How To Speak Fluently In English About Almost Anything

0:03 I think we're actually live this time I'm Drew Badger the founder of englishanyone.com and welcome to another live video here on YouTube and we'll see if we get this working should be coming through clearly all right making sure we're okay uh so I'll give people a moment to come in we should be live and working right now but the reason I wanted to make this video is because I get really one question actually I get a lot of questions but I get one particular question over and over and over again from students and this is how can I actually speak fluently about many different kinds of things well huddle [Laughter] yesterday

0:49 uh so a lot of people again they can understand a lot of English but they have trouble expressing themselves and especially if the topic is new or unfamiliar or something uh then they have trouble being able to speak so I wanted to talk about this because in a video I did a couple of I think what was that last week I did on Instagram I'd spoke with a few Learners and one of them in particular was talking about how she's reading lots of books and taking time to improve her English but she doesn't feel like she's actually becoming more fluent and so fluency again just to make this very clear for people this is how well you can communicate it's not how much

1:34 you know and we know this because often little children like you know four five six year old kids native English speaking kids can communicate better than many adult English Learners and so the the goal is not to just try to learn more and more and spend more time learning what you really should be doing is actually focusing on vocabulary because this is how people get fluent it's how you got fluent in your native language it's how you develop Mastery in anything uh so I had a couple of notes actually uh there are quite a few things I want to talk about [Laughter] all right so we got let's see here hopefully muted issue hopefully the hopefully the uh the

2:20 volume is loud enough to let's see uh welcome from Germany nice to see everybody I want to be quick go through a couple of different examples about this just to make the point about how you can actually speak fluently about almost anything uh but also just to let you know this is not like an instantaneous process uh but it really actually does happen quite quickly if you start doing the right thing so that's what we'll talk about in this video uh so I wanted to talk about this again I mentioned the learner at the beginning uh but also just because I really want to show how natives are learning and remind you about how you learned your native language so I had my uh actually before I do that let me give you a quick a quick example of something uh just to

3:06 kind of contrast these two ways of learning so the typical uh we'll just call this the uh the ESL approach so this is English as a second language and then we have the efl approach over here which is learning English as a first language and what most people do is they spend a lot of time trying to learn as much vocabulary as possible so imagine each one of these is a new phrase so if you spend today trying to learn 10 new phrases or 10 new words or whatever the efl approach really you're trying to focus on one thing and and learn it very deeply okay this is basically the simplest contrast between these things so children they will often be learning something like a child will watch the same movie you know a hundred times so they're they're just

3:56 naturally getting lots and lots of review while uh most English Learners are trying to just and again this is it's not really the fault of Learners part of it is your brain just trying to get you to learn new things and part of it is teachers that are really not spending enough time focusing on things and so they will learn something new and they will learn another new thing and then they will forget other things that uh that they thought they knew so before I talk about uh exactly what you should be doing and give you some examples of this uh I thought it would be interesting to just use a brick example to get you all thinking about something very simple like a brick so just imagine I have a brick right here I want you to write down in the comments right now just think

4:44 of how many different ways you can use a brick all right so very simple object you could do the same thing with a marker or you know an eraser or something like that but how many different things could you do with a brick all right this will help you get thinking more like a native speaker about vocabulary because what we want to do is get you focusing on something rather than trying to you know we we look at one way a brick could be used and then we go to some other object all right so Arc just popping in look at that keep up the good work here we go uh so yeah everyone take your take your time and uh and give me just any kind of use you can put it right in the chat how could you use a brick all right just think try to try to be a little bit of creative you

5:33 can think about this as a creativity uh let's say you could build something okay so even if we have only one brick I mean obviously if we have many bricks we could probably build a wall but yeah we could build something we could make something that's true it could be the like the first piece uh of a wall uh we could throw it for sure you could use it as a weapon if you wanted to throw it as something yeah it could be a bridge yeah maybe like even a bridge a small bridge for a mouse or something like that so if we put I don't know something under here and then we have our brick like that it could be a little bridge over some some water something like that so we could probably think of I don't know 30 40 different

6:18 uses as a supporter sure so you could put something on top of it you could sit on it that's right you could use it as a chair very good so we could also so again we could put things on top of it or we could put the brick on other things like using it as a paper weight a paperweight so things maybe if it's a windy day we put the brick on paper to stop it from blowing away I don't know maybe we throw it in some water to make a loud Splash just to hear the sound of that all right I don't want to spend too much time in the video going over all the different ways you could use a brick but the point is if you think a little bit about it you spend just a little bit of time thinking you can probably think of some pretty creative uses for a brick okay

7:04 and then we also have maybe there we could have different kinds of bricks you could have like a Lego brick where you're you know you got your little pieces in there you're connecting it to something or it could be uh maybe made out of plastic or something a different kind of brick or it could be a different color maybe you just use it as a decoration or something all right so why am I bringing up this example uh the point of this is really just to show you the difference between what Learners are doing so what teachers are usually doing in classes and what natives are doing all right so I was walking uh walking my older daughter Arya to school today and uh while we were walking she said dad what does harsh mean harsh

7:51 word harsh all right let's see do you think pay attention at native English math can help you with pronunciation yes if you obviously if you're if you're watching what people do but listening is more important and it's better to listen to like 10 different people speaking than to try to watch one person's mouth if that makes sense so Arya my older daughter asks what does harsh mean uh and I said oh where did you hear that and she said oh I was watching a show boss baby maybe you've heard of this show boss baby so there are actually a lot of complicated words and expressions it's really a show for adults but because it's a cartoon kids like to watch it but she's learning lots of interesting vocabulary and

