Ask Me Anything - Live Stream

and we are live hello everyone how are you i hope that you can hear me and see me well please let me know in the comments and also let me know how you're doing are you well is the weather good are you feeling happy today is going to be something a little bit different um this is going to be quite a personal live stream not so much a lesson but these kinds of things are always good for listening practice so if you have nothing better to do then why not hang out with me for a little while and uh i'm here to answer some of those questions that i see in the comments and i see in personal messages that i receive and i never answer because they're of a personal nature um of course having the level of audience that i have now there's quite a lot of you and so sometimes i'm happy to answer questions but i just don't have the time or the capacity to to respond individually to all comments and all messages so this is your chance to ask those burning questions and for me to give you a little bit more background about myself and to answer those questions that you have about me and my personal life okay so um let me get started i've had a couple of questions on both instagram and youtube here asking me how old i am so that's always a good question to start with uh so i am 39 years old i will be 40 this year which is a very scary number um i'll be 40 in september and i'm very much looking forward to actually i think 40 is the new 30 as far as i'm concerned so age is just a number but it is a very big number um yeah so 39 is my age um another person asked me where in the uk i live and i am in i'm actually in surrey technically but it's greater london so i'm within the m25 the m25 is a circular main road a motorway that encircles london it's quite a large area my son's just knocking on the door hi jacob and that brings me on to another question that i get often which is are you single um no i'm not single i am very much um unsingle i'm very much um connected and committed to my partner nick and we have two beautiful children jacob who's still knocking at the door and my youngest son who's seven months old caspian so jacob is two and a half more than two and a half actually he'll be three in september and i have a seven month old as well it's very difficult to um function with two young children especially when you're all working from home as well so the father is working from home and i'm working from home many of you might be asking and i've seen the question actually are you married no we're not married it's not because we don't want to be married it's more because of practicalities and financial commitments um getting married in the uk it's expensive unless you literally just pay for the ceremony just to get married and legally find those documents if you're having a proper wedding it costs thousands and thousands of pounds and we just don't have that we've got two young boys we bought a house and so you know providing for young children is an expensive past time so we don't have the money to get married but for all intents and purposes we are as good as married we are completely committed to each other we have no doubt that we are spending our lives together we have children now so that's it that's us made for life is everyone here married how do you feel about two people having children together and not being married in the old days people would say that that's living in sin they say oh we are living in sin you're not married that's terrible um but these days in the uk people don't mind most people live together without being married i think it's a good test for a relationship if you're marrying for love it's a good test to live with someone and truly know what they're like um before you commit to living with them forever and marrying them so um ara says 40 is the new 30 age is only a number now i do believe that phrase good good yes i think as long as you stay young in your in your spirit and you keep your body healthy then age really is just a number it doesn't really matter how old you are okay let me just go to the questions here now um have you ever seen any episodes of doctor who is it still popular in the uk so i don't watch much television to be honest i don't have much time but i have seen episodes of doctor who they were remaking it uh recently in the last few years they've made new new episodes of doctor who and it was very very popular the remake it's such a cult classic if you're interested in knowing more about british culture then watching doctor who and knowing about doctor who is definitely a must because it's definitely a big part of british culture it's a cult classic a cult classic um okay nicole says do you believe in god this is an interesting one a couple of you have asked me about religion so i am not religious uh i grew up in a spiritualist family um and i've been friends with and shared my time with lots of people of different beliefs different faiths but i i feel like religion causes more problems i know that there's this fantastic element of religion which is community and i think that's the best thing about religion that that faith and community and love that religion brings is the best part of religion and i would often go to church throughout my life at different points i would go to church just to be a part of that to feel a part of the local community to meet people to share in that sense of gratitude and respect and love and understanding of one another of different people all coming together in one place for a common cause but i feel like religion causes a lot of problems as well i feel like there's a lot of conflict and hatred that comes from different factions different um different belief systems and i don't buy into that um i'm very much a live and let live kind of person and hopes that everyone can live in harmony and we all get on and i feel like everybody has a right to be and everyone has a right to believe what they want to believe as long as they're not hurting other people so my religion is is just people and life um i love my family i love my friends and i try to live a very careful conscientious life that's respectful for the environment respectful to the people around me and i try and provide value to other people that's how i live my life so i'm not particularly religious i don't know if there's a god if there is then i hope that he will look at my time on earth and feel like i did a good job but i don't prescribe to a specific religion no okay let's move on from that one um my name is on the screen i'm anna uh anna english english is my middle name it's not really but that's a bit of fun um i am british some people ask me where i'm from because i don't necessarily look particularly british but i am my mum and dad are both british my grandparents were british um yeah i just have quite dark features so some people think i might be russian or something um but no i'm british and i live in the south of england i was born in the north of england and someone asked me i can't remember who it was but i did see the question what do i think about the northern accent i love it i love accents those of you who know my channel and the kinds of videos i put out will know that i'm a huge fan of accents particularly regional accents in the uk i try to expose them as much as i can to get people familiar with the many variations of the british accents and yeah i love the northern accent