Do do do do, wow, Brad Pitt has a new life! Now, what conversation would I have with him? I mean, I don't have a - I'd love to practice
- Hi, James from www.engvid.com . I mean, if I ever met Brad, I'd love to have a conversation
because we're like - see how we look alike? No, we don't. This lesson is on what - like, how can you
practice conversation when you don't have a partner? It seems, you know, it seems, you might say
oxymoron, you know, practicing conversation without a partner when you need to have a
partner to have a conversation, okay. But, you know, that's not the word I would
use, but it seems, you know, it seems impossible, aright? I'm going to give you four ways today that
you'll be able to practice, which will give you the practice of conversation without having
a partner. Don't leave just yet, I haven't lost my mind,
we're going to go do it, okay? Now, why? Why is this important? Well, number one, if you don't get the practice
in, you don't have the fluency, the pronunciation or even the vocabulary to maintain a real
conversation if you don't get the practice. But if you don't have partner, you don't get
to practice, you're in what we call a Catch-22. You don't have this, and you need this in
order to get that. So, in order to have a good conversation,
you need practice in a conversation, but if you don't have a partner to have a conversation,
you won't get good at conversation. Yeah, it's a problem. So, I want to give you something in a structure,
or methods you can take apart that you can practice and notice next time you have a conversation,
you're much better and improved so that you can - ah, wait for it - create a relationship
so they will have further conversations with you and you'll have a conversation partner. And that's why we're doing this. So, when Brad and I meet, we'll have the perfect
conversation. Anyway, moving on. So, before I go on, this video is for Alex,
Mom - I'm very sorry I forgot your name - you were such a lovely lady, and baby Matthew. I was at a restaurant with a friend up at
Shinobu in Toronto and this Russian family, beautiful little family, came over and said
"Hi, are you James from EngVid?" and I was kind of like "Yeah", and they said "We watch
in Russia." and I will say Hi, you're probably back in Russia, and baby Matthew probably
isn't a baby anymore, he's bigger, but it was brilliant meeting you and this lesson
is for you, okay? Anyway, so this is four ways to improve conversation
skills when you're alone. I've explained the "why", so let's talk about
the "how". What I'm going to use is - well, the "how"
is actually right here on the board but I'll go into it. We're going to start trying to use the four
methods of learning that we have when you learn a language, which is listening, speaking,
or which are-listening, speaking, reading, and writing, but I'm going to be listing them
a little bit differently in order to emphasize what parts we want to work on to improve our
conversation skills alone, so let's go to the board this way, this way. Okay, so you notice I have input and output,
and this include the skills I talked about, like you're repeating yourself, yes, but I'm
breaking them down into different segments because each part, there's - in my opinion
and from what I've read, there is way of using these things and input is, obviously, inputting,
putting stuff inside your head, you could say, put in. And when you input stuff, that's things like
reading and listening, okay? You're not producing anything yourself, you're
sitting there and just stuff's coming in. Input. Output is like, out, putting out. That's me right now, I'm speaking. I'm speaking to you, that's output. Also, writing is output. It means I'm putting out information or I'm
communicating with the world. Input is taking information in to understand
the world, output is to put information out, alright? So, let's go. So, that's input and output. The next one I want to do is talk about pacing. Pacing is what I am doing now. I'm walking. But, how fast you walk, how long the strides,
what is the pace, the speed? When we talk about pacing in language, at
the beginning of this video, you probably noticed that I was speaking very, very fast
or very quickly. My pacing was fast. I've slowed it down now. Every language has its own flow and its own
pace. For example, "Ni hao mah" in Mandarin is not
the same as "Coc de mas verna" in Russian. The pace is different, alright? So, we're going to look at pace and we're
going to look at the speed, let's just get rid of this bracket here. The breaks in the language. In English, we have certain breaks just as
they do in Japanese. Some breaks are harder, some flow like "Como
estas muy?", alright? If you're doing it in Spanish, it follows,
right? Less break. We're also going to look at mimicking. Mimicking is not the same as imitation. I made a - immitate, it's delicious, yes,
