty clear. And you can see beautiful images and learn something about the world. Very interesting series. So I would recommend that one. That's a documentary series that's pretty good as well. In the next lesson, we're going to be going on and we're going to be talking about how to use the Internet to learn the Internet as a resource to learn. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 14. The Internet: Okay, So in the last lesson we talked about watching movies, how to do that. In this lesson, we're going to be talking about the Internet as a resource. A resource is something you can use right? Now. At the beginning of the course, I mentioned that it's important that you swim. Remember, swim. That means to surround yourself with English like you're jumping into the water, swimming in it. If you only learn English through your own language, you're not really swimming in it. How can you expect to be able to think in English? Now you can't, you can't. So you have to be surrounded by English all the time. So I would recommend strongly in order to develop, to improve your English brain, your ability to think in English. You actually start using the English Internet regularly. What kinds of things do you do on the internet? Okay. On a regular basis, usually. Do you read news? Do you talk with people, join chats, forums? Do you watch videos? And what do you do on the internet? Okay, I'm gonna go through a couple of websites that can help you with different aspects of your English. And just keep in mind that by doing this, by surrounding yourself in English, you're kind of forcing yourself into an English environment. Sort of like if you go to an English speaking country and live there, that's called immersion. You immerse yourself in an environment. And that's what the Internet is. It's just an environment. So I'm going to go over some websites which you can use, which are really useful and which I actually use as well. And we're going to start with different categories, different topics, okay? So first for listening and learning. Learning general skill and listening, listening and learning. Okay, some websites for this. Number 1, TED.com. Now, none of these websites, by the way, are paying me or something. I'm not saying these because these websites are giving me money. I'm giving you these because they're really useful. Okay? I like them. Ted.com has tons of videos. People give presentations about a large number of different topics. Wildlife, technology, health, medicine, maybe the future, architecture, finance, playing music, right? All kinds of different topics. It's incredibly interesting and you get to something new for five days a week. And there are large number of videos that they've done over the past years. Okay, It's a conference TED, and they put them on line these videos and you can watch them. And it's a really great learning tool. It's a great way to improve your listening. So Ted is good. The other one, coursera.com. Coursera.com is for high level learners. This is an R, by the way, that looks like some sort of crazy V. It's an R. Coursera.com is a very high level core System, university system. Basically, you take a university course at a famous university. It's not like you're actually watching only the videos of the course. You are in the course, you have to do homework assignments. You have to interact with people in forums. Forums are places to discuss things. You can talk about two different things in the forums. And the university professor in that course will answer questions. They have a large number of topics. Technology, mathematics, different sciences, biology, chemistry, lot of different things, whatever you're interested in. But it's tough. This is for students who have a very strong vocabulary. So if you've got a really strong vocabulary and you want to improve your listening, improve your ability to think in English or English brain. You want to really, really challenge yourself. Take your Coursera course. Okay? Now, you can do it, right? If you're up to that level, you can do it. It is possible. It will be quite challenging because these courses are not for second language English speakers, these are for native English speakers. But it's a great way to challenge yourself and awesome, It's free. Fantastic. Okay. Another one which I say I have to recommend is my own website, cloud English, dotnet. We have a lot of free videos there, many different topics. Run a 100 videos at the moment and counting, I don't know when you're watching this course, a lot of different videos, free stuff. I'm topics like culture and the different vocabulary, expressions, Idioms, things like this, a lot of different things. So you can use that. Most of the videos are pretty short, some of them are a little bit longer, and we're always adding more videos. So this is another resource. Also, you can go onto the website and actually ask questions and other people can answer your questions and you can answer questions. And you can also read some different culture, news bits of culture from around the internet, which is also a way to get a feeling for English speaking culture, especially American culture. Okay, now let's go on to news. Where can we get news? Where can we get news? News? Things that happened recently could also call current events. Current events. And I would recommend several awesome websites. One probably my favorite, reddit.com. Okay. Read it is a community website where they post all kinds of things from the Internet. Not only news, they have things called sub credits. These are topics on Reddit. Okay, so you can go to the subreddit, maybe funny. World News, different things like this. Maybe go to reddit world news. And