Hey welcome to Let’s Talk, well here we are, of course you have met Michelle before
and you have watched her wonderful lessons _and so have you watched her wonderful lessons
and you know that she is Niharika, _and here we are here together today, so we thought
that why not come together and have a video for all of you guys _I think we should tell
them why we decided to make this video _yes _so the other day we were having a coffee
together and we were just going through our comments and we saw how people are really
coming up with this request that we shoot a video together, so we were like why not?
Let’s just do it, _absolutely _you know _absolutely. So we thought that let’s just
start with ‘how to learn English?’ because there are so many people who come up to us
and they are like, ‘okay how do we just start learning English, how do we go about
it? So we thought that yes why not help our people to learn English. _Yeah and they also
wonder you know, how could we improve? How could we get better? And here we are, I think
we have listed quite a few ideas together that we brain stormed, and we have come up
with few suggestions for you all. _Yes, so we have ten simple steps for you, to learn
English _yeah _and we’re gonna start with something very, very simple which is think
in English, what do you think about that Michelle? _Yeah I think, ‘thinking in English’ is
pretty important because it helps your fluency and restricts your mother tongue, _Exactly,
_what do you guys think about it? _So you know what happens very often is, a lot of
people when they try to learn a new language, _yeah, _and they feel that, you know it is
so tough learning a new language, _yeah, _you know it’s not the language, _yeah, _I really
feel that it’s because they think in their native language, so when you think, _ya sure,
_i your native language, and then you try to speak English, ta-da, that’s the mistake
that you do. _yeah, yeah, yeah… _So people spend a lot of time in translating, so even
like native speakers if incase if they are rally fluent with two different languages
and they end up thinking in a different language and speak in different language, even they
get stuck, so I’m sure it’s very difficult for the learners as well. So what I really,
really believe in is that you need to start thinking in English. _Hmm, _So maybe what
you can do is, you know say for example, you are planning your day, _Hmm, _o when you are
planning your day, _Yeah, _why not think in English, right? _absolutely, for your daily
routine, _umm, yes or maybe you are in a restaurant, trying to order some food, wondering what
to eat, so when you are thinking about the food, the different dishes, _yeah, yeah…
_that you’ve ordered, so why not think that in English. Yeah, I mean, I think your first
step should be just to think in English and you know not at all go there to that zone
where you think in your mother tongue, I mean there should be kind of a restriction or barrier
in your mind in thinking in your mother tongue when it comes to talking in English, but otherwise
it’s a great idea to use your mother tongue as long as you’re conversing with people
cannot talk English, _yes, _that’s what I was saying, I think it’s a very good point
there, _so people, make sure that you start thinking in English, _yeah, so she’s made
a very good point there and now that she is talking about thinking, I think we should
also talk about talking, you know because that’s the next step, so when you think,
then you talk, so talking to yourself, how about that? _yeah, _So quite often it happens
that you know that we really don’t get people to talk to in English, and quite a few of
my students who’ve come up to me and told me, I don’t really get anybody to talk to
me in English, coz everyone around me, you know, speaks in my native language and I go
like, yeah that’s quite possible problem _yeah, _and we need a real solution for this.
So my suggestion for such a problem is that why don’t you talk to yourself in English,
yeah, I mean, I know that sound a bit crazy, but then yeah, like, I mean, what you could
do is you could just plan like 2-3 minutes long conversation and you could go in front
of the mirror, you know and talk to yourself, and look at how you appear when you talk in
English, and this is not regarding your appearance, _yes, _this is more about your body language
because when you try and speak a language, you are not just you know communicating, it’s
your body language, you know the verbal and the non-verbal coming together, so I think
it’s a good idea you know to plan an introduction about yourself, like, who you are, where you
come from, what’s your profession, you know and going in front of the mirror and go like,
‘Hi, my name is Josh and you know and I’m from so and so country and my profession is,
I’m a teacher, I’m a blog writer, and etc., etc. So I think that’s a good way
to start talking in English, _it does, _when you don’t have someone around you, yeah,
_it builds your confidence, _yeah it does, _it does. So what’s the next thing that
would really help you in learning English? Well I feel that, one should work in their
fluency and not really focus on grammar, what do you think Michelle? _I think that’s a
great idea because grammar is so boring, I mean whenever I think of to a pronoun it turns
me off, _absolutely, well do you think, people are gonna ask you that, hey can you define
what’s a pronoun or what’s a noun? _No I don’t think they would any day and I don’t
think it’s important for communication either. _Absolutely, so what we totally believe in
is fluency, _Um-hmm, _and not focusing on grammar. _yeah that makes sense. _yeah, well
you know when it comes to fluency, you need to pay attention on your communication _hmm
_skills _yeah _It’s not really grammar, of course grammar is gonna help you when you
wanna write good English, _yeah, yeah, yeah… _but when it comes to communicating with people,
_Um-hmm, _I really feel that it’s your fluency and not grammar, _yeah absolutely coz fluency
kind of includes your vocabulary as well, so if your grammar goes wrong it’s perfectly
fine but, if you don’t have the words, you are at loss, because you don’t know what
to say, _right. _I think you made a wonderful point there. _So when people think that you
know you have to work on your grammar, and not your fluency, well they are absolutely
wrong, because when you end up thinking, Oh my god, am I going correct? Am I saying the
right tense? And that is when you start stammering or that is when you get stuck, _yeah _while
you’re, _yeah, _communicating, so, well yes, grammar is important, _it is, _but what
I believe is, your focus should not be on grammar but more on _fluency, _fluency, yes.
