Don't Waste Your Time Learning English Like This

- How can you really learn to speak English confidently?

Let me help you speed up the process

by telling you in 10 minutes what I learned in 10 years.

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Hello, it's Keith from the Keith Speaking Academy

and the YouTube channel English Speaking Success,

here to help you become a more confident English speaker.

Now then, I've spent over 10 years...

Oh, actually, no, over 20 years.

I should change the title.

Over 20 years-learning languages like French,

Chinese, Spanish.

And I feel like I'm a confident speaker of those languages.

However, what most people don't know

is that I've also tried to learn Italian, Malay,

and Japanese.

And I was less successful.

Why was I successful in some of them

and unsuccessful in others?

What is it that worked and that didn't work?

And how can I help you become

a more confident speaker of English?

In this video, I'm gonna tell you five things that work

and will help you learn English more effectively.

These are five things.

They're based on linguistic research

but also on my personal experience.

So it's kind of mixing a bit of science

and a bit of anecdote.

I'll tell you five things that work

and the opposite that doesn't work.

And all of this will help you

become that confident English speaker.

Ready?

Let's dive in.

Right, number one:

to effectively learn English

and become confident, you must be focused.

In English, we say to "put the blinkers on"

or to "have your blinkers on."

If you've ever watched horse racing,

you see the horses have these things on their eyes, right?

So they cannot see.

These are blinkers.

So to put your blinkers on is to be very focused

and only see one thing,

because otherwise, you're gonna get distracted,

and you're not gonna study, okay?

You're gonna be really, really focused.

My experience in Italy...

Did you know I actually lived in Italy

and taught the Italian police?

I was working for the Italian police

as their English teacher.

There are some interesting stories there,

maybe for another day.

The thing is, through those months I was there,

I was there for two months, I picked up some Italian, right?

Getting by in the coffees and in the shops and restaurants.

And for about a week or two when I got home,

I carried on practicing.

But then I didn't have time.

I was too busy, and it just didn't happen.

I wasn't focused.

It wasn't a priority.

And this is an important lesson I learned.

You have to make things a priority;

otherwise, something else will come up, and you won't do it.

"Oh, I've got my English class.

No, but I've got this to do and that to do;

I haven't got time." (chuckles)

The biggest lesson I learned then was never to say,

"I don't have time," 'cause what that really means

is "I choose not to do this."

And I learned to change that.

Whenever I said, "No, I don't have time for this,"

no, no, no, "I choose not to do this."

That's the reality, 'cause you have time.

If you don't do your English class in that hour,

you'll do something else, right?

You're not gonna stop breathing for an hour.

You'll do something else.

You choose not to do the English study always, right?

So be clear about being focused, making it a priority,

and saying, "I choose to do it," or "I choose not to,"

but it's your choice always.

Number two: be persistent.

What a lovely word.

Persistent.

Persistent.

And it means to continue or to keep going.

I often tell my students that learning English

is not a sprint.

It's not 100 meters; it's a marathon.

And you need to keep going, right?

Be persistent.

The thing is, if you go on social media,

a lot of influencers will tell you,

"No, you can get fluent in three months.

You can learn English with these five words in 10 minutes."

The thing is, right, us people on social media,

we've always got one eye on the views

and one eye on the education.

And there's always a balance.

And so a lot of influencers will try,

and convince you that it's easy.

You can do it in three months; you can become fluent.

It's not true.

It takes time.

If you go to the Cambridge English website,

it'll tell you to move up a band, like a B1 to a B2.

It will typically take, what?

200 hours of guided study and learning.

And the higher up you go, the more time it takes.

So very often, schools and courses will run for one year

or nine months to move up a level, taking into account,

you know, spaced repetition and all of that.

Nine months for a level, that's more realistic.

It does take time.

So you must be persistent.

And the trick here is if you enjoy your study,

you're gonna be persistent.

You're gonna carry on.

So do that.

Enjoy your study.

Find materials you enjoy, that you like, that are engaging,

and that's gonna help you a lot.

Let's move on.

Okay, number three is find your mojo.

(laughs) Mojo.

What I mean really is mojo, motivation, right?

Find your motivation.

Because you need to be motivated

to learn another language like English.

One way to harness your motivation,

I mean, to get motivated,

is to have specific and unrealistic goals,

and ones that you can measure, I think.

SMART goals, right?