8:40 so one of the words that she learned was harsh so she's asked what's harsh mean and so I said okay where did you hear that you're watching Boss baby what's happening in the scene or in the show when you hear something or someone use the word harsh so I I think uh like one character and these are I don't know babies or whatever I I didn't I didn't see the show but but just listening to her talk about it so one character uh is is kind of like yelling at yelling at this other character maybe we'll give him like an angry face uh and the other character says like don't be be so harsh so this is one example of this so don't be so harsh

9:26 so what's happening here is okay if we we imagine the scene we can think about one character as being angry at another character uh and they're saying some some harsh words some harsh words to the other character and you can start to understand what harsh means or kind of one one example of what harsh means but after she she kind of understood this it's like okay it's maybe kind of something maybe a little bit mean or something difficult or something hard hard to hard to deal with something hard to accept something that's harsh like that but I didn't stop here as we're walking to school I start giving her more examples of harsh and so you might have

10:12 we'll just put some more examples up here and I'll just leave this so we might have some harsh foreign harsh weather now if you think about it okay we understand this meaning of harsh then if we have harsh weather do you think that's like good Pleasant weather or maybe not good Pleasant weather and a child can imagine oh wow that looks like there will be some harsh harsh weather today there's a snowstorm and lots of wind so that's what we mean by harsh weather harsh weather all right so you might have a harsh storm or we could have a harsh season again we're still talking

10:57 about similar kinds of things here but again the point is that we don't stop with just one example of something we really want to make sure that you can understand that vocabulary very well so when I'm teaching my own kids we spend time with the vocabulary yeah so bad weather again harsh weather the same kind of thing and you understand it from the situation from the context rather than trying to get a definition or a translation of the word so this is why I asked my daughter like when did you hear that what situation what's happening to those characters when they say that because I want her to be thinking about that when she's learning new things again it's going to be much easier for her to understand new vocabulary this way so we got harsh weather uh harsh storm harsh conditions

11:46 all these things they mean something that's difficult or it's going to be bad and again we already have the example of harsh words someone might use some harsh language maybe they're cursing at someone they're angry at someone does this make sense is it is it starting to be a little bit more clear what harsh means you've probably heard this word before but have you heard all these different uses of it maybe maybe not but this is usually what natives are doing so they don't learn like I I'm actually very efficient about how I teach my kids because I understand how they should be learning but usually what children do is they will hear maybe one example of something and then it could be weeks or months later they hear another one and they make that connection so I want to help my kids make that connection as fast as possible

12:35 like look at that here's something harsh here's another thing that's harsh these are all different harsh examples so they understand very well what it means okay so this is just one example but I wanted to give some more especially kind of higher level things but uh remember just because the the vocabulary looks simple you might have a word like harsh and it seems like a short simple word uh like okay that's not an advanced word but again in in a real conversation would you be able to use harsh in these different ways would that vocabulary come to your mind automatically if you learn this way it does so if you can think wow like harsh uh and and now because I have this word

13:21 and because I know it so well I've gone deep into the vocabulary we're going to focus on something rather than trying to learn a bunch of different things so remember the traditional ESL approach we have a lesson I try to teach you 10 or 20 words or something but we're not going to go very deeply or spend much time on them and then next week There's No review of any of that vocabulary so you learn a few things and then you don't spend time reviewing them but with the efl approach we really want to take something and go deep into that vocabulary so we learned the word harsh and then we want to hear lots of different examples of how the word might be used and it's all of these examples that really make you fluent in that vocabulary all right now here's the

14:07 amazing part about this now that you do this with one word you can use this word when you're talking about other things like don't judge me so harshly so people are being critical they are criticizing you hey like you know this is a bad presentation or something like wow don't don't be so harsh please give me some kind helpful feedback okay so again it's another example of like harsh feedback harsh words harsh language and this is just one example okay so when I'm teaching my kids this is what I'm trying to do I don't want to give them a definition of the word I want to help them understand really what it means by covering lots of different things does this make sense let me know in the comments if this is like yeah so rough another idea and these are all kind

14:55 of similar because often words don't have maybe one definition or the definition might be broad so it could cover many different things but in this way my daughter Arya now understands ah okay harsh means something difficult wow that test was really harsh well that was a difficult a difficult thing okay so the point here is uh if you want to be able to speak fluently about almost anything the the you actually should do the opposite of what most people think so the English as a second language approach says uh if we try to learn all these different vocabulary words let's say we have like a thousand thousand word vocabulary uh and if we if we try to learn a whole bunch of words

15:42 or try to learn more words than that then we can talk about anything but what happens is that they don't actually know very well the vocabulary and so they actually can't have conversations about anything they can have a very limited conversation about some things but the uh the efl approach the English has a first language approach what we're doing is really trying to help you understand something very well and then you can move on to the next thing so once you feel confident about this then you move on to the next word or phrase or whatever but because you know this so well now you can use it when talking about everything you can use it when talking about relationships or going to the doctor or whatever you now know that vocabulary and you can use it when you're talking about almost anything okay so the point is not to know every word the point is to know like