some people might call me a hypocrite because i no longer have my original northern accent but um you know each to their own i slowly changed my accent via drama school because i wanted to have the ability to switch my accents on and off i wanted to learn how to do other accents so i could do different characters and i now live in the south my partner is southern so yeah i naturally just kind of shifted my accent and so when people say you can't change your accent you absolutely can and i've worked with many students to help them to improve their pronunciation to change their accent if that's what they desire and for those of you interested because i do get the question i do have a pronunciation course and assessment service which is available on my website so if you're interested in doing what i did and shifting your pronunciation into what is now a modern rp which is what i speak now it's a modern rp accent then it absolutely can be achieved you can do it okay someone asked me about my background um how i came to be a teacher here on youtube and for those of you who don't know i'll give a very brief a brief background on me ugh i hope you don't find it too boring listening just about me so i started life as an actress i was always interested in the stage and in movies i wanted to be a film star i wanted to be a shakespearean actress and i loved i loved language i loved poetry and shakespearean english and i just wanted to be on the stage reciting these fantastic monologues and living lots of different lives i wasn't satisfied to just choose one life i wanted to portray lots of different characters and and be lots of different people so i pursued life as an actress i started dancing actually initially but then moved into acting and singing i went to the royal conservatoire the royal birmingham conservatoire and studied speech and drama where i learned a lot about voice i did some workshops with the um the royal shakespeare company and i was lucky enough to perform on the globe theatre in london i then decided that i needed to improve my understanding of the singing voice after i graduated with a first degree i'm very pleased to tell you that i went on to the royal academy of music in london again i was very lucky to get a place and i did both a singing masters there as well as a license it's called a lycient which is a teaching qualification to teach voice and singing and vocal health from there i was already teaching at that point in my spare time i was teaching all sorts of different things mostly singing and then i started teaching in schools i was doing lots of different things like study skills presentations i was substitute teacher so i was covering history lessons geography lessons all sorts of things and then i took some permanent posts as a drama teacher and then i had some students who were difficult having difficulties at times with their speaking they were struggling with pronouncing certain sounds they had different different lisps and different pronunciation problems and so i started um a club an elocution club to help these children to improve and to get over these these little issues and i found that it was something that came very naturally to me i didn't have a specific elocution qualification i didn't have a background in speech therapy but i had a good understanding of the voice and a very good understanding on how to train the voice and i had a natural instinct for how to help these children and so i took that experience that i had for those children and offered my services to adults so that i moved on to teaching adults elocution which turned into what is now my pronunciation course and services that i offer i've been doing that for goodness me nearly 20 years 20 years yeah i'm feeling old uh from there i was still teaching singing teaching elocution and then i started teaching english because that's what my students wanted now i believe in life that if you open yourself up to opportunity the universe will provide opportunity if you just accept everything the universe has to offer um and i had students asking me questions about grammar and i was like is that what you want to know is that what you want to learn in our sessions and they were like please yes please so i started studying i didn't do an official qualification but i did an awful lot of study and have now been teaching english for near on 15 years online i've been here for about six years i think um you'll know that i've put out about 400 maybe 500 videos here and i'm constantly learning myself i hope that my method of teaching is fun and interesting to you guys i certainly enjoy it i enjoy the challenge of finding new ways to to impart information and new ways to help you to remember information and that's definitely the kind of um it's it's the kind of environment i wanted to to create when i created my my newest website and the courses so some of you may not know but what i've been doing for the last year is working on creating an english program a full platform which not only offers my pronunciation course and the services that go along with the assessment but to create an end-to-end product so that when you enter the program you have access to a1 a2 b1 b2 c1 c2 and you can go all the way from any level complete beginner all the way through to complete fluency and accuracy um i wanted to create an environment that was different to most online courses an environment that was supportive and motivating because to me it's not about just reel off um a couple of videos and then you know try and get as much money as possible it's not about that for me i want to make sure that whatever i create for you is actually going to make you succeed it's actually going to motivate you and make you want to come back and continue learning beyond those first few lessons so my platform includes this incredible community where all of my students can get together and interact and already it's so it's so early in in the the life of this community but already my students are so they're so supportive of one another it really warms my heart and they've already started creating skype meetings and really supporting helping one another they're all sharing their work it's fantastic so um if you are interested let me show you how you how you can get involved so this is my website i built it myself i'm very happy about this because i've been building websites for years and it took me so long um to get this right and there's still so much to do but here's my website this is what you'll see when you come on and these are the courses that are on offer so you have the pronunciation course the assessment where i'll go through a number of recordings with you and break down exactly what your pronunciation is like if you want to achieve a british english pronunciation and i'll tell you what's excellent what's working what needs a little more focus and what really needs work and so that's that product there we have the b2 course which is going incredibly well and we've just launched the b1 course as well we've got a few students enrolled on that and then coming next month we'll have a business course and the c1 course and then following that c2 a1a2 and then lots more besides but that's that's the core offering um if you are interested we have just launched the b1 course which means there's an incredible sale on at the moment it's a founding member sale so i do this for the start of every