it's nice but it's not delicious, so no "mmm", so im, it means, so I made a mistake, it happens
to everyone, alright? So, imitate, sorry. So, imitating or copying is - imitate means
to do something similar to. Mimicking is to like, exaggerate and sometimes
you do it to make fun of something, alright, or to ridicule, but we're going to use this
particular skill of imitating and copying to help enhance your English. Then, we're going to look at some creative
practice. A couple of things that you can do, or one
thing in particular, to open up your mind so when you get locked into a pattern or a
habit, we call it a rut. It's harder for you to learn new things or
have new things come in, but if we can break that up a little bit, it gives your brain
the opportunity to start fresh or be new, so it can absorb more information. In fact, what I said here was opening the
mind, so it can be more responsive and learn more, faster. Let me repeat that again, if we open your
mind, we can make it more responsive, it means it can move faster, and it can learn faster. This is important, because what a lot of people
forget is when things stop being fun or interesting, you quit. You stop. And it's important to remember, if you've
been even watching this video, you've already given me 10 minutes of your life. If you've been studying for a year, you've
been studying and giving a year of your life to something. You don't want to quit because it's no longer
fun or interesting. To me, that has been a waste of something
you worked on that you clearly want, but if we can make it interesting and fun and you
can learn faster, you can get more of what you want here and now, we'll make you better
at what you want and get the things you want faster. In this case, it can be getting a job, getting
a relationship, or just being able to travel. You put the time in, so let's make it worthwhile
for you, okay? Anyway. So, these are the four things we're going
to practice - or these four methods - in order to help increase or improve our conversation
skills when we don't have partner. A lot of people said it couldn't be done,
but they weren't me. You ready? See you in a second. We're going to go the board for those lessons. Okay, so we're back. So, what I want to do is take on two of the
methods right away, which is input and output. They're like brother and sister. You need one to go with the other and they
usually go together. When we're studying in English, if you're
doing writing, we always say it's best to read a lot first. And if you're writing a lot, we say read a
lot, so they go together. Anyway. I'm going to come here and say a simple statement. Conversation is like a two-way street, okay? A two-way street, you have traffic going this
way and traffic going this way. It's not just about you, okay? You need to understand other people as much
as you need to be understood. You need to see their perspective if you want
to have good communication. And in this case, I'm going to be using input
to substitute as your partner, your reading partner. I'm sorry, your reading partner. I'm going to use reading to be your partner. Now, you might say "How does reading substitute
as a partner?" Well, it's not just reading, we have to specifically
talk about something called fiction, reading fiction, and you might say "What is fiction?" Fiction is a story that is not true. When you think about romance novels, science
fiction novels, comic books, they're not real, but they're stories, they're made up stories. Fiction. What they have found, or during studies they
have found, is that people who read a lot of fiction tend to understand other people
more. They tend to have more empathy. Empathy is they feel and understand others,
right? Or they feel the pain or the happiness that
other people feel. So, why is this important in our conversation
skill when I'm by myself? Well, if I don't have a person to speak to,
it doesn't make sense. It just doesn't work. You need to interact with someone, and if
I can't react or, you know, work with a real person, the next best thing is a fiction novel,
because as the writer writes, they are asking us to get into someone else's head and understand
them and understand how they communicate. And even though it's not a one on one real
person, it's similar enough that they have found that it improves people's ability to
communicate after reading a lot when they meet real people. In fact, they say that in some ways, that
people who read a lot of fiction have better communication skills and interact better with
people than people who just talk. Because it's the whole thing of seeing things
from their perspective, taking your time to understand it, because you can't - they don't
allow you to speak, you just take information in - input - and as you're taking it in, you're
like "Okay, I got it, I got it", and if you don't get it, you don't understand the story
though, it doesn't make sense. But when you do get it, the story comes alive
