Hello welcome to LetThemTalkTV and today a much
requested video. it's all about how to get your English from intermediate to advanced. Now a lot
of you tell me that you are stuck at intermediate now. In life you don't want to be stuck
anywhere not on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe and certainly not at an intermediate
level of English I want to be quite clear that what I won't be suggesting in this video
is that you cover your house with post-it notes banana. shoes This is a pen. Also what I won't be doing in this
video is the obvious. Well, I will actually I'll just tell you very briefly right now you need
to read, write, speak and listen. Do a lot of that stuff and you will definitely improve but
again that's obvious and you should be doing that already and we've already got lots of fantastic
advanced grammar videos as well on this channel such as this one. One thing to consider though
that you may be doing better than you thought. For example I know 10 words of Russian perhaps
and if I sat down in a room for an hour with Svetlana I could learn 10 more and so make a
100% improvement in the time it takes to heat up a samovar. Now if you have a low level you notice
your improvement but if you've already got a good intermediate level of English if you already
know say 2 000 words if you learn 10 more words you're hardly going to notice but you are still
improving so keep on keeping on. So with that in mind let's start with my tips and tricks to get
you to advanced level. Tip number one: Learn and use words of Anglo-Saxon origin. Now this sounds
like a strange way to start but trust me on this and this is especially true if your language
is a Latin language Spanish French, Italian, Romanian Portuguese etc but it does apply to
everyone whatever your first language is now our instinct is to take the easy path to use a word
that readily translates from our own language and often it works. For example here's a
simple one PREFER now if you have the word prefer something similar in your own
language the easy way is to use it in English for example “I would prefer to live in bangalore
than Austin, texas.” which is perfectly correct - the grammar I mean I haven't been to
either city so I don't know which is better. However, a native speaker is more likely to
say I'd rather live in Bangalore than Austin now RATHER comes from the old English hrathe
dubious my pronunciation there but something like that and it means without delay that was the
original meaning and quite often the Anglo-Saxon words they sound better than the Latin equivalent
because after all English is a Germanic language and just to get you started here are six examples
of Anglo-Saxon words that you can sprinkle in your conversation they are everyday words albeit
advanced ones that you should know at this level and any google search will give you lists
of English words of Anglo-Saxon origin but be careful the words really have exactly the same
meaning as the Latin equivalent and I'll leave it to you to do the research. “I'm fed up of living
in the city I yearn for the great outdoors.” “Our business was beset by difficulties from
the start.” “20 people were arrested in the aftermath of the riot.” “The plight of
refugees in this country is being ignored.” “I was dumbfounded by his stupidity”. So tip
number one learn five Anglo-Saxon words a day also make a comment and use
at least one in your comment. Let's move on to my second tip use subtitles but
not in the way you think. You're probably already using English subtitles when you're watching
English language series or films or perhaps you're not using any subtitles at all and
if if you aren't then power to you but here's a trick I've discovered which
I find useful I think you will too. Next time you watch a film or a tv series in your
own language, not in English, in your own language switch on the English subtitles if you're
able to do that. Have you ever had the experience of watching a film in English and
you don't know what the hell they are saying or perhaps you get fifty percent or thirty percent
or ten percent it's so frustrating that in the end you just read the subtitles and you don't pay
any attention to the English anymore. Now when you watch something in your own language
you understand 100 percent you understand everything and then when you see the English
subtitles you get these moments of realization, these eureka moments, when you think ah!
that's how you say that phrase in English so for example, if you're Japanese and you
put on English subtitles on a Japanese series and then you see yoroshku onegaishimasu you
see the translation in English you think I always wondered how to say that in English
and then you think ah that's how you say it. Of course you have to make sure that you keep on
reading the subtitles because you don't need them but that's the whole point. if you don't read the
subtitles then it's not going to work is it? So make sure you focus on the subtitles and try it
out try it out and you'll see that it's extremely effective the other unexpected consequence of
doing this by the way is that you see how good or how bad the translator is and I've seen so many
translation train wrecks which makes you realize that a lot is lost in translation. Just one
example of many. I once saw an English film in Spain I can't remember the name but I do remember
that there was a medical setting and I was reading the Spanish subtitles so I was learning
Spanish and in English the line was I know a man who had TB. TB is the acronym for tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease of the lungs but somehow the line was mistranslated in
Spanish as conozco a un hombre con una tele “I know a man with a television.” Hh my god TB not
TV which of course made no sense in the context and all these baffled Spaniards in the cinema were
wondering why while discussing health issues the protagonist out of the clear blue sky announces
that somebody he knows owns a television set. Now if you have had any examples of bad translations
let us know in the comments because I love these kinds of stories. I didn't want to leave that
grammar so my next tip is for grammar bingo. That's right grammar bingo. I love grammar
bingo and believe me this can be hours of fun alone or with a friend or with family even if
you're watching the dullest most mundane drama, TV show, film. Ones that you wouldn't normally
watch if somebody paid you somebody paid you the equivalent of the national debt of Venezuela but
this game will elevate this terrible drama to the giddy heights of Citizen Kane so don't throw
away your old dvds of “Hottie and the Nottie” with Paris Hilton or Alvin and the Chipmunks
the Squeakwool or Deathbed the Bed that Eats This is how you play: You select a few
grammar points that you are learning and you award each one points according to
how difficult and how common they are so just for the sake of simplicity.