course it's a one-off offer it i never give this offer again and it's 50 off which is incredibly cheap these courses are already very very affordable they're very reasonable i've given you the best content for the most reasonable price and you get a 50 off as well up into the 25th of june now as i said um i'm really conscientious about wanting to make sure you guys have the very very best and so it's not just me that's built these courses i've hired a team of professionals we've got two phds who are experts at not only building great courses that are a great user experience so to help you stay motivated but they're also experts in teaching english and even providing teacher training to teachers so they are at the top end um yes i've invested a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of money into making what i hope is something that's really going to help you to succeed yeah so that's that um if you would like to know more obviously you can come to the website it's www.englishlikenative.co.uk and if you just want to stay up to date with what's happening you're interested in one of the future courses then if you scroll down to the bottom um oh not on this one if you go onto the courses page and then scroll down to the bottom there is yes here we go a mailing list form so if you sign up to the mailing list then you'll receive lots of news well not lots of news i probably send an email at the most once every week usually once every couple of weeks so fill out that form and you'll receive any news about special offers and i also send out free lesson notes as well okay there's nick in the background you know i talked about my lifelong partner there he is shaking an arm in the background okay so back to your questions here let me see let me go to instagram and see what you guys are asking me on instagram um okay did you ever want to have a daughter this is a good question uh so i've got two sons and before we see your legs in the background before we started having children i always wanted to have three it was i was one of three and i think whatever arrangement you grow up in whatever your setup is in terms of how many siblings you have i feel like you want to emulate that and so i've always wanted three kids and i definitely would like a mix because it's the idea of having a daughter it would be wonderful but i ended up with two sons i am not disappointed i love boys sorry that sounds worse than i meant it too boys are great fun i'm very energetic and um girls are great fun too but they're very boisterous my boys they're very much my kind of personality very sporty very physical and they suit me very well so i know i'll be happy taking them on adventures camping and climbing and skiing and i think it suits me being a mum of boys we've had two but now i'm about to turn 40. we've decided that we're not going to have any more um i'm a little bit a little bit old for it i physically feel very tired now i don't feel like i have have it in me to have another child as well as running a business and that's the thing it's very difficult to split yourself away from your kids i want to be the best mom i can be but i also want to support my community and i want to help my business to grow and be the best i can be here and provide the best content so it's it's very hard to keep taking time out to have children so i'm happy i've got two healthy children and i think that's enough so as much as i would have liked a daughter i'm going to stop um if in life i am more successful in the future and we can afford to have another child then i'd look at adopting because there are lots of children in need of a loving family and i definitely have more love to give so if we had the the fortune to be able to um take on another child then we would adopt has anyone else here adopted a child in the past um it's a very it's a very scary scary thought but it would be amazing i always watch those youtube videos of kids getting adopted and it just makes me cry it's just so heartwarming okay let me see um how does it feel having an unelected head of state so you're talking about boris johnson so because of the mess of our political system we um we didn't elect our current leader and um no we didn't no we didn't we have had some votes recently but there were local local council um elections i mean the thing is with politics is there always seems to be a few bad options so you'll it's the less there's a phrase we use the lesser of two evils um i think boris johnson personally i think he did an okay job of dealing with the pandemic we're certainly doing well now with the vaccine roll out there are lots of people who would debate debate me on that one um i think the messaging from the government has been terrible i think they were very late in making some important decisions and in the first instance we we definitely suffered a lot in the pandemic but i think it's been a very difficult few years and um i i don't trust that any of the other leaders would have done any better so i i wouldn't have voted for boris johnson myself but you know we live in a democracy so i put up with whoever has been voted in and although he hasn't been him specifically voted in the tories were voted in so you know we live with their policies um let me find another one have you ever been to south america and would you like to visit some country in south america yes so about three four years ago i went to argentina i spent three weeks in argentina i did some amazing things like climbing white water rafting um i went to base camp on akinkagua um so lots of hiking and had an amazing time it was wonderful absolutely wonderful and i would love to go back when everything is back to normal if it ever gets back to normal so yes i i love i love argentina and would love to visit other areas of south america too i'd like to visit most places in the world i've been to a lot of places and i think it's always interesting to see places for yourself because we build a view and an understanding of different places based on media and based on books and other people's opinions but sometimes we're surprised there's many places i've been to that surprised me when i was i used to work on cruise ships for a little while as a singer and i would be surprised visiting places that i thought i knew what they'd be like but they were completely different and i was like wow this is completely not what i expected um um someone asked me where would i like to visit if i could visit anywhere in the world i'd like to go to the galapagos islands um i would like to go to hawaii i'd love to visit new zealand and australia i haven't been to that part of the world yet i'd like to go back to japan um [Music] i'd like to see more of india i've been to india a few times but um i'd like to see more i would there's so many places so many places i just want to do lots of different things but at the moment it feels like traveling's proper traveling is a long way off okay um [Music] how to pronounce didn't or did not like that i didn't i did not uh okay what do you hang on here we go let me see um trying to find a question i haven't answered okay guys if you if you've got a question just ask the once um because when i'm trying to scroll through i can't obviously answer everyone's question um okay can we have a chat on whatsapp so this is a question i get a lot people ask me whether we can connect on whatsapp or if we can just chat and