The Power of Sentences for English Fluency

okay this is jack from tofluency.com and welcome to this english lesson where we're going to talk about the power of sentences the power of sentences when learning english now i'm going to use an analogy here where we're going to talk about driving a car and why this is similar to learning english and what we can learn from this too so there's a lot to cover in this lesson but first if you are new here welcome to you please subscribe to the channel where we go live most fridays at the same time and i also have lots of other videos for you too so be sure to watch the other videos on this channel now we're again we're doing this live so welcome if you are watching live right now we've got a lot of people in the chat um willian is a member as well so consider becoming a fluency member here on youtube there is a link in the description or you can just simply click the join button and then we have um other things to go through as well so i'm just going to have something at the end just to help you think about this a little bit more deeply so you can really understand the power of sentences but that's what we're going to focus on today the power of sentences when learning english and why this is so important if you want to be able to speak with fluency accurately and without thinking about grammar rules so i call that effortlessly without effort um meaning that you're not really having to struggle to think about how to speak in english but it's also going to help you in all areas too so things like reading listening watching tv and having conversations in everyday life so we've got people from switzerland slovakia moscow chad london and brazil it's great to have you all here please click that like button and also share the lesson if you want to all right so today i'm just going to switch screens here we're going to talk about the power of sentences and i think this is a really important topic now look at this picture here so what we have is a student driver now in the uk you can learn to drive when you are 17. so when you turn 17 you can start taking driving lessons and pass your driving exam in the us i think it might be 16 in some states maybe even 15 i'm not sure but i think it is earlier here in the us now what i've done here is i've broken up learning to drive into three stages and this is important because again it's going to help us understand the power of learning sentences because first what what happens in the uk is that you have to learn the theory behind driving driving theory and this happens in a couple of ways you have a theory exam where you take the test on road traffic signals you have to talk about safe driving how to park and there's an actual test on this but also your driving instructor usually sits down with you and says okay to learn to drive you need to use the um pedals when you change gear this is the gear pedal the brake pedal and then the accelerator now i have made a lesson on driving vocabulary so if you want to learn all about this then go to my channel and just click the search button and look for the driving lesson it's a good lesson i think you're going to enjoy it um but yeah you have to learn the theory first so you learn the theory now i think this is similar to learning grammar rules learning grammar rules and in my mind this is not really that important so when you're learning to drive the driver can just spend two or three minutes saying here's a gear stick here is the pedals the steering wheel indicator you've got the theory in your head but you don't need to spend too much time on it now the next step is this to learn how to do it to learn how to drive to learn how to use the steering wheel and this is where you are actually doing it and you're getting feedback from the driving instructor okay so you're getting feedback from the driving instructor they are saying slow down change gear earlier use your steering wheel better use the brake slow down when you come to a roundabout all these different things um and i remember learning to drive i had a great driving instructor and yeah he he was very stern and strong and he knew exactly how to pass the test that is relevant too because passing the test doesn't mean that you are a good driver but let's just say you learn how to drive you pass the test the next stage is this to be able to do it effortlessly without effort and i love this word i think this word is so important when it comes to speaking english and for you as an english learner so to be able to drive effortlessly now this usually comes not just after you pass the test but a few weeks months after that where you feel comfortable driving in the city around the suburbs on motorways or highways going fast going around roundabouts parking this comes with time and guess what else it comes with repetition repetition so the more you drive the better you're going to get after a while it just you don't think about having to step on the brake step on the the clutch to change gears indicating you do this subconsciously you do this without thinking about the theory of driving this is so important you do it without thinking about the theory you just do it it's natural and this you know this if you are a driver because sometimes you drive somewhere and you you can't really remember the journey or you're driving somewhere and you're talking to somebody hands-free on your phone um i have a new car and i can plug my phone in it's fantastic to be able to speak to people just naturally using the in-car microphone and speaker but yeah you can speak to people you can listen to english podcasts while driving you're able to do other things to a certain extent because you can drive effortlessly you're not thinking about the theory behind driving this is so important because that's exactly what i want to go on to because look at this we want to be able to read listen and speak effortlessly in english so we want to be able to speak read and listen effortlessly in english we want to reach this stage where we're not thinking about all the grammar rules