16:33 the vocabulary that you have very well and the better you know it this is how you do it so you're getting lots more examples you're really trying to understand something very well hopefully this is making sense let me know in the in the comments if everybody is getting this uh before I move on to some additional vocabulary for this all right yes you could have some harsh parents that's true uh let's see Alfonso that's so I just want to know if it is possible uh so who is fluent in English be able to express one's thought on all topics yeah but do you see how this works so now that I know the word harsh I understand how I can apply it in different topics okay so if I just learn the word harsh and a definition maybe I'm only thinking about harsh weather all right

17:23 but actually harsh doesn't it doesn't only mean weather that's not harsh does it mean that it's meaning like as you look at all these different examples you can understand that what that means eh yeah me and that kid on there yes use your English though use your English got his own I was just watching that this morning that's from a Japanese TV show called hanakapa uh if I'm talking about the same if we're talking about the same thing uh but yes that's kind of a harsh name over there all right

18:15 all right hopefully this makes sense though uh so the idea again is to focus on something to understand it very well and that's how you can use it to talk about lots of different topics so you can use this vocabulary and other things all right let me give you two more examples uh of something so this is just a single word but I thought I would also give you uh two other ones I know Learners love phrasal verbs so we will talk about that very quickly phrasal verbs are things that young kids learn when they're trying to understand uh more complicated things than just a single verb like stand we might have stand up or we might have sit down or sit up so again we're not just we're not just looking at sit because we have sit

19:04 we might have sit down and we also have to sit up so sitting down just means to sit down in a chair but sit up means actually to have correct posture when you're sitting all right to sit up uh but let's just give another example of bring up now usually when kids are learning these things for the first time they will hear somebody using a physical visual example of something so if I say oh I might bring up like if I bring up a marker I'm going to raise something up so if I'm maybe walking from uh the first floor in my house we're going to draw a house here it's got two floors in it and here's some stairs so

19:50 if I walk from here up to the second floor and I'm carrying something with me I'm bringing up a like a thing I might bring up a marker from the first floor all right to bring something up all right yes all right we're getting there we're getting there very good Nina uh but again this this same idea we begin with something physical that you can see and this is how kids are able to understand the vocabulary without using translations all right so we're going to physically bring something so pull it from one place to another to bring it up bring it up all right and so we might have another thing so we've got another example if we imagine a conversation two people are talking about something so here's one person

20:36 and another person talking and the first one says oh like I had an idea about something uh and they're they're just introducing that in the conversation so that person might bring up bring up a topic so again you're kind of imagining if it's like inside your head and you you bring it up to the to the topic you know bring it up to the conversation it's a similar idea of carrying something from one lower level to a higher level so if you bring up a conversation oh my friend just brought that up in the conversation so we're talking about something and my friend brought up I don't know some idea about that what we kind of mean is they're bringing something maybe from their mind or from the inside of their head and now they're making it uh obvious okay

21:25 bring up your date yes and so another example another uh very common one is like to bring up a child to bring up a child so if you bring up a child same kind of idea on August you're gonna sneeze uh oh no it went away maybe it'll come back so if we bring up a child we can think about that child physically getting bigger over time so they're bringing we're bringing them up we're trying to raise them up trying to help them grow to bring up a child all right so all of these examples the ESL approach would be okay we're going to bring up and then maybe they would learn one example of something but the efl approach is really to help you understand the vocabulary very well all

22:15 right does that make sense so the the thing that's really stopping people from communicating it's not their vocabulary again you might have uh like a child that knows 100 words and an adult that knows 1 000 words but the better Communicator will be the one who knows that vocabulary really well all right so me speaking Japanese in the same way like my my Japanese vocabulary is I don't know how many words I know in Japanese I know actually I can't even count how many words that would be but I have no trouble communicating in different situations about different topics okay so confidence is a key factor yes confidence is key but confidence comes from your understanding of vocabulary so you don't

23:05 you don't just magically become confident for no reason you become confident because you think ah okay now I get it now I really understand what's happening I really understand the vocabulary okay I'll go back take a look at a few comments and I'll give a final example here uh all right Chris says I like your way of teaching from India glad to hear it uh why native people use this like going doing it's just to be faster so they're speaking uh faster English Shihan says where are you from I'm from the United States uh that makes sense means I heard in lots of movies yeah so that makes sense

23:57 to make sense means to be understood so if I say oh am I am I being understood do you understand what I'm saying I can say does that make sense so am I am I talking something up yeah bringing up a ball so that usually like if you're like playing basketball or something it's again bringing something like forward down the court to bring something up all right but again the point is that you're spending more time with fewer words so it's it's like you're learning less okay I know people are they really want to learn more and like here's how to have a massive vocabulary but you don't get there uh for speaking unless you actually spend time with the vocabulary but it's it's new for your mind as you're learning these different examples just like we talked about with harsh all right so I'm going to teach a new phrase maybe some people know this already

24:46 maybe some people do not uh but this is the same way I would explain it to my own kids and again this is important really want to help people understand it the same way natives do all right Zora says uh bring up something that happened in the past yeah exactly so something in the past you might bring that up as well all right and as you feel more confident about the vocabulary then you will feel much more comfortable in a conversation using it all right so we're going to draw a tree here for this last expression then I'll take more questions uh if we have them so here's uh my this is supposed to be a tree I can draw a tree okay and so each one of these things we can call this a branch or a limb this is a silent bee a limb so a branch of a tree or