be friends and i tend to ignore those messages now it's not that i'm cold-hearted or mean or fake or anything like that it's there are over a million people following me across the different platforms so across facebook instagram tick tock youtube there are over a million of you and every day on every platform i get probably about 20 messages and 20 messages every day on every platform is a lot as well as obviously running a business and having two children and needing a life and needing to stay fit and all the things i have to do in life and it's hard enough to stay in touch with my own extended family and my own friends without having the pressure of trying to be friends with all of my audience as well so i don't have a whatsapp group what i do have is a support group for my students who are students on the english like native courses so the elan students have a community so they've got the community area that i talked about where they can connect with each other and with me we also have dedicated telegram is it telegram yeah i've just set it up a few weeks ago but we've got dedicated telegram groups for the students as well based on their levels and um that's a place where we can interact and chit-chat but it takes the pressure off me i can jump in and chat when i'm able to but it's not a one-to-one need for me to continue an individual conversation does that answer your question um [Music] i had a whatsapp group in the past and it was a disaster we had so many people joining and it just my phone my phone was almost crashing every day because there were so many messages and so many notifications and then people started calling me at all hours of the day and night it was terrible so i had to stop that so that's why i don't have just a general public whatsapp group okay so some of you are asking what i think about different types of people so um akshay says what do you think about the indians have you ever visited asian countries before as i said i have been to india a number of times i love indians i have um spent a lot of time i made a lot of indian friends when i was working on the cruise ships and um indians throw amazing parties um we used to have special parties for india independence day um and yeah i i i love indians if uh if that answers your question it's a strange question to ask because it really depends on the individual in general all the indians that i've been friends with have been wonderful um but you know you can't judge every individual person just based on where they're from uh which i'm sure you know what do you think of brazilian students um is one of the other questions if you have some yes i have quite a lot of brazilian students actually which is fantastic uh again i i don't think i've ever had a negative experience with any of my students who have come onto my courses um some students have been more dedicated more motivated than others but there was no correlation between where they're from and how they behaved on the course or their level of study so it's a it's it's an odd question to answer really um lincoln says greeting from brazil i always recommend your challenge channel to my friends in order to improve the british accent listening because most of the people here now only have american english accents well thank you so much for sharing i really appreciate when people share my material it's very hard for us youtubers and that's not grammatically correct either um is it us brits us youtubers i don't know it's very difficult for us anyway um we um we spend our time making content not knowing whether or not it will be successful because we're at the mercy of the youtube algorithm so sometimes we will create the best content that we thought so long and hard about which is based on things that you guys have requested and we spend so long making the the right titles making a nice thumbnail editing doing the lesson notes whatever it is we're doing we spend a lot of time on it days actually a five minute video can take a week to make and we put it out and sometimes the algorithm will go nah we're not going to show this to anyone so you don't get notified and you don't see it in your feed and so you don't know that we've released that material and it doesn't get seen and other material which perhaps we haven't necessarily put a lot of effort into and we think oh i'm a bit embarrassed about this but i'm going to put it up anyway then the youtube algorithm will go let's show this to everybody and you're like no um a bit of advice actually anyone who's thinking about starting a youtube channel or if you have don't worry too much about being perfect just do it because youtube is a tough game and it takes time to learn and the best way to learn is through experience so get your material made learn from learn from your mistakes learn from listen to what people say learn from your students your viewers and uh yeah it takes a long time and it's hard even now it's hard so i appreciate when you see when you share thank you very much okay um suvic says which university is best and cheap for doing masters in literature i don't know i don't know i didn't um do a masters in literature so i don't know but i'd be concerned about going for a university that's the cheapest a course that's cheap isn't necessarily the best um you know price points will differ depending on whether they are online or whether they are in person if it's a grand a grand university in a really old building a grade two listed building um then it might be a much more expensive experience than just doing an online course but don't just go with a course because of the price point look at the quality of the content get a feel for the teaching methods the teachers perhaps if you can because you need to stay motivated so a cheap course could be an amazing course but i think the best course is going to be a course that has materials and teachers that inspire you and motivate you okay hello manuel manuel is one of my students and he's joined us from tenerife um um manuel manuel okay yuki hi how far do you think the england england football team can reach in the 20 20 euros i don't know and that reminds me someone recently asked me um whether i prefer football or cricket i don't really follow sports um so i i do follow the world cup but i haven't recently i don't know where we're up to because i have kids you know life just kind of stops really um in terms of football or cricket i would choose football over cricket because i'm not very patient i like things happen fast but i don't follow a football team specifically because again it's quite tribal i think like it's just not me it's not me i would rather play football than watch football i'm very much a doer not a watcher very physical very sporty and i get frustrated sitting and watching i'd rather be up and kicking a ball about myself i used to be the captain of the girls football team when i was at college yay uh okay let me see on youtube any recent comments here that i've missed okay lots of people ask me why i don't try acting or they say oh your acting's great why don't you be an actor as i said earlier my background isn't acting i am an actress i'm not practicing so much at the moment uh but i am an actress my background's in acting i've done lots of acting i've done acting on stage film nothing you probably would have seen i did a lot of fan films um a few small parts in some bigger films a few little bits