Q & A with Kris Amerikos

hey everybody out there welcome to another video with me Chris americo's and in case you don't know who I am I am a professional teacher of English as a second language so sometimes that's called an ESL teacher sometimes that's called a TEFL teacher and sometimes it's just called a teacher so the first thing I want to do today while we're waiting for everybody to get on to the video I'm just going to tell you a little bit about English and why it's important so if you're watching this video you probably already know that and the video today is an opportunity for you to ask any question about English that you want to ask because usually these videos have a specific topic or theme and that means that we usually just talk about one thing the whole video but this video is question and answer that means you ask the questions and I'm going to answer you so I see one question already in the chat Zil Maura wrote hi how are you Xiomara I'm doing excellent how are you go ahead and answer me in the chat so you see guys this video works like this you write your questions in the chat and I'm gonna answer you live right now now usually there's a lot of people here like there's already more than 200 people watching this video right now so sometimes it's difficult for me to actually answer all the questions but don't worry if I don't answer your question right away I'll try to answer later in the video and I'm going to answer the most important questions first all right so that means that things that I think that lots of people want and need to know I'm going to answer that first and then I'll answer other questions and if I don't answer your question don't get upset because you'll have another opportunity to ask more questions you can always write me and ask me your questions in group and you can find my my groups about teaching about studying English you can find them all in the description to this video so if you click the video the video that you're watching right now then it'll open up and you can look at the description and there are all of the links and I'll send some of the links to the chat as well so the first one I'll send here is your link to to the English group so you can ask more questions there and then after that I'll also send a link to the teaching group so if you're a teacher I see someone wrote that let's see Varro Vaughn wrote hi I'm an English teacher - nice to meet you nice to meet you too so here's the group it's called language teaching business I actually help teachers set up their own teaching businesses online and and offline so yeah so those are all of the links I've just sent them all to you and you can click the video and look at the description and find the links there too so we're going to get started here very very soon and first of all you know we're just waiting for more people to get on the video we have almost 300 people here now and I'm gonna start answering some of these questions so let's see we have someone here from Peru hi let's see let's see someone wrote what's the difference between being grabbed and get in use hmm okay maybe you mean bring grab and get good question well grab first of all grab means to take something with force or take something very strong ly very quickly so when we grab something sometimes it can be rude but also we could say grab like just hey can you give me that thing can you grab my phone for me you're closer to my phone can you grab it when someone comes to your house you could say I'll grab the door like I'll answer the door I'll open the door great the other let's see it was grab bring so bring is when we hold something and then we move near something okay and actually I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that today because I don't think I've made a video about that before and it's really important and then get means a lot of things it has a lot of different meanings so you know there could be a separate video just forget because get is very confusing there's a lot of different meanings let's see okay some more questions here in the chat it's important to know good grammar of the language to learn more easy another language oh that's a question okay grammar is very important I'll just say that from the beginning grammar is very very important think of it like this if you sit in the car and you just move the steering wheel left and right and left and right that's like that's like the vocabulary of the language sure you can point the language in different directions but you're not moving forward grammar is like what moves us forward it's the rules of the road okay this is how you need to drive so you don't get an accidents like make mistakes in the language or so that you don't I mean so that so that people understand you right cuz that's the whole point of learning a language it's it's you know the point of learning the language is to communicate so you want to send a message to someone all right let's see we've got lots of comments here so hi I'm from Hungary where are you from hi let's see senti hi Cynthia I am from the United States right now I'm in Florida that's where I live right now but you know I travel a lot and I'm really lucky because I have a really great job I'm an English teacher and I'm a teacher trainer so I teach other teachers how to teach and how to how to start their own teaching businesses and I get to travel all over the world I get to work from wherever I want from the computer and I really love it I really love being a teacher so yeah great so everybody who's watching right now it looks like we have 350 people right now everybody who's watching now just write in the chat where you're from all right I'm from the United States and I live in Florida where are you from I saw someone wrote from Peru from Hungary someone from Thailand great we have a really international