25:39 a limb of a tree now if you look at this if I climb up some of these branches are going to be stronger than others so maybe I will uh I could if I stand like on a on a very strong Branch up here I know I am safe I will be supported but if I'm out here if I try to stand up out here you think that's that's is that safe or not safe and again this is the same way I would teach it to my own kids just to make sure it's understandable so if I'm standing up here on a very strong big limb then it will probably be pretty safe I will not fall from there but if I try to stand out here do you think that would be safe or not now forgive me if this seems like an easy question but I'm trying to get you to think like a native as I do this so let me know in the

26:28 comments all right bring down is that possible yes so that's another example you can bring something down as well so you bring something up you bring something down and you'd also learn different expressions like uh like another person is uh maybe you make them feel bad so if I'm depressed and I'm talking with my friend like I can bring him down too I can bring him down to my level yeah you you can improve your English if you understand what I'm saying you can you can improve all right so I can't create a sentence while speaking what should I do so yes this is the point the point is about getting lots of input to help you really understand uh the vocabulary so we have the person up here it's the very strong Branch or

27:16 strong limb and out here very weak because uh the person is too heavy maybe they will fall fall down all right so here's where we get the expression to go out on a limb what do you think that means to go out on a live so to go out on a limb what do you think that means try to think about it like a native English speaker to go out on a limb I'll give you a moment to try to give me even a simple explanation of what that means not safe okay [Music] anyone else just post it right here in the comments uh is it possible to improve my English by listening to something that I don't even understand uh probably not I would

28:05 not I don't know if you don't if you're just listening to something you can't understand at all you're probably wasting your time other than hearing maybe how the sound of the language is uh let's see so dangerous awful very good very good and how to motivate low Achievers to speak English well you just make the language easy that's it if you make the language difficult people don't want to learn if you make the language easy then people want to learn it's really that simple all right something that's not saved do you think shadowing is a good way to learn a new language uh it's not really the best use of your time not reliable yeah foreign

28:51 very sloppily here not reliable all right so yes the idea here to go out on a limb really it means to do something risky that's not safe yes it could put you in a dangerous position all right but you can understand physically how this works so you can imagine a person again this is the same way I would teach my own kids I would actually draw something like this if they say Dad what does it mean to go out on a limb to go out on a limb so I have to explain what a limb is and talking about their their kind of like going out further and further so they're not just standing here next to the tree where it's safe they're really going out and going much much further they're going out

29:40 on a limb all right so you can understand what this means from the picture all right and that's why people have given some good examples over here of what it means Okay so we've got something that's not safe dangerous not reliable yes there's probably going to be some issue or something wrong that will happen it's risky okay so where do you think we might use this expression now so we take a physical thing like this we understand what it means as many Expressions can be understood this way when do you think someone might use this so yes visual visual examples are key if you can understand them especially if you understand okay what is a limb so often if you if you begin with trying to teach people an expression like this if you just translate this whole thing into

30:29 somebody somebody else's language you're not really teaching them anything you're not actually helping them understand the language like a native speaker so that's why again in the English as a first language approach we really want to help you understand everything so you can really feel confident using it a newbie does it literally mean a beginner yes like a new person who's doing something yeah so an unsafe situation like what be specific mean a very good so think about uh when you might use this when might someone go out on a limb all right uh do you have more videos about minimal pairs actually uh I don't think I have I have some videos that cover that but I would recommend if you just if you want to compare different sounds in that way uh get Frederick so you can click on the link in the description below this video but rather

31:16 than having a video of that you can actually go back and test that out oh adiaginkio foreign we're going to go back to that kind of stuff in a minute all right do you have some vids about pronunciation yes again uh if you if you just search our YouTube channel for pronunciation and also get Frederick as well that will improve your pronunciation as well all right so if we imagine this situation everybody understands this is something risky a person is doing something maybe they should not do for themselves so maybe I go out on a limb uh I'll see if I can fit all this in here so I went out

32:17 so I went out on a limb to help someone so again I did something risky to help somebody else now I'm not actually in a tree uh in the example uh maybe I went out uh I don't know like I had to I had to go out and swim in some some shark infested water so sharks lots of sharks in the water and I had to go out and try to save somebody so I went out on a limb to help them or I went out on a limb uh to create a new uh like try to create a new product at work so it was a risky thing to do maybe maybe not many people will buy the product or something wrong will happen to it it's risky all right to go out on a limb all right now watch we're going to take

33:05 it to an even higher level but I want to make sure everybody understands this as it is all right it's just another way of saying to do something risky to do something dangerous do something that maybe uh like if I'm if I if I'm talking about like a friend of mine at work and I say some good things about him even though he maybe did something I don't know not so good at work or something like that so I'm going out on a limb to say something nice about that guy so I could get in trouble for that or I could lose my job or something all right so I'm going out on a limb all right yeah so you could you could like to to talk about like investing in a stock or something so I I went out on a limb to to try to try doing something like that

33:53 to try uh investing in something all right and so it could mean something that's like actually dangerous uh or it just means like a kind of risk in a in a certain way like this is this session devoted just for teaching idioms now this is this is one one example this isn't I mean you really wouldn't call this an idiom it's really just like and and an idiom is typically something that you can't understand from the words this is usually like this is to go out on a limb is a thing that you can usually understand like natives would understand what that means uh physically in this way but some things are more difficult to understand uh so some people might call this an idiom but this is an easier one but the point is I want to show that number one you should be understanding it and spending more time with it as a native uh

