Learn English: Do These Two Things to See AMAZING Progress

hello this is jack from tofluency.com and welcome to this english lesson where i'm going to talk about a really important thing when it comes to achieving your goals which generally speaking most people want to reach a c1 level of english now this is when you can have conversations in english and understand other people when they're speaking and to be able to express yourself freely as well now this isn't perfect english but it's the level that most people want to reach and then from there you can start mastering the english language now most people when they talk about learning english they say that they find it difficult to understand native speakers and they find it difficult to be able to express themselves freely and that's what most people want to focus on so today i'm going to talk about the two main things you need to work on if you want to make great progress but also the two things i think are the most effective ways to learn english and this is super important because we want to be effective with our studies we don't want to waste time on things that don't work now this is for you if you have a busy life if you have other commitments if you have a job maybe family hobbies interests because what i want to do is to help you create a study plan so that you can continue enjoying your life doing normal things but also make progress with your english so there are two main things we're going to talk about but again it's so important that when you create a study plan that you make it sustainable for the long term so that you can actually achieve your goal and we're going to be talking about this in context of 6 to 12 months okay so 6 to 12 months a lot of people approach learning english or learning the guitar or trying to get in really good shape within the next two to three four weeks they want to see massive results in that time but forget about that if you really want to make good progress don't think that you can just go to an english-speaking country for a month live there and you're going to master english it takes longer than that therefore it makes sense to set up a plan so that you can do this over the long term now before i go into this know that i have some tools for you so firstly my book the five step plan for english fluency the link to that is in the description i also have a link to the course that i have as well we'll be talking more about that later and also some links to other lessons which are similar to this one where you can learn more about what we're going to talk about today but i'm going to share my screen and show you exactly how to follow this method and also just try to get feedback from you so please leave comments now i'm doing this live so if you have any questions leave those questions for the end i'm just going to go through some of this now but a way to help me in this channel is to click the like button and to share the lesson so if you just take a moment click the like button and then also share this lesson with a friend okay great so let's just talk a little bit about what those two main things are but firstly why sometimes less is more i'm going to share a picture with you which i think is just such a great way to teach this if i go and click this button here you can see on your screen now this is a picture and it says the key to achieving massive results the key to achieving massive results so on the left we have a circle which is your energy circle and you can see this energy is going to lots of different directions so it's going up down to the side in all these different directions and it's saying pursuing everything pursuing everything whereas on the right we have the energy going in one direction focusing on one thing just to focus on one thing so this is really important when we're going to talk about how sometimes less is more now with this what the author is trying to say is that if you try to achieve german spanish french english languages at the same time and if you try to learn the guitar if you try to get in the best shape of your life then it's going to be very difficult because you're not going to go very far in those different things but if you focus on one thing in this case learning english then you can put all your energy into this but i'm going to take that a little bit further and talk about actually focusing on one thing or two things mainly when it comes to learning english you can see that energy going in different directions but what i want you to do is to think about and to try this out for a few weeks what if i put my main focus on doing one thing or two things okay and then if i do other things okay but what if i really focus on doing two main things and i've been thinking about what those two main things can be what are the most effective things to do and again the reason to do this is because sometimes less is more and if you focus on what's important and get it done then you're going to make progress but if you're constantly thinking all right study grammar then i'm going to take lessons here do some writing practice watch this type of video watch that type of video try this method try that method then your energy is going into too many directions whereas if you focus on two main things get those done every day or every day you want to study then everything else will just take care of itself so those two main things they are input mainly listening and then secondly what i'm going to call the to fluency method and i'll show you the tough fluency method a little later on it's quite simple but it covers every aspect of learning english listening speaking reading writing and also things like grammar as well but firstly listening this is one thing i want you to focus on get as much listening practice as possible now the good thing about listening is that it's easier to do than most other english learning tasks and you can listen while doing other things at the same time now again i have a long video on this where i talk about how to improve your listening and how to get the right type of practice but in summary this your phone you're already doing this i'm sure you're watching this lesson right now this is a listening practice this is fantastic listening practice it's input and you need lots and lots of input in order to get used to english in order to to import all that english into your brain so that you can store that information so you're used to the way people speak so that you can understand words and phrases input is so important and this is how