and the right vocabulary to use in a very conscious way instead we want to be able to just do this naturally without thinking about the rules that we have to use just like i'm speaking now so when i'm speaking i'm not consciously thinking about grammar rules i'm not thinking about the second conditional i'm not thinking about using gerunds sentence structure tenses and all the other things that come with this additionally i'm not thinking about what i need to do with my mouth in order to make the sounds of english in the right way sometimes i do sometimes okay th in my head use a th because as an english teacher i try to model the th sounds but people where i live tend to just use the um the sound in london this happens a lot too but that's a different story a little tangent if you will the key point point is i'm not thinking about how to make the sounds i'm not thinking about sentence structure i'm not thinking about the rules of grammar it's just happening naturally and effortlessly and how do we do this how do we reach that stage well i think the best way is this the power of sentences the power of sentences and i'm going to go through near the end how you can actually use sentences in your daily learning in order to reach the stage where you are speaking reading and listening effortlessly so the power of sentences now look at this when you get lots of input you store sentences in your brain when you speak you use these sentences this happens unconsciously so just think about that for a second when you get lots of input you store sentences in your brain when you speak you use these sentences this happens unconsciously and then the next part is really important and i got this from antimoon.com i think this is a fabulous website if you want to learn the theory behind learning english and more about how i like to teach english too it says here the brain doesn't really look for whole sentences but rather the parts of sentences here they put phrases you can also use chunks it can build very complicated and long sentences from these parts so it doesn't just imitate one sentence at a time it uses many sentences at the same time to build original sentences so let me get on the screen again and just explain this in another way when you see lots of sentences you store them if you repeat them we'll come on to that soon but when you actually speak what you do is you take lots of the chunks of sentences that you've learned in the past and you piece them together to create your own sentences so what you're doing here is you're actually learning grammar in a natural way you're learning grammar to the part where it feels right or it feels wrong so if somebody says a sentence that is grammatically incorrect when you reach a stage where you know grammar it will just feel wrong but when you're speaking you'll be able to use sentences grammatically correct because it feels right it's all about that feeling you get not about oh what did i learn yesterday the second conditional if i had you're not doing that instead it just feels normal to say if i had more time i would do it it feels right you get a little tick inside your head because of all the input that you have got so you take parts of different sentences and you're able to create your own sentences and that's where you can speak effortlessly and also flexibly so that you can create your own sentences let's have a look at the chat before we move on yusuf says thank you jack for everything your lessons are very useful for us we appreciate you thank you so much denise is here um a member hi jack how are you i'm doing very well denise good to see you again so santa says we need to build different kinds of sentences and susanta also says that's a very thoughtful sentence very good if you if you are enjoying this so far please like and share this video okay so let's just do this again again it says the brain doesn't really look for whole sentences but rather for parts of sentences it can build very complicated and long sentences from this part so it doesn't just imitate one sentence at a time it uses many sentences at the same time to build original sentences how many times have i said sentence or sentences in this lesson lots of repetition though lots of repetition and so when we're talking about imitating this is important because imitating english speakers is important but when you actually come to speak you're going to use parts of what you've listened to and heard over the long term to create your own sentences i want to give you some examples now to help you just understand this a little bit more deeply so this i've used these examples for years now and i think they're so important but just look at these three sentences i'm excited about going to the party okay he was excited about seeing her they're going to be so excited about meeting him now three maybe simple sentences for you but there's also a difference and this is so important there's also a difference between knowing something and being able to do something okay and i think this is such a great life lesson because let's say you want to learn history and somebody teaches you all about the julius caesar okay and so you think okay i know this but do you really know it because you took a lesson once you read a book once the key here is to be able to teach somebody what happened during his life that's when you actually know how to use it so there's a difference between knowing and being able to use it the same with english i see this all the time people say oh i already know the second conditional i learnt the rules so i said okay can you give me three examples and then a lot of times they can't do it because they haven't turned that knowledge in to be able to express themselves and sentences allow us to do this if we learn them in the right way which will learn about soon so again i'm excited about going to the party he was excited about seeing her they're going to be so excited about meeting him now let's see if i can highlight some of this i think i can good so what we learn here is after excited we use about so every