- Hey everyone!
- Hey!
- How are you doing?
Benny Lewis from Fluent in 3 Months with...
- Gabby, from Go Natural English.
- That's right.
I want to do a video with Gabby
because her channel Go Natural English
is very, very popular.
She's got some great tips for learning English,
and I know a lot of my subscribers
are English learners themselves.
So, Gabby, what would be your tips for people
who are learning English as a second language?
- Yeah, I'd be happy to share.
And these tips are great for English learners,
but they also apply to learning other languages too,
so keep watching if you're learning any language.
But first of all, I think mindset is really important.
So, I believe you can learn any language,
I believe you can learn English.
I want you to believe you can do it too.
So believe in yourself, that's one of my first top tips.
Another one is don't translate from your native language.
You might have said this before.
This is really important.
Don't try to translate everything
in your head before you say it.
You have to learn the language as it is.
And the other thing that I'd like to suggest,
it's also kind of a mindset thing,
these are all mind tricks,
but approach learning a new language like a child.
Think of it as something playful,
something fun that you're doing,
and approach it with an open mind.
- Okay, yeah, excellent tips there.
And when people are learning English,
there's a lot of parts to it, a lot of trickiness,
but how you recommend someone get started?
- How I'd get started in English,
I would say listen to things that you enjoy,
I learn a lot of my other languages
by listening to music I enjoy.
So, I'll find a song that I like, and then find the lyrics,
and try to listen while I read, then maybe sing along.
Sometimes it's difficult at first, but it's fun.
- Yeah, and there's lots of tools you can use
to kind of slow it down.
- Oh yeah, that's true.
- You can always try to repeat it over and over again.
When I learned some of my languages,
what I would do, especially to try to speak
with less of a foreign accent,
is I would just take like a 10 second clip
of some audio or interview or something,
and I would not only listen to it,
but try to get the spoken part of it as accurate as I could.
That, for absolute beginners, is not necessary.
If you're just starting off in the language,
you don't really have to worry about having a strong accent,
but when you're getting into it
you can do that kind of thing.
And what have you found have been the hardest
parts of learning English that people ask you about,
and what do you do about that?
- Oh, well listening is always tough, right?
And I think you have to be okay
with not understanding some of the time.
Like, I barely understand you, Benny (laughs).
- It's the Irish accent.
- Joking, joking, but you have to be okay
with not understanding 100% all the time,
with making mistakes.
It's all good. Just stay relaxed,
ask questions if you're not sure, and keep practising .
- Yeah, and keep in mind that making mistakes is okay,
and perfectionism is never a good goal.
Because, even native speakers have this issue.
Like, I'm here living in America,
and there are all these words that I hear
that I don't understand,
and then I have to have them explained to me.
Like, I learned recently about something
called a wife-beater, which I was like,
that sounds horrible.
- It does sound horrible.
Not what you think.
- But it's just the name of what is it
you wear under your shirt, or something.
- Yeah.
- So, you know, even us native speakers are still learning,
so it's okay if you're still learning as well.
- Mhm, definitely.
- So, we got loads of great tips over on Gabby's channel.
- Go Natural English.
- If you click her, we'll make sure that that's clickable,
you'll check out her channel, subscribe to her,
and she will give you some great tips.
And otherwise, subscribe to my channel here,
and I will continue to give you some
language learning advice for many languages,
including English soon enough.
- Awesome, thanks so much Benny.
- All right, thanks everybody. Seeya.
- Bye.