Learn English: The 20-Minute Method

Hi, guys. Do you notice something different about today? Hmm. Where's the board gone?

Today's lesson is a bit different. It's just me giving you some advice about learning English.

And this video is for you, in particular, if you are a learning English quitter.

Who is a learning English quitter? A learning English quitter is somebody who works really,

really hard studying: "Learn English, learn English, learn English", for two days, four

days, one day, and then quits. Does nothing, does nothing for weeks. And then the same

thing: Works really, really hard: "Learn English, learn English, learn English", for three days,

and then quits. "I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow." And the other thing that

a learning English quitter does is feel bad all the time about not learning enough English.

"I'm so stupid. I should be learning more English." But you're not, are you? You're

watching TV, you're having a beer. You're not learning English at all, are you? So,

this video is for you if you're a learning English quitter. And trust me on this one:

It is a life changer, total game changer.

What you need to begin, starting today, is what I call the 20-minute English discipline.

20-minute English discipline, and you do this every single day of your life. And what it

means is for 20 minutes a day, every single day, you study English in a serious way. Okay?

A serious way. An active way. You do it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,

Saturday, Sunday; every day. You do it on your birthday, you do it when your cousin's

getting married. You do it every day, it doesn't matter. No excuses, you do it. So, when your

cousin comes to you and says: "Hey, let's go and have a beer", you say: "That's a great

idea. I'm going to come with you in nine minutes when I've finished my studies. I'll be with

you in a minute." So don't let other people put you off doing your daily... Daily discipline

of study. 20 minutes every day.

Plus, this is what happens: When you start doing the 20-minute discipline, you realize:

"Oh, 20 minutes isn't that long. I haven't... I haven't finished everything I wanted to

finish. I'm going to study some more." Nun-uh, nun-uh, nun-uh. It's just 20 minutes every

day. When you get to 20 minutes, you stop. It's not: "I'll do 25 minutes today." It's

not: "I'll do 40 minutes today, and not do anything tomorrow." It's not that. It's 20

minutes every day, and then you stop. That's all you need to do.

The problem when you do 40 minutes one day, one hour another day, nothing the next day

is that you lose... You don't build up the strength and the habit of making studying

and studying English, in particular, part of your everyday life, so that's why for most

people it doesn't work to do a lot on one day and nothing on the other. Your 20 minutes

is something that you can fit into any... Any person watching this video, any person

in the world, if you're serious about learning English, or serious about learning anything,

anything in the whole world, you can find 20 minutes from your day to get serious about

it and put that time aside. If you're... We know if you're not serious. If you're... You're

not serious if you say: "Oh, I haven't got time. I haven't got time. I'm too busy for

20 minutes every day." Well, you're not serious if you don't make 20 minutes a day for your

learning English studies.

So what I want to talk about now is how exactly you should be using your 20 minutes, and we're

going to talk about using the engVid website for 20 minutes every day. You already know

there's so many lessons on the engVid site, lessons on everything. Everything you could

possibly want or need to know about learning English is on the engVid site. If you could

just take all those videos and put them in your head, that would... That would be awesome,

wouldn't it? That would save you a lot of time. But we can't do that. It's not a way

of learning.

Most people, I think watching the site, watch the videos, listen, do the quiz at the end.

Okay? Lesson done. Now, that's good, but I can tell you how you can make it a lot more

effective with your 20-minute daily discipline, and that means that you have to be active

when you're watching the lesson. So I want you to have a pen in hand, paper, and I want

you to be taking notes from the lesson. Now, for me, personally, taking notes, I just find

it effective to write things down. Like, even if I know something, I'll write it down; a

new phrase that I heard that I learnt, I'll write it down; new vocabulary, of course,

write it down; if it's a grammar rule, write it down. So just get your hand active during

the lesson. Now, the more active you are, obviously, the more you may need to pause

the video, so stop the video, write something down, and of course, carry on.

Another thing that is so, so, so effective when you're learning a language is to repeat

materials; watch more than once. Now, your brain is very lazy, and it's going to be like:

"But I already saw that, I know that. I know that lesson." If you're learning a language,

you don't know everything the first time you watch the video. Watching a video two times,

four times is where you get to see a big, big, big difference. Now, you don't have to

watch again the same day; you could watch again a few days later or a week later. But

that's where you really start to pick up the things that you missed before, so I think

it's a really, really good part of your daily discipline to be watching things again. So

what it... This is what I advise you to do with the videos: First time just watch

and watch without subtitles. Okay? Take notes. Good.

Second time, watch with the subtitle, and you can read along

and listen at the same time. Another good way. A third time, I want you to just watch

the video, and pause. Every now and then there's a good phrase for you to write down. Write

it down, and then after, as an option, you can check: "Did you get the spelling of the

phrase right?" as well. The point of this is not to rush through the video, and learn

everything really, really quickly. The point is to take your time and be active in lesson.

And of course, at the end of the lesson, there's always a quiz for you to do.

So, I want you to begin that now. If you're an English quitter, a learning English quitter,

today is the first day of the rest of your learning English life, and you're going to

do 20 minutes studying every day. Trust me, it's going to make a big, big difference.

You're going to learn so much English. It starts today. You can do this. You've got

the power. What I'd like to do now is invite you to take the quiz on today's video. And

also, because we haven't done this kind of video before-there's no board here, is there?

-I want you to give us a comment and say: How did you like this video?

So, until next time,

I'll see you later. Bye.