crowd here today ah let's see how do you motivate kids to learn to love learning English very good question very good question thank you let's go ahead and talk about that so how do you motivate children to love learning a language well I know a lot of people who they have kids and they want their kids to know English and they actually tell their kids that they can only play video games in English yeah they can only play video games in English so that's one way to motivate people right because if they can only do it in English then because they love playing video games there because they love playing video games they're only going to be able to play them in English that means they want to know what people are saying in their games right so I would say that that's the best way to motivate kids is find something that they already love and if it's not only for children find something that your students love anyone who wants to be motivated to study English or learn English or learn anything find something that you love associate the thing that you want to learn with the thing that you love or it doesn't have to be a thing you love it can just be a thing that you usually do example might be driving in the car associate driving in the car with listening to English tapes associate washing the dishes with watching a TV show in English this is really easy to do and it really works because now every time you do that activity you have to do it in English and every time you do it you start to think about that you make a rule in your head in your mind that you have to do that in English and so every time you get English practice that's you know that's amazing I love that that's that's awesome so yeah great okay and other questions I see lots of people writing here let's see from Turkey from Brazil great great great okay someone wrote how can I teach English to children I see another comment hi I'm from Thailand but I live in Florida cool what part of Florida do you live in I live in Tampa let's say you have Poland here okay great great great so I see some people are getting angry that I'm not answering their questions so guys I'm really sorry if I don't see your questions and I don't answer right away but if you really want me to answer your questions send me a message okay I think you guys probably already have probably already have my page so if you if you go to the description of the video then if you go to this description of the video sorry about that then you can actually go to my page and you can follow me and by following my page you will be able to actually ask me any questions that you want because I always answer and on my page I post a lot of stuff just all the time I'm posting on English so wow I see that we have a lot of people here today writing that their teachers so if you are a teacher definitely follow me because I have a lot of resources for you and I'm actually helping teachers right now start up teaching businesses around the world so send me a message and I'll tell you more about that and you can actually go to the link that I've shared and learn more for students of English anyone who's a student of English and if you want to study if you want to take lessons with me then go ahead and just follow me on Facebook because right now I'm actually doing something very special where you can study with me for two dollars and that's not two dollars for one lesson that's two dollars for a month of lessons okay so that's a special thing I'm doing it's kind of a secret so the 375 people who are here right now that's a secret don't tell anybody else but because you're watching today I can offer you that two dollars to study with me for a whole month great so okay everybody else who is watching right now I'm gonna go back to answering some more questions I see we have someone from Boston awesome I love Boston it's one of my favorite cities let's see I Oh in said thank you all my teacher to Island send me a message I have a lot of resources I can share with you great okay somebody is asking for grammar somebody's asking for there's a lot of questions here so alright guys let me get back to giving you some more useful information about English um someone said send me your Facebook link well my facebook link is here I'm sending it to you in the chat alright there we go there it's been the chat so now you can find my page and follow me okay guys so um from Argentina Wow we have people from everywhere today all right there's something I want to tell you about because there was a question about bring and grab and and things like that and here's what I want to tell you so a lot of people don't know about this and for students I think that this will be really really interesting because most English books out there don't talk about this at all I don't know why but they don't talk about it at all if you're a teacher you're really gonna like this too because I'm sure your students have never heard about it so here's what it is there's something in English that is very special a lot of languages have this but a lot of people have never heard of it and the technical name for this for all of the teachers who are out there the technical name for this is Dyke sis and basically what that means is how two things are related there's a very simple explanation but let me give you an example let me give you an example of what I'm talking about so you probably know the words here and there I hope you know them if you're watching me and you don't know the words here and there then it's probably difficult to understand me but the words here and there so when I say here it depends where I am right if I'm in Florida like right now and I say here then you need to understand that I mean in Florida but if I'm in Moscow in Russia and I say here then you should understand that I'm speaking about Moscow so the