children learn when they are growing up they listen all the time they're constantly listening to english and then they put this into practice when speaking so get as much listening as possible there are two things to think about here firstly listen to things you enjoy don't listen to things that you don't find interesting there's no point so for example if i'm listening to things in english which i do i'm going to listen to boxing podcasts soccer or football podcast marketing stuff and politics i'm going to listen to things that i find interesting so you do the same listen to english teachers but also find podcasts that are just talking about whatever it is you're interested in however there is a problem the problem is that most of these podcasts are quite difficult to understand so you need to take some time find the right resources for you because if something is too difficult then you're not getting the comprehensible input the input that you can more or less understand now i'm going to talk about some ways to find that in a second but this is really important because if you find something that's too difficult then you're not going to get a lot from it it's just going to be not enjoyable to listen to you're going to be stressed about the fact you can't understand the words and phrases so find stuff that you enjoy and stuff that's comprehensible if you are somebody who likes stories and novels i highly recommend graded readers graded readers these are stories that have been adapted into understandable comprehensible english so take some time and find some graded readers but also look at youtube videos that you can understand for example i again i listen to a lot of football podcasts some of them are difficult to understand for english learners others are much easier for example tfo football they the way they present things is done in a way that is just simple easy to understand english which is good whereas other podcasts more conversational people are talking over each other says people talking over each other and it's just difficult to follow so find things again that you enjoy listen to listening to and things that you can understand more or less make that a focus again yes you can do reading yes you can watch movies and tv but i just think listening is such an important skill to work on and if you focus on that then you're just making sure that you get the most effective things done okay so let's go back to my screen here which i should have done a while ago and that's the first part and again if you just join in what we're talking about today is how you can get or how you can focus on what's really important when it comes to learning english because what often happens is we get excited about learning we then create a study plan and say this is what i need to do in order to improve i need to do an hour of speaking practice an hour of writing practice an hour of reading an hour of listening then i need to do grammar exercises and then you find that it's just too difficult to do when you stop and you just give up you stop you take a break but what i'm suggesting is that focus on doing things that you can easily do every day and things that are effective because it's a long-term goal six to 12 months now another part of this as well is once you get into the habit of listening to a podcast on your way to work or listening to a youtube video watching a youtube video before you go to bed or listening to a graded reader while you work out at the gym get into the habit of doing it then you're not using that willpower and energy to learn english instead it's just part of your life now it's just something you do every day there's no effort to start it it's easy to do it's enjoyable so it's just part of your life and part of your daily routine that's the the type of area we need to get to that's what you need to get to okay that's part one listening um again if you are enjoying this then please click the like button and also share it with your friends so we have 52 likes let's try to get to 100 in the next 10 minutes okay so kubra says listening important yes it's important you can listen or you can watch so watching a tv show is listening i i think that the most powerful way is to listen and read at the same time but again this this is taking a lot of energy when it comes to this and method two is actually going to cover this part it's going to solve that problem but listening watching this is a the input that i think is more important than reading let's say so again it's focusing on what's more important and make sure making sure you get it done because you can have the perfect study plan in the world the most perfect study plan but if you don't do it it's not going to make any difference whereas if you if you actually understand that you have a busy life you have commitments family job work sports school other things you enjoy doing and then you can bring english into that world then you're going to do it for the long term now number two okay number two i'm going to call this the to fluency method you can also call this the lrrc method or the sentence method and this is very simple in terms of what you're doing but it's incredibly effective and what you do is you find audio phrases okay ones that you can read and ones that you can listen to so a phrase with the writing and also the audio then you repeat the phrase so you listen to it and then you repeat it and at this stage what you're working on is mastering the whole pronunciation how to repeat that sentence back sounding similar to the english speaker that's the first part now this takes a bit of work it takes concentration and it takes focus so this is important to find time to do it and what i'm going to recommend as well is that you spend 10 minutes a day doing this every day now that might not sound a lot but you can always do more if you want to the minimum commitment is 10 minutes a day so you find a phrase you listen to the phrase you repeat it and then you record your version on your phone or on a computer and then you listen to the way you say it and you make changes so you take any kind of phrase for example learn english with narcia who wants to practice speaking with me who wants to practice speaking with me and what you're doing is you're listening for things like the sounds of english you're listening for when words connect together or linked together like he passed it to me passed it passed it passed it links together you're listening for relaxed pronunciation okay i'm gonna want to go soon my favorite example i'm gonna