you can read news articles from a lot of different sources, different news sources, from sources in Asia, from sources in America, in England, the BBC, for example. And so it's a great way to find lots of different information in one place. Fantastic, especially for news. And I could also say interesting articles there as well. A lot of different articles on a lot of things about culture. For example, they have one page, they're called Reddit jokes. And you can just read a bunch of jokes, which is a good way to get a feeling about English-speaking culture. Another one for news would be Huffpost.com. And the Huffington Post is a, is a newspaper. And they have a lot of current events that are going on. A lot of them in America. And they have some international news as well. And the BBC is pretty good as well, obviously. But I would recommend this one because usually the articles are pretty simple, not so difficult to read, not too technical and interesting. So you can check out that one. Now for articles, I would definitely go to Wikipedia. I personally believe that Wikipedia is probably the greatest website in the world because it has all of the knowledge in the world. There, can learn everything from Wikipedia, it's awesome. Go onto Wikipedia, search. Mount Everest. Read an article about Mount Everest. Why is it called Mount Everest? Who's the first person to climb Mount Everest? A lot of information about it, very interesting, and you can keep reading this different topics about a lot of different things. It's fascinating, very interesting, strongly recommend going here. And another May 1 be in gadget. This is for people who like technology and gadgets. And that's a, that's a column, sorry, in gadget is a Tech website. So they have articles about new things coming out in a when's the next iPhone coming out? This is the new this new computer. What's good about it, what's bad about it? So you can get a lot of tech news from this website. And I think they also have an app or two. It's pretty good. I like to read this one, pretty interesting. Now, finally, I want to talk about community. Community means places on the internet where we can actually discuss things. Not only gets new is not only gets articles, but actually do discussions. Now I had mentioned read it and that's the first one where you can actually join these subreddit. And then you can actually have conversations and discussions about issues and topics and posts, someone posts something and then you have a comment discussion with someone really interesting. It's a community. It's not only for reading. And so when it comes to community online, this is one of the best, but there's actually one which I think is even better and that's Quora. Quora is fantastic. This is a website where people ask questions and lots of other people answer the questions. And it's a big community of people asking and answering questions. Someone posts a question, you know the answer, right? The answer. Other people say, Oh, this answer is very good. Up, up, up, up vote. You want to know something, search something, ask a question, someone will answer your question, read the answer, leave a comment, ask them more for more information. It's incredibly interesting and you can have real discussions with people. And always you are going to be thinking in English when you're doing this, right? So it's a way to surround yourself and challenge yourself. If you have to write answers to questions, Everyone's going to be seeing that, right? So your grammar is going to have to be pretty good. Your punctuation is going to have to be clear. So you're going to have to try pretty hard. And if you try hard, you challenge yourself. If you challenge yourself, you improve. Just to summarize, this, these websites that I gave you are not all of the good websites, but just a few of the websites I would recommend to you to use as a resource to improve, okay? For listening, for, for learning general things, right? For reading news. Community. There are a lot of places around the Internet where you can become part of something. And by doing so, force yourself to improve and think in English. All right, so in the next lesson we're going to be talking about a daily routine, what you need to do every day to improve your English. I'm going to give you actually a plan to follow. Okay, so I'll see you in the next lesson. 15. Routine and Attitude: So in the last lesson, we talked about the internet, how to use it as a resource to improve, to practice, to learn. And in this lesson, we're going to be talking about the daily routine, what you should be doing every day to improve. I'm going to give you a plan. Today's lesson is your plan. Okay? So what is a routine? Routine is something that you always do? It's a habit and becomes regular. Daily routine is what do you do every day? Okay. So I'm going to go through and we're going to be talking about what you do in the morning. What do you do on the way, maybe on the bus? What you do when you have nothing to do and at night. And if you make all of these things a habit part of your lifestyle and it really doesn't take up that much time. If you make these things part of your life, then you will find that you improve a lot over time and pretty quickly. When it's that simple, do or do not do, okay, up to you. But I'm telling you that if you follow these things and you do these exercises and you get in the habit of doing this every day, you will see results. You will get better. First in the morning, okay? Maybe after breakfast, maybe during breakfast you're eating your breakfast among your writing, write, write down one of the prompts. Remember, in the earlier, in the earlier lesson we talked about