The "Fluent Communication Switch" In Your Brain That Guarantees English Fluency - EnglishAnyone.com

hi there i'm drew badger the english fluency  guide and it is great to see you here again  

especially the longtime friends and followers of  this channel now before i get into why i'm here  

i want to explain why i haven't released a youtube  video in over a year the truth is i've always had  

a love-hate relationship with youtube it's really  great for things like how-to videos or if i want  

to learn some specific information how to make  a birdhouse or a wedding cake or fix a car or  

something like that but youtube is less good for  developing skills a big reason for this is youtube  

is always trying to give you new information when  what you really need to develop skills and habits  

are focus and review remember that fluency is  really measured by how well you speak and not  

how much you know now i understand the great power  of focus so rather than continue producing more  

content more random videos about various grammar  points or whatever on youtube i decided to focus  

on just one lesson and i've been doing this for  over a year now teaching students and friends and  

family and really anyone who will listen to me  so what's the one lesson well i've been guiding  

people to fluency for nearly 20 years and all this  time it's been actually quite difficult to explain  

what i do and why it's so helpful after many years  of experience teaching just became automatic for  

me so i took the past year to really figure out  what i was doing not only to explain to students  

but also to members of my team the truth is  fluency is a simple process in fact it's so simple  

because you were born to speak but there are a few  pieces of the process that need to be explained  

in the right way now as i taught this lesson i  also discovered that the people i'm best able  

to help are not surprisingly the people most like  me so these people number one they understand the  

power of focus and they don't want to jump from  random video to random video or from course to  

course number two they are systematic and they can  follow a simple plan if they have one number three  

they have a deep need to communicate and fluency  would really benefit their life and number four  

they care most about getting results so they value  saving time rather than saving money now if i  

described you you're really going to love this  video but if not no hard feelings i understand  

i can't be for everyone and there is plenty of  great content for people to enjoy right here on  

youtube okay now that we've gotten all that out of  the way it's time to share how to become a fluent  

confident english speaker no matter where you  live how old you are and even if you have no one  

to practice with we're going to cover three things  in this presentation the first one is the problems  

learners experience and why they experience them  then number two we're going to talk about the one  

thing that solves all of these problems and then  number three we're going to cover courses and  

things that we do to help learners specifically  now some people watching this video may have  

never seen or met me before welcome if you are  new my story begins basically when i failed for  

over 15 years to learn four different languages  so i struggled to learn latin in elementary school  

french in high school in college i failed to  learn spanish and then even when i came to japan  

which is where i live now i still struggled to  learn japanese so basically i had years of study  

and even private lessons didn't work  for me so really i tried everything  

i learned a lot but i could not express myself  and i always felt nervous i couldn't understand  

and i would lose my words when i'm speaking and  i used only basic words in conversations if you  

experience these problems then you know what  i'm talking about basically i just wanted to  

communicate i really didn't care about studying  a bunch of grammar rules and trying to pass tests  

really i wanted to speak and express myself and  have good conversations with people but everything  

changed when i took a walk through a park i was  really frustrated and i just happened to notice  

the children just speaking with their parents and  i was wondering to myself why are these two and  

three-year-old kids able to speak so well with  their parents and me even studying very hard for  

many months already i still couldn't really say  more than basic sentences now watching these kids  

i finally realized why i struggled to speak and  i also saw that it wasn't my fault basically the  

discovery is that there are two ways of learning  languages so we have the esl approach so in my  

case that was japanese as a second language  but it's the same thing for english learners  

it's just basically learning a language through  your first language you're trying to learn formal  

english so this is the kind of english you would  learn usually for writing for passing tests and  

you're going to use traditional methods and these  are things like translations and grammar study  

drills you're studying maybe flash cards  trying to memorize the definitions of words  

to prepare yourself for tests and then  you're also going to do rope repetition  

which means you're trying to take the  same lesson and repeat it again and again  

teachers will just say go home and write this 10  times or you know read it 10 times or whatever  

or you're not going to get any review at all and  often people who are really when they're trying to  

practice something they can't either find people  to practice with or they're too shy to practice  

using their english because they don't want to  make mistakes in front of other people and that's  

understandable so basically all the frustrations  that people have when they try to communicate come  

from this method so what happens when you start  learning this way is you develop negative beliefs  