and you're like "Wow, that is so cool!". And what's really cool is that you get to
actually say something after, but being understood is great. Letting people know you understand them is
sometimes better, because then they give you the opportunity to be understood. And, by the way, when we go up here to the
board, I do have a little statement on that, which is I want you to read and read fiction
in order to get that perspective from others and that empathy and that, you know, ability
to work in social circles. But, I also want you to know that it's not
just me saying this. Here is something right here where it says,
okay, here's something. I'm saying, "Reading helps people modestly
improve understanding and their mental reaction to others in social situations." I took this out of Psychology Today, it was
written in 2018 from a research study, okay? That's because they found that, and I found
that in my classrooms, the ones that read the most were the ones much more capable of
communicating with others, right? And that's all this is saying is that you
read, when you're in a social situation which is in a school environment, on a date, or
in a business environment, you're the one who can actually speak to other people, because
you're listening to them, and that's the important part. So, the reading becomes the partner that you
need when you don't have one. Cool? Good. So, now that you've got (muffled) because
you want to talk, you're like, I did all this listening, I'm taking all this stuff in, when
is it my turn? Let's talk about writing. Now, you might say writing has nothing to
do with speaking, but there is a thread that they both have, or something that joins them
together, which is thought. One thing about writing is, or speaking, is
when I'm speaking to you, I can make a mistake. That mistake is instant. I wouldn't say it's permanent but in a way
it's instant and you can be judged on that right way. When I write that same statement on a piece
of paper, you don't know what I've written until you get to see it, so I get the opportunity
when I write it down to change it and modify it and improve it, look for mistakes in it. In fact, when I do lessons, I do that very
same thing. I write all the stuff on the board, then I
get a friend to look it over and say, "Look it over!" and he checks for mistakes and I
go "Okay, great!" and ok, see if I made a mistake, because sometimes I miss something. And by the time you see it, it looks pretty
good and I'm like yeah, well, we correct it. Now, that wouldn't happen if I didn't do that. You might go "Mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake"
and you'd be so caught up in my mistakes you wouldn't actually see what I'm trying to say. Writing gives you the opportunity to correct
what's going on up here, or to see what's going on up here and get the help you need
to fix it. Now, the beautiful thing about writing is
you can be creative with it. You can change things around and experiment
to see. You can be more forceful or you can be softer,
and you can do all of that while doing it, you're actually doing it with repetition and
improving the natural flow that will come out of your mouth, because as you fix it,
you're not just fixing it for the paper, you're fixing it for your mind so your mind knows
the most accurate or the most correct way of expressing what you want to say to people
so they can understand you. So, you're writing, you know, a page a day,
two pages a day, and I'm not saying go crazy, but I would say yeah, take a day. Write out a page, a paragraph, of expressing
yourself. Put it away for about ten minutes, come back
to it then read it again, read what you've written, look for mistakes. You'll find them, if you put it away, you'll
find them then correct it, put it away again and come back to it, you might even find other
ones. We need fresh eyes sometimes, but as you're
doing that, each time you're correcting it, you're asking your mind to be more critical
and to learn, learn from what you're doing, and by doing that on a regular basis, you'll
start noticing that when you speak, you just speak better, alright? So, what I wrote over here, I was saying:
Writing does what speaking does not. It gives you time. That's what you want to think about. It gives you time to think about structure,
and in this case, I'm talking about structure as in grammar, what is the grammar, what is
the syntax? You can't do that when you're speaking, because
as you're thinking about getting the words out, you don't have time to go in your head
and say "stop, go back, replace, and redo", okay? But writing does that, okay? And because you're doing that, you're able
to improve it, modify it, and learn from it, okay. And by the way, that repetition, by repeating
it, you create a more natural form of expression. What I mean by that is by through the repetition,
I can say "Ni hao ma, Ni hao ma, Ni hao ma", but I've done it for so many years and when