wanna go soon i'm gonna want to go soon you're repeating that you're listening for the intonation and stress and you're repeating that and you're listening to the way you say it and making changes that is step one of this second um method where you're making changes to the way that you say things based on based on your recording this takes care of a lot of things this is going to help you improve a lot of areas mainly your your fluency but also also your pronunciation sorry mainly your pronunciation but also your fluency because when you're saying sentences back and you're saying them exactly like the speaker or close to the speaker then it's a fantastic way for you to improve and if you listen to yourself on a recording that's how you're going to notice what changes you need to make by listening to yourself it's an amazing method i've done this with spanish it's when i made my fastest progress with spanish i took audio from tv shows and then i listened to them i repeated them i watched tv shows i listened and repeated that's step one you mastered the phrase you master saying the phrase step two is to get long-term repetition of this phrase so you don't stop there instead you repeat this phrase over the next few months not every day in fact you're going to repeat it today then you're going to repeat it tomorrow then 4 days 8 16 32 64 et cetera i won't go on that way you're being very effective with the repetition and what we can do we can use software to help us with this so i'm going to show you next on here if i do that nope if i do that here we are so this is using an app called anki and anki is an app that you can use on your computer or your phone you have to pay extra if you get the app on an iphone or an ipad but it's twenty dollars it is worth it it's the best investment you'll make and what you do is you enter sentences into anki and you add the audio as well now this is the part where i'm going to say if you want to get sentences to download and to repeat them from me then join the to fluency program because that's what you get and in fact what we're going to see now is some phrases from the to fluency program so this is anki if you say study now okay so when you start you're going to see these sentences our theme today is heatwave now what i recommend you do here because repetition is so important it is such an important part of all of this i'm just going to make my screen bigger and move that over there but repetition is such an important part of this and you want to make it easy to repeat you don't want to make it difficult to repeat phrases because you want software this software will do this for you so when i say show answer on anki let me get it back open okay there's no real answer because anki can also be used as like a question and answer for example in which year did thomas jefferson die and then you say show answer and it tells you the answer but what we're doing here is we're learning sentences so there's no there's no answer you can make notes here and say something about it but this is important part because when we see the next step we can say we want to see that again in less than a minute or if you feel oh that's okay good or if it's easy in four days so let's just say that's easy everything in this bucket is a mystery to jack everything in this bucket is a mystery to jack so that's another sentence and these sentences come from a conversation my wife and i had um about heat waves so again show answer we're gonna say good this all seems very mysterious this all seems very mysterious now there are a few things you can do when you see these sentences you can just listen you can read them you can write them down but also you can repeat them i think the best way is to repeat them but also write some down as well in fact this should be very relaxing i don't want you when you do these sentences to worry about oh i need to remember them i need to memorize them instead just trust the process trust the software and know that after you see sentences a few times again and again over the next two three months then you are going to internalize these sentences you're going to remember them and it's important to know also that we're not we're not just learning vocabulary here so let's say you don't know mysterious you're not just learning the word mysterious you're learning lots in this sentence all from one sentence very mysterious this all seems this all seems very mysterious you're learning the intonation you're learning the stress you're learning the sounds of english the grammar structures sentence structures and that's so important because learning english through sentences is going to give you all of these things grammar sentence structure vocabulary and all the the way that the different ways it's said intonation and stress but it's going to give you to the these things in a very natural way so you're not learning grammar rules instead you are internalizing grammar's grammar rules and if you do this with a thousand sentences ten thousand sentences you're going to learn so much naturally so this type of learning here is more focused it's a more focused learning where you're spending those 10 minutes a day really focused on a method really focus on this method but if you want to do more you can do more if you can do 20 minutes that's great you can do an hour that's great but the minimum the commitment is 10 minutes that means that you're actually doing it every day because we can all find 10 minutes in a day to do something if it's a priority and then using that first other method the listening where you're listening you're enjoying things you're just listening along enjoying it then that allows you to then get all that input in a way that you don't have to completely change your life you don't have to give up hobbies and interests you don't have to do like stop spending time with your family you can make it part of your life this is for everyday people people with commitments and what we're doing here is we're focusing on two main things the input but then also this powerful method which is going to just use all these different skills of english you're reading sentences you're hearing them you're saying them you're writing them down the four skills and you're also learning grammar and vocabulary in the most effective way which is through sentences and just to take this method a little further you can learn these sentences from context if they come from strong context then that's going to make a big difference too and good we've got 107 likes and let's try and get