that stop you from improving so the first one is  that it takes years to achieve fluency and again  

if you're learning in a difficult way of course  it's going to take a long time often you just have  

the hope that you'll become fluent if you study  long enough but for most learners it never comes  

number two you need to be young to get fluent now  this is again a negative belief a false belief  

that comes from learning because traditional  lessons are so difficult for people and people  

just assume if they're difficult for me but maybe  kids are able to do that then maybe i'm just too  

old to get fluent the third thing is that you need  a live teacher to get fluent again because lessons  

are so difficult they're so hard for people to  understand that they feel they really need to have  

someone right there with them to listen to their  mistakes and try to tell them when they're doing  

something correctly or you know critique their  pronunciation something like that because they're  

really just learning in an incorrect way number  four is that you need a speaking practice partner  

now this idea comes from people thinking that they  start speaking and that's how they develop fluency  

and i'll show you why this also is incorrect in a  little bit but the point is that people think they  

need to find someone hopefully a native speaker  that they can practice with in order to get fluent  

number five they have a false belief that you  need to live in an english-speaking country in  

order to get fluent now what most learners forget  is that many learners millions of them in fact  

live in english-speaking countries so the united  states canada uh australia wherever uh and a lot  

of these people are still even after many many  years of living in the country not becoming fluent  

and number six most learners believe that it's  their fault if they struggle to speak again this  

is a false belief and i'll show you why in a  minute but it's really important that we cover  

this because if we can change the way you think  about learning then we can actually get you fluent  

okay so returning to my story at the park  basically you have the second language approach  

and then you have the first language approach  so that's what i call learning a language as a  

first language so we have e s l for english as  a second language or efl for english as a first  

language and so you've got again the esl way so  this is what i was doing but for japanese i'm  

trying to study lots of formal vocabulary but the  little kids at the park they were learning spoken  

japanese now if you've ever been in a conversation  with a native and you've thought wow this is  

just it's almost like a different language than  what i studied in school it's again because of  

this you're learning the formal vocabulary in  school trying to prepare for tests rather than  

the spoken vocabulary that natives are really  using next we've got the traditional methods  

versus the natural methods that natives are using  so traditional methods as i explained before we've  

got things like translations you're trying to  memorize vocabulary study grammar rules and again  

we're contrasting that with the comprehensible  input that natives are using now this is just  

a fancy term that means you understand  everything in the language without needing  

some kind of explanation or translation i don't  teach you about heat by giving you a chemistry  

lesson what i do is i have you touch something  hot like a hot stove so this is direct experience  

and the point is to help you connect the  vocabulary or the idea with the situation and  

then for more difficult things so maybe touching  something or tasting something is really easy but  

for more difficult things we use stories and this  is a lot easier this is really how we communicate  

we usually think in stories and so when we're  learning this way this is the natural way we  

should be learning rather than trying to get a  list of something and hoping to remember that  

so it's much easier just like you remember songs  very easily or stories from your childhood much  

more easily than you would if you had to just  maybe your parents told you a list of things  

like that so people don't communicate that way and  we don't learn that way either and then we've got  

the final and even probably the most important  part of this is the naturally varied review so  

the two different ways we talked about reviewing  uh when people are learning english as a second  

language you really have got three options the  first one is just to repeat the same thing again  

and again which is very boring your brain doesn't  want to do that your brain is naturally excited  

about and naturally interested in things that are  new and the reason your brain does that is because  

it's constantly looking for things that are new  in the environment to figure out whether they are  

good for you or bad for you so as i talked about  before you're getting little or no review with the  

traditional way so again it's hard to find people  to practice speaking with or even if you can find  

people you might be too shy you're worried about  the pronunciation errors or vocabulary mistakes  

that you might make but with naturally varied  review this is really just how you're getting  

fluent naturally by hearing slight differences  maybe you might hear a phrase like your parents  

when you were young so your dad said wash your  hands and your mother said wash your hands too  

so you're listening to the same phrase but there's  something a little bit different about it and this  

keeps your mind engaged and happy to review the  information without being bored isn't that cool  

so this is how you got fluent in your native  language and if you look at these the example  

really is quite obvious and you can see why  one is successful and the other causes a lot  

of frustration so the english as a second language  approach is really going to stop you from getting  