34:44 so in the same way that we don't want to just get a definition or a translation of the word we really want to help you understand it like a native so you feel confident about using it all right and that means you're getting lots and lots of examples of something you really understand it well and again that's how you become fluent and and when you become fluent in this like if I know how to use uh to go out on a limb then I can start talking about that in lots of different situations so if we take it to an even higher level let's imagine uh uh we have a kid so he's got he's got like a hat on backwards uh actually and I just drew a face on his hat put his face on his face uh he's got some kind of

35:33 baggy clothes here uh and he's uh I don't know some baggy baggy pants and he looks like he has a picture of a skateboard on a shirt now I might say when I meet this kid I like I'll go out on a limb like I might be going out on a limb but do you like skateboarding all right so I'm going or you could say I'll I'll go out on a limb as an even even easier way to think about this so I'll go out on a limb and say

36:20 like skateboarding so I'll go out on a limb and say or I'll go out on a limb and guess you like skateboarding so here I'm using the expression ironically so there's I'm not actually talking about risk at all because like I can look at him and and guess like it's probably you know like he probably likes skateboarding he looks like a skateboarder has a skateboarding shirt on maybe he's at a skate park and I say oh like I'll go out on a limb and say you probably like skateboarding all right so I'm I'm using the expression in an ironic way all right and so I if I if I mean it

37:06 in a serious way I might say I'm gonna go out on a limb but I bet you like Stock Investing so there I'm actually I'm saying something that like it's not really risky like for my personal health or something but it sounds like a there's there's no no real reason why it should be true just looking at him so if I say I'll go out on a limb I'll go out on a limb and say uh you look like you invest in stocks and so it's a funny thing to look at that and think maybe he does maybe this kid likes investing in stocks but judging by the way he looks like he doesn't you know he should have like you know maybe uh like a stock like ticker or something on his shirt and

37:52 then you know maybe maybe some other things like that he's got a tie on uh he's carrying I don't know a briefcase he's got some charts in his hand something like that all right so whenever you have a situation like this where you're you want to use it in an ironic way you can use it in the same way all right now I don't expect you to remember all of this and try to use it confidently today the point is that if you spend time with vocabulary and maybe the next day you review this again and another day you review it again and you hear it in different ways that's when you start feeling confident and then you can use that expression in lots of different ways all right let's see so uh Brahim yeah so we have a whole a whole app about about it covers everything about

38:40 phonics just get Frederick it's already done and waiting for you so you don't need a video about phonics uh we have a video series on YouTube about that already uh and yeah just get Frederick by clicking on the link in the description below this video all right so we've covered a few different things in this video and each of them are examples of how you spend more time learning something so you really understand it and then that's how you can use it in different situations I'll give you an example in Japanese uh so for me like uh a joke that I learned like something I use all the time and I have to remember like did I use that joke in front of this person or I can't say it in front of my wife because she's already heard me use it so many times but in different situations I will say

39:34 I bet all right so this is just the English translation of uh the Japanese is like shine waribiki which is like an employee discount so let's say I see a friend of mine uh this happened to me a couple of days ago so this friend of mine is a doctor and he has he had like a like a cut on his eye uh and I said oh like but it's you know you don't have to pay for medical bills like because you're a doctor you know like I bet I bet you get an employee discount uh or like a friend of mine another friend of mine he was uh I think he was like cutting his

40:22 own kids hair so he's a barber but he's cutting his own child's hair at home and I was like oh like that child gets an employee discount all right but I can use this because I'm like very confident about this particular expression I can use that in lots of different situations and pretty much any time I could be speaking about anything and would would be able to find a way to use that all right so I I didn't just like memorize this I really understood what it means and then I can use it in a fluent way in different situations all right so this video is not about how to learn like one word uh and now you can speak fluently about everything the point is that you will build up very quickly uh the ability to communicate if you learn in this way

41:11 all right all right so let me go back answer questions uh it's been about 40 minutes let's see here if I missed anybody yes I went out on a limb and spent all my money yes so that would be like going out on a serious limb right there and you will learn uh very good Mina also um you will learn the nuances of expressions like this as you hear more people use them all right so to go out on a limb and you also improve your understanding of tenses because you're learning like to go out on a limb or she went out on a limb or she would be going out on a limb that kind of thing as you're hearing these different examples this is all just naturally varied review uh what does it mean to come out of the woodwork what does it mean to come out of the woodwork all

41:57 right we'll give one more example Alfonso because uh that's a good one and that goes along with what we're talking about here so if we use that last expression here uh to come out of the woodwork all right so if we imagine like a piece of you know wood or something like that the woodwork usually refers to uh like the pieces of wood or you might have a door or you know some nice like design something like that uh I don't want to move the camera because it's going to mess up the video but let's say we have like a lovely piece of I don't know there's like a column with little little other I don't know fancy Spirals and things like that so this is the woodwork

42:47 uh in a building or in a room the woodwork and so we talk about like things are coming out of the woodwork imagine if there's like a design of I don't know like a person or some kind of animal we have I don't know like a a dog or something like that so if we have pictures of things that are carved into the wood so into the woodwork we've got some lots of interesting designs but suddenly all of these things they become real and they come out of the woodwork and oh now now we've got like a dog here and another animal and other things over here so things are coming out of the woodwork it just means like imagine you're in a room and suddenly you're getting lots of examples of all these things something like that so another example might be uh let's say if I'm