on british tv and um but my biggest claim to fame recently although i didn't think i would get anything lately because of the pandemic and because of having children i'm not really putting myself out there but i got an advert i did an advert for a very big beauty brand in the uk called number seven which is a skincare makeup brand and the adverts um is is running now and i did some gymnastics in the advert and it's and the adverts running in the uk and in america i will post it on my instagram at some point soon on my personal instagram which is called anna's big adventure so if you're interested in following me personally you can see all my kids i post a lot of pictures of my kids but i'll post the advert up on there as well if you want to see it so i am still acting but my focus my my passion at the moment is on youtube with you guys and that's where it'll stay for a while i think um okay let me have a look back on instagram to see what these guys are asking me um what do you write in your diary is one of the questions i don't have a diary i don't have time to have a diary uh i used to when i was a kid and it was all really boring stuff but it's really it's really interesting reading that stuff back now as a grown-up what i would write in my diary as a kid um a few inappropriate questions which i won't answer uh it's amazing it's amazing the kinds of things that people ask i mean i'm not going to dignify them with an answer but just the other day i was getting some rude pictures sent to me it's just what do you think you're going to achieve by sending me a dirty picture or asking me dirty questions what do you think i'm going to do like it's crazy it's crazy it fascinates me what must go through people's minds when they send things like that i'm sure many of you here have experienced it um okay um is this your real job someone says or are you a secret spy yes this is my real job interestingly uh youtube obviously started as a hobby and actually i was using youtube to help my singing students so i was just posting up singing exercises to help my students improve outside of face-to-face lessons but over time um my audience built and i started the english channel and i was able to make it a very successful business it's hard it is hard and every youtuber is different the size of someone's audience doesn't dictate how much money they're earning so this is some people think that if you have a million subscribers you are earning thousands and thousands of pounds but it's not true one person with a thousand subscribers maybe a little more than a thousand subscribers could earn more money than somebody with a million subscribers and this is because it depends on the amount of watch time you get so the amount of time people spend actually watching your content you can have a million subscribers and no one ever watch your videos it could happen so it depends on watch time it also depends on where in the world people are watching your material so you know some countries will pay a lot of money um for adverts to be delivered in that country some countries aren't um just aren't as expensive for advertising so if you have a a big audience in like sweden for example then you're going to be earning a lot of money because um swedish adverts are like they pay a lot of money to advertise to the swedes so it really depends on your audience and your watch time um but i've managed to be relatively relatively successful and someone asked me do you consider yourself successful i absolutely do i absolutely do i am not rich but i am very comfortable i have a house i have a family i have food in my fridge i'm able to buy good quality food which when i was younger i wasn't able to afford good quality food um i'm able to give my kids wonderful experiences like swimming lessons and trips to the zoo and things like that without worrying about the cost i have a loving partner who i respect who respects me in return who i trust and so in that respect i am one of the most successful people in the world because i have everything i could have wanted i have my health kind of i've got terrible back at the moment i need to exercise more but um yeah i'm very lucky and therefore very successful and i have a wonderful audience and lots of opportunities you just need to have a bit of a bit of guts to go and and chase your dreams oh i'm getting high i'm getting hot here okay um sonu says what should we do for better pronunciation um you need to do a lot of listening so a lot of pronunciation issues are down to ear training not knowing what you need to change not knowing what the problem is not knowing what you're hearing when you're hearing the correct pronunciation versus an incorrect pronunciation so a lot of what you need is ear training which is why on my pronunciation course there's over 5000 audios because it's important that you spend time listening really listening and then repeating shadowing mimicking in order to get the same tune and flow of speech um when i was younger i was traveling around the uk doing theater shows and everywhere we went i would mimic the accents because i wanted to understand and i wanted to be able to take those accents on and be able to switch into those accents so i'd mimic people all the time sometimes they thought i was being rude but i really wasn't i was just mimicking them but now with the internet you've got access to so many resource materials where you can hear all these different accents so choose your target accent lots of listening lots of mimicking and if you're not sure where you're going wrong find someone who will help you like you know you've got my assessment is is one option um where i'll tell you exactly what you need to do you've got amazing teachers like pronunciation with emma if you've not um discovered her she's a fantastic english pronunciation teacher she's on tiktok instagram youtube and there's plenty of others plenty of other british english teachers who help with pronunciation too loads so you've got so many resources at your fingertips oh bless you mary that's very sweet you said you're very beautiful in everything i think you should be an actress or a fashion model bless you thank you um there's been a lot of talk recently about standards beauty standards on instagram and a lot of people calling out how false this expectation is how unachievable this expectation is of beauty on instagram and i spoke about it recently feeling this pressure to be perfect to be flawless and to always look glamorous you know lots of you know me for my red lipstick and my red outfits um my big eyelashes and i do do that because sometimes that makes me feel good i do do it on my videos but i was starting to feel like it was needed for everything every little post every little video and that's not how social media works if i want to just tell you about something or show you something i shouldn't have to feel like i need to be flawless and perfect and so i made the decision a few weeks ago just to stop trying so hard i'm nearly 40. i have crow's feet which are the wrinkles you get here you know that comes from having a happy life from smiling lots i have i have sweat patches now because i'm hot um i get very rosy cheeks i you know i'm i'm human and if you look around most people are flawed nobody is perfect it's just what's wrong is our perception of what is beautiful and what's not and so when people say you're beautiful that's