word here can have a different meaning depending on where the person who's speaking is located this is a very important cept and when I use the example here and there you might not on you might not see why it's so important but I'm gonna explain why so just just stay with me so for example a lot of times when someone calls us on the phone say hello hello hello are you do we say are you here or are you there well I would say are you there because if I say are you here and that means the person is near me that I can see them right there near me and if I say are you there it means there away from me or there near that person the person who is listening so this concept is very very important okay the concept behind here is near me near the speaker and the concept of there is near the listener or away from the speaker so guys let's see Miriam writes yes it's all about linguistics Dyk sis you're right this is about linguistics and and you know a good teacher should also be a linguist a good language teacher right so yes this concept near me or away from me or near you right here and there other words automatically have this meaning too and this is something that a lot of English learners don't know and they don't get it from English books and that's why I'm really happy that I get to share this with you know the four hundred people who are watching right now so the words this and that also show this concept near me away from me and when I say this for example this pin it means it's near me if I say that pin it's not near me it's away from me or it's near you I see this a lot with some different people who are speaking different languages oh I see Claire is on our group hi Claire how's it going the weather here in Florida is great thanks for asking how is it in Taiwan alright so excellent how is it they're waiting for you gonna continue so yeah this and that this pin if I if I speak to someone and they say give me that pen then I understand what they're saying but sometimes my students will tell me Chris give me this pen and they'll they'll point at me I'm holding a pen they say give me this pen and I say what are you talking about because when we say this it means that I need to look at you because you're speaking about something that's near you another example is that sometimes people are speaking about a place and they sometimes people are speaking out about a place that they went to in the past for example let's say we went to a to a restaurant and then after that we went to my office and at my office were sitting and we're speaking about the restaurant and we say I really like the atmosphere in the restaurant do I say there or here I can say the restaurant is so great I really like the atmosphere there like the atmosphere they're not here because if we say here it's in my office if we say there it's away from the people who were speaking away from the away from the place that we are now right okay this is very important now yes I see Karen wrote demonstrative pronouns this is great yeah uh-huh these are examples this and that but there are also examples of this thing we call Dyke sis so examples of this concept here near near me and away from me so great another example these and those right these is just when we have more than one thing this is one thing these more than one and when we say that it's one thing and those more than one okay here is where it gets more difficult the word the words come and go also have this meaning now this is where a lot of English learners make mistakes because they don't know that they don't know that that come actually means near me and go means away from me that's so important because people won't understand us if we if we say the other way I mean everybody knows that that come here is correct but when do we say come there we don't usually because come is near me and there is away from me the same with go there right go away from me and there away from me but we don't usually say go here right because here is near me and go is away from me so we really really really don't want to fuse these things we need to pay attention to what's near me what's away from me this is a very important concept and I hear people make this mistake a lot a lot of people say go to me or go here or something like this this is a big mistake it's an opposite meaning all right another example of this is bring and take so bring means that we're holding something and we're moving near the person who speaks and take means that we're holding something and moving away from something else so this is a very important concept all of the teachers who are watching I see Jessica wrote me from Texas she says excellent thanks a lot thank you for watching all the teachers who are watching right now this is a concept that almost no English books go go into they don't talk about this and that means that a lot of a lot of teachers out there a lot of students out there sorry a lot of students out there don't learn this they never learned this so this is something that that I think that it's it's just really important and a lot of my students don't know this and I have you know a special lesson that I teach about this and that's why I'm sharing this with you too you know when you have a whiteboard and you can draw it and you can show people visually it's better to but you know what are you gonna do Facebook lives maybe they'll come up with something better soon so guys okay I'm gonna go back to the chat there's just so many so many comments right now it looks like we've already got about 150 comments and that's great so thank you guys so much for participating today and before I answer another question I just want to remind you that if you're a teacher because there are a lot of teachers watching right now if you're a teacher go to my language teaching business community and website here it is