You Don't Need Permission To Speak English - The English Fluency Guide

37,931 views ・ 2020-05-01

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Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Hi there, I am Drew Badger, The English Fluency Guide, and in this video I'm going to tell
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you that you don't need permission to speak. You don't need permission to speak. This is
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going to be a very quick video but is an important, it is an important reminder for you out there.
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Especially because a lot of people, number one, they are worried about making mistakes
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when they speak. And number two, this is another thing I hear even from, especially out here
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in Japan because people are always very polite and they're especially trying to not make
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mistakes. Is they apologize for what they say or if they make a mistake, they say, "Oh,
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I'm sorry for my bad English." Or something like that. So don't say sorry about your English.
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Now, this is most important for you and it's slightly less important for other people you're
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speaking with. But I'll put another phrase up here in just a second. But this is a very
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important idea, because for most of people's lives they are taught to get permission to
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do something from a very early age. They have to ask their parents permission to do something.
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Like even going to the bathroom at school, you have to say, "Hey, can I go to the toilet?"
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You have to ask the teacher's permission. And the opposite of this is that if you make
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a mistake, you lose points or you get a bad grade and bad things happen to you. So there
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are lots of reasons why people worry about this, but the biggest problem is that it conditions
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people. It trains people. It makes people want to kind of apologize and feel nervous
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about doing things, especially when they're not very good at them.
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Even if many people are very good at something, if they make a mistake, they apologize for
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that thing and it really hurts your own confidence to do that. So I'll give you just a quick
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example from my own life related to teaching specifically about this. I'll give you actually
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a few, we'll see. I want to keep this as a short video, but when I started calling myself
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The English Fluency Guide a number of years ago after I was talking with students and
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figuring out what's... Kind of like what am I doing exactly that's different. Why is it
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successful? Why am I helping people? And I realized I was not like a teacher just focusing
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on the rules of the language. I was thinking more like a guide and working with the student
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in the same way that a guide would take you through their town or into their home and
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show you how things are working rather than focusing on the language, I'm focusing on
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the student. Obviously I'm teaching the language, but the
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focus is the students. So we learn more about how the student understands things, and then
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we can guide the student to where they want to go much more easily that way. We begin
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with the student, not the language. And so when I started calling myself this, other
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people were saying, "Hey, who told you, you could be the English Fluency Guide? Who told
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you you could do that? Who gave you permission to do that?" And at first I thought like,
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huh, that's an interesting idea. Nobody has given me permission to do that. And I thought,
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well, I don't give a fuck. So I excuse me if young children are watching this, but I
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don't care. I don't care if other people have given me permission to say I'm one thing about
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whatever. I care about results for my students. So I
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didn't want to be a teacher. So I don't care about having credentials like a normal teacher.
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Now most people, they're waiting for permission to do something. They're saying, "Well, I
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can't teach until I have a degree in something, and then I have to get a master's and a PhD
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or whatever." But what I've discovered often a lot of people who have these advanced degrees,
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especially in language teaching, they only focus more on the language. And they focus
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less on the students. So they know so much about the language. It's amazing. Most language
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teachers know way more about the language than I do. But I'm not concerned with a lot
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of deep details about those kinds of things, that are mostly going to confuse learners.
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So when I thought about that as a guide, instead of trying to be a teacher, I said, "Well I
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don't need any permission to do that." And I don't need basically students are saying...
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I mean not many but a few people, nobody says that to me now, interestingly. But years ago
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when it was a new thing for people, they were saying, "Well who gave you permission? Who
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gives you the right to do something like that?" Now the reason I'm bringing this up is because
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a lot of people, like non native speakers are thinking, well kind of subconsciously,
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even if they don't really think about this or know it, they're thinking to themselves
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like, I don't have the right to speak. Or who am I to speak English and try to speak
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with other people. And that's why they apologize. So they don't realize they're doing it. They
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don't realize why they're doing it. But when people make mistakes in conversations and
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I make mistakes and when I'm speaking Japanese, but I don't stop what I'm doing to apologize
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for it. Because I have a right to speak Japanese just like anybody else. I might not speak
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it as well as a native speaker who's learned it for 50 years, but still, I'm not going
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to apologize for that. So let me give you another great quote to remember.