But specific and realistic.

And I look at the comments in my video chat,

and sometimes students say, "Well, I'm a beginner now,

and I want to be fluent in English."

Okay, it's a nice ambition:

"I'm a beginner now; I want to be fluent in English."

It's not very specific.

What do you mean by "fluent," and when?

How long?

And it's too big, I think,

and it's too far away, like the stars.

Make it more specific and realistic.

A much better goal would be, "I'm a beginner now,

and I want to be able to speak

and communicate my ideas on some common topics

in the next six months."

Something like that is much more specific.

You could even say which topics.

And a teacher will come and say, "That's great.

We'll take you from an A2 to B1 in six months."

That's basically it.

And it's something you can measure,

especially if you identify the topics.

That's something, it's more specific, it's realistic,

and it's measurable as well.

So all of that can really, really help.

Now, the thing with motivation

is you need to feed your motivation.

It's like your dog or your cat if you have one.

If you don't feed your pet, they will become lazy and tired.

They'll have no energy,

and ultimately, I'm afraid they'll die.

Like your motivation, it'll disappear.

So you must feed your motivation, right?

What do you give your motivation?

The best thing you can do is remind yourself

why you are doing this.

"Why am I learning English?"

And maybe it's, well, because you want to travel

and speak to other people.

If you are studying IELTS,

actually, your goal is not IELTS, right?

Your goal is the reason why 'cause I want to study abroad.

I want to actually work and live abroad

or take my family abroad and have a better life.

That's the why.

And so in those difficult moments

when your motivation is (sighs) down,

remember the why.

Another thing you can do,

and I did this when learning Spanish.

I was living in Spain.

I was there for about a year.

I was there for a long time.

But after a year, I decided to join some classes,

and my roommate said, "What?

Why are you doing classes?

I mean, we live in Madrid;

just go on the street and talk to people."

And I said, "Yeah, I know I do,

but I always say the same things,

and, you know, and I don't really know many people."

When I went to the class, oh, it was just my level went up,

because I was learning much wider,

not language, vocabulary, grammar,

but I was also connecting with people.

I was making friends;

I was talking to people in the same boat as me.

We weren't in a boat, idiomatically,

we were in the same situation.

And it was great to connect with others.

And when my motivation was lagging,

we could cheer each other up

and say, you know, "Keep going."

Connect to others.

It was invaluable.

The best thing I ever did,

even though I was living in Spain at the time,

joined a Spanish course.

And finally, I think a nice thing to do

is to reward yourself.

When you reach a goal or part of a goal,

just give yourself a pat on the back.

I can't reach.

But reward yourself.

Say, "Great, I've done it.

I've done a month of study, I've studied every day.

I've learned to speak about this, this, and this."

Great!

Go to the cinema, go and buy yourself a book.

Give yourself a little reward.

Keep the motivation going.

Feed your motivation.

Let me feed you with some more ideas.

Moving on to number four.

Number four is big goal, small steps.

Now, this is related to the motivation.

So having a big goal is great.

Breaking it down into small steps is really important.

What you're gonna do step by step.

If you've ever been walking in the mountains,

if you like rambling, right?

Sometimes you go out rambling,

you say, "Right, we're gonna go in a big circle

for 10 kilometers."

And you go, "Whew, it's gonna take ages."

That isn't great.

What's much better is to say,

"Well, okay, we'll do a circle,

but first we go to that peak, then we'll go to that lake,

then we'll go down the valley to the village,

and then we'll come round."

And there are steps, small steps.

And you think, "Oh, yeah, that's doable."

Little things you'll achieve on the way.

That's great.

So when I arrived in China

many years ago,

I knew that I wanted to speak Chinese,

and I really wanted to speak to a very high level.

I was a bit like, "I'm a beginner;

I wanna be fluent in Chinese." (laughs)

But I also realized that's not gonna work.

So I broke it down.

I thought, "Right, what am I gonna do

the first year I'm here?"

I want to be able to communicate with family and friends.

That was key.

Second, I wanted to be able to have daily conversations

with people on the street in the shops.

Thirdly, I actually wanted to be able to work in Chinese,

to function in Chinese.

So I broke that down into three goals, each one a year.

And the first one I remember,

every day for about eight months, I went for an hour

or an hour and a half to class before work.

Eight o'clock in the morning, boom, to class,

an hour and a half, and then go to work,

and did that for eight months.