and sending the links again and if you are a student then go to my group English with Chris americo's and you know there's a lot of resources there I post every day I actually post a new video on my youtube channel every day also so in the description to this video you can find my youtube channel and there it is so I'm posting all the links in the chat also so that it's easy for you guys to find them I have Instagram I have VK I have I have lots of different stuff I post everywhere all the time I'm all about teaching English I love it alright guys back to the chat let's see can I learn English I need to I need someone yeah definitely I told you guys I'm sharing a secret with you guys you can study with me for two dollars two dollars a month that's it you know not for one lesson but for a whole month of lessons two bucks so if you want to know more about that send me a message so yeah guys go to my page follow me and send me a message if you have questions if I didn't answer your questions here just follow me all right let's see all right let's see Nancy DiFalco just wrote difference between college and university well Nancy that's a good question because this is another issue another problem in in studying English British English and American English so in British English you know British English is closer to other european languages other european cultures so in british english college is actually something just after school and usually before university but in the united states college and university are almost the same thing in the united states a university is a place where they have a program where you can get a PhD or a doctorate that means you can become a doctor of something not not a medical doctor only but you know a doctor of philosophy Safiya doctor of psychology this is a university and a college in the united states doesn't have a doctoral program doesn't have a program for getting a PhD in something that's the difference all right great let's go back I want to answer some more questions and you know today I actually I feel like I've got a lot of energy a lot of motivation how do you guys feel how do you feel out there I saw some people writing let's see Livio writes you're a great teacher from Italy oh hey I have a bunch of students from Italy I lived in Italy for two years actually in Sicily yeah great so let's see Claire writes in Taiwan a university usually has several colleges that's awesome Claire and yeah I think you know in the United States that's also true that inside of a university we might have something called school of medicine or school of law so yeah okay I'm gonna answer some more questions from the chat now because there's just so many questions and I'm gonna be on here a long time today I have just a lot of energy so let's see please explain pair pronunciation philia writes pair pronunciation my students find it difficult okay cool very cool I think what you're talking about is something called minimal pairs so minimal pairs are when we have two words that have all of the same when we have sorry I saw another interesting comment here minimal pairs are when we have all of the same sounds in two words except for one sound one sound is different and if we make a mistake pronouncing the sound then we will understand it as a different word a good example is ship and sheep and I saw someone write this question before so yeah this is a question of long I and short I so okay what I want you guys to do right now is practice this sound with me I'm gonna say this sound and I know that I I can't hear you speaking back to me right now but when we have lessons together you'll have the chance to speak and I can correct your pronunciation and remember right now only right now I'm offering a special deal where you can study with me for for a whole month for two dollars only two dollars alright it's just a special I'm doing right now don't tell anybody else cuz this is just a special thing for people who are watching right now so when we want to pronounce long I in short I like in the words sheep and sometimes people are confused about this let's repeat this sound let's repeat this a word right now okay actually let's just start with sounds first sound is e good say it I know you if you're sitting at your computer or maybe here on the bus listening on your phone and might be a little strange but go ahead and just say it E all right Enrique says hi from Argentina hey hi Enrique thanks for joining us and now this short I or short e sound this is a a so pay attention to the mouth and how I'm saying these sounds that's that's the first thing we're gonna do II second sound so what you should notice is that the e sound the long sound is in the bottom part of the mouth and the e sound the short sound is in the top part of the mouth that's first that's just very you know basic very simple and it's Wilbur watching from Nicaragua great thank you so much for watching so okay about long e in short e it looks like we are down to about 310 people watching right now guys if you're watching this and you like this and you think it's valuable and it's useful please share this just share it to your wall share to your groups share it with your friends because the more people who learn English the better we can all understand each other right I mean it's it's the global language today and it's really important for everyone to learn so help me out share this video with people and you know those people will get our special deal to two dollars for a month and teachers out there will find the training that we do and they'll become better teachers and that our teachers means that our students better students means better future so share the video and and I'm gonna answer some more questions so guys yeah long short e long e actually has two values let's say two parts it's e e alright when we say