I had some students I was teaching, and "Ni hao ma", "ma, mah, muh, muh", or if you're
Russian, "Coc de mas verna". It's like, what, where is that coming from? Repetition over months. It's not perfect, it's not supposed to be,
but I don't think about it, but I needed to repeat it, and I did that on paper, believe
it or not, and then I would speak to people and they'd go "Hey!" and I'd say "Stop, that's
all the Russian I know!" Anyway. So, with writing, we get the ability to repeat
before we go into public and after we get, you know, we go over it enough and then work
on it and perfect it, it will come out much naturally when we actually speak with other
people. So, combining these two, input and output,
we get the being able to express ourselves fully, being able to change it, that's the
modify part that's important, you don't want to repeat the same thing over and over again. I've actually repeated the same information
to you about three times in different ways, and you may not have noticed it because I've
changed the words to give each person who needs it a different message to take. But then, I want the input because when people
are speaking, if I want the conversation to continue, remember I said it's a two-way speech,
speech, street, I need to understand what they're saying to me and they need to know
that, because when that happens, they feel understood, they will continue and I will
actually gain a partner to speak to. Remember, if you don't have anyone to speak
to now, every opportunity you get might be the only opportunity and you have to take
advantage of that and you only do that by practicing beforehand, like if you know anything
about Batman? He's prepared for everything. That's your job now with input and output. Now, I want to go and talk about the other
two methods I've given you, right? We'll do that in the section before, so remember
this - input, read, but don't just read, read fiction. You can even take some notes on it, but read
to get the perspective of others. Output: write, create, modify, learn. You ready? Two more methods to go. Okay, now. I wouldn't be talking to you, "blehblehblehbleh",
wow, that pace was very fast. That's pacing. How do you know? Because now I'm going slowly. Pace. I want to talk about pacing and mimicking
here. Now, that noise I did at the beginning and
then how I slowed it down is to show you that there are different speeds, what is the pace? When you're walking, you can walk slowly or
you can walk very quickly. You can have a long walk that's quick or short,
it's different pacing. And why is this important? Because every language has its own pace. Spanish tends to flow and it's a little faster
than English. English is slower, but it's faster than Japanese. Japanese is like - Oh god, I can't believe
I'm doing this - it's like "Hai, hai, hai, hai", it's like "cut, cut" when you say like
"Ohayo Gozaimasu", "Ohayo Gozaimasu", you see, chop, chop. In English, you'd say "How are you doing?" It's like, how are you doing, alright? In German, "Sprichst du Deutsch", very, "Sprichst
du Deutsch!", I'm going to "Sprichst du Deutsch the pacing is different, how it comes out
is different, and every language has its own natural rhythm and speed and you have to learn
it. You change "Ohayo Gozaimasu" to [faster] "Ohayo
Gozaimasu", Japanese people go "What are you saying?" Well, I said the words, but I changed the
pace and it's confusing. The same happens in English, and that's why
many people who speak properly but get the pace wrong found that they're not understood. Why am I telling you this? Because I told you in this lesson, we want
to work without a partner, or we're forced to work without a partner, but we have to
improve. We talked about writing, we talked about reading,
remember those four skills, now we're coming into listening. Listening is how you get the pace of a language,
and one of the best ways to do it is through music. Because when you get music, you notice when
it's a good song, you bounce to the beat, you bounce, you're like, you're talking to
your friend at a club, you don't want to, your body starts to move and you get to know
what the beat is, you start moving with it and it's almost involuntary. But, it's natural. And when we use language and there's music
when people sing, they sing with the same kind of pacing. I had a class one time where I had students
listen to a song in English and then we had - it was a Japanese song and we had it with
English subtitles and people tried to sing it but they didn't speak Japanese, so they
tried to sing it in English and it just sounded horrible and the Japanese people were like
"OH!", they couldn't get it. They weren't actually listening to what the
pacing of the Japanese language was so they couldn't sing it with the song. I like songs because - and I'm bringing it
to pacing - singing is you, hm, how do I say it? There's a natural rhythm with music and we