really sweet thank you very much um i i hope that most people can start to feel more comfortable in their own skin despite the standards that seem to be elevated on on social media so less makeup less worrying and someone asked me a question about what i would say to my younger self if i could go back and talk to my younger self and i would say stop worrying about what other people think about you stop caring about what people think of the way you look or the way you speak or whether your english is good or not you know i make mistakes all the time i make mistakes because i'm busy and i do things in a hurry when i'm doing videos like this i make mistakes but who doesn't you know um so i'd say to myself stop trying so hard to please everybody because you never will and stop worrying about what other people think you know when i first started youtube it's hard people are nasty i used to get such nasty messages i've done videos saying oh i'm upset because someone's been sending me hate messages you know people i've i've had death threats i've had people threatening to come to my house i've had people threatening my family people can be horrible but you just have to accept that there are people in society who are just nasty and just out to try and get a uh a reaction from you so you you just need to stop caring about what anyone thinks except your close friends and the people that you love and respect it's their opinion that matters because sometimes we do need to be told that we're you know not being very kind or that we're not being true to ourselves or something our friends can offer good advice and our family can offer good advice and those are the people we should listen to okay um are there any more questions how long have i been screaming oh screaming streaming nearly 50 minutes thank you for joining me guys um how are you doing uh i'm doing well thank you my dream is let me let me share this my dream is not to win the euromillion but have the same accent as you by the way do you know a country called algeria yes of course i do know a country called algeria um geography wasn't my strong point at school but i did spend a lot of time two years on cruise ships so i am very familiar with a lot of places and um it's absolutely wonderful that your dream is not to be rich but to have you've got another goal because the thing is money buys freedom to a certain extent but it doesn't buy happiness it doesn't buy happiness i've known a lot of very rich people in my time and none of them have been happy they've had a lot of freedom to do what they want but all your problems tend to continue in one way or another um you know i think you should spend your life trying to create experiences wonderful experiences and finding happiness in the small things in life like blue skies and cherries on the tree and nature yeah okay um [Music] let me find another question um may i ask what you're thinking about racism i think i think that's what you first hear what do i think about racism i think it's disgusting it's simple i think racism sexism ageism any kind of hatred towards a person based on something that's outside of their control is just disgusting and it should absolutely not be accepted by anybody it exists it exists because as human beings we are fundamentally opposed to things that are different to us we are scared of things of people of anything that's unfamiliar and we allow that fear to you know just create awful rifts in society and and make people make people miserable it's uh yeah i don't i don't agree with it i mean who does i don't think anyone does publicly uh by the way i have to say a huge thank you it's very hard to see here on my new software for streaming but uh diego you've sent me a super sticker thank you so much for that and someone else dropped a super chat earlier and i didn't catch the name but thank you so much that's really really sweet of you that's very much appreciated um emmy hi emmy how are you i hope everything's well with you you've asked about my level of education um i don't know if you were here earlier but i have a first degree honours and i have a master's as well and a license for teaching um is that hopefully that answers your question okay oh here it is a phantom of many topics you donated a super chat thank you so much and you asked a question do you enjoy hanging out at piccadilly circus not really when i didn't have children i didn't i did enjoy going around the city london's a beautiful city as many cities are there are nice areas and not so nice areas but the centre of london there are lots of beautiful historic points to kind of take in the crowd and taking the environment i used to enjoy that as a young kind of single footloose and fancy free young lady um but generally i prefer places that are a little quieter i'm not a big fan of crowds um it just becomes too noisy yeah i like i'm a bit of an introvert i'm learning that many youtubers are we're kind of like introverts that like to put themselves out there on youtube it's weird right um yeah i'm not very good in big crowds of people i like to stand on stage in front of a big crowd of people but i'm not good in kind of really busy i like to feel i can escape easily i've got this kind of anxiety about being trapped or being stuck and when you're in a crowd it's quite um overwhelming so i can't get on the train if a train is packed i won't get on and i it comes from lots of different things in in my earlier life um just fear of being trapped and being stuck and not being able to get out and breathe but i have these panic attacks and so i if i have to go into london it's rush hour i will allow an extra hour to get where i need to go because i will probably skip getting on a number of trains i'll just stand back and wait for the next one and go no that's too busy and wait for the next one or sometimes i'll get on and then more people will get on and i'll get off at the next stop and wait for the next train because i get so anxious about the train stopping and being stuck in a crowd it's horrid anyway so no i london is wonderful but it's not something i i don't tend to just hang out in in central london anymore it's too busy um is your hair color natural oh good question you might be able to see i've got a little gray here at the front i've actually been losing my hair since having having a little caspian can you see there i've got these patches i've got a lot of hair loss it's coming back now but um but yeah that was quite disconcerting actually having quite a lot of hair loss at the front but no um my actual hair color is dark but as i've been getting older my hair gets lighter and i have quite a few greys now and so i i do go to the hairdressers and and they put little bits of color on my hair just to revive it and to to banish those grays so i used to dye my hair black because i liked it really really dark but now i just go dark brown because as i'm getting older at some point i'm going to have to give in and let the grays come through it was terrible over lockdown um i started having to dye my own hair but um which is always bad because i always spill it i get all of my ears and i get it down my neck and it's just messy messy and my arms ache from having my my arms up doing it much better for the hairdresser to do it um is there rivalry between the youtube english teachers a funny thing so no there's not obviously you know we are competitors but there's