long and short that's what we mean long just means that we say it twice so a lot of people think that they have to say the sound long or say the sound short that's not true the long sound you just say twice so for example there's another minimal pair and this minimal pair is thick and feed fit feed alright now when I say the word fit there's three sounds right if we look at the phonetics the sounds of the word there's only three sounds there's four it fit I say the word feet there's really four sounds okay when we write it phonetically we have this sound and then we have two dots that we use to show that we say it twice we say it longer all right it's not that we say it just really long but we say it twice so it's actually II eat all right so there's fit and feed fee eat okay I hope that helps with the pronunciation it's hard to do pronunciation lessons it's hard to do pronunciation lessons when we are doing you know a live video here on Facebook but I'm trying to get it across to you guys and if you're having trouble with pronunciation I have a special pronunciation course that I've made to help people speak more naturally and speak like a native speaker so if that's something that you're interested in go ahead and send me a message about that right now you can find my link in the description to this video and I also sent my link you know in the chat several times so you can find me follow me send me a message and I'll answer alright guys um let's see I want to go back to the questions let's see someone from Morocco Ecuador hey guys we have so many people from so many different countries in here today um it's just so great best regards from Bulgaria Wow Thanks for writing in Elena uh-huh great all right guys well you know I still got a lot of energy we're gonna keep going so write more questions I'm sure that I've missed a lot of questions already and I'm gonna try to go back and answer some more all right what other questions what other questions let's see Olivia says where did you live in Sicily I'm Sicilian cool I used to live in near Catania on Mount Etna yeah so I really loved it there great let's see what else other questions other questions go ahead and write your questions right now and I'm going to just start answering really fast if I can answer it fast a lot of these questions they require me to answer in you know a lot of sentences so it takes me a few minutes to answer but I'll try to answer quickly tell us about movies we can watch to improve our English great well movies that you can watch it depends on your level of English if you have an elementary level or pre intermediate level of English I suggest watching cartoons for children's alright or educational programs for children if you're if you're 50 years old or 60 years old and you're watching TV shows for children that's completely okay alright that's that's fine don't feel bad you're helping to learn the language that's how you know let's see we have a question how can I get info about your classes $2.00 per month send me a message my link is in the description to this video and yeah guys if you want to study with me you can study with me for a whole month for two dollars just two dollars alright so just send me a message and I'll tell you more watch so if you have a lower level of English watch TV shows movies educational programs for children and how do you know what your level is well I'm doing this video at an intermediate level so if it's difficult for you to understand what I'm saying then you probably have a pre intermediate level or an elementary level if you don't understand anything I'm saying then you probably have a beginner level if you understand what I'm saying if you understand most of what I'm saying then you probably have an intermediate level or an upper intermediate level and if you understand everything I'm saying and it's kind of boring for you then you probably have an upper intermediate or advanced level of English great so Enrique rights weren't you afraid to be burnt by Aetna yeah actually it erupted when I was living there and we got a video of it from my balcony it's pretty cool you know life experiences let's see I either rights where can I recognize about your teaching I am new here Aida sorry I don't understand what you mean by recognize you can find more information about about you know you can watch my videos on YouTube and can find information about studying with me and just you can send me a message my links are all in the description to this video if you click this video you will see all of my links you can go to all those pages and subscribe join follow alright okay we have another question here what is the difference between pen and pencil well let me see if I have a pen and pencil around here well okay this is a pen pens have ink pencils have led alright that's the difference you might not know what those words mean so you can understand that a pencil is not plastic but a pen is plastic so that's the best way to explain it here on this live video great let's see we have Sheila also giving her advice about how to study with movies independent level of English I would also recommend to watch films with different accents because learning American English and then going to Scotland for instance would be interesting absolutely Sheila thank you for for your input you sound like a teacher you might actually be interested in our starting your own teaching business program but Sheila thanks for that and I definitely agree that if you are if you have a higher level of English if you understand everything I'm saying if you understand me very well yeah I speak American English because I'm from the United States and I try to speak very clearly with what we call a non regional accent or a neutral accent but if you go to different places you're going to hear different accents in Ireland