43:39 I'm in a room and there are a bunch of people sitting and listening to me talk and I say oh no I have a problem uh does anyone have uh I I need like medical help and all of these doctors start coming out of the woodwork so people I didn't know they were doctors they're just people sitting in a room and they all are like Oh I'm a doctor I'm a doctor I'm a doctor they're coming out of the woodwork so it's if you imagine a situation where uh something is it just seems like normal and and every day and you don't really think much about it but suddenly all of these things appear at the same time so it's like they're coming out of the woodwork they're coming out of the woodwork all right let me know if that if that makes sense

44:25 all right [Applause] so something that is typically different from the actual word yes so that's more of an idiom uh so me and you hello sir uh it is going always I'd like to learn uh a bit maybe you mean a bit about phrasal verbs thank you drew lessons are really valuable for us glad to hear Alfonso again I'm struggling to express my expressing my thought in English would you mind telling me the secret to overcoming it that's it this is the whole the whole video is about that all right so when we're we're talking about how you become more fluent you become more fluent by understanding the vocabulary better okay it's not about practicing repeating phrases I don't become fluent I would not say okay now I want you to repeat come out of the woodwork come out of the woodwork you don't get fluent in the vocabulary by repeating it you get fluent by hearing lots

45:14 more examples of of how it's used so that way you feel very confident about using it yourself uh I'm a dead loss when it comes to drawing on the board yes I could probably draw nicer than this maybe uh but I'm trying to be quick that's why I'm drawing it like that uh bro I think your drawings are not uh I think your drawings are not as mine like not as good yeah maybe not I bet I go at a limb and guess you like me yes so you could say that like I could go out a limb and guess you like me let's see let's see yes we um

46:04 so just asking if I'm like not not coming to the park uh but yes drop some vids about phonics yes hey there good to hear you you're getting old says Noel really getting older but I'm I'm guessing that's what happens as time goes by yeah we get older hopefully I'm not I'm still still all right you know I'm not not too tired all right uh diggis if I'm pronouncing that correctly d d is just say my listening is very good I can understand most of what they say but when I want to speak it's hard to create sentences what do you recommend for me for improving my speaking this is it the the exact thing I'm talking about in this video is how you get there all right so you get there by uh understanding the vocabulary better so what's great about this the

46:55 English as a first language approach is you don't have to go anywhere you don't have to speak with anyone you just have to get more of this input all right so just like I'm giving you one example of harsh you don't stop with one example you get many examples of harsh and that will help you use the word and remember the word so you feel very confident about using it in your conversations all right so yes that is that is the whole the whole secret here Monday morning live class become a good habit thanks no end uh my pleasure Hilda your kids are getting a teacher's discount bam you got it yes my children get an employee discount my kids get an employee discount so that's a perfect usage of that same expression very good do you think grammar is important in

47:44 speaking yes it's the most important thing become alive get alive hi sir today is my daughter's birthday could you call her name she'll be very happy I'll tell her her name uh in your live stream her name is Baron if I'm pronouncing it correctly happy birthday all right how to use VOC VOC in context to use VOC yes you want to learn it in context yes yes all right I'm going to be okay Mina again says I come out of the woodwork and carved a beautiful tree yeah in that case you would like unless you are kind of like hiding somewhere like I came out of the woodwork also the the idea and and this is one of those things you get better at understanding the vocabulary as you hear more examples of it so typically things are coming out

48:31 of the woodwork like like lots of examples of something at the same time all right so if we have a bunch of things are hidden and they all appear at the same time they are coming out of the woodwork so it's like they were there all the time but nobody noticed them all right so in my example about having many doctors in a room uh they're all coming out of the woodwork so it wouldn't be just like we wouldn't really talk about one thing coming out of the woodwork it's usually like I mean imagine uh like something in woodwork it would be like you know some patterns of something we would have many examples of that so it would be more than one thing uh let's see yourself to more listening and speaking yes let's see

49:20 yeah you got food poisoning oh my goodness great job hi everyone from Turkey greetings from Morocco let's see if we got anybody else greetings from Mexico yes we got people from all over the place nice to see everybody and it's Tsubasa there all right does this make sense does everybody understand what I'm getting at here what it what is the point of my message today I want to make sure everybody understands what I'm talking about and yes uh and then happy birthday to Baron as well what's up us from Yokohama uh let's see Future Hope a kid asks his dad what's a man that does is a man is someone who is a responsible and cares for his family the kid says I hope one day I can be a man just like Mom [Laughter]

50:06 yes that's something something he would probably hear in uh in more conversations uh in this day and age interestingly all right to make this very clear and simple for people I'll just write it up here you get fluent you get fluent when you know vocabulary extremely well extremely well and this can be a very quick process so you can learn something and maybe you understand it right away the first time

50:54 you hear it and then you could start using it in your in your conversations it would be very easy to do that uh and so like me as I'm learning new Japanese this is how it is for me for many things some things it takes more time uh you know to to use that vocabulary all right but you get fluent when you know vocabulary extremely well so I notice I don't say anything here about speaking practice or meeting native speakers or chat groups or anything like that you get fluent when you know vocabulary really well so if you don't feel confident about something it means you don't feel confident about the usage or the vocabulary or it could be many different things about that but the point is you're you're not you don't feel confident enough

51:41 to use it and that's what's really stopping you from communicating so it's not the amount of words that you know that helps you speak it's helpful but only if you know that vocabulary really well so it's much better to learn something you know a hundred words really well you could easily have conversations about many different things and so very quickly if you follow this approach you can get fluent like in days or weeks and then and then have a good vocabulary that you can use to talk about many different things so if you want to have conversations about lots of different things quickly this is how you do it I know it seems like okay we should we should do the ESL way where we're trying to get like you know a thousand examples in a month it's not it's better to do like 10 examples in in a month or something or is really as long as you