quite a nice community of english teachers lots of us are genuinely friends and we you know i message a lot of the youtube teachers on whatsapp at all hours of the day and night we have chats you know i had a call with lucy the other day so lucy and i are friends um i was whatsapping with layla from um love english um she's just had a baby and i'm with sabra as well she had a baby not long ago as well um i chat to emma from pronunciation with emma and vanessa and you know there's there's a nice community a very supportive spirit because the thing is there is lots of youtube views to go around it's not like we're vying for your attention um many of you i'm sure watch more than one teacher and so there's no need for us to be like cutthroat you know we we help each other we support each other there are some teachers as they're in as there is in any group there are some people who are not as nice or um accommodating you know there have been experiences that i've had where people have been a bit backstabbing um but it's very rare in this particular niche i have to say and most people are very supportive so yay hopefully you'll stay that way um what's your favorite accent in england in england because one of my favorite accents is actually welsh and a scottish i love the scottish accent but that's not english um english accents i love the geordie accent and i'm a big fan of the brummie accent and the west country accent probably one of my favorites very friendly very friendly but i do love a welsh accent i can't i can't emulate the welsh accent it's so hard [Music] um okay let's have john what you're saying maybe because i'm more aware of the differences but i can't find that trigger or switch to go into a particular accent accents fascinate me i can't do a british one to save my life so when i'm switching accents i used to have i'd have triggers i'd have um a trigger word or a sentence or a phrase that i would use in order to do the switch so you need to just if you if you understand the the differences if you understand the features of an accent then choose a phrase that highlights those features and then and then use that or sometimes it's a placement so sometimes the accents just placed in a completely different space so it might be that it's more forward and plumb or it might be uh quite far back and like when i think about like a northern accent like i'm going really like caricature northern here when i think about that i think about it being really flat and uh and quite far back in the mouth but when i think of a very plum like heightened rp i think of it being very much forward on the lips and um yes it's always here terrible terrible examples of switching but yeah it's just thinking about placement having a trigger okay i've oh no i haven't i've been scrolling the wrong way i haven't been looking at the most recent comments i'm so sorry i was going backwards your teeth are pearly white what's the mystery it's funny i'm sure that do many people think that the british have terrible teeth is that is that what you think maybe in the past but a lot of people in britain have good teeth um my teeth are they're not that white i always put a little bit of lipstick on and that makes your teeth look whiter um i used to work in a dental surgery and and this was a long time ago now this was eight nine years ago i worked in a dental surgery as a as the receptionist and i did do a little bit of teeth whitening while i was there they just do like um some laser whitening um but that was a long time ago and the last time i saw that dentist she said my goodness me anna what have you done to your teeth they need some whitening so she thinks my teeth are not very white anymore i do go for regular dental hygiene cleans and the hygienist tends to take up any stains but i guess the biggest secret to having clean white teeth is obviously beyond brushing twice a day flossing um is not drinking lots of coffee not drinking lots of staining drinks like wine um i don't eat lots of curries curries tend to stain turmeric tends to be quite staining um i don't if i do have a glass of red wine i'm always conscious to have water afterwards to kind of take the staining agent off my teeth so sorry back to the microphone uh yeah so that's that's the secret just not not mistreating your teeth um thank you so much for your contribution that's very kind i used to watch the channel enjoyed everything continue with the great work thank you very much that's very kind of you um yeah so i i do plan to continue i have no um i've got lots of plans for the platform obviously the courses are still being built they're going to be finished by september and then there's even more exciting projects coming up next year um but yeah my main goal at the moment is just making this this platform to be the best it can be and then supporting with free material on youtube who's following me on tick tock by the way because i've started this tick tock and it's grown quite quickly which is exciting but i feel like it's a completely brand new audience there i don't feel like there's many familiar names coming up on tick tock so maybe i'm a bit old for tick tock i don't know but if you're on tick tock and you're not following me please come and join me um just look for english like a native and you'll find me uh okay so here's a question that i get a lot i spoke about this earlier how can i have a conversation with you directly um if you have a business request if it's something to do with business then you can email me my email is englishlikenative gmail.com but if it's just uh i want to be friends hi hello then they'll just go to they'll just not be responded to because i said earlier i can't i just can't i can't be friends with everybody i can provide you with what you need which is free content and and high quality courses but i can't be your friends sounds terrible but i can't i just don't have the time i've tried it before i can't do it um okay would you like to send me inside an envelope two hairs of you i want to have a lovely memory of you that's just weird that is just weird i my hoover my hoover has lots of my hair because my hair is always falling out and we're always hoovering up but no it's a very weird request anna very important question when did you start practicing gymnastics is spelt with a a j a g do you know so i'm dyslexic i struggle with like with letters and numbers and i really struggle with j and g j and g j for jam g for jim as in work out gym and gymnastics oh look at that muscle gymnastics is spelt with a j for jam g for jim with a g g gym gymnastics um can i start practicing at 22 yes absolutely if you want to start gymnastics then you're 22 years old you've got loads of life and in you go for it absolutely i started at 32 and i performed um i came fourth in a in the national gymnastics competition how incredible is that i started at 32 it surprised even me so yes you can do it um go for it [Music] um okay let me just see if there's questions here i can answer oh can you friendships with me i just answered that question i would love to but i can't what exercises do you do for your sciatica um i don't have sciatica i i said i have i do have back pain um so what do i do i do a bit of yoga um the problems i have at the moment is my baby is still breastfeeding and um he co-sleeps in my bed with me as well and he is heavy and so there's a lot of lifting and twisting and i'm