that up to 150 before the end of the lesson and if you're watching this later after the fact and you're new here then please subscribe to the channel and also turn on the notification bell turn on that notification bell right so now's a good time to ask any questions um if you want to learn more about these two things i have a full video on this where i talk about the whole anki listening repeating method and i go really into depth with that it's the if you just go to my channel it's the top video on the channel and then look forward to fluency english listening where i talk about how to get the best materials for your listening and then how to be able to understand native speakers over the long term and again if you want to learn more about this then get my book the five step plan for english fluency that is free to download and if you want to get these audio phrases then go to i'll show you a link to it to fluency.com tfp i'll put the link in the in the chat and there'll be one in the description as well okay bogdan says what about reading a textbook and listening to its audio version in headphones at the same time yeah i love that method as well now you can take that method um a little bit further as well if you want to combine the two by listening pausing repeating listen pause repeat but that's the focused learning part listening reading at the same time is the input okay that's the input and i think it's good to do that you know when you're in bed at night listen and read at the same time before you go to sleep um and then when you're out and about doing other things at the gym commuting at work you can just plug in your earphones and listen to things in english the more you do that the better and that's easier to do because sometimes you can you can you know you're listening to a podcast but you don't have to listen to everything and really pay attention you just listen and pick up things every now and then and then maybe you focus on something else you know and then you come back and you listen again and you hear something so it's a great way to do it and present pandy says should we only listen to the audio or should we jot down the new words and phrases too yeah so if you're using anki um then what you can do is the the audi the sorry the text and the audio is there for you and that's the input part but then either repeat it or write it down and just that the the exercise of listening to a sentence and writing it down it just connects all the words together in the patterns of english and the grammar in a way that is more powerful than learning grammar rules you know we we learn grammar through phrases and sentences and just getting all that repetition through that okay someone says hello teacher what would you recommend the best materials to listen and speak here on youtube um there are lots of english teaching channels for example go natural english espresso english speak english with vanessa english with lucy um dream sleep english there are a bunch of other ones but yeah then in on top of that also think about how you can just find materials that are specific to you and what you enjoy listening to and also what you can understand so take that time it might be for example um vlogs watching vlogs or listening to for example sam harris sam harris has a podcast where he speaks so clearly and slowly that there's no issue in terms of speed of english he speaks very clearly and slowly but in a way that is very good to listen to so i put his in here and he's more of like a philosopher um political commentator so if that's what you're interested in great but take that time to find channels and podcasts that you enjoy listening to and ones that you can understand so take the time to do that someone said how important are phrasal verbs um they're important in terms of being able to understand others you don't always need to use them in speech now there are times when it would be the best verb to use to express what you want to express okay but it's not always necessary to use them on the other hand phrasal verbs are used all the time in everyday english so just learn them like you learn anything else learn them like they're a verb or a vocabulary item um that way you can just don't worry about it don't try to learn lots of phrasal verbs instead just enjoy the journey with it um the best book to improve english again there's no one book that you can use that is going to be best for you instead find books that are specific to you so i can't say oh learn this book read this book instead find graded readers that are specific to to your level and stories that you enjoy listening to so that that's important is to find i think graded readers are really underrated which means people don't give them enough credit for what they can actually do so graded readers are fantastic nadjab says that the pronunciation part is important in daily practice yeah it is so what when you first see and i'll go back to this when you first see one of these sentences the first stage is to to master the way it is said this all seems very mysterious now let's go on to another example i'll say easy sounds good from what i know sounds good from what i know now the these phrases are everyday english sometimes you're not going to think oh i know all those words you know you're going to say i know these words i know this vocabulary but the key part is being able to say them in the right way at the right time so it sounds good from what i know from what i know it's a little bit dangerous to travel around there from what i know i'm not quite sure about if that would be good for you or it sounds good it sounds good it sounds great it sounds good so what you're doing here is you're learning collocations you're learning phrases you're learning words that often go together you're learning these different types of phrases which we use in everyday english but you might learn the single words but not be able to use them as part of a sentence so let's do another one everything in this bucket is a mystery to jack now let's just say you find that easy and you think i don't want to learn that one you can just say delete note and then you don't have to do that moving forward okay it sounds amazing from what i've heard it sounds amazing from what i've heard now what i do is with with these sentences as well is i take a sentence from context and then i give another example just changing it slightly so that you can understand how to use it in different ways okay so what you want to do is you read that you listen to it it sounds amazing