Listening, listening, listening and more listening is the key to speaking excellent English, it's the most important thing, because if you listen a lot, you're gonna learn vocabulary, yo[r]
(1)Rule 1
Hi, I’m A.J Hoge, the director of "Effortless English" and welcome to the Free Rules e-mail course Today is rule Now, rule is: Learn English phrases, not individual words This one, just like all the other rules, is very simple, very easy And, like the other rules, this rule is very, very powerful So simple, so powerful What is the rule? The rule is: always learn phrases, not individual words So simple
So a phrase is a group of words, it's not you can have a whole sentence, but it's just a, it's even a part of a sentence So for example, let's say, you have the word "hate", H.A.T.E., "hate", and you want to learn this new word You can, you know, just write down the word "hate", and then you will find in your dictionary the meaning and then you'll memorize it Hate, hate, hate, hate That's the old way, that's the kind of text-book way, the school way Right? In school you probably remembered a lot of individual words You had those big vocabulary lists, you tried to memorize all of them, trying to remember all these individual single words It's not a good way to learn
Much better if you learn a phrase, a group of words And where you find these phrases? You find these phrases in the real English podcasts that you're listening to, in the real English story books that you're reading So you don't memorize a list in a book No, no, no You listen to real English and when you hear a new word you write it down Or when you're reading a story book and you see a new word, you write it down But not just write down that word, you wanna write down the whole phrase or sentence that it's in All of it
So instead of saying "hate", and you just write down "hate", you would say you would write down "John hates ice-cream" You write down the whole phrase Why we this? What's the power of phrases? Well, phrases give you a lot of information, much more information
Number 1
Phrases are easier to remember, because they have meaning, they have a kind of a picture, a story, especially when you get them from something that you're reading or listening to You'll remember it "John hates ice-cream" You remember the whole story, you remember who John is, you remember that he had ice-cream and then you remember he hated it, he didn't like it Right? So you have all these extra pieces of information, all this extra information helps you remember the meaning of the phrase and the meaning of that word So it helps your memory Much easier to remember
Number 2
(2)learn groups of words, not just one word by one word by one word Word by word is slow and it doesn't help, and you don't learn any grammar But when you learn a whole phrase, you write down a phrase, you're getting extra information Maybe you don't know it, but you are
For example "John hates ice-cream" Just that word, that -s on the end: "hates", right?, John hates Well, you know from grammar study that, you know, you're you're making the subject and the verb agree You don't need to think about that Just write down the phrase "John hates ice-cream" and study it, and review it Always learn the phrase, not just that word And so, in the future, whenever you say "he hates ice-cream", "she hates ice-cream", you will add that S, the "sss", right? because that's how you learned it You learned it correctly You learned it from a phrase
On the other hand, if you learn it from a text book, you just learn: the word "hate" means "does not like" And you only learn that form, "hate", "hate", "hate", and you study, you study, you study, you memorize it That's when you start making mistakes, because you learned it only this one way You didn't learn it with other words, so sometimes you'll say "he hate ice-cream" You'll forget the S because you, you never learned it correctly in a sentence, in a phrase
So, (is) this is a very simple rule, our last rule in the course*, very, very important: every time you find a new word, always, always, always write the phrase or the sentence When you review that word again, when you study it again, always, always, always study the entire phrase or sentence Never study just the word, always the whole phrase Do this every time Your grammar will begin to improve It'll improve much faster And you'll remember the vocabulary faster and more easily And you will use that vocabulary more quickly So you get a lot of great benefits A lot of great stuff happens when you learn phrases instead of words So phrases, phrases, phrases Learn them
I hope you enjoyed the rule number one Use this rule Now, your homework is to get a little phrase notebook So when you find new English vocabulary in a lesson, in something you're listening to, in a book, in an article, write down the phrase, not just one word Write down the entire whole phrase that you find, and then review that phrase again and again each day And you will create a notebook full of phrases, full of sentences, not individual words Never an individual word
Ok, so that's rule 1, tomorrow you'll get another e-mail with rule number So I will see you tomorrow Bye-bye
Rule 2
(3)School, in University, in language schools, everywhere in the world: grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar
So my first question to you is: did it work? Was it successful? If you're watching this video you have studied English before, in school, somewhere, and probably you focused a lot on grammar rules So my question is: Can you speak English easily, quickly and automatically right now? If the answer's no, why not? Because you have studied English for many years already
