Master English with these 5 questions!

I need some toilet paper because I have to clean my...

Hi.

James from engVid.

I'm thinking about shopping.

Toiletries.

We'll do a lesson on that, yeah, soon.

Anyway, today's lesson is introducing a brand new guy.

You might have heard of him before.

I'm going to slow down a bit because Thomas, and I said Thomas, the tutor turtle, he wants

to...

He wants to help you.

He's going to be tutoring.

So when we do tutoring, what that means is, well, Slightest Snake does slang and idioms,

the cool stuff.

Mr. E is your education, E for education, and also he's a Mr. E.

And then Thomas Tutor is going to tutor you, give you lessons and questions, maybe not

the same as Mr. E, but to help you learn English, okay, like a teacher helper, private student.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Private teaching.

Today, he's going to help you because what Thomas says is this.

Basically, before you start something, you should know where you want to go.

Imagine going on a trip, right?

If you go in a taxi or in an airplane, you don't just go, "I pay.

You take me, okay?"

You'll go anywhere.

But if you know where you want to go, then you'll know how much you want to spend, how

long you're going to be there for.

You're going to get the results you want, and it's going to be a great vacation.

We want English to be a great opportunity for you.

So let's start with the first five questions.

So Thomas says, "Why do you want to learn English?"

Most of you right now are going, "Because."

Well, because isn't a reason.

Because leads to a reason, because of this.

So for some of you, it's for vacation, or I would say pleasure, right?

You want to have fun.

You're going to a new country, you want to talk to the people, you want to understand

them.

That's it.

Some of you, school.

You're going to go to a foreign country, Canada, United States, or England.

You know there are benefits to having a degree from these countries.

They're international, right?

So in that case, you're going to have to pass tests like TOEFL or IELTS.

So your needs for English are different than the vacation person.

They don't need to know academic words.

You do.

And for some of you, it's job.

So you were looking at promotions, right?

I need to get this for my job to keep my job, right?

Or I need this because I want to have a higher level job, because my company is becoming

international.

I'm from Mexico.

We work with Americans.

I'm from India.

We do telecommunications, right?

All of these things are necessary for people, so when you're looking at it, your need is

going to dictate, and dictate we mean tell you what you need to do.

Leads to Thomas' next question.

Once you've done this, how will you use your English?

"Well, James, we just asked.

It's for work."

No.

There are two different types of English, and what do I mean by this?

Well, any language.

There's what we call -- let me give a green one to give you a good idea.

It's what we call passive, and what we call active.

What are they?

Well, one, information comes in, and that's passive.

The other, information goes out, and that's active.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, active.

Passive would be reading or listening.

When you listen, you're passive.

You're not saying anything.

You're not producing any information.

You're just basically taking in information for other people, okay, when you're listening,

and when you're reading, it's the same thing.

So in this case, we want to understand, okay?

We want to understand.

That might be a little low for you, so you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to put it up here.

So when you're doing passive information, think of passive information as understanding

English or understanding, okay?

So what's active?

Well, active is obviously the opposite.

That's when you're going to be doing a lot of speaking or writing, okay, like business

reports.

You might have to write something or talk at a meeting, okay?

So this is when you want to give information, or better yet, let's say, be understood, okay?

Student people will probably like speaking and listening, not much reading or writing.

Students, reading and writing, and listening.

Speaking maybe not so much.

Business people, speaking, you get the idea.

So once you know why you need the English, then you're going to know how you're going

to use it.

We can move on to the third part.

The third part are, believe it or not, it has nothing to do with English.

It's what are your own strengths in your own language?

Are you a good speaker?

Do you like to read?

Do you like to write?

If you know that, you will have...

Notice I stopped speaking because I wanted you to pay attention.

You will have the ability to learn faster.

If you're a good speaker, then practice speaking in English.

It's natural for you, so it works better for you.

If you're good at reading or writing, then what you want to do is read in English.

You love to read.

You love classic literature.

Read.

You love to write.

Then write.

Write in English.

Write stories.

Write crazy stories or funny stories, happy stories.

Whatever makes you feel comfortable makes you relax and makes you learn faster, okay?

So figure out in your own, figure out means try to understand or find the answer.

What is your strength in your language?

What do you do best because that's the thing that will help you, okay?

Now once we've done this, right, we figured out what we want to do, how we will use it,

and what are our strengths, we go over here.

What are your strengths or weaknesses in English?

Let's face facts.

You, if you had no English, you wouldn't understand anything I just said.

So obviously, you have some English experience, okay?

If that's the case, now that you understand this, right, what are your strengths in your

language and you thought about it, what strengths or weaknesses, and strengths means like forte,

muscle.

Weakness.

Okay?

I mean, what are your best things in English?

Funny, you're probably noticing that your strength in your language is also your strength

in English.

Maybe not.

But things you might want to look at or key in on, and when we say key in, we mean focus

on, would be grammar, okay, I might be off board here, so I'm coming back, I'm going

off again, vocabulary, okay, conversation and listening, and by the way, if you come

back to Envig, you'll notice we have videos and all these things so we can help you, okay?

But yeah, figure out what your strength is in English and your weaknesses, your strengths,

you can improve.

As they improve, actually your weaknesses get less and less.

You become stronger all over.

But if you also know your weakness, and you can work on those, like go to our videos on

slang or grammar or vocabulary, you'll notice that your strengths get faster as well.

It's what we call win-win, means you get better and better by looking at both aspects, okay?

And finally, this is the big one.

How much time do you really have?

This is the big factor.

A lot of students say, "I want to learn English, I want to be good, I want to be fluent," and

they never ask the key question, "How much time will you devote?"

Devote means give time or energy to.

To learning your English, 10 minutes a day, 20 minutes, an hour, five hours?

Be honest.

Be honest with yourself.

You see, once you make that commitment and you know what you want to do, you say, "I

will do 10 minutes a day," and you do it, I can guarantee, yes, guarantee money back.

By the way, it's free, so I'm not giving you any money, okay?

But a money back guarantee that this, if you make a commitment and say, "I will do five

minutes every day, 10 minutes, an hour," and you keep it, you will learn English faster

than you ever believe is possible.

However, you have to make that commitment.

So today, write down your time.

How much?

Is it going to be 10 minutes, one hour, whatever?

It doesn't matter.

Just make a commitment and stick to it.

By answering these five questions, you're going to find that your English experience

will be fun because you're going to pick things that you're strong at doing and you enjoy

doing, and fast because you make a commitment it will build every day.

So before you know it, one day you and I will be having coffee with Tom the Tutor, Mr. E,

and Sly the Snake, having a coffee at Starbucks here in Canada, talking.

Like that?

I'd like that.

Anyway, don't call my house because I probably won't do it, but it's a nice idea.

Think about it, okay?

So where do we have to go?

Well, seeing as we're working on our skills, I've spoken a little fast, so you might want

to go to some listening videos at engVid or reading.

I'll give you some reading right now, okay?

So he wants to help you, and so do I.

How will we do this?

We'll do this by going to www-- oh, by the way, response to something one of you guys

said.

I am not tired of writing www, and I'm going to keep doing it because you wrote about it.

That's right.

You know who you are.

You can write another comment.

We do read them.

Okay?

So www.eng, as in English, vid, as in video,.com, okay?

Have a great day, and see you soon.

I hope you get your goals.