52:30 can understand exactly how they are but it should be vocabulary you know very well oh my goodness let's see uh go back to all right I think I got all those hello I'm late and I don't have any idea of the topic the topic is how to speak fluently about almost anything and this is how you do it so you just have to spend more time reviewing things and making sure you really understand them so anybody that's asking how can I speak fluently that's that's how it is so I mean again when I got in trouble in the pool many people came out of the woodwork to help yeah so you could say like lifeguards lifeguards are coming out of the woodwork like I didn't notice them before but wow suddenly there

53:21 are so many people around uh to help me right now uh hi everyone from the uh USA I pray prep I maybe appreciate appreciate you do your teacher for your practical lab lessons glad to hear greetings from Sri Lanka from Brazil and my team loses today oh my goodness foreign could you recommend some American dramas for beginning ESL student and intermediate ESL student uh most most TV shows like that are going to be more difficult than than kids would be able to

54:07 understand I would recommend actually watching kids shows rather than trying to watch like a TV drama I know it might be more interesting but you will spend a lot of time trying to understand the vocabulary and there's very little review in that you have a story and then you go on to the next story Sometimes some of the same vocabulary will be used but often it's not so it's really difficult to review in that way so I would stay away from that even for like intermediate intermediate Learners it's better for them to really understand at least like 80 uh 80 to 90 percent of the vocabulary in a TV show or a cartoon or whatever or a book uh to make sure that they can learn new things in context so you don't want to make it like okay

54:56 you only understand half of it imagine trying to read a book and you only understand half of the words that's going to be a very bad learning experience you won't understand most things and you'll have to look in a dictionary and it just destroys the atmosphere of the book so really you should know 80 to 90 percent because if you have a sentence with you know five words in it and you know four out of five of those you can understand that last word pretty easily from from the context of the sentence or the the context of the paragraph or whatever so I would recommend like uh stuff for kids I don't know what's what's popular now though for for English stuff I actually don't recommend even boss baby my my own kids should not be watching that show uh just because it's it's it's way too difficult for them but they're picking up lots

55:45 of uh lots of interesting uh interesting phrases uh tell us about the story when you got the scar on your chin so I have if you look see here it might be hard to see but there are two scars two scars on my chin I think I told this story maybe at least in a lesson or in another YouTube video but I can tell it very quickly again that review is important so the first one came from my older sister who was holding me and she was swinging me around uh like just I think I think holding me by my hands maybe it was holding me by my feet that seems like a little bit easier for the story but she was just like swinging me around like this turning around really fast and Swinging

56:33 me uh and she let me go and I went flying and I hit like a window sill and split my chin open so that's the first Scar the second scar is from my younger sister so I was climbing out of a pool and she just like pushed my head back down onto the pool and I cracked my chin open again I split it open I split my chin open all right so now I have two scars one from each sister on my chair all right so if you're listening carefully you've learned ah you can say split open like to cut something like that split it open some very good vocabulary there all right uh me and you even if I learned one important vocabulary sentence of your class is good for me yeah again take take

57:20 your time there's no rush to try to learn a whole bunch of things if you if you don't feel confident in using them so every day if you could feel like fluent if you could become fluent in one new word or phrase every day you would feel very confident in a month you would be like wow like now I can say a whole bunch of things and your improvement it accelerates over time so it starts getting faster you make progress faster as you start learning that way so I know it seems like wow it seems like you're learning a lot if you try to learn a hundred phrases in one day it seems like you're learning a lot but because you will forget you will forget most of this vocabulary so look you just spent all that time and now you only remember one thing but you still don't feel

58:06 very confident about it you're thinking okay is the pronunciation correct is the usage correct or maybe the grammar or whatever and so in in these situations you're really wasting your time it seems like you're learning a lot but if you forget all the vocabulary you're just wasting your time but here we know we're learning we can actually feel it and you don't forget the vocabulary so you hear many different examples like the word harsh earlier today so maybe today when I come back home I will use I will intentionally review the word harsh with Arya in uh in some natural ways so I might say yeah it was a I was walking home and I forgot my sunglasses the sun was really harsh it's a really harsh sun on my eyes and then like without her saying anything even if she

58:55 doesn't say the word she's thinking automatically like ah like okay another example of harsh okay so I was I was like washing my hands after uh after dinner I was doing the dishes but I used the wrong soap it was really harsh on my skin it was really harsh on my skin and so it was kind of rubbing my rubbing my skin badly and making my skin cracked so I split some of my skin like split open again that same split open you see what I'm doing how I'm reviewing the vocabulary naturally in context mm-hmm all right so when you're thinking about this again if your issue is you understand but you don't speak I talked to another in another recent video about the three levels of fluency

59:45 or the three stages of fluency how it works so you begin by just being exposed to something so my younger daughter or my older daughter Arya hears the word uh like I don't know she hears the word uh harsh okay so we use that same example more review so she hears the word harsh in uh in a TV show she's just being exposed to the word but she doesn't really understand what that means and so she asks me again Dad what does harsh mean and so now we're moving from exposure to awareness where now she can recognize the word because I've given her some more examples of it and then when she is feeling like finally confident enough because I've given her enough examples or she heard them from other places she heard harsh like don't be so hard like be kind to people don't be