Why can't you speak quickly, easily and automatically? Why not? Well, it's not your fault, actually The reason, the answer for most people is that you studied grammar rules too much, you focused on grammar rules Why? Because your teachers told you to
Why is it bad to study grammar rules? Well, because when you study grammar rules, when you focus on grammar rules, you focus on analysing English In other words, you think about English, you think about the past tense, the present tense, the future, the present perfect, the past perfect Now, for writing English, errr that's OK Why? Because when you write English you have time You can go slowly, you can write very slowly, you can think about it, you can erase your mistake it's ok You don't need to write fast
But for speaking there's no time You not have time to think about the rules for the present perfect tense in English when you're listening and speaking There's no time Someone asked you a question, and you must answer immediately You have no time to think about prepositions, you have no time to think about verb tenses, possessives, all the stuff you learned There's no time
How native speakers learn grammar? Well, I'm an English native speaker and I can tell you I never studied grammar rules Not until high school, and we studied grammar rules for writing In college native speakers study grammar rules again Why? For writing But for speaking, we don't So how we learn grammar rules? Well, we learn through listening, through hearing correct grammar, again and again and again and again A lot of correct grammar So the best way to learn English grammar is through input In other words, English coming in, mostly through your ears but reading is also ok, but don't read text books, don't read grammar books, just read easy English books, easy novels But most of all you'll be listening
Now, in the next e-mails that you get, I'll tell you exactly how to learn grammar in an easy way, in an effortless way, without studying rules So keep getting those e-mails, read the next e-mails because in later e-mails I'll tell you exactly how to learn English grammar so you can use it quickly and very fast when you're speaking, not just writing But for now, for today, the, the number two rule I want you to remember is: not study grammar rules If you focus on grammar rules it will hurt your speaking You'll speak more slowly, you'll understand more slowly
(4)Ok, good enough This is the second rule for learning to speak excellent English Tomorrow you'll get the next rule, rule number three tomorrow So I hope you enjoyed this e-mail course and these videos and I'll see you next time Bye-bye
Rule 3
Hi, I'm A.J Hoge, the director of "Effortless English", welcome to Rule Number So rule number three is very simple, so easy, and yet very, very powerful In fact, I usually say this is the number one suggestion, the number one rule, the most important rule, and so easy, and it is this: learn with your ears, not with your eyes Ok? If you want to speak excellent English, you gotta learn with your ears Listening, listening, listening and more listening is the key to speaking excellent English, it's the most important thing, because if you listen a lot, you're gonna learn vocabulary, you will learn grammar, you will get faster and you will understand better
Listening is kind of the magic key to great English speaking There's a lot of research about this and it all shows the same thing: listening is the most important thing you can So this tells us one reason you probably have some trouble with your speaking Why? Because again, when you learned English in school you probably learned mostly with your eyes Most English schools, middle school, high school, university, private English schools, most of them focus on text books in the classroom I'm sure this has been true for you also So text books, text books, text books
So that's the problem In school, basically, you learn with your eyes, and basically, in school you learn to write English You also learn to think about English So you know a lot about grammar rules In fact, you know more about grammar rules than most Americans, most Canadians, most British people, 'cause native speakers don't study that stuff very much Native speakers learn to speak English with their ears, by listening, listening, listening And that's what you must if you want to speak English quickly, easily, automatically, correctly, just like a native speaker
So, let me be a little more specific about listening, because it's important how you listen and what you listen to The most important thing is you must listen to easy English It must be easy What I mean by easy? Well, you should understand 95% [per cent] or more without stopping, without a dictionary So that's quite easy, right? You want a lot of easy English listening Now, you might try children's programmes You might try children's audio books Or maybe audio books for, you know, teenagers, like Americans who are 13, 14, 15 years old If that's too difficult, find something easier You can listen to programmes for very small children
(5)when you go to work, or when you're at home, listen when you're at lunch, listen when you're coming home from work, listen in the evening Lots and lots and lots of English listening Lots of easy listening
That's your number key: listen to podcasts, listen to my videos I have a free podcast, listen to that Listen, listen, listen OK? So it's simple, it's easy and it's super-powerful Please, this, focus on listening, not on text books, not on learning with your eyes Learn with your ears, it's the most powerful rule Ok? so that's rule number Tomorrow you'll get the next e-mail: rule number I'll see you then Bye-bye