time we use excited um then we use about this is using the objective preposition um which i made a lesson on so after excited we use about then we can also see after excited about we use the gerund me tin excited about seeing excited about going so let's say that you repeat these three sentences um for let's just say 10 days and then you want to be able to use this but you want to be able to use it with a different verb okay let's just say eating or let's say have to have dinner i'm excited about having dinner tonight you'll be able to say this automatically effortlessly because you have internalized that grammar rule you haven't just learned the grammar rule you have internalized it you have reached a stage where it just feels right to you that is that is the power of learning these sentences okay and then what you're also doing here is you're learning verb tenses i am excited present simple he was excited past simple they're going to be so excited that's the going to to go into um it's not a verb tense but you can call it a verb tense and then you're also going to lean learn some more stuff like so excited so we don't just use any word to um to before excited we use so they're going to be very excited you can use that too but so is a little bit more common and then we're using um other things here like going to the party meeting him seeing her so you can see here that if we learn these three examples or let's learn even more ten examples then you're going to be able to use this this structure effortlessly without thinking so what we're doing here again is we're not just learning something but we're knowing something and to know something uh that is is different between being able to do something so what can we learn from this how can we take this what we have learned so far into something else into something where we can actually apply this on a daily basis okay well the first thing we can do is this get lots of input get lots of input now like i've said before not all input is created equal what is important for you might not be important for someone else so input here is reading listening watching basically reading and listening is probably the the two easiest ways to think about it because when you watch a movie you're listening so listening and reading but not all input is created equally so it's important to choose materials for your level choose materials for your level i've talked about this a lot and the example i like to give is if you are starting to lift weights you don't go to the heaviest weight you can start with instead you go with the weight that you can lift right now for like say 10 reps 10 times um my wife is sending me uh real estate listings because that's what she does every day so yeah you don't start with the heaviest weight you start with a weight that you can manage right now suitable for your level of strength but as you build strength then you can go to heavier weights okay it's the same with learning english it's better to use materials that are good for your level now and just quickly my favorite material is a resource is a graded reader with audio an audio book for graded readers so choose materials for your level and then find or use sentences relevant to you okay so this is when we're going to start getting into the actual application here because one when you get lots of input you're going to naturally come across sentences but i think the most efficient way is to find these sentences and do something with them i'm going to tell a little story now to talk about why i think this is important so my son is in grade one and at the moment they're only in two days a week so they're only in school two days a week and the rest of the time i'm teaching him him at home and then i come to work in the afternoon sometimes evening too so i'm teaching my son at the moment and uh let's just say the work that they are getting through the school is there's not a lot of work and it's all done on the ipad so i'm doing some extra stuff with him now and at first i was doing some things that they sent me and doing the extra work but then i decided you know what i have a theory here which has worked for me and lots of people which is the sentence method how to learn english through sentences so we got him some flash cards um using the most common sentences in english right now or for his level so grade one kindergarten sentences we're also going to get some grade two um ones too so what we're doing is he is trying to say the word on the flash card we turn it around he reads it and then what he's doing is he's trying to what i say store the sentence in your brain and then write the sentence out and we've been doing this for about four weeks now and his reading and writing has just gone like up so high so what we're doing is we're choosing materials for his level we're using sentences relevant to him and he's doing this every day usually we do around 25 sentences a day he enjoys it which is so important because we make it fun and and he likes just the the relaxing nature of writing down slowly and making sure your handwriting is good and this is what i recommend you do too and you can do this in a few ways i also think context is important so what we're going to start doing as well is when we read a book that he likes we're going to write down sentences from that book and then he's going to learn those sentences this is so important and he's also getting repetition too because we're using the same sentences um he uses he writes them down today then he'll write the same one down in three days and then in a week or two and i'm trying my best to make this organized so this is something you can do too find sentences important to you write them down repeat them out loud which he's doing as well um read them in your head just get that repetition of sentences that way you're going to internalize them so to go back to this use sentences relevant to you and choose materials for your level and then what i recommend you do is repeat these sentences again you can say them out loud you can write i love the writing