fluent although it will help you learn a lot of  vocabulary for reading and writing and passing  

tests but if you want to actually communicate  you really need to follow the english as a  

first language approach okay now i want to make a  very important point about the three elements of  

the english as a first language approach or what i  call the english fluency triangle and that is that  

you need all three of these things if you have  one or only two you will still struggle to speak  

if you learn real conversational english but  you don't understand it like a native and you  

don't review it you won't be able to use that  vocabulary fluently similarly even if you learn  

and review formal vocabulary you really won't  understand natives or communicate naturally  

and even if you understand conversational english  like a native if you don't get the right review  

you'll never become an automatic confident  speaker now looking at these two different  

examples you realize that natives get fluent  because of how they learn i can take a person from  

china and bring them to brazil to teach them  portuguese and if i do these things that chinese  

person would easily learn portuguese so it's not  who you are or where you are but how you learn  

that gets you fluent now once i discovered this  i wanted to see if i was the only person who had  

figured this out so my own research led me to  linguists like noam chomsky and stephen krashen  

and they confirmed exactly what i discovered so  basically what they found is that number one we  

all get fluent the same way we all get fluent  the same way so basically you don't need to be  

a native to get fluent like one isn't that cool  number two there is really what i call a fluent  

communication switch in your brain that  lets you acquire language and speak when you  

understand messages so when you don't understand  things if you're learning through translations  

or you're studying grammar rules but you don't  really understand well enough to use something  

that's what switches off this communication  switch and basically makes it impossible for  

you to communicate this switch is also  deactivated if you're feeling nervous  

so when people get into a conversation and they  worry about what they're going to say their  

brain almost like the information disappears and  they're unable to speak so number three really the  

secret to getting fluent you need understandable  messages you need naturally varied review and you  

need to have the actual vocabulary that people  are using so the spoken conversational english  

that people use in casual and professional  situations and the great thing about this is  

it's all you need to get fluent because it's also  giving you all the feedback you need to improve  

all by yourself so over time you will stop  making your mistakes automatically you will start  

pronouncing things the same way natives do and  again this is how you learned your native language  

now i want to make a quick point here that  speaking is not bad it's just not necessary  

remember that if you feel nervous or it's  difficult to find people to practice with  

you're not really going to get much input anyway  and the input you do get it's again from other  

people speaking not from what you say so this  is why you don't really want to stand in front  

of a mirror and practice speaking to yourself you  really just want to get as much input as you can  

and if you have this in a structured way it's  going to get you fluent automatically even if you  

don't say a word isn't that cool so now this is a  really big idea hopefully i've taken some of the  

beliefs that maybe you had before about language  learning and showing you that they're incorrect  

and how you actually if you learn the right way  you really develop different beliefs that will get  

you fluent so number one you don't have to know  the whole language in order to speak fluently  

remember that when young children are learning  a language their vocabularies are really small  

but they're able to use that vocabulary fluently  because fluency is actually developed word by  

word as you understand information rather than you  studying for months and months and years and years  

and hoping fluency develops but you don't need  to know the whole language and that's why you're  

actually much closer to fluency than you might  think so if you focus on the things that you  

need to focus on just for your life you can learn  that and become fluent very quickly and of course  

number two you can get fluent at any age number  three again you don't need a live teacher and  

you don't need a practice partner either for the  same reason because really you're just getting  

the input number four you don't need to live in  an english-speaking country you can get fluent  

anywhere as long as you get the right input and  number five this is my personal favorite it's the  

teacher's fault it's my fault it's the teacher's  fault if you don't get fluent not yours now to  

sum all of this up hopefully i'm not going too  fast i know i'm giving you a lot of information  

but hopefully this makes sense the traditional  way people think that you start by speaking and  

you keep practicing and speaking and speaking and  speaking and at some point you get fluent that's  

that's really the traditional understanding of how  language learning works but what really i saw and  

what's been the case for me and my own students  is that you begin with understanding understanding  

leads to confidence because you know you're going  to say something correctly when you say something  

oh i know how to use that expression you you feel  that when you're learning so when you're learning  

these things when you understand something  that gives you the confidence to use something  

and that's when you speak if you don't have  confidence about what you're saying of course  

you're going to be shy you're not going  to want to express yourself so remember  

understanding you get the right input you really  solidly really really understand what you're  

