A Neurolanguage® coach helps you understand an inspiring film for entrepreneurs.

- Do you ever wish

that you could understand movies in English?

You probably know that it's a fun way

to practice your English,

to understand real-life conversations,

and a lot of students

really enjoy watching movies in English.

But at the same time,

there's, like, this frustration,

because it's hard to understand the movie

without having the subtitles.

Well, today we're gonna dive deep

into one of my favorite movies,

it's a great movie for entrepreneurs as well,

and help you understand some real-life English.

Let's go.

Hi, I'm your English coach, Christina,

and welcome to Business English with Christina,

where you become better at English and better at business

and today, better at understanding fast, you know,

spoken English in movies.

So what's the movie that we're gonna look at today?

It's called "The Pursuit of Happyness,"

and it stars Will Smith.

And it's a biographical movie

that's based on the life of a guy named Chris Gardner.

And Chris Gardner was a homeless salesman,

so you can imagine it's gonna be an inspiring story.

And in the movie,

Will Smith's son plays the son of his character,

which is kind of neat.

Now, the reason that I picked this movie for this episode,

was A, because I find that it's just a very inspiring story

for anyone who is, you know, an entrepreneur,

maybe struggling with some things,

like being successful at work.

I think we can all relate to those difficult moments,

but also because it was listed

as one of the seven movies on Netflix

that entrepreneurs should watch.

And you can find a link to that article

with other movies down in the notes below this video.

All right, so let's really dig

into these extracts from the movie now.

Now, first of all,

the thing to know is that it's normal

if you find that it's difficult

to understand movies in English.

The reason for that

is you probably learned a lot of written English

or reading English at school.

But the thing is,

that the English that you hear in the real world,

is not like the English

that you see on paper or on the screen.

So it helps to know, you know,

sort of like what's happening in spoken language.

And the first thing that you might notice,

is that we don't always pronounce the letter T

in spoken English.

So watch this clip and see if you can catch all the places

where you might see a T written,

but you definitely don't really hear it

in the spoken English.

(tense music)

- Hey, you know what today is?

- Yeah.

- What?

- Saturday.

- You know what Saturday is, right?

- Yeah.

- What?

- Basketball.

- All right, so let's break that down,

and let's look at how those T's disappeared

or suddenly magically transformed into D sounds.

And let's see if you can actually count the missing T's.

All right, ready?

Here we go.

"Hey, you know what today is?

"Yeah.

"What?

"Saturday.

"You know what Saturday is, right?

"Yeah.

"What?

"Basketball."

Did you catch how many T's disappeared

or changed as I was saying those words very slowly,

but I really wanted to emphasize the place

where the T disappeared or became a D.

So do you have that number in your head?

See if you got it right.

Go over to the blog.

I've put a little quiz over there,

something new that we're trying,

but there's a little quiz

to see if you got that number right.

So the notes for the blog post is down below the video.

Okay, another thing

that makes spoken English kind of hard to understand,

it's all these words that we kind of like eat.

- You wanna go play some basketball?

- Okay.

- All right, then we're gonna go sell

a bone density scanner, how about that?

Wanna do that?

- No.

- "You wanna go play some basketball?

"Okay.

"All right, then we're gonna go sell a bone density scanner.

"How about that?

"Wanna do that?

"No."

Okay, so in this clip,

you had the T's that disappeared,

plus a lot of words that got eaten,

like wanna, gonna, and 'bout for about.

Oh and by the way, the bone density scanner,

not something that you'll use in everyday language,

unless maybe you work in the medical industry.

You know, in your business,

you've ever had to sell your products

or your services to clients,

you know that like in normal conditions,

that can be a pretty hard job,

which is why I find that it's pretty incredible

to see how Chris Gardner did that job of salesman,

while being homeless for one year.

Like I said, I find this story very inspirational,

and I hope that this video will go

and inspire you to go and watch the movie, you know,

first of all, to see the story,

and then also, you'll be able to recognize the things

that you learned in this video.

All right, now we're gonna look at a part of the movie

where Chris Gardner is sharing some,

let's say, inspiring life lessons with his son.

And I want you to notice something interesting here,

it's that we tend to speak less formally

with people who are close to us,

and, I mean, this is probably the same

in your language also.

So in the clip, Gardner's playing basketball with his son,

and his son tells his father that he wants to go pro,

which means to become a professional,

a professional basketball player.

But Gardner tells him, you know,

be careful about that dream.

- [Christopher] Hey, dad, I'm going pro.

- [Chris] Oh (mumbles).

- [Christopher] I'm going pro.

- Oh, okay.

Yeah, I don't know.

You know, you'll probably be about as good as I was,

that's kind of the way it works, you know?

And I was below average, you know, so...

Whoa.

so you'll probably ultimately rank somewhere

around there, you know?

So really you'll excel at a lot of things,

just not this.

I don't want you out here shooting this ball around all day

and night, all right?

- All right.

- [Chris] Okay?

All right, go ahead.

- Now, you may have noticed

that he used some quite advanced vocabulary with his son,

like, "You'll ultimately be about as good as I was."

Or, "You'll excel at a lot of things, just not this."

And these are maybe words

that a parent might use with a child,

if they're, you know, giving them some important lesson,

or helping them to grow up

and to become, you know,

a better speaker to sound well educated

when they're speaking their language.

And also, Gardner's reminding his son,

that, yes, it's good to dream,

but be careful of disappointment too.

But, notice that in his speech to his son,

not everything is totally formal,

because that would just be a little weird,

talking to your kid in very formal language.

So he keeps a lot of informal elements as well,

to create that sense of closeness.

So watch this clip

and see if you can catch maybe some of those contractions,

or those words that are eaten, like wanna and gonna.

- Don't ever let somebody tell you

you can't do something, not even me.

All right?

- All right.

- You got a dream, you gotta protect it.

People can't do something themselves,

they want to tell you you can't do it.

If you want something, go get it.

Period.

- So listening for the ways

that we make the language less formal

and how we build rapport,

it's a great way to understand real-life English,

but also to speak real-life English

and to create that connection with other people.

And if you want to practice this a little more,

go over to the blog and check out the free quiz

and the answers that I've made to go with this video.

And you'll be able to see the difference

between the English that you hear,

versus the English that you read.

If you don't use it, you lose it.

So here's a way that you can also practice your English.

In the comments over on the blog or down below this video,

tell me about a movie that has inspired your life.

Now, it can be a movie about business,

it can be a movie about life in general, a biography,

whatever, it doesn't matter,

but if it inspired you,

please share it with us in the comments,

because I'm looking for some new movies to watch,

and I like to watch movies that inspire me.

And if this lesson was helpful for you,

there are three ways that you can tell me.

Give this lesson a thumbs up on YouTube

and subscribe to my channel,

so that I can continue making business English lessons

for you.

Go over to the blog post to do that quiz

and sign up for my newsletter while you're there.

And go ahead and watch this next lesson,

all about understanding native speakers

through a TED Talk on time management.

All right, and thanks as always

for improving your English and improving yourself

with Business English with Christina.

And I'll see you next time.