_Fluency, absolutely right, and you know that takes me to another point coz as she said
that grammar is not so important but fluency is, the same way quite a few people are saying
that pronunciation is not important, okay? But I don’t really agree with that, coz
the way you speak, is very important, for another person to understand what exactly
you are saying, _yes, very true. _isn’t it? _So _very true, _So if I end up pronouncing
a word wrong here, she may not be able to understand what that is, _yeah, I’ll be
like, um, okay… _yeah, so for example we have the word ‘address’ & ‘address’
okay, so these are two different words and address is like a verb which means when you
introduce somebody in a speech or in a gathering, and address is the place where you live, which
is a noun, so just with my pronunciation, I can make a whole lot of difference with
the way my message, you know, with people to understand, _very true, very true, _ what
I’m trying to say, so, but problem here is that pronunciations gets very boring sometimes,
you know and people are like, how do I make all these you know proper gestures and how
do I put my tongue in the right place, and my mouth on the right place, to speak the
right thing, so for that I got a very interesting thing here, If you want to learn pronunciation,
I think tongue twisters are great idea, yeah? Coz they are lot of fun, you know and you
don’t have to think about where you need to put your tongue because you can twist it
the way you want so for that Niharika, you are in for a challenge, _okay… _yeah, I
have something written with me, because I can’t remember it, so I’ve just written
it down, but you are going to face the brunt of it. So I’m gonna speak a tongue twister
and I’ll ask you to repeat that, okay? _Okay, I’m gonna try, _So, yeah, let me try this,
listen to carefully, okay? And yeah you can try that as well, please and I’ll be glad
if you could do that, so “the thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne
throughout Thursday.” _Wow, _How’s that? _Am I really supposed to do that? _yeah, _okay
let me try, can I read it too? _Okay, there you go, _Okay, well “the thirty-three thieves
thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.” Okay, was it okay? _Yeah that
was good, _okay let me try again, okay, “the thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled
the throne throughout Thursday.” _Yeah, you got it better now, yeah, so look at this,
this helped her pronounce the words correctly and this also helped her with the fluency
which she was talking about, you know so you get the speed, you get the correct pronunciation
and trust me grammar goes away, it’s not the most important thing you know when it
comes to communicating your message, _True that. _So as I was talking about fluency you
know, and stressing words with ‘address’ and ‘address’ as you just heard, I think
I need to emphasize more on this topic, coz this is a very common problem and I think
you might have faced the problem with this as well, so this is essentially a problem
of word stress, _right, _so this specifically about syllables, which means different parts
of the word and which part do you need to stress, _yes, _right? So just like address
and address, I have another example for you, have you read the reader’s digest? You know
you must have read it, and that is a noun, okay where we stress on ‘di’ right, and
you say ‘DI-gest’ okay? There’s another word, ‘diGEST’ as you see, I stressed
on the syllable here ‘diGEST’, you know and just did the stress part. Now this is
a verb, as in you are digesting your food and digesting your food, _Yeah, _So I hope
you got the difference there and this is what it means when it comes word stress, you know,
stressing the word correctly. Do you know what is the best technique to learn this?
_Um-hmm, _Listen to the native speakers, _Yeah, _or people who can communicate fluently in
English, or have spoken English for most of their lives and as you hear them speak you
know, you will understand how to stress a word correctly, what do you think? _very true.
Absolutely. So that reminds of something, well you know a lot of people they really
enjoy singing English songs, _yeah they do, yeah. _Yes but they get stuck when speaking
in English, _absolutely, _Now if you enjoy singing teen why not learn from music and
singing, _yeah that’s pretty cool, right? _yeah so sing along, so when you sing along,
with these awesome English numbers you know you go to a pub, you go to a club, you just,
at home listen to some great music, you know, I think singing along with the songs is a
great idea, what do you think? You know I think it’s amazing because it connects so
well with what I was talking about, so I was talking about is a photograph, the word stress
story, so that bring to my mind that you know there’s this particular word, which lot
of students have a problem with the word ‘photograph’ you know coz it has different stress on the
word you know when you talk about different forms of the word for example, photograph
okay where you stress on the ‘pho’ then it goes to photography you know and it sounds
so different suddenly and then you say photographer and you know you suddenly stress on ‘grapher’,
so it just completely changes and that makes me think of a lovely song, have you heard
that song, you know photograph by Ed Sheeran, _she’s gonna sing for us, yes, _really?