saying so you can think ah i'm actually thinking  like a native speaker rather than trying to think  

through translations or think about grammar rules  or something before you speak so when you really  

understand you've got confidence and that's when  you start speaking okay so now finally getting  

back to my story once i had discovered this at the  park and i'm researching all of this and trying to  

understand not only how to teach better but how  to learn myself i start applying these things  

and some amazing things start to happen so i'm  learning the real conversational language people  

are using and i'm learning it as a native would  learn it rather than trying to learn it through  

translations or explanations and then i'm also  getting that naturally varied review i'm hearing  

different people say things in different ways or  i'm learning different vocabulary at different  

times so very quickly i became a good speaker but  again it wasn't in the whole language and even  

today after i've been learning japanese for years  i still don't know everything there are lots of  

things i still can't have great conversations  about but in the same way i can't have great  

conversations about particle physics in english  so my job is not to know everything it's to know  

and have great conversations about the things i  care about or the things that happen in my life  

so as i started becoming fluent in japanese  i was a classroom english teacher at the time  

and then started helping english learners  learn the same way then i start teaching  

lessons online and i created this youtube  channel over wow like 10 years ago now and  

so i have over 500 videos 1.2 million subscribers  i've been on radio tv other things like that for  

basically helping people get fluent the same  way they got fluent in their native language  

now understanding all of this people often ask me  why doesn't everyone teach this way why doesn't  

everyone do this so here are the three  main reasons why i think people don't  

the first one as i covered before is that most  learners and teachers don't believe it's possible  

remember it begins with your beliefs if you don't  believe you can do something then why would you  

bother trying to do it so what's interesting is  dr crash and call this the best kept secret in  

language learning isn't that interesting so most  people just believe it's not possible so they  

don't do it number two it's just not necessary  so if you're going to be a teacher at a school  

and you have a whole bunch of kids and you don't  really care about them being able to speak but  

you do care about them passing tests then okay  you're just going to give them a bunch of rules  

or lists to memorize or something so that they  can pass the test and go on to the next grade and  

number three frankly it's just really difficult  to do this if you imagine you're tired when you  

come home from work and your young child maybe  they come to you and they say daddy what does  

this word mean so they learn some new word or  they hear it in a movie you say oh go look it up  

go look it up so you're telling them okay  here's the here's the word go connect that  

with a definition rather than really understand  what the word means so it takes more time  

takes more effort to think of a good story to  think of a way to connect people with with the the  

vocabulary directly rather than just trying to say  here's a vocabulary definition here's a vocabulary  

translation or something else now of course this  is the problem i experienced when i was trying  

to do this myself so once i understood this is  how you should be learning i had to apply this  

so people like noam chomsky or other linguists  they're they're coming up with a like a framework  

for how to learn it's like a philosophy or a  methodology so how you should be learning but i  

had to take that and actually make a system that's  going to get me fluent and i had to really teach  

myself because nobody else was going to do it for  me so you can imagine how much faster i would have  

been able to get fluent in japanese if i had  someone there to guide me when i was struggling  

so nobody else does this nobody else gives you all  three of these things and this is what makes us  

different so when people ask me drew why should  i learn with you what makes you different it's  

because of this i'm giving you all three of these  things and making it so that you don't you don't  

need to live in an english-speaking country you  don't have to have a partner there with you or a  

live teacher as long as you get the input and you  get that practice and the natural practice that  

happens as you're getting the input it's really  the input itself that gives you the practice  

it's not you trying to repeat phrases again and  again to a mirror or you speaking in your car  

or something like that it's really just getting  the input so if you get it systematically you're  

getting the right input you're going to get fluent  guaranteed whether you like it or not you could  

actually i could sit you in a chair and tape your  mouth shut and just hold you there so you can't  

move and i would get you fluent even if you tried  to not get fluent i would still get you flying all  

right so if all of that makes sense i wanted to  give for the people who are interested just a very  

quick introduction to the various courses we offer  i'll give you a quick overview of each one of  

these and remember you get instant access and you  keep access forever so fluent for life this really  

covers everything we've got the fluency triangle  we're giving you all of the various vocabulary you  

need but the amazing thing about this program is  that really you get to choose what you learn with  

each student who goes through the program it's  almost like having a personal program with me  