not doing much exercise to work my core so what i'm trying to do is i try it doesn't happen every day i try to do stretches every morning so yoga stretches to improve my core and my strength through my stretches but other than that not very much it's terrible i need to get on with it um um [Music] okay do you teach children uh i used to i don't at the moment but this is something that i'm looking into working on next year once i finished my uh english course in english courses on the on the platform i want to work at starting to produce content aimed at children um if they're very young children i do have a youtube channel for kids called bella and beans but it's aimed at very young children um so yeah i don't at the moment maybe next year if everything goes well this year and i have the time to uh invest into a kids course uh manual this is a magic glass an hour drinking water and still has water oh yes yes i need to drink more i'm so bad at hydrating at the moment i need to drink more especially as a nursing mother dehydration causes so many problems what made you start your channel that's a good question i as i said i was teaching i was teaching elocution because i wanted to help people who were struggling with their pronunciation confidence and and then people were asking me grammar questions and so i started studying english and i felt like i had uh i felt like i had a nice method and way of delivering information that people liked so i started this channel just to see how it would go and you know we the growth of this channel has slowed down a lot but this channel has done incredibly well it's done incredibly well and it just goes to show that if you have an idea or a small desire to do something like a youtube channel don't hold back just do it you know i started with no expectation and it's become my life now it's become my my job i never expected it to be this big but it's incredibly successful and and and it's brought lots of other opportunities with it so yeah just go for it see what opportunities come out of it do you drink electrolytes i sometimes drink coconut water which is full of electrolytes apparently um do you think most of your subscribers are from india a lot of my subscribers are if you look at my demographics for my channel um it's mostly people based in the uk the us india then brazil italy are usually my top five um okay so it's been an hour and ten minutes i am going to um just answer a couple more questions i want to ask you one thing do you like natural long hair uh yeah i've i like long hair i've got long hair um i would never go short i went short when i was a child i went shoulder length and it really upset me so i will always have long hair because i think it suits me hello i'm polish and i have a series about common english could you tell me about the most abusive expressions for police uh i mean um i guess people so a bad thing to call the police is the pig um i think actually if you call the policeman a pig to their face you might get arrested or cautioned or something um so yeah that's the only one i know i don't tend to abuse the police um i hope that answers your question um okay which one is most difficult to understand for you scouts or scottish it depends on the severity of the accent not severity that's the wrong word the the strength of the accent some some scousers with really strong scars accidents are hard to understand um but then again some like glass regions some or like like really north scottish accents are hard to comprehend completely so it depends on the individual and how how severe not severe wrong word how strong their accents are um hi i have a grammar question oh let's not do grammar questions the difficulty with grammar questions off the off the cuff is that usually we have to get our ducks in a row so natives don't learn grammar rules we as natives have to learn the grammar rules to teach the grammar rules and um unless you're in a classroom teaching those rules over and over again every day as a youtube teacher you only teach them once or twice and so when someone asks you off the cuff what's the grammar for this it's like oh well hang on a minute hang on a minute i need to let me just have a think about that for a minute oh yeah actually let me double check my notes on this one oh yeah that's what it is but um but yeah a lot of grammar is very boring and um that's one of the things i do with my courses actually long lists of vocabulary and grammar rules are really dull i find them really dull not necessarily the grammar the vocabulary lists are okay but it's not a natural way of learning you don't really think about grammar rules when you're speaking when you're communicating with someone you're thinking about what you want to say about the content and so teaching grammar is really dull so my my courses are um delivered in such a way it's quite a unique way where you're learning it but it's not obvious it's not like let's drill this grammar rule you must know this grammar all it's kind of subliminal learning and um yeah hopefully very fun and immersive my students certainly think so um i've noticed the brits speak slower than let's say an average american do you think that's true too again it depends on the individual like you know i always think everyone who speaks english i think everyone should speak slower we all speak too fast um but i don't think it's true necessarily that brits speak slower than americans i just think it depends on the individual the age younger people seem to speak faster i think it's a confidence thing the faster you speak the quicker it'll be over so people speak fast to get it out so they don't lose people's attention which is silly slow down be confident take your time okay i am going to wrap this up thank you so much guys for joining me you've been amazing um like most of the time we've had 300 of you watching this is insane watching me talk about myself um thank you for being interested and thank you for being so supportive of this channel those of you who share my channel those of you who share the content um those of you who've supported me through being patrons being members of the channel or dropping super chats super stickers giving stars on facebook it really does mean a lot and i've invested so much money into creating the platform that i've created in creating free content for you it's helped me to keep this channel going through the pandemic through my pregnancies through my maternity leave so i really really appreciate all the support you give because you're not supporting just me you're supporting the entire community and you're helping me to bring education to people who wouldn't necessarily be able to get it so you're awesome um and i will hopefully do another live in two weeks time otherwise i do have a shorts channel if you enjoy shorts content so check out english like native shorts and if you're interested in coming and joining me on that new b1 course and joining my community and my telegram group then come and check out the awesome offer which i won't give again 50 off the link is down below for my um for my website that's the name anna the website and thank you very much take care lots of love stay safe be kind to one another

Channel: English Like A Native

Views: 16,003

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Id: 52AtHjzhh7k

Length: 76min 44sec (4604 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021