they have a different accent in Scotland a different accent in the UK lots of accents Australia different accents you know and then we have places like South Africa Singapore they also speak English and they also have a different accents so you know it depends on what you want in my in my course about pronunciation called English hacks if you go to google and search for Chris americo's English hacks you'll find it in my pronunciation course I actually start from that point that it's very important to understand what accent you need so that you can sound natural all right nina writes me just do an accent please show me an Irish accent Nina I don't want to I don't want to make myself look like an idiot honestly because just because someone understands accents and understands how accents are made doesn't mean that they can do a good accent alright so I would suggest going to YouTube and looking for Irish accents there because me as an American guy you know I'm a professional teacher if I hear an Irish accent I can definitely tell you what it is but I'm not going to pretend to have an English accent right now or an Irish accent right now so sorry that I can't do that for you but it is what it is alright let's see can you repeat the webpage English hi okay yeah so most of the links that I have first of all if you click on this video you'll see all the links to my pages and everything else there you can follow and subscribe and everything like that if you want to go to my website if you're a teacher my website is language teaching business comm so www.languagecomics.com and you can go to English dot Chris americo's comm and you can study English with me so guys you know I also lived in Russia for about eight years and I taught Russian people English and I opened a language school there that was my first teaching business and I also teach Russian so if you're interested in that Russian dot Chris america.com and guys just remember that if you have any questions if you can't find anything send me a message I see some people are asking about the pronunciation course that was English hacks and if you can't find it just send me a message you know follow me here on Facebook my link is right there in the description to the video and follow me and send me a message and I will send you the link all right it's that easy but of course I'll only answer you after I finished this live video let's see we have someone hi from Poland hey I actually have a lot of students from Poland great too great to have you on the video today let's see Sheila yes I got my Modern Languages degree and had both American and British teachers but my masters was in Wales and it was difficult to get their intonation I I agree with you Sheila for me as a native speaker of English sometimes it's difficult for me to get intonation of different English speakers from different countries so see Sam era says hello from Germany hey here we have another question have you ever been in Georgia Georgia I see that your name in Georgian the language and so no I've never been to Georgia I actually have started helping some teachers from Georgia start their own business and I have some students from Georgia because they also speak Russian and am Georgian so I've never been there but it's you know I've heard it's a great place and the closest I've been to Georgia is Sochi in Russia so alright guys let me get back to some more of the important questions here so let's see can you write your internet website here well I've written all of them in the description to this video so click the video and you can go there but but yeah if you have other questions about other websites send me a message all right okay we have a long comment here hopefully I can have enough time to read it all Nadia wrote I have a difficulty with reading books in English if I understand the whole sentence that I did read pay attention to new words this I don't remember them can you give us some tips for widening vocabulary learning new words maybe there are some methods writing them down learning with flashcards doesn't really work for me okay good question so the question is how do we remember new vocabulary if we learn lots of new words how do we remember all of these words and I'm going to answer you in detail right now okay I actually one thing that I study is memory because it's very important for teachers to communicate information to students in a way that they remember not just for a few minutes but forever so memory is a very important topic and before I answer because this is going to be a long answer will probably take me five minutes to answer it before I answer what I want you to do is everybody who's watching right now share this video with someone okay just send it to your best friend and share it on your wall share it somewhere because what I'm about to say is actually very important not only for people who not only for people who are learning English but for people who are teaching English and for people who speak any language or study any language at all anybody who learns anything or studies anything it's very important so memory first of all we need to remember that there are different types of memory and the first type of memory that we need to talk about is working memory or what some people call short-term memory short-term memory only lasts for a minute usually not very long maybe a couple minutes and we can usually only hold about seven pieces of information in our short-term memory or working memory seven pieces of information now if you think about a phone number the first phone numbers were only seven digits long right there were seven numbers in a phone number and that's because scientists studied memory and found out the typical short-term memory can only hold about seven pieces of information so when we're learning new information and and we're