follow it, we don't have to think about it, okay? And when you're working with a language and
you've got that natural rhythm, you can pick up on the pace of the words, so we can switch
it up and it's not so difficult. In real speech, we tend to focus on the content
of what we're saying and the meaning and we go "bap, bap, bap", but I don't know, actually
I could challenge you, most of you out there have an English song you like and when you
sing it, you don't sound Russian, you don't sound Japanese, you don't sound Indian, you
don't sound Chinese, you don't sound Spanish, you sound like you're English, but only for
that 30 - 3 minutes and 45 seconds, right? Because you've got the pacing down of the
language, you're not trying to think about it, you just let that rhythm flow. So, my suggestion for improving your listening
skills as part of a conversation, because when we talked about reading, that's input,
but it's not actually working on the auditory, it's getting into the mind, how the brain
works. But, to get into how the words actually come
out, listening, I would suggest we go for pacing with music. And pacing includes, and let me go here for
you, I'm just going to read this out: Every language has a natural speed, I just discussed
that with you, and breaks and flow. So, when we talk about pacing, it's also the
break in the language. Does it flow and there's no break? That would be Spanish. "Como estas hoy? Como estas" together, it's almost no break. There is, or you wouldn't know the words,
but it's very difficult to hear versus "How are you?" Much easier in English, alright? So, there are breaks and the flow. The flow is like, sometimes language is more
sing-songy. When you deal with Chinese, it's an Asian
language but it's more sing-songy "Ni hao ma" versus as I said, Japanese, "Ohayo Gozaimasu",
that's not sing-songy at all, but they're both Asian languages, so there's flow, there's
break, and there's a natural speed to it. The Chinese is faster than the Japanese. So, by learning the music, and I don't mean
music, singing, you knew I was getting there. Signing and listening to music will help you
with the natural flow of how the words should come out of your mouth when you're speaking
and some people go "What, I don't see it, I don't get it, I don't...", think about it. I've had students try to sing and they find
it extremely difficult, harder than speaking. And I say yes, because when we're doing singing,
the singers use the music and their lyrics which are the words they're using for emphasis,
to get emotion, to move you and it's very difficult because they might even extend or
exaggerate sound, which helps with pronunciation, by the way, and when they're doing all that
stuff, it's harder to follow along if it's not your first language, but being able to
master that and getting that out than when you're listening to someone speak, it's so
much easier, because the words are used like little boxes, the proper way with no exaggeration
or form so it's easier for you to get that information in. So, without having a partner, listening to
television is good, listen to music. You'll enjoy it because it is fun, there's
always a genre, genre is type of music, I don't care if you like death metal "Nah nah
nah nah nah", I don't care if you like that, I don't understand it and I speak English,
Okay? I'm like "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah", that's
how I sing it. Or if you like the opera, alright? People love that. They can't change the flow too much or even
native speakers don't understand it, regardless of the language, especially in English, so
by getting to music, listening to it, and really listening to it, listening to when
the breaks are, and you'll find that there are commonalities and common patterns where
they have to have a break for the maximum meaning to be taken in, that will help you
with your listening skills on your journey to practice without a partner. Cool, right? So, I've got you reading and writing, reading
fiction, not boring textbooks, okay? So, you can read something you enjoy as long
as it's fiction, I've got you writing, so write out all those nasty little thoughts. Nasty - things you think in your head that
you won't say to people like "I want to say this!", alright? Correcting it and then finding a better way
of saying it, so we've got that, and now I've got you for your listening part, alright,
actually listening to people, listening to music. Here's a little hint, when I did a video on
it before, how to learn from YouTube, you can turn up the speed of the music, so it'll
go from 1 to 1.5, I won't go into it now but go check through my videos, you'll find one,
"How to use YouTube to increase your English" and it'll tell you actually how to use the
system to speed up the English so that you can learn like, hear the music faster and
then you can slow it down so it's much easier for you to pick up the sounds and you'll notice