1:00:35 so harsh don't judge people so harshly or the weather is Harsh or the sun is harsh after she hears all those then she will feel very confident about using that uh in her conversations all right the meaning says I've been listening to for more than uh 10 years wow oh my goodness hopefully I've been improving your English in that time hopefully all right let's see here all right Noel again hello uh thank you I learned how to improve my English glad here how's your daughter yeah both of them are doing well uh maybe I'll get Noel in a video that's my younger daughter I don't think she has ever been in a video before thanks for this wonderful class glad to hear it when I finish my uh finish my money many friends came out of the woodworking album yes that's a good example

1:01:21 right there so like people when I I was when I was broke many people came out of the woodwork so I was not expecting people to help me but when people heard I had no money they came out of the woodwork like people came out of the woodwork to help me all right good usage and again don't feel bad if you don't get something the first time remember like if I just say the word harsh the word harsh like vocabulary by itself doesn't mean anything it's only when you're hearing it in context connected with some kind of situation that's why it's important to learn vocabulary in context and really understand it rather than trying to connect it with a translation okay so I hear like harsh weather uh I had like a really harsh time at school like it was really

1:02:08 like the class was really difficult all right so I can use lots of different examples of that and as you get more examples this is where you really feel strong about that about that vocabulary all right uh uh let's see here all right how to watch movies and TV shows to increase listening and speaking uh again the the best thing to do is really to to focus on something I would not I mean I know like people want to watch TV shows let me let me draw this and make an even like easier way of explaining this all right so this is hopefully this will make sense to people you hear me using this expression

1:02:58 again and again hopefully this is understandable uh this is our English student right here so someone who wants to learn the language uh the goal over here uh let's say the goal is to understand the TV shows uh and conversations or whatever and so what people think they do we're going to put a line here there's an e uh SL so English as a second language uh they're trying to go directly here they're trying to go directly uh to this vocabulary uh and so in the ESL approach we go directly let me let me draw a different line here make this a little bit easier to understand so this is so we're going to contrast these two methods here trying to get to this trying to get

1:03:49 to this goal over here so to enjoy conversations movies TV shows or you know all of that kind of stuff just regular everyday life and they want to go there but because they try to go directly they never reach this it's like this this just it's what they what they think they're doing is like they're getting to the goal but what's really happening is they're kind of they're going like around in a circle like this so it looks like they're they're making progress but but really they're just learning more vocabulary but not actually becoming fluent in that vocabulary okay and so it's for the efl approach so English as a first language what's happening is like you're you're kind of taking like a slow a slow step each day as you build up your vocabulary

1:04:37 and you really become fluent in that so it seems like this is like the faster way it seems like it's faster uh but the problem is you're moving faster because you keep getting like all this new vocabulary but you're not actually fluent in it all right so you can keep you just go faster and faster and faster but aren't actually getting closer to the goal but in the English as a and this is the same thing natives are doing here they spend more time learning things and and over time this like it accelerates and gets much faster and this is how you get to to understanding TV shows and music and movies and having conversations that kind of thing it's because they spend a lot of time really understanding vocabulary very well so at first it seems like a slow process so if

1:05:25 we imagine like on day one uh so the English as a second language person has learned or I mean they had a class about let's say like 10 words but the efl approach was only just one okay on the on day two they learned like 10 more and on day two over here it's you know they're on the second word or phrase so it seems like the efl approach is is moving more slowly all right but the problem is they're they're never going to get over here by doing this approach it's only going to have them just go faster and faster as they try to learn more vocabulary the traditional way but they don't actually become fluent in that so they never reach this okay so the only way to get this is to become fluent in individual words and phrases if you don't become fluent here and here and here

1:06:16 then of course you will not be able to do this but if you get fluent in this word and you get fluent in this word and fluent in this word and this word then of course you will have great conversations okay as I as I often say like people think about getting fluent in English or in Japanese or in French or in German or whatever the language is so they think about and they talk about getting fluent in a language when what's really happening is you're getting fluent in vocabulary you get fluent in a grammar point and you really understand pronunciation but you get all that like one thing at a time and this is why like even some ESL students like they will be fluent in some things but not others so they can have a conversation or speak maybe about work because

1:07:06 they've talked about those things so many times so this is not about trying to watch a particular movie or TV show uh instead of doing that it's much better to find something you can focus on that's like a shorter easier thing uh like you know like watching a YouTube video about about doing something you're interested in like growing roses or something so I give these examples in this one like we would watch you know on one day we would watch four or five videos just just talking about one topic like how to how to break uh I don't know how to how to make bread or something all right so here like if we're gonna contrast these two examples again the English as a second language approach is learning about baking they're learning all this

1:07:52 like vocabulary about about baking stuff but they're not actually getting fluent in being able to talk about baking okay so the difference here is like if you get fluent in uh in each one of these things then of course you get you get over here to the goal why wouldn't you you're getting fluent if you get fluent in each of the pieces then of course you get fluent in the hole all right but I don't know Korean you have to tell me what that tell me what that means uh hopefully this makes sense though so when you're looking for like a TV show what will happen if you watch a TV show is you will learn you will get a lot of vocabulary and then you will not be fluent in most of it and so you will be able to understand but it will not really improve your conversations

1:08:39 you really have to take time and focus on things and that's why like what we do in fluent for life is we will have one conversation you're focusing on a single conversation for a month think about

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