of sentences and also you can just read them in your head sometimes too but thomas has the advantage of having a teacher with him so if he makes a mistake when he says the sentence i can say oh try this instead of that um and as you know english can be difficult because we have words like um which he finds interesting you have words like would would with the exact same pronunciation so this is something that is important as well it's you have to learn how things are said otherwise you're going to learn the wrong way to say things so we have been working on this a lot repeating sentences but if you can't do this if you don't have a teacher then instead record yourself and find english audio with the sentences but by recording yourself what you can do is listen to the way you say something and then compare it to the original audio and then you can notice the changes you need to make to sound more like the original okay now i will say i have a program which comes with over 1 200 sentences with audio based on lessons i've made in the past so if you want to learn more about that and to get all the sentences you need for this and to use software too using anki then go to my website to fluency.com and then click on fluency course and learn more about it there's also a link in the description too i'll put a link in the chat if you are interested in that but if you don't want to buy that program or you can't afford the program then what you can do is create sentences yourself and put them into software or if you prefer the old school method the traditional method you can get a notebook and write the sentences down and then repeat them that way but i like the software especially if you get audio because you get the repetition of hearing the sentence again and again and again and that just uses a different part of your brain so then you hear the audio you get used to the sounds of english and then you store that sentence additionally in audio format in your brain so that is how i recommend you do it um let's have a look let's go to questions and answers now and then i'll do a quick summary at the end let's see willian i'm going to prioritize super chats if you want to support the channel send in a super chat there's a little dollar sign to do that and then also um feel free to become a member i'm going to prioritize member comments and super chats so willian says who was a member yes this really sounds great because i never studied grammar and i can understand all you're saying this is so good well thank you william yeah um i just didn't know i've i've done this in in spanish i made massive improvements in my spanish when i did this i got sentences from the tv show friends i listened to the audio i repeated them over time i read a book i used the reading method which i've talked about before where you highlight words you don't understand or sentences that are relevant to you and then you enter these into anki and you repeat them so doing this just means that you just have that repetition of the most powerful part of english you can use which is a sentence or a phrase paulo paula says hi folks first time here well welcome to you please uh please subscribe and um yeah turn on that notification bell can you please repeat the name of the site you've been saying yeah anti-moon there's a link in the description read that article the way that they write is just phenomenal i love the way that this person writes because they use simple english powerful english they don't use words and phrases that you don't need to know simple is good simple is effective what is the name of the flowers in the background um it's called uh plastic flowers must ludin says very useful lesson thank you so much okay here's some um here's some phrases here from excited i'm excited about swimming in the pool i'm excited about the dinner party yeah so when you use excited about you can also use nouns as well at the end you don't have to use a verb gav says i live in turkey i'm an english language and literature student and i have to say you helped me a lot to improve my english thank you so much well thank you it's my pleasure to have you here so santa she seems to be excited about going to the usa good your lesson is so exciting thank you nelina says i'm confused about one thing i'm an english learner and don't know which action accent should i use and also can i use a mixture of both american and british yeah you can people do people do this all the time i do um well vocabulary i use a mixture ken says i'm curious how to remember 20 000 english vocabulary in one month it's not possible um it's not possible well no ten twenty thousand is a lot uh yeah it's not possible but just think about how much you can do in a day and how much you enjoy doing and do that do as much as you can better to learn how to translate easy sentences from my native language to english using flash cards and yeah so i i like that method as well where you translate sentences or you you know how to say this in your native language after a while you won't need to do that because once you learn i'm excited about going to the party what that means in your native language then when you learn all the other examples you won't need to translate everything you can just take that initial translation understand it this is key too before you learn and repeat a sentence you need to understand the sentence and understand when it is used again that's why i recommend using things that match your level so it's not too difficult you want to build on what you know let's see every place are brazilian guys yep willian says yes anki is a powerful tool for all students i know it is awesome yeah i love it hello from germany uh can you help me i know many words but i have difficulty making a sentence can you give me a tip please that's exactly what this lesson is about is how you can make sentences um it's through repeating sentences could you tell us how to improve our listening comprehension skills thank you yeah if you go to my channel and sort by most viewed videos then there's i think number three or