Rule 4
Hi, this is A.J again, director of "Effortless English" Welcome to the fourth rule for speaking excellent English Now, this rule is also very simple In fact, all of these rules are simple, but when you use them, when you use all of them, change the way you use English, you will get fantastic results So rule number is also very important Rule number 4, again, is very simple, and it is this: Learn deeply Deep learning
What does that mean? Well, deep learning basically means repeating what you learn again and again and again, many, many times So this, again, is very different from the way you learned in school Unfortunately, most schools have a lot of pressure to go fast, fast, fast, fast They're always pushing the students to learn more vocabulary, more vocabulary, very fast New grammar, new grammar, new grammar Every week new grammar Every week a lot of new words, right? 'cause they're going through these text books and they're trying to finish the text book very quickly
So, what's the problem? Well, the problem is, the students, you, you learn a lot of stuff, but then you forget it, you forget what you learnt Or you remember the basic idea but you can't use it So, for example, all students who have studied English learned the past tense, you learned the past tense, but you studied it in a text book and then, boom, very fast, you went and you learned more grammar You learned possessives, you learned the future, you learned the present perfect
So you're constantly going very fast, so you never mastered the past tense You did not learn the past tense deeply, deeply, deeply like a native speaker That's why you make mistakes with the past tense, still You studied many years but you still make mistakes with the past tense It's because you never mastered it, you never learned it very, very deeply
(6)Wednesday, same lessons, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, for one week, two weeks If it's still difficult, then you it again, three weeks, four weeks It's not a race You want to learn everything very deeply so that you really learn it, so that you never forget it, so you can really use it That's deep learning So if you have an audio article or a podcast, something you're listening to and you like it, don't just listen one time, one time is not enough Five times is not enough You should listen to that (the article, the speech, whatever it is), you should listen to it 30 times, 50 times, 100 times or more
Now, you can have a few things or maybe you have two or three audio articles and each day you listen to them all, but then you repeat them again, and then you repeat them again, and you repeat them again You're learning deeply, deeply, deeply Even after you know the vocabulary, continue listening to the same thing Because knowing the vocabulary just means you can take a test and you say the meaning, but when you hear it, you instantly understand it? Can you use it quickly and easily, automatically? If the answer's no, you need to repeat more, you need to listen to that same word, phrase, sentence, article, lesson, again and again and again Many, many times This is one of the key secrets to speaking faster and to really learning grammar correctly and using it correctly
So, focus for example you listen to a story in the past tense Listen to that story again and again and again and again, one week, two weeks, three weeks Then another story in the past tense, one week, two weeks, three weeks And then another story in the past tense, one week, two weeks, three weeks You never stop! I'm a native speaker and all my life I've been learning the past tense I still listen to the past tense now, and I will as long as I live
So you never stop this basic, key, verb tenses, grammar, learning all of it, the the the c- the most common words, you gotta keep listening to them like a native speaker, you hear them every single day You repeat them again and again I've heard the past tense I don't know, tens of thousands of times, millions of times I've heard the basic most common vocabulary in English every day thousands, tens of thousands, millions of times, and I will continue to hear them That's why I can use them quickly and automatically, and maybe you can't
You just need more repetition, you gotta learn more deeply Focus on the most common verbs, the most common vocabulary, the most common English, through listening and then, repeat, repeat, repeat When you that, that's the key, that's the secret, that's how you will develop, that's how you will get automatic speaking
OK? So that's our rule today for rule number 4: deep, deep learning, repeat everything a lot, repeat it many times So I'll see you tomorrow for rule number Have a great day Take care Bye-bye
Rule 5
(7)excellent speaking e-mail course Now, remember? Before in one of the other rules I told you: not study English grammar And maybe you're thinking, "oh, my God, but how I learn grammar and how can I use correct grammar?" Well, today I'm going to tell you how to learn English grammar without studying grammar rules Mmm, that's a little tricky How we that?
Well, there's actually a very simple, easy, powerful technique And research shows that this technique is the best way to learn grammar English grammar Grammar for any language, actually So, what is this technique Well, it's called point of view stories Point of view stories Or point of view mini-stories "Mini" means "small" So these are small mini-stories Now, what's the secret to these stories? How they teach you grammar?