I'll just give you three; the future perfect, the past perfect continuous
and the subjunctive. Let's say the future perfect if you find that one in the drama you get one
point a lot of students have difficulty with the past perfect continuous but on the other hand
it's fairly common so we'll give it two points. The subjunctive is used but it's much less common
and it's quite rare in English so you give it 10 points. So you watch the movie and
every time you hear the grammar you shout “grammar bingo” and then you review the item
and collect your points. At the end of the film the team with the most points is the winner. “One
day I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them
away.” Grammar bingo! Past perfect continuous. Yes! My next tip is read and watch things that
are about 10 percent too difficult for you what do I mean by this if you're reading
something in English which is too easy you're going to give up because it's boring
or if you like it you're going to continue but you won't learn anything. If it's too
difficult it's going to be so frustrating you're going to give up you don't understand
what's going on and you give up pretty quickly what you want to do is to hit that sweet
spot where you understand most things but there is always some vocabulary and some
expressions that you don't know but your English is good enough to understand it from the context.
To fill the gaps if you like let me demonstrate. I looked at the table and I
saw something interesting. I picked it up and I thought is this a pen? I
looked closer and said yes, yes this is a pen Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four,
Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very
much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious,
because they just didn't hold with such nonsense. Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called
Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have
a very large mustache. LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in
Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had
but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a
Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke
lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big
as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.
The first quote was from my upcoming masterpiece This is a Pen available soon at all good
bookstores but you're probably thinking it's too easy. I'd sooner eat a kilo of Marmite on
burnt toast than read that crap and you'd be right it's for someone with a beginner's level
of English which is not you. next we had the first page of Harry Potter if you have a
good intermediate level you should understand it all except perhaps for a few words maybe drill
or beefy. Next was Bleak House by charles dickens you'll need an advanced level to understand that
there's lots of complex vocabulary so which one should you be reading? So by reading something
which is just a little bit above your level each time you pick up an English book you'll move up
the scale and of course I can't underestimate the importance of reading to improve your vocabulary
just make sure that it's something that keeps your interest. My next tip is memorizing a
passage learning by heart used to be very common but it's kind of gone out of favor in the
last few decades but there are three good reasons to memorize passages from literature
poems. Firstly memorizing is scientifically proven to improve your memory and your cognitive
functions. Secondly you'll learn lots of new words and expressions and you can use the passage like a
library and take one of those words or expressions and use it in the right moment in an email in a
business meeting in a conversation and thirdly of course you can impress your friends at a party
by speaking your favorite passage by heart. Dishonor not your mothers now attest that those
whom you called fathers did beget you, be copy now to men of grosser blood and teach them how to war. pringle anybody? My final tip is to read the dictionary. Get
a good dictionary and go through it and find words that you don't know and then go
on to google and find examples of usage don't read all the dictionary just
concentrate on finding those interesting words words that pique your curiosity
and imagination. Sounds stupid but I've done it and I'm not stupid - don't comment
about that please. Strange as it may seem, I don't have a paper dictionary anymore. I
always check online. I threw out all my paper dictionaries during the great Maria Kondo clear
out of 2018. I guess the dictionaries didn't spark joy so I gave them away. So do as I say not
as I do I'm sure you've got a dictionary somewhere anyway for the purposes of this demonstration
I'm going to find three words from the first page of the oxford paperback dictionary that
I found online and here they are. Aardvark aardvark is an animal found in south africa.
Now you I know you're thinking you're thinking well that's not important I don't really
care about that the name of a stupid animal that's where you're wrong you're wrong firstly
it's it's the first noun in the English dictionary consequently lots of businesses call their
company Aardvark Limited why because you're first on the list if you're looking for a plumber
in your area you'll find first on the list Aardvark Plumbers and enough people are too damned
lazy to look beyond the first entry so that's what they choose so just the name aardvark gives your
business a head start over your competitors so yes it's an important word in English. ABLAZE
which means on fire “the building is ablaze,” Abide by means to respect and follow the law “the
law is the law and we must abide by the law even if we don't agree with it otherwise it's anarchy.”
Follow those tips and let us know in the comments how they go and do add some tips of your
own if you think I've left anything out stay mellow see you next time.