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Just an interesting idea. This is always, or here, write it differently, often and people
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have... Often. I can't write and think at the same time. Some people will hear me use
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this as off-en or often it doesn't really matter. Again, I'm not going to apologize
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about that. So often wrong, w-R-O-N-G, but never in doubt.
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Often wrong, but never in doubt. So I'm not worried, I'm going to be wrong sometimes.
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But you don't see me getting nervous about it and thinking, oh no. A perfect example
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of this. I was with some friends of mine and I was at a parking lot at a mall a few years
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ago. And we all were done shopping and we went back to look for the car and I said,
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"Oh, the car's over here." And the car was not over there. But I had walked in there
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and I didn't say sorry or do anything. I just said, "Oh actually the car is over here."
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So I was wrong, but I was not in doubt. And my friend who was walking with me, another
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guy was also like, he's a smart guy, confident guy. And he was just impressed that I did
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that. So even though I was wrong, I wasn't in doubt.
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So I wasn't nervous. I wasn't feeling unconfident about that. And this is different. I think
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somebody asked me in a video comment on a previous video, about how I developed confidence.
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I'll talk more about that maybe in another video. If you'd like to learn more about that,
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click on the... Actually just write a comment down below this video if you'd like to learn
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more about that. Because I was not very confident at all as a young man, as a child. So anyway,
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this idea of often wrong but never in doubt. This is why you see people on television,
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especially in business news where you'll have one guy that says, "Hey, the stock market
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is going to go up tomorrow." And then another woman says, "Hey, the stock market is going
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to go down tomorrow." And most people are wrong. Or the same thing
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about a psychic. So someone who's saying, "This will happen tomorrow." And then it doesn't
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happen. But nobody cares if you say it with confidence. Everyone forgets about the mistakes
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or the times where you were wrong. And so for a language learner, people don't remember
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even 20 minutes later that I said some grammar point wrong. They don't care. They only care
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if I make a big deal out of it. So if I am often wrong but never in doubt, then I'm going
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to feel a lot more confident about speaking. Because so what? I make a mistake, boom. I
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just keep on going. Just like I was in the parking lot. I think I didn't know where the
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car was two or three different times, but I still, in the end I was like, "Ah, there
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it is over there." Then we finally found a car, and the reason
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I did that is because nobody else had any other idea anyway. We were all lost. But you
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look to the person who feels confident, who is not in doubt, who is not feeling uncertain,
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who is not feeling nervous about that. So you don't need to ask for permission and you
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don't need to say, "I'm sorry." If you make a mistake. Does that make sense? This is how
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you build your confidence. Or it's kind of one of the about building confidence where
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it's okay to be wrong. The most important thing is to not be in doubt. So nobody is
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perfect all the time, but many people are often in doubt. Does that make sense? Well,
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hopefully this idea makes sense to you. Remember you don't have to ask for permission to speak,
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and you certainly don't need to ask for forgiveness if you're making a mistake and explaining
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that your Japanese, or your English, or your French or whatever is not perfect.
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It doesn't matter what language you speak, never be in doubt. People are responding to
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the confidence more than what you actually say or do that causes a mistake. Hopefully
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that makes sense. It's a very important idea. Remember it, apply it to your learning and
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your speaking. And you will become a much more confident, fluent speaker, much faster.
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Because you will feel a lot more excited about speaking because you're just focusing on this
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part about never being in doubt. All right. Well, if you'd like to learn more about this,
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you can start applying these lessons more by clicking on the link in the upper right
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of this video or on the link in the description below this video. And you can learn more about
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the programs, and how I help people become much more confident speakers, not only these
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principles, but also a lot more of the vocabulary that native speakers are actually using. So
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click on the link in the upper right, or in the description below this video. And if you'd
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like to continue learning what the English Fluency Guide here on YouTube, just do these
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three simple things right now. 1. Click on this link to subscribe to my YouTube
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channel for over 500 free videos. 2. Click on this link to download my #1 eBook
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guide to fast fluency, FREE! And… 3. Click here to watch the most popular video
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on English fluency here on YouTube!
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