four or five maybe is a video on how to improve your english listening amber says how to achieve the transition from input to output great question yeah so the getting lots of input helps and some people say all you need is input i think it helps if you have the output too where you are also training the way you say things that's why my lrc method is really powerful because what you're doing is you're listening to a sentence you're repeating it you're recording it and you're comparing your version to the original and then that way you can make changes so that you can say it correctly and then over time when you are um repeating these sentences then that's how you internalize them to be able to use them but like we said you take parts of lots of different sentences that you've learned and you put them all together and then you can speak um effortlessly just try this out i think it's a good idea to try it so what you can do is take the sentences we've learned today i'm excited about seeing her um he was excited about going to the party find another 10 to 15 sentences like that and then just try making your own sentences last week you didn't conduct this live class why was that i think oh it was it was a holiday last week it was thanksgiving and then black friday so our children were at home are you paid um yeah well i'm an english teacher who the way i get paid is through youtube and my courses so um yeah i have a course tofluency.com check it out for your response still miss that time when i was in newcastle yeah i like newcastle does your course consider american english in your thousand phrases pack um no the well the pronunciation is in british english some of the vocabulary is american how can we make an immersion on the target language in our own country what's the better method uh i like the just to say do what you do now but do it in english so let's say you obviously you can't do this for everything but you can try your best for let's say friends you can make more friends who are english speakers um and i know people who do this when i was in valencia we had a we were friends with a group of spanish people from valencia who wanted to hang around us they liked us but also they wanted to practice their english and you see this a lot so think about the areas where there are english speakers where you are and make friends with people in the right way but on top of that what you can do is you can listen to more things in english so if you watch tv watch it in english listen to english music play computer games in english read in english and change your whole twitter feed to english language change the language on your phone to english ask siri things in english i mean there's so much you can do but yeah you can just do lots of things like that i want to be as a native speaker yeah there's a lot of conversation about this right now um saying like that i i always say your goal should just to be um to not just but to reach a c1 level of english um where people can understand you you can speak clearly but don't worry too much about your accent english speakers love foreign accents so we love listening to a french accent a spanish russian it's great for us uh could you give us a tip for learning vocabulary and the way for keeping it in mind exactly what i've been talking about in this lesson too um where you can learn new vocabulary through that do you lift weights i do um i'm getting a little bit more serious about it bulking right now uh how do i get anki just search for anki download and you'll find it online when someone speaks for me i translate automatically my mind but if i don't translate i won't understand how to change the situation and again i'll say what we've talked about in this lesson if you learn and get lots of input english sentences and then learn how to use them then you won't have to translate he was excited about going to the party it will just oh you just know what it means it's practice amit says i was made redundant in the covert and no money i really want to improve english new people speak good english how do i get it make friends for one that's a long term thing because you can't just make a friend today and and speak in english tomorrow it takes some time but you can also do things like language exchanges where you speak in your language for half the time with somebody who wants to learn your language and then you speak in english for the rest of the time it's the best way to do it just search for language exchanges online do you drink tea every day yes herbal tea thank you very much i'm good in english but the issue for me is the lack of confidence while speaking this comes with time and practice um and just also know that again people love listening to people speak english in different accents and that they really appreciate it when people try try their best to speak okay i'm going to um i'm going to leave it there we've come to 40 minutes which is a great time for a class um so what i want you to do next is go to the description and check out my other videos if you also go to my channel home page there is a full lesson um on this where you can learn about how to use anki in sentences and i go through this step by step so go to my channel homepage and watch that video definitely check out the to fluency program as well get my free book if you don't have it again the description has everything for you and also just please like and share this lesson it really helps me as a teacher and um the more people that come to these lessons just makes me want to do more of them so yeah let's get lots of people involved and really build up this channel okay so thank you again everyone being here live i really appreciate you and i'll speak to

Channel: To Fluency

Views: 83,759

Rating: 4.9518814 out of 5

Keywords: learn english, to fluency, english, learning english, speak english, grammar, free english lesson, english lesson, conditionals, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, mixed

Id: 9Zb9YmoErCs

Length: 41min 5sec (2465 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020