you get to learn whenever you want and study the  things as you want to study them so we give you  

access to the whole library that i have and  you can go through the individual programs as  

you like to go through them so let's say one  day you want to learn about uh you know home  

building you know where you want to learn about  going to the doctor or you want to learn about  

money and investing whatever the course might be  whatever the interest you have or maybe you want  

to learn with particular speakers so you want to  learn with someone from australia or someone from  

the united kingdom someone from canada or even  different places in the united states where we  

have different accents depending on the person  who's speaking so we cover basically everything  

it's like me actually being there right with you  and giving you everything you need but you get to  

choose what you learn it follows that same formula  so you're getting again the input that you need  

wherever you are it doesn't matter how old  you are but that's what fluent for life is  

so you get to choose what you learn and you get  fluent automatically by yourself next we've got  

the visual guide to phrasal verbs this is another  very simple program but it's basically taking the  

same idea of understanding the real vocabulary  that natives use phrasal verbs i tell people  

to learn these because it's one of the most  important things you can learn as a student  

because this is really one of the first things  that children are learning they're starting to  

build phrases like pick up or put down or  turn over things like that and with just a  

few different words combined in different ways you  can really grow a large vocabulary that you will  

use very often very quickly so phrasal verbs are  much better to learn than something like idioms  

idioms are helpful or proverbs other things  like that but phrasal verbs will be used  

much more frequently so rather than getting the  whole fluent for life program if you just want  

to start with something small but it's going to  teach you in the same way very focused that's a  

visual guide to phrasal verbs and it's going to  give you my three-step formula for mastering this  

automatically next we have the native fluency  blueprint this is for people who have struggled to  

learn and they're trying to figure out what really  what kind of pieces they're missing this is for  

developing your communication habits and what's  really so cool about this program is it helps you  

improve without learning any new words or grammar  so i actually take the vocabulary you already know  

and i'm going to help you improve just using  that so you don't need to learn anything new  

although there is a lot of new information we  give for people who want to learn that but the  

the core of the program is really just taking  the vocabulary the grammar the other things you  

already know and really tightening these things up  improving your pronunciation improving the way you  

speak again without having to learn anything new  so next is how to remember any english word all  

of the things i've explained already in this video  are talking about how you can learn something the  

native way and that's really going to build your  vocabulary but if you really want to have like  

a super memory this is a specific technique that  i've taken from the world's largest companies and  

applied it to language learning so i call it the  billion dollar memory secret but it's basically  

how to remember things so you don't forget them  in your conversations really cool program very  

simple and it's really just a technique and once  you understand how it works you can begin applying  

it to any vocabulary you want to remember and  finally we have frederick learn to read this  

is a program i've developed over many years  but i really wanted to have a system where we  

could start at the absolute beginning whether for  learning vocabulary or grammar or pronunciation  

and it would take you through a lot of the basic  grammar all of the pronunciation that we have in  

english but the really cool thing that we do with  the app is that we let you discover the rules  

for yourself so you get to find words you get  to learn what they mean the same way natives do  

again it's applying all the same principles of the  fluency triangle but it's just in an app that lets  

you do it yourself if you'd like to learn more  about these programs you can click on the link in  

the description or in the link in this video but  the most important point here is whether you learn  

with me or not all the information i've given to  you will get you fluent if you follow that thank  

you very much for learning with me if you have  any questions put them down in the comments below  

really probably the biggest question people ask  is which program should they try first really it  

just depends on what you're interested in  if you want to try something smaller like  

visual guide to phrasal verbs or the native  fluency blueprint you can try one of those or  

if you just want to get started you want to start  speaking fluently in the next 30 days or less  

get fluent for life so that's going to help you go  through everything but you get to choose what you  

learn with you get so much content but again it's  not supposed to be overwhelming the point is you  

have so much to choose from so it's like having me  there with you depending on what you want to learn  

and i hope you learn that whether it's for your  career or for everyday life however you want to  

get fluent you can do it wherever you like and  really that's it for this video so hopefully  

you've enjoyed it if you have do click that like  button and share the video with anybody else who  

might be interested in getting fluent especially  other people who are clicking around they've  

been trying to learn for years and they're  still trying to figure out how to get fluent  

video hopefully explains everything and if you  have any questions i'll see you in the comments