Well, what we is, we tell the same story but we change the point of view In other words, we change the time, for example Or we change the grammar somehow in the story Let me show you an example, a very simple example When I teach point of view stories, I teach a funny or short little story And maybe the first time, I teach it in the present, it's happening now So, for example:
There is a boy, his name is Bill Bill goes to the store He buys a bottle of water He pays two dollars for the water
Ok, that's it That's the that's our little story right now So that was in the present, and all you need to is just listen to it Listen, listen, listen, listen again Deep learning, remember? you gonna repeat it a lot of times Now, how we learn grammar with a story? Well, next, I tell the same story, but now it's the past:
There was a boy named Bill Yesterday, he went to the store He bought a bottle of water He paid two dollars for the water
That's all Now, in a normal story, in a normal point-of-view story, it's longer and it's more difficult, of course In my lessons, my point-of-view stories are longer, they're more difficult But this is an example It's an easy example So now, you've got the present, you've got the past, you listen to that story in the past many times
Don't think about the grammar rules, you not think "oh, this is the past tense, oh, paid is an irregular verb" No, no, no, don't think about that Just listen to the story and understand the meaning That's all you need to Listen to the first story, understand the meaning Listen to the second story, understand the meaning That's all It's easy, effortless grammar learning So next, I might tell the same story in the future So I'd say, imagine, imagine in the future, next year Imagine:
There will be a boy His name will be Bill He's going to go to the store and he'll buy a bottle of water He's going to pay two dollars for the water
(8)every day And every day, since last year, he has paid two dollars for the water
So, you don't need to know the name of the grammar or the verb tense that I'm using It's called the present perfect but you don't need to know that I don't want you to think about that All you need to is listen to the story I'm using words to help you understand the meaning I said "since last year" So now you understand that these changes, these verbs, they change because something happened in the past and has continued for a while
But you don't need to think about that That's why these stories are so easy and powerful You just listen You listen to story number one You listen to the story number two, the story number three, the story number four, and you learn the grammar like a native speaker, like a child When you learn grammar like this, using these kinds of stories, it goes deep You learn to use grammar automatically, quickly You learn to understand it instantly, quickly, automatically You don't need to think about a bunch of rules
Forget the rules, you don't need to know them You want to learn it automatically, the same way I learnt English grammar, the same way all native speakers learned English grammar Learn English grammar using these point-of-view stories Your grammar, your speaking grammar will really improve quickly, and you'll feel more relaxed because you'll start to use correct grammar automatically, you won't even think about it You can stop thinking so much You can just relax, listen and speak
Ok? So these are powerful point of view stories to learn English grammar
Alright? That's the end of today's rule, I will see you tomorrow for our next rule Take care and have a great day Bye-bye
Rule 6
Hi, this is A.J Hoge, director of "Effortless English", and today we have rule number to speak excellent English What's rule number 6? Rule number is to use real English materials Only use real English materials Now, before I told you: stop using text books In fact I told you to throw away your text books I told you to burn your text books I hope you did it
(9)that's interesting, maybe a romance book, maybe an adventure story Something like that It's easy, it's fun That's the best kind of reading
So, you know that you should focus on your listening Your listening should be 80% of your learning So what should you listen to? Same thing, you should listen to easy English that you enjoy, about topics that you enjoy You should enjoy the speaker, you should enjoy their voice, you should enjoy their energy, you should enjoy the topics So you don't want to listen to text book CDs, those are terrible, you know: - hello, how are you? - I'm fine, and you? Oh, terrible, terrible, terrible You don't want to listen to actors, ok? not listen to actors Listen to people who are speaking more naturally Just like these videos are good to listen to, actually You can just practise by listening to me talk I also have a podcast Podcasts are great Now you can get on the Internet, you can find a lot of real English listening material Podcasts are perfect I have a podcast You can go to effortlessenglish.lybsin.com and you can listen to me talking about English, talking about learning, talking about my ideas, and it's free, it's easy You can just listen, listen, listen, a lot of real materials I'm just talking, and I'm a real native speaker I'm not acting And there's a lot of other podcasts out there You can pick, you know, English learning podcasts, but you can also pick a podcast about any topic you like If you like sports, find English podcasts that talk about sports If you like cars, find ones that talk about cars If you like exercise or health, find podcasts about that