_yes, yes, you have to, everybody want to listen to her beautiful voice, right? I’m
not really sure that it is beautiful, but I can just give it a try, I think she is taking
revenge because I asked her to do the tongue twister, _no, but she really sings beautifully
and you have to hear her out, go for it, _well I’ll try my best you know, please don’t
blame me if it’s too bad, okay so you know this particular sentence in the song really
clicks me, “so you can keep me inside the pocket of your ripped jeans” that it goes
on and on, _awesome, _it was just a try, _you guys agree, she sings beautifully, right?
Yes she does, so yes you know sing along these beautiful songs, because lot of songs contain
different phrases, different expressions and music, music always stays, right? So enjoy
music, sing along and that should really help you in learning English as well, _definitely,
so keep it up, listen to more music and practice word stress, _True, so Michelle you know there
are many times, when people really get stuck with tenses, so do you think you can help
them out with tenses? Yeah I think I could, I have a suggestion for that, because when
you are trying to learn a new word, you know for example, you learnt the word ‘write’
okay, write means the verb, as in to write something w-r-i-t-e, so when you use that
word, the next time when you are trying to use that word you will use it just the same
way, you know, you could possibly say, ‘I have write a song for you’ you know and
there comes a problem, _exactly, and people really get confused, _yeah, so that’s practically
wrong, I mean you might know that, if you know some grammar, so yeah, ‘I have write
a song’ is a wrong sentence so what you need here is another form of the word, right?
So I could say I have written a song for you. Now how do I know this? Well I know this because
when I learnt the word ‘write’ I tried to learn its different forms, for example,
write, wrote and written, and you always use have with written you know, and that makes
easier for me to, _correct, you know how to use the word correctly you know in a grammar
context so that’s just a way to help you out, _so yes so learning words really helps,
because that increases your vocabulary, _absolutely, _so along with words, why not learn phrases
as well, _there you go, _you know, _yeah, _so words, yes, it’s a fantastic thing but
I also believe that you know when you learn phrases you tent to join different words together
and you come up with a phrase so say for example the word ‘leave’ or the word ‘impression’
let’s join these together “to leave an impression” _absolutely fantastic, _So you
get a new phrase so along with words when you are learning English of course learn the
words also add some phrases to your conversation, so that really kind of helps you to build
a great fluency while you are you know talking to people. _yeah, if you know the word form,
you could say that she left an impression on me instead of saying she leave an impression
on me. _exactly, so there you go guys, learn lots of lots of new words as well as new phrases,
and word forms, and word forms, there you go, yes So you know Michelle there are times
when people learn English for a specific reason, yeah, for example, they have an interview
and they want to prepare themselves for the interview, give their best, and that’s exactly
they wanna learn English, or probably they are planning for a holiday in the U. S., or
maybe they are planning go like you know for like a speech like you know and public speaking,
social gatherings yes that’s exactly the reason why they wanna learn English, so people
if you all are preparing for particular situation, and learning English, well that is great too,
because learning really helps, yeah, it does, so if in case you have a social gathering
or probably you are just going to a restaurant or probably you just have an interview, then
go for it, I mean learn English for specific situation, because that will also help. Yeah
that a great idea, you know learning for specific situations will give you better vocabulary
you know so you are prepared for example, for a party you need to have a deferent vocabulary
you know, possibly introducing yourself, and for public speech you know you might need
to introduce yourself more formally, so you understand the difference between something
formal like a speech or something informal like a party, It is pretty important, yes
so what you think is it too much of learning English now? Yeah, I feel we’ve spent too
much time talking about learning English and now it’s time to relax and say goodbye as
well, yeah, so thank you so much for staying with us and in the end I just want to comment
you know, you should relax which is very important coz, when we are trying to learn English,
you know, we stress too much, like word stress and grammar, and also other things I think
we need to calm down, and take it easy because language is a part of you, you know it’s
not something that comes from outside, so you build it with time, so you don’t have
to set limits for yourself, you know you don’t have to set the number of hours on you are
going to learn English, it’s just part of you so watch movies, sing along with songs,
meet people, introduce yourself, go to parties, and then you are pretty much on your way of
learning English, make enjoyable, make it enjoyable, have fun learning English, and
that’s what we totally believe, absolutely, well thank you thank you for watching us it
was really nice, I mean we together, yeah, we really enjoyed doing this video and thank
you for watching us and do subscribe to our channel. Definitely and like the video if
you enjoyed it, okay, thank you so much for having us, see you soon with another such
interesting conversation, till then you take care, keep learning English, and come back
for more, bye-bye, bye