some different prompts. We talked about how to write, right? This can help you wake up in the morning because you have to think a lot. Alright, you're sleepy, you have your coffee or whatever, right, for ten minutes. Okay. Every day. First thing. If you don't want to do the prompts, diary, okay, Next, do some exercises, not the same as the writing. The writing is something that's a little more serious and I wouldn't consider it exactly an exercise. Well, it is, but It's really just a kind of practice. Then do either the forward exercise or variations. We did two kinds of variations. We did variations about full paragraphs and about single sentences, either one of those or you can do the forward exercise. Maybe Monday you do a forward, the next one, the next day, Tuesday you do variations and you switch it up. Don't do it the same every day. Change it a little bit. That's okay. Okay. Practice that. Let's 20 minutes in the morning. That's not even enough time to finish your coffee. That's not that hard, right? Okay. So do that. Then for example, maybe you take the bus or you do something on the way. Maybe someone drives you somewhere. I don't do this. If you drive maybe a little bit difficult. But at some point between the time maybe you start work and when you leave home or after you eat breakfast at sometime early in the day, do listening, right still when your brain is a little bit, maybe sleeping, it would be good to help you wake up. How would you focus? Do listening? Listen to an mp3. Maybe one minute. Only, only a minute. Less than a minute is okay to 40 seconds. Something really challenging for you. Get your Listening notebook out and write down every single word that you hear. Okay, and this is something that you should spend? Well, it depends on how much you get done each day, but try to finish a couple of sentences each day and don't know, maybe 20 minutes, that would be okay. It depends on how much time you have that day. It depends on how much you can finish, try to get some done. Okay. Listen to it's maybe 20 times. Okay. Then whenever you can do the description exercise that we practice, the description exercise was in your mind, giving detail to the things that are going on. Just saying what's happening. What do you see out the window? What do you see beside you? But you see in your office, in your school, in your mind, or always be thinking in English as often as you can. If you keep doing this and you keep reminding yourself, oh yeah, I need to think in English, I need to describe something. Then you get into the habit of doing that. So I'm not saying you need to do that at any certain time of the day. Whenever you feel bored, there's nothing to think about, nothing to do do this, okay? Not that hard and actually should be pretty interesting. At night. You need to do something to wind down, right? And at night you can do some learning. So read, do some reading of your reading, Harry Potter, okay. You want to read, who is, who was those books? Okay. Maybe you want to read some articles. That's okay too. But use the reading that you do as a way to learn new words. Find new words in sentences, and use the way that we learned to practice and learn the new words. Okay, So be learning actively. Don't just read and skip the new words. Try to learn the new words and follow the method the way that we practiced earlier in the course. Next, in your free time at night, nothing to do. Okay. Browse online, checkout, Cora. See if there's anything interesting on the Cloud English, dot-dot-dot S, to check out some websites, browse casually. Okay? Then watch a movie, Okay, watch, uh, maybe if you're learning seriously, watch that movie that you are focusing on. If you're not, okay, don't watch something else. Watch something casually. Tv show, a documentary and animation, something you're interested in in English. Just to sort of wind it down for the evening. Don't focus on it too much. If you're not learning that movie seriously, it's okay. All right, so this is the routine you should follow and you should do this every day, seven days a week. It's not a job. It's part of your life. Okay. So make it your lifestyle. If you do that, you will see results, okay? Lifestyle and habits really important. Now, just quickly at the end of this lesson, I want to talk about a couple of attitude things that are important. Generally for your English skill. To keep in mind. Attitude means the way that you think about yourself, the way that you see the world as your attitude. So bad attitudes. Lead to doing things incorrectly, lead to being depressed, right? You have to have a good attitude. And what kind of attitude is important for learning English? Well, it's important to be confident. Don't always say I'm terrible, awful, I suck my English is the worst. I'm just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Don't focus on how bad you are. Maybe you are bad. I don't know. I don't know how bad you are. I don't know how good you are. I don't know how bad I am. Actually, be confident. Instead of focusing on the negative, focus on the positive, the more confident you are, the more you're likely to go ahead and try and do. Confidence is a very interesting thing. Confidence is often self-fulfilling. What that means is someone who's confident often succeeds because they were confident first. So maybe even if you aren't that good, but you're confident soon your level of skill catches up to that confidence because you were confident first. But if you're always seeing terrible and awful and bad, alright, so your level of skill will stay at that level. I'm terrible, I'm awful, I'm bad because you will always believe you are. So this attitude makes a real difference. And