from what i've heard and you repeat it and then sometimes you record your own voice and you listen back and then you repeat it on here and then you can notice changes you need to make that way you're going to really improve your your pronunciation and the way you speak in general and your fluency okay any more questions about this how can i improve my writing i've made a video on that i have a blog post on that as well what i recommend you do again is go through these sentences and just write out sentences okay if you want to get specific let's say you have to write um proposals or you have to write a speech or you have to write emails you can find similar emails online and just copy and paste them copy and paste them copy and paste them so you read it and you write it down that way you're going to improve your writing in a more natural way and juliet says i'm studying english at the moment after a month i'll take ielts exam however i'm struggling on speaking so this method is really going to help you but when it comes to the ielts exam also get very specific and focused on what kind of questions they're going to ask you and what kind of answers they are looking for okay um i've taken some tests in the past where i could have easily just learned everything about history but all they wanted to know was specific answers or answers to questions that i already knew about so look at some past ielts exams look at speaking examples here on youtube and then go through and think all right they asked that question a lot well they are similar questions a lot and think about what type of answers you want to give then find a teacher who can help you with this who is going to give you feedback on the speaking um how to make sentences interesting and attractive it's about how you say it it's not about what you say okay i think this is a really important part so when it comes to english a lot of people want advanced advanced english whereas we still say things like how's it going how are you but you want to say this in a way that sounds enthusiastic warm polite whatever it is you want to get across so you don't need to say things like i don't have in that kind of example it's hard to say but or just like talking about a soccer player like leno messi just say like he's incredible he's incredible i'm using that intonation and stress where you can really well i'm really focusing on the word incredible he's incredible incredible and making that stress on the incredible which just gives it more emphasis and that's better than saying like i can't think of a good example but trying to sound advanced using an advanced word you know he's astounding he's astounding it doesn't sound as good as saying he's incredible i just think using simple everyday english it's better than trying to use fancy idioms or advanced english when it just doesn't sound as good whereas focusing on things like intonation and stress it's just going to make you sound so much better and it's going to help you with your fluency as well so concentrate on the way you say things that's why again i recommend listening a lot and also getting audio phrases too how do we learn that intonation it's not taught in schools yet this is a this is why again i think you can do this on your own by um listening to phrases and repeating them and trying to match the intonation you know what you can talk about things like rise and fall intonation rise intonation and that does help and that is part of my course but you're going to learn it through just listening to people and repeating and then recording the way you say things so that you can make changes someone says how can i check my english level i have videos on that just just search for um to fluency english level how can i get phrases for anki you can join my program i put it in here um i have about i think 1 200 phrases right now i normally add phrases every two months or so it's not guaranteed it's just something i like to do to add more to the program for people who bought it three years ago they still get new phrases now um but also what you can do is just find audio phrases online as long as you're not you know getting them downloading them illegally and then upload them to anki but um other things you can do as well is you can record your own phrases if you're happy with the way you say things um nigeb says this program is affordable it helps me a lot yeah nadja has been in there for five years now and he keeps getting the updates of the the new phrases um there are two parts to it there are there's the the whole like pronunciation tutorial and then it goes on to the audio phrases uh what's the price of the fluency program for one month um it's more of a think of it more as a one-time payment so you pay for it you get it no more payments but there is also a 12 month plan where you can pay monthly for 12 months so it's not a monthly subscription that's just a way for you to like if you get a car payment and you pay monthly for the car you don't continue paying for that once the car has been paid for it's the same here okay i'm going to end it here um if you could please share this video with your friends so it can reach more people just in summary it's important when it comes to learning english to consider your situation in your life we all have commitments we're all busy and when you focus on what's important and make two things two things really important and two things you're focused on then you're going to do them and i think the two things to work on are lots of listening podcasts audio books movies tv shows and then also this method i've talked about because this method i've talked about really focuses on the way that you say things but it's also going to help you internalize things as well okay so i'll leave a link to the program one more time in the chat and take a look look at the payment options um and just learn more about it there and then also go into the description get my butt the five step plan for english fluency and check out some other lessons which are going to go into depth in what i've talked about today all right so again thank you so much for being here it's been great teaching you today and i'll see you in the next lesson okay bye

Channel: To Fluency

Views: 68,029

Rating: 4.9498534 out of 5

Keywords: learn english, best way learn english, speak better english, how to learn english, english live class, speak english, learning english, english lesson, study english

Id: cQJX9daUd1M

Length: 41min 21sec (2481 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020