You can also find audio books Audio books are another great way to practise your listening An audio book is just a book that someone's reading and they're recorded, so instead of reading the book, you listen to the book Again, choose audio books that are easy You may need to start with children's story books That's ok, you know Enjoy them, it's more fun than a text book I guarantee even listening to a story book is more interesting and more fun than some boring text book As you get better, when your level is higher, you can listen to audio books for young adults or for older children And you just keep listening, listening, and when it's too easy then you choose something a little more difficult and you listen, listen, listen more, a little more difficult, a little more difficult Eventually, when you are advanced, you can listen to CNN or the BBC or American movies, British movies, Australian movies, etc But that's at an advanced level In the beginning start with easy stuff
So you're always choosing these real things: audio books, podcasts, movies, TV shows (they can be children's TV shows, that's ok) Not text books and not text books CDs This is so important, because when you listen to real English materials, you get real spoken English Text books don't teach you real English, they teach you formal English They teach you written English, in fact The vocabulary in text books, the grammar, the style, it's all for writing Even though you're listening to these conversations they're not normal conversations But when you listen to real materials (audio books, conversations podcasts, anything that is real) that's the real English we use, Americans, Canadians, British, Australian, that's how we really speak Those are the words we use in normal conversations That's the pronunciation we use
(10)getting my e-mails, you'll actually get more suggestions from me I'll tell you how to find podcasts, how to find easy listening
OK So that's rule number I hope you enjoyed it Tomorrow rule nuber 7, our last rule Alright, I'll see you tomorrow Have a great day Bye-bye
Rule 7
Hi, this is A.J Hoge, the director of "Effortless English" and today is the last rule, rule number And rule number is very, very powerful Rule number helps you to speak quickly and to understand instantly, automatically, immediately This is true fluency, true automatic speaking So, what is rule number 7? Rule number 7, the last rule is to use listen-and-answer mini stories
What are these mini stories, listen-and-answer, and why are they powerful? Well, first, remember in the past when you went to English school In school you probably learnt with a lot of listen-and-repeat For example, the teacher said: "repeat after me, class: hi, how are you?" and the class together, everybody said: "hi, how are you?" Then, the teacher said, "I'm fine, and you?" Then, all of the class together said, "I'm fine, and you?" This is listen-and-repeat It's an old way to learn English But it's not powerful When you listen and repeat, you don't need to think in English, you don't need to think You just repeat what the teacher said Maybe you don't understand, but still, you repeat That's an old way, don't it
Much more powerful is: listen and answer, especially listen-and-answer mini stories These are special kind of stories where the teacher "asks" a story Now, I not say "tells" a story, I say "asks" a story The teacher asks a lot of very simple and easy questions Why? Well, because the student must answer questions constantly, constantly answering Hearing a question, answering Hearing a question, answering This is like real conversation When you use these listen-and-answer stories, you teach yourself to understand quickly and to respond quickly, to speak very quickly and automatically No thinking That's why these are powerful You learn to think in English and you learn to speak quickly, without thinking, without translating
(11)No In listen-and-answer stories the teacher asks the questions, the teacher asks a lot of questions, very easy questions We use easy questions because we don't want you to think If I asked a difficult question, then you might stop and think, but if the question is very easy, you can shout an answer One word, two words, ok For example, I would say: "Class, there was a boy Was there a boy?" And you shout "yes, yes" And I say "was there a boy or was there a girl?" And you immediately, instantly shout "a boy, a boy" And I say "Ah, so, there was a boy?" Again you shout "yes, yes, there was a boy" And I say, "Ah, I see, there was a boy What was his name?" You don't know, so you guess "John", or "Jim", anything You shout an answer And I say "Ah, yes, his name was John" Was John a boy or was John a girl? And you shout "a boy, a boy" And then I continue, more questions, more questions And because you are constantly answering questions, you learn to think in English, you learn to respond, to answer very, very quickly in English
These are very, very powerful Now, of course, this example is very, very simple, supersimple In my real mini story lessons it's it's more difficult and much more interesting, and there are a lot more questions And when you use these mini story lessons, you will learn to speak so much faster, so much more easily and automatically This is very powerful So, your rule number 7, absolutely very important: use listen-and-answer mini stories Super, super important Always this
And, of course, you can find a native speaker to make these stories for you Show them this video and then they will understand how to it Or you can get my lessons And, in fact, that is your next step, because now you're finished You finished the rules of effortless English Congratulations Now you need to use them, and you must use all of them so that you will learn much more quickly, so that you will understand English very quickly and so that you will speak English easily, quickly and automatically
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