trying to use it right now in our short-term memory seven pieces of information that's also one of the reasons why when we read texts and when we're learning new vocabulary scientists say that if you're reading for example if you're reading a page in a book then it's important that you understand 90% of the words if you understand 90% of the words then the other 10% you will be able to learn if you only understand 50% of the words you're not going to remember all of that new vocabulary all right ninety or ninety five percent you need to understand already and then five to ten percent can be new vocabulary that's how much you can learn so that you can actually remember something now some people who have a very very very good memory they might be able to to you know understand when when they only know about 85% but it's usually 90 to 95 percent so when we want to remember something long-term though it's not about our short-term memory it's about our long-term memory and that's something that is very different okay because when we're studying something there are lots of different factors that help us remember it and first of all we understand that there are different types of memory not only short-term and long-term but things like iconic memory things that we see and things that we see usually stay in our short-term memory for about half a second really we don't remember them very long but things that we hear called our echoic memory things that we hear they stay in our memory about two to three seconds so a little longer the best way to put something into your short-term memory is to use lots of senses so if you see it you hear it if you can touch it that's even better so we want to use all of our senses and I know that I'm getting a little too detailed here and I'm saying a little too much about memory so I'm gonna try to make it a little faster but in order for us to move something from our short-term memory to our long-term memory we actually need to use some kinds of methods to encode all right - to put this information into our long-term memory and there's a lot of different ways that we can do this so I'm gonna start by telling you some of the some of the ways that aren't very good the things that don't help us learn very well and remember things very well the first one which isn't very effective is what we call rote rehearsal this is when we just repeat something so if I just say if I just say kikuchi gaupa is the capital of nicaragua Tegucigalpa is the capital of nicaragua and if i just keep saying it over and over again it's not really gonna help me remember something it's not gonna help you remember this piece of information but if I use a different technique different method for remembering things then I can take things from my working memory put them in my long-term memory better for example if I do chunking chunking basically means that if I have lots of pieces of information I can put them into groups so you know maybe I have a list of food like strawberries bananas grapes oranges you know and then I have walnuts and then I have whatever I have a big list of stuff so maybe I want to put them in groups of fruit vegetable proteins things like that if I do that it'll help me remember them better and longer maybe I can put them in groups of colors you know apples and strawberries are both red so that's that group and you know then I might say oranges and something else or orange so if I chunk it'll help me keep this information in my long-term memory longer now something even more effective than chunking is what we call mnemonic devices and there's a lot of different ways that this works one of them my favorite is it's just using acronyms so for example when I was studying geography I always had trouble remembering the names of the Great Lakes in North America you know between Canada and the United States and we have an acronym that helps us remember it it's homes so we have Huron Ontario Michigan Erie and superior so you see now I remember that now it's in my long-term memory why because of this acronym we do the same in English you know in school teachers use this method to teach children the colors of the rainbow so the acronym there we had a man's name Roy g-give I mean I don't know how I remember this actually I do I used mnemonic devices so it's still in my long-term memory ROYGBIV red orange yellow green blue indigo violet the colors of the rainbow and that's possible because of what we call acronyms and this is one example of a mnemonic device now something even more effective than mnemonic devices is self referencing self referencing is when we think about how this new information really affects us and how we're going to use it in our real life so when we do self referencing we usually you know apply the information to our real life so I might say you know I might I might learn Tegucigalpa is the capital of Nicaragua and I think to myself okay when I'm traveling down Central America and I'm thinking of places that I want to visit I want to visit all the capitals so if I go to Nicaragua I want to visit to Gucci gaupa and yeah okay so I apply it to my real life I think of you know in this situation this is when I will need this and that helps me remember it long-term it puts it into my it takes it from my short-term memory and puts it into my long-term memory they call this encoding so there's actually a lot of ways to do this and another important thing to do when we're trying to remember lots of information is spacing okay so spacing means that we don't try to learn a lot of information all at once if you have five hours to study don't study for five hours study for one hour and then take a ten minute break and then study for an hour and then take a break and maybe maybe take a break for an hour and then come back and study for another hour all right what you're