And that took me up to like an A2 level.

And I was able to talk to family and friends,

very simple, like, "Pass me the sugar" and "I like this."

Things like that.

The key was big goal, small steps.

You see, the small steps help you focus

on the present moment.

On the now.

When you've got big goals, you start thinking,

"Oh, God, it's so much; it's too much.

It's overwhelming."

The more you think, the less you are present;

you are lost in your thoughts.

To avoid that, to be present, small steps.

Because the small step helps you focus

in the present moment, and it works much, much better.

So if you've got your goal of getting,

let's say a band 7 in IELTS,

think about small steps.

First three months, the next three months,

the next three months.

What are you gonna do?

How you gonna reach it?

Big goal, small steps.

Let's move on.

Number five: practice lots.

You see, the big mistake a lot of students make,

and I did, as well, although I'm gonna blame my teacher

(laughs) at school with French, is we studied too much.

We just studied, and by study, I mean reading and reading,

learning the rules, learning the grammar, reading, reading,

a bit of listening.

It was all passive.

It was study.

We weren't actually practicing;

we weren't speaking, writing very little, right?

And that's what happened with French.

And so, you know, I got to the age of 18,

having studied French for 10 years, and I couldn't speak.

That's ridiculous.

So it's so important: practice lots.

Wherever you are now,

and as you are studying, whether it's with videos,

my videos, or with a book,

as you study, practice at the same time.

You can practice speaking out, practice making phrases,

changing phrases.

You can use the Speaking Success System

that you can learn from my videos.

You can practice in the real world;

you can practice online with classmates

or students or teachers.

Online is the real world, as well, right?

Or face-to-face; it doesn't matter.

But as you are studying, practice as much as you study,

and that will help you become a more effective learner

and a more confident speaker of English.

Next.

Right, point number six.

"Hang on, Keith, you said five."

I did, I know.

All right, you can call this a bonus if you like,

or point number six.

And that is review.

And I couldn't leave you

without telling you how important it is to review

to become an effective learner and speaker of English.

Review because, well, there's a lot of science

and theory behind this.

Do you remember?

Teachers will probably know Ebbinghaus,

Hermann Ebbinghaus, and his learning curve,

or, well, his memory curve.

Some call it a forgetting curve.

That after a certain number of hours,

a lot of people say 24 hours, you will forget 70%

of what you've studied if you don't review.

And then several days later, you need to review again,

or your learning goes down.

There's a lot of mythology around this.

And even, you know, Ebbinghaus, he was the researcher,

and he was the person undergoing the research.

He was the candidate, if you like.

So I think there's a lot of flaws.

But the general idea that if you don't review within a day

and within a week, you are gonna forget a large amount.

There's also spaced repetition theory, right?

This is what most of the apps, like Duolingo, work with,

that you learn some words

and then the next day they come back again.

A few days later, they come back again.

That spaced repetition.

And it does work.

It's very, very important.

So I think it's essential to review.

What I do with my classes learning French or Spanish now

is, after the class, I review after a few hours

the notes I've taken.

And then a day or two later, I don't review the notes,

but I listen or watch something on the same topic.

So if I've been watching something about weather,

I'll listen to the weather report,

or I'll watch a film about weather,

or I'll do something on a similar topic

so there's a recycling of language.

Reviewing and recycling, basically.

Hugely important, very valuable, and quite easy to do.

Just find time.

Remember, don't say "I don't have time."

It's, "I don't choose to do it," or "I choose to do it."

The choice is in your hands.

Okay.

So there you have it, five or six different ways

to help you become a more confident speaker.

Now, I realize I am mixing research

and anecdote here, right?

And, you know, that's what I did to build my online course,

IELTS Speaking GOLD course.

It's a mixture.

I mean, it's based on research I did in my master's degree

on digital education, which I did very, very late in life,

but also anecdote, my own learning experience.

In fact, the Speaking Success System

is based on my own experience of learning languages.

You can watch a video about that actually

straight after this one if you like.

You can find out about the course,

more details on how that might be able to help you,

in the links below, in the description, and the comments.

That's it for today.

Listen, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me.

If you've liked it, you know what to do.

If you've subscribed, you know what to do.

And listen, I can't wait to see you in the next video.

Keep going, be focused, persistent, motivated,

and all the rest of it.

Take care, my friend.

Bye-bye.

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