in natural conversation, you'll hear things clearer and faster. You're welcome! Alright. Now, I've gone from listening, and I want
to touch on the fourth skill, which is called mimicking, okay? Oh, sorry, before I go to mimicking, I almost
forgot, slang. The cool thing about music especially pop
music, pop music, everybody knows, pop music, pop, pop, pop music, they use slang. Slang is like, shortened language, like "c'mon",
instead of "come on", "c'mon", right? Cool language, "phat - pretty, hot, and tempting",
stuff like that. In popular music, a lot of slang that you
will not find in a dictionary will be in music, and because music's coming out every single
day, unlike a book, a book comes out now, you've got to wait two years for it to be
published again, songs are coming on the radio all the time. It gives you a new opportunity to learn the
new cultural words that are coming out that won't be in a dictionary in a year or maybe
five years before people go "Oh, this is a new word that we have", alright? There's something we call body hacking or
bio-hacking, came in like 2017, it's not a real word, a guy started it named Dave Asprey
started doing this stuff and then the whole world was like you can bio-hack by having
bullet coffee and taking sleep like this? And it became a new word. You couldn't find it in a dictionary or in
a translator, but people were using it. But they were popping it in music, right? Hacking this and hacking that, so it's a good
word to catch up on the cultural norms that are going on before they're written down on
paper and become "official" language instead of slang. Now, go to go to mimicking, mimicking speaking. Mimicking, mimicking is like copying and like
imitating. It's actually both and a bit more. Mimicking is the first thing you did to learn
a language as a child and you say, "What do I mean?". Well, when you mimic something, you copy and
you use it and usually, you exaggerate it. A lot of times, we exaggerate when we're mimicking
to make fun of somebody or something. "I am the biggest and the best and the greatest
guy ever!" I'm mimicking somebody, I'm exaggerating,
this person doesn't speak like this, but when I do like, the little accordion with the little
fingers and I rush like this you go "I know who it is!". If you put the two of us together, I sound
like a terrible example, but because of my exaggeration, you can see where it came from
and you understand. Now, I get a little better and say, "I'm the
best" and then you go "Oh yeah!". The best students I've ever seen when they
were speaking, the best time they were ever speaking was when they made fun of me. I would say something and I'd say, "We have
to do this now". And they'd go "Teacher, you no speak good
English, we don't understand", and I go "What do you mean?" and they go "You have to do
this now!" but it was almost perfect like, no accent, perfect cadence, woah, where did
you get that from? "Just making fun of you, teacher." In fact, there's a couple of things I say
that people make fun of, and when I give it back to them, they always laugh because it's
sort of like "Oh, this is what it sounds like it to me" and I exaggerate it. I think for me it's the word "can't" because
I say "can't", and people will go "You can't do this, you can't do that". And I go "What, do you want me to say 'cahn't'?" It's terrible. But then they're like "Ooh", because I sound
like a real American, I can't do it, but I have to make this funny face to do it, and
if you notice me doing that, that's my mimicking, I "cahn't". The importance about mimicking is this: it
teaches you motor skills. What are motor skills? In the "cahn't", I notice how I have to raise
my mouth on one side, which I don't normally do and I can feel it, and because it's exaggerated
and that's why I kept talking about exaggeration, I become aware of what I am doing. Now, once I become aware of it and I copy
it and I do this a few times or I keep doing it, it becomes more natural for me to go there
and it drops so I can go "cahn't", and I can drop it and get it more and more natural until
it becomes my natural form of speaking. So, by using mimicking, you can exaggerate
at first and then bring it back and go smaller and smaller until you're accent drops off
and you're starting to sound like the native speakers you want to sound like. What's the best way of doing this? Okay, here I'm just talking about it being
the first form a child learns for their first language, which is you, but movies. We've got you listening to music, I want you
watch movies. I want you to watch TV programs. What? But teacher, we're supposed to study. I'm like, you are studying. Watch them, get a certain part of the movie
or the television program, stop it, copy the actor, and it's not just, remember I said
motor skills for your mouth, it's also the body. Body language is very important with language. Perfect example: please, Italian people don't