going to do is when you come back to study again you're going to refresh that information it's going to be stronger in your mind because when we're talking about creating memories or learning a language or doing anything we're really talking about how our brains work and it's a little complicated so I'm not going to describe it completely right now the psychology and and the physiology of how our mind sends signals down the neuro neurotransmitters in our brains that's for another time and this is something that I go over with some teachers who I trained but yeah it's really it's really important to understand that our brains need that space so okay I think I've talked way too much about memory and I see that a lot of people have been asking other questions here so I want to give other people the chance to ask for me to answer okay olá says is it possible for non-native speakers to sound like a native where we always feel that it isn't your first language thank you for that question so the answer is it's possible I actually know a lot of students who have been able to do this we had a couple a man and his wife who studied with us they were beginners they didn't really know English at all they studied with us for two years and then they emigrated to Australia and now they speak perfectly really for other people it takes a lot longer some people start studying when they're a kid and they're a child and they really like it and they travel to the country and they start to speak like a native speaker so you know I I I started studying Russian as an adult but I lived there for a long time and I speak with Russian people a lot I don't think I sound like a native speaker but you know I can't express myself as well as I can in my first language but I can think in this language I dream in this language I sing in this language you can see my you can see my Facebook page I recorded a song where I'm playing guitar and singing in Russian so it depends on what you want let me ask you this ola sounding like a native speaker who decides when you sound like a native speaker do you decide that or do other people decide that who is it important to because if you go to a shop and you speak to someone and they say oh where are you from I like your accent and you think oh I don't sound like a native speaker they understand I'm not from here well is it really important because that person doesn't mean anything to you do they they're just a person working in a shop it's important what you think all right it's important how you feel about your level of language and it's important about right we talked to the beginning of this video about what language is it's used for communication if people understand you then you speak well if people don't understand you you need practice that's what I think all right I think that if I can communicate what I want to people and I get what I want I know the language I can speak it all right so this is more of a psychological thing because it really depends on who is judging it all right let's see let me answer some more questions here all right what questions do we have in the chat here okay guys well it looks like we've been at this for a long time over an hour already and I just want to say thank you to everybody who joined today and watched today and everybody who wrote in comments looks like we have Wow almost 300 comments so I'm gonna go back through the comments and and look at the questions and maybe next time when I do this video I usually do this video once or twice every week I'll try to answer some of those questions and again if you want more lessons then you can send me a message and right now I have a special deal a very special deal that you can study with me for only two dollars for a whole month all right it's really special because usually it costs a lot more it's it's a little expensive to study with me usually but right now two dollars and you can study with me if you're a teacher I want to help you I want to help you be a better teacher because that our teachers make better students better students make a better future so that's better for everyone teachers send me a message because we have a training program that will help you start a teaching business and also we do teacher training so yeah that would be great and I love working with teachers from all over the place right now we work with teachers from every continent except for Antarctica so thank you again for watching and if you have any other questions feel free to to write me a message on Facebook just click this video right now and follow me on all of the different pages because there's a lot of useful resources there and I release a new video every single day on my youtube channel alright so thanks guys for watching and I expect to get a lot of messages from you right now about lessons about teaching about you know other questions that you have that I didn't answer so I see Claire sent a picture of a penguin Claire thanks for being here with us today too by the way anybody who's here right now and who's watching Claire is also a professional teacher and she can help you out with learning English and with speaking better claire has worked with us before and she can tell you if you're a teacher you can ask her about our training program so yeah you know if you have any questions you can ask her because sometimes you don't want to just ask the guy who's who's speaking on the video right but thank you guys I'm gonna end the video now and it's been great talking to you guys and I will see you next time all right take care have a great day and keep learning and teaching English it's very important

Channel: English With Kris Amerikos

Views: 6,551

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Id: XBcwUsSxLlY

Length: 61min 53sec (3713 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 15 2018