I've noticed this with my students. Those students which are really successful are very confident. They say good things about themselves. They don't always go around saying I'm the best, I'm number one. They're not unrealistic, but they also don't say, I'm terrible and the worst. They, they try to be positive, right? They tried to focus on what can I do to be better? How can I improve rather than this is bad, this is wrong, I'm bad, right? So this attitude being confident, very important. Next one related to confidence, but don't have fear. You're always afraid to write something. For example, if you go to read it or Cora, and you want to answer someone's question, we think, oh, no, no, no, I'm not good enough. I won't answer their question because maybe if there will be a mistake, of course there will be a mistake. Probably most people make mistakes. I make mistakes. These two points are connected. Nobody's perfect. Okay? So don't be afraid if you're shy about speaking. If you'd never speak, if you never try, if you never go out and push yourself, There's an expression to go outside of your comfort zone. Comfort zone. If you've never step outside of your comfort zone, that means where you feel comfortable, how can you expect to really improve quickly? If you always just say I'm going to learn the easy way I'm going to use my language. I'm going to use a dictionary and my language, I'm going to try to learn that way. Good luck. Probably won't make it. Okay. So don't be afraid. Struggle. Don't be afraid of something difficult. Tackle something difficult, right? Try hard to defeat the difficult thing. Be confident. If you meet someone and you have the chance to speak to them in English, speak to them, ask them questions, have a conversation. Don't be afraid of looking stupid. Everybody is stupid, Okay. It's not a big deal. Just try do your best. And over time you'll be able to figure out what things work, what things don't work, right? If you never try, you never will be able to figure out these things, what things work, what things don't work. So obviously we should try. Obviously you should be confident. Obviously you should have no fear, okay? As I mentioned, also, nobody's perfect. If you make mistakes, if you do something wrong, don't, don't give up. Don't say on I quit. I made a mistake. I'm not perfect, I'm not great. I'm not good enough. Don't just give up and quit. Okay? Nobody's perfect. I'm not perfect. The most perfect person is not perfect. Mistakes all the time. You see in this course, sometimes the video cuts, right suddenly, why do you think it cuts? Because I made a stupid speaking mistake. I said to live hos instead of tomatoes. Those are going out to to pick some to a minute ago. Well, what was that? I can't leave that in the course, right? People are paying money for this. I can't say that. I have to say tomatoes correctly, so I cut it. It's a mistake. Okay. Everybody makes mistakes. Don't worry about it. Not a big deal. Keep going, keep trying. Okay? Finally, if you hate to something, you'll probably not be good at it or it would be pretty slow. All right. I have some students who don't really like English. I tried to make them like it, but it's sometimes hard. And if you hate it, you hate it. But hating it won't help you and it will actually hurt you. So find something about the language that you enjoy. If you enjoy something about the language, maybe movies, maybe music, maybe writing, maybe describing things, whatever it is, find something you enjoy and focus on that. If you enjoy it, you're more likely to make it a habit. You're more likely to make it your lifestyle, right? And you're more likely to become more successful at doing it, you're more likely to become more confident. You're more likely to lose your fear. You're more likely to begin thinking in English more. Win, win, win, win, win, win, win, right? All winds. So enjoy it. Try to relax. Don't get stressed out. Don't tell yourself I must, I must, I must learn that. When I mentioned the exercises, I'm not saying to yourself, all right, Now it's time to study. I hope that you can make those things that you just do. I get up in the morning, I brush my teeth. I just do it. I don't think Damn it, it's time to brush my teeth. I don't do that. Get up, brush my teeth. And that is done as part of my life. Just like that. Okay, so have the right attitude, practice. You'll see results. And the next video we're going to be doing just a very quick conclusion, a quick summary of the sea. There we go. There's a mistake. I'm going to leave that went in just to prove to you. I said the hurt. I meant to say the whole right, just to prove to you that I do make a lot of mistakes. So we're going to do a summary of the whole course in the next video. And I will see you then. 16. Summary: So I want to, in this last video, quickly summarize the things that we've learned in this course. What we've talked about in this course about building our English brain. And actually, what this course really is about is how to improve your English. How to get better at English, the right things to do, right? The first step is to start thinking in English. You have to be thinking in English if you want to be a very good English speaker, if you want to be good at English. If you want to be a good English writer, if you want to be a good English reader, a good English listener, you have to be thinking in English for all of these things. Okay? I want to just explain that main idea. Here is one language and all of the things going in and out or another language. How can these things going in be understood? How can these things going out to be clear, cannot have to be English in the middle. Thinking