get upset, but when I'm talking and I'm feeling Italian, I don't wanna get it go you, you
know, I gotta move my hands like this. This is Italian. I've never seen an Italian talk like this,
I think there's something wrong, I go, your arms are broken, you know what I'm saying? You gotta move your hands. And when I do that, my voice changes. And when I'm speaking Japanese, I keep my
hands very close to my body. Very short movements. So, "Ohayo Gozaimasu.", and I feel more Japanese. But I would never say "Ohayo Gozaimasu!" They would say "He's angry Japanese!". So it's not just the motor skills for how
to speak, but taking on the body language helps you get into the language, not just
the body language that is in the language, every language has a body language, we know
what it looks like to see an American, right? "Hey, I'm an American!" big body language,
to see an Asian with a smaller one, and the language kind of flows like that. So, when watching movies, you get to see the
whole body as well as how the mouth works. You get more of a flow through your body to
make it much more natural. There's nothing worse than seeing someone
trying to speak another language with a completely stiff words, you know, like Spanish is like
"Hey, como estas, eh?" "Eh, mi amigo!" it's very loose. Try to do that like this "Hey, como estas,
mi amigo!" Spanish people would be like "Woah, there's
something off with that." And it's true, but by getting that flow through
the body and the motor skills through the mouth, you'll find that the language flows
out of you more naturally. In fact, I've read a couple of people who
speak multiple languages and they say when they switch languages, their body language
switches with it. There's one book called "Fluent forever" and
they talk about that process of, you know, watching, getting into more than just the
words, but by taking on your whole body and mouth and mind into the language itself. So, we talked about how we can do listening
with pacing with music, so getting that pace, the flow. We've talking about speaking and mimicry,
using, you know, mimicking people, not just how they speak up here but try to get your
body into it so you can actually step into that language and perform it in a much more
natural way. Alright? I've got one more thing to do before we go
because, if you notice, the bonus has been sitting there, and homework. I want to give you a little something to open
your mind. Are you ready? See you in a second. Okay. So, in the lesson, I told you I'd give you
four techniques that you can use separately but perhaps I hope you will put them together
to make a complete lesson for yourself to practice without a partner. I explained what they were and why, as in
reading for input to understand someone's perspective, they become your partner. Output, speaking, writing, writing it down
to clarify your thoughts, make them clear so that you are clearer when you speak. Pacing, how to get the pace of the language
even though you're not speaking to someone, by practicing by singing music, listening
to videos and trying to sing along so that you get better at moving your mouth around. And then, we did mimicking for actual speaking,
copying with your body as well as your mouth to get the motor skills to sound, you know,
proper pronunciation and proper, I guess, cultural, no, slang! I almost forgot, slang, getting the proper
cultural references in slang. Now, those are the four I gave you and I said
doing those will help you to practice without a partner, so you can improve consistently. I going to give you one more thing, or two
little things you can do, but to open your mind, be more creative. Because when you're practicing with a partner
- without a partner, it can get boring, and I want to make sure that it's not boring for
you, it's interesting, it's fun, and then you are ready for anything that might come
up. It's like a utility knife. Utility knife will have like a knife, a screwdriver,
many other different things and you never know which one you're going to need. It's very small, you can carry it with you. So, in order to be prepared for anything because
luckily, if you're reading enough fiction to get different types of understanding and
you're doing enough mimicking from different situations in television, you'll be prepared
for most social situations, but to get your ready ultimately, I'm going to give you two
different methods. One is the flash cards methods, the other
is the envelope method. Now, I'm going to start with the flash cards. Oh wait, because I'm going to give it to you
in the bonus section. Dum dum dum dum! So, I'll give you my envelope method. The envelope method is simple. What I want you to do is just take - you've
been reading and writing. Take some vocabulary you had difficulty with,
write those words on pieces of paper, okay, take those pieces of paper and put them randomly
into an envelope, don't seal it, keep it open, and then just go in the envelope, grab out
a word, take the word, quickly say a sentence. That's it. Randomly. Make it more challenging, go in the envelope,
take out two words, and you have two things you could do. You could either make one sentence using these
two random words or make two sentences using one of these words in each sentence. It's up to you. It's to play. It will force your brain to be much more adaptive,
so when it comes to an environment, you have all of these words in your brain and you'll
be able to bring them out when you need them, alright? You won't always be watching television be
a play, but there's nothing worse than having information in your brain trapped that you
can't get at. This will force you to take it out when you
need it, when you don't expect to take it out, be able to use it and use it properly. And you'll be surprised how you start in the
real world, when you talk to someone, and get the opportunity being able to start bringing
out new vocabulary you've learned from your listening, reading, writing - listening, reading,
and writing, all four. Now, finally, the bonus I wanted to give you
- so, you got a bonus bonus - is a new way to do flash cards. Most people do flash cards, they have one
word. They'll say, for example "book", you want
to learn "book". So, I'm going to take a Hebrew word "sefer",
you've never heard "sefer" before, right? Or "sefer, sefer", so this is "sefer", "sefer",
okay? Alright? This means "book", but I don't want you just
to put book. Sure, you're going to put "book" in there,
but I want you to put down on your new one, so you're going to use that, write the meaning
"book", write a sentence, I don't have room to write a sentence so we're not going to
do that part, but you'd write a sentence, a small sentence, using it like "I like sefer
in the morning." Makes no sense, but "I like to read sefer
on the bus", okay? Now, the other thing I would want you to do
is write it in phonetics, now sefer is like this, it's not "sefer", that's what it looks
like in English, so I would say this, I would write this: say-fell, say-fell. They'll go "That's correct!" but they will
probably look and go "You go 'sefer'" and I'll go "No, no, it's "say-fell". No, this not correct, you go "say-fell", correct,
not correct spelling. I go, "I don't care, this is the phonetics". This is what it sounds like when an English
person hears it, so write "say-fell". I know "sefer" means "book". So, now I know how to say it and I know what
it means and the last thing I'll do is draw a picture. By drawing that picture, it helps it to stay
in my mind, because we're picture creatures. Everything we see is usually an image. I have the image, I have "say-fell", and I
go "sefer, book". Quickly turn over, book, sefer, "say-fell". In the old days, flash cards are, you have
this and the word. I want you to make yours more juicer, better
for communication, helping you with your conversation by adding little pieces of extra information
to make it go deeper into you it'll come out in a much more natural form, that's why we're
going to do the sentence, which I'm not doing right now, write out a sentence to help you
go "Ah ok, yeah, reading sefers will help you with knowledge". Anyway, let me finish this off. So, you've got two little things you can do. I want to give you homework. Your practice is to do this. I want you to take one of the methods I've
given you, either the listening, okay let's put it this way, output, input, pacing, or
mimicking, take one, spend that day working on that method, okay? So, you're not spending hours, maybe half
an hour to an hour if you have it. Do one each day, so that's four days on, take
a day off, okay, so take Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, do it, don't do anything
Friday, then repeat, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, so you're breaking up, changing the
days, and you're giving yourself a break, okay? By doing that on a regular basis, eventually
what will happen is that each skill will get better and better and you can combine them
until you're actually improving your conversation without a partner, and you'll be so surprised
how well you communicate even though you don't have a live partner to work with. Now, I want you to do me a favor. Leave a comment below on which is your favorite
method to use, and when do you use it? Anyway, want to say thank you very much for
watching this video, I hope you find it very useful. I'm sure you will if you actually put the
principles into practice, and I can't wait for you to have your first conversation. Anyway, before I go, there's no quiz to this
one, but I still want you to go to EngVid which is www.engvid.com . Go check out myself,
other videos I have on conversation and communication, and other teachers. You'll have a brilliant time. Remember, you don't have a partner, so what
are you waiting for? Have a good one.