in English. And everything coming in is clear. Understood, everything going out clear, easy to understand, right? All right. So what did we talk about? First, we went over some basic tips, talked about some things to remember. Next, we talked about reading. We talked about how to read. What's the right way to read. We look at words and we figured them out in context. Then we go figure out the meaning of the word. And then we go back to the reading and we saw how it works and we can understand more about the language. We can get a feeling for English. We can see the structure. We talked about building the tree. Remember, the tree has to be there strong before you can have leaves or fruit, right? Obviously. Okay. Then we talked about how to learn words. We talked about studying vocabulary. How when we study vocabulary, we should learn all of the different forms of a word. And we can learn vocabulary through reading. When we're reading, we find, we discover new words. You're reading something, you come across something, and I don't know this. And then we can use the context, the situation around the word to try to guess the meaning. And then with that guest meaning, we go look up the different forms of the word, right? And the different forms of the word can help us understand it deeply so that we can use it easily. Then we make some examples and make some sentences to deeply, deeply get it. So reading and learning words are connected very closely. Okay? Then we talked about idioms. We've talked about how idioms are pretty weird because there are different idioms for different places, different idioms for different people. And you have to try to get a feeling for this and it's very complicated. Are you the kind of person who should be saying this idiom, which usually only my grandma says, maybe, maybe not. You have to figure that out and you have to get a feeling for it. We went over a simple example of that. But generally the idea is you have to try to feel how it's used in that situation, right? On what it is compared to another thing. In other words, what it communicates compared to another thing. It has a suggested meaning. Then we talked about to the forward exercise, how we can use these four words or five words or six words to practice making sentences and how it forces us to be very creative thinking in English, this then is connected with our idea of variations, making single sentence variations or making complete paragraph variations. And now this forces us to think in English locked, how we have to be creative, how we have to use different sentences to always be coming up with a different idea and how different ways of saying things can be basically the same but expressed maybe a different feeling. And we talked about listening, and now we can practice listening. We use the exercise of listening to clips to improve how that's really important. And if we went to really, really learn quickly, you have to do the same one over and over. Boring, yes, maybe, but effective. Okay, we also then talked about thinking, how can we think in English, thinking exercises describing things out the window, right, simple. But if we go into more detail, we find that we force ourselves to get into the habit of thinking, great, that's our goal. Okay, then we talked about movies. How to watch movies? Should we use subtitles or not? Well, there are different types of ways to watch movies. Are we learning very actively or passively? Both are. Okay. But they have different functions, right? And there were a few suggestions for movies, but generally the idea is watch what you like. One of the things that can help you like English is to watch movies that you'd like rather than movies you hate. So watch things you like, TV shows you like, okay, then the Internet. How we can use the Internet as a resource, a very, very powerful resource to, to, to begin thinking in English, communicate in English, to learn in English. And often when we're browsing online, we're enjoying ourselves having fun. And we don't really notice that we're learning. Because some things that we see on the internet are very simple. Some funny pictures with some English, a little bit of information. Well, that's learning. But even if it's one word on one picture and you understand something new that's learning. That's an environment and that's swimming in English. Then we went into our routine. And that routine, you can change around, you can adjust it. But this is a general routine you can follow to get into the habit of doing this every day, you will get better. Okay? And we need to have the right attitudes when we're learning. Don't be negative, be positive, be confident, don't be afraid. Speak. Do more. Try. Say, right. Okay. So I hope that you've got something from this course. I hope that you've really got some clear ideas about how you can actually practice your English by yourself. Now, recommend that you get a teacher. Because if you have a teacher, you can get feedback. But a lot of the things that we went over in this course you don't need a teacher for, unless you want to get feedback for the things that you do. For example, writing, for example, the Speaking exercises that you do, the direction you should go in. But a lot of these things you can practice by yourself and these can give you a background to help you improve, to help you expand your abilities. So I hope you really got something and I really enjoyed teaching this course. I had a lot of fun, and I wish you good luck in the future. I hope you all become fluent English speakers. And if you already are an English speaker, Are you watching this course? All right, so I'll see you in the next course. If you take it. I hope you do.