How to Read to Build Fluency in English...and Love It!

Hi everyone. I'm Jennifer from English with  Jennifer. Many students turn to YouTube and  

other social media platforms to learn English.  Common goals include learning to speak English,  

improving pronunciation, picking up idioms, and  getting answers to grammar questions -- and that's  

great because I'm happy that I can be part of the  solution. The question I have for you is whether  

you also look online for opportunities to read in  English. Do you include reading in your language  

studies? I'd like to introduce a colleague to  you. His name is Joseph Poulshock. Like me,  

Joey is an English language teacher with a  lot of years under his belt. Joey uses his  

experience outside of YouTube to help language  learners. He is a classroom instructor,  

but he's also built a platform that  provides reading practice at all levels.  

Please listen and enjoy the  conversation. Here's what you can gain  

awareness of: Common mistakes that learners  make in their approach to learning English.  

Tips for reading the right way  to build your English skills.  

Tips for finding appropriate reading  materials. Tips for making reading  

enjoyable. What's a "home run book"? Insights  into self-esteem, performance, and courage.  

Do you want to know what fear I recently faced?  You'll find out the chance to hear two American  

English speakers from the field of ESL speak at  length about a subject that has importance to you.  

And at the end, how to get an  exclusive discount on ReadOasis.com.  

Joey, thank you so much for taking the time to  join me. Thank you for having me. Right. So, of  

course, we've had plenty of time to chat a little  bit. Could you give a brief intro to those who  

aren't familiar with you and your work? Like who  are you, where are you from ,and what do you do?  

Sure. I originally come from the United States,  Pacific Northwest. But I've been in Japan for  

quite a while teaching English at Japanese  universities, and when I first got over here,  

one of my bosses he was saying, "Yeah. I taught  English before." And he said, "It was really  

boring." And I was like, "Wow. Um, I don't want my  English classes to be like that." And so I kind of  

made it sort of my educational...my teaching  mission to see if I can't make, you know,  

English classes, English learning interesting. Um,  I even like to use the word "compelling." That's  

Stephen Krashen's famous idea. The Compelling  Input Hypothesis, where we kind of solve the  

motivational problem by just giving students  what's really interesting. So yeah, I've been  

spending my whole career thinking about how I  can make English language teaching interesting,  

inspiring, motivating, compelling. And I've  basically, you know, come to focus on what what I  

call big, easy reading, which the the experts call  extensive reading, and then I like to combine that  

with the power of stories. I think stories are the  most interesting kind of information in the world,  

the most powerful way to put information  put language in our brain. So, I've  

focusing on stories of over the last few  years, and that's been kind of my passion for  

teaching -- using the power of story. I love a lot  of the keywords coming out: passion, compelling,  

motivating. It's really what each teacher tries  to create, but we all do it in our own way. And  

of course, the learners want something engaging.  They want something motivating. And I believe  

there's more than one path towards fluency.  There are different directions you can take.  

There's a lot of resources out there, and that's  part of the problem...is that I find I think  

it's overwhelming today, as a language learner.  There's a lot available, and that's wonderful,  

but it's also overwhelming. But can you tell  me then, with everything available now today,  

what are some of the common mistakes that language  learners face? What kind of problems tend to be  

common as they create their studies? Right.  So, my experience has been primarily teaching  

English in Japan. So, some of my answers might  be more Japan-specific than globally, uh per se,  

but in Japan, I think we teachers still use the,  um, grammar translation method. So, you know,  

that's different from just teaching grammar. It's  sort of a method that, as I understand, it doesn't  

have any research to support it, and doesn't  have any theory behind it. That's different  

from teaching grammar the good way, like you do.  Thank you. Some people are very gifted at teaching  

grammar, and I'm in awe of people like you who  can teach grammar in a very interesting and very  

intelligent way, and you have a really powerful  grasp of it. I'm not as good at grammar, so maybe  

that's one of the reasons why I focus more on  story. But students in Japan will tend to focus  

too much or overfocus on grammar and  also do it in a translation approach,  

so the grammar translation -- translating back  from English to Japanese, translating sentences,  

and focusing on grammar in that way, and that's  a kind of a learning mistake. I think if we  

overfocus too much on grammar, we definitely need  focusing on grammar to focus on grammar, but,  

um, we need balance. And then I think another  mistake that learners often make, especially  

here in Japan, is focusing on test prep. We  have a big examination culture here in Japan.  

Um, they even have a word for it: examination  hell. Uh. So, what happens is that in Japan,  

as I understand it, junior high school students  are really enjoying their English classes.  

Um, they don't have a lot of uh exam pressure,  

um, to get into university yet. But once they get  to high school, English becomes exam-oriented,  

and so they focus on test preparation. And I think  they lose their motivation, or there's a tendency  

for students to lose their motivation because  they're only studying for exams. Not only that,  

not always, but in many cases the exams here at  Japanese universities are extremely difficult,  

and they kind of aim way above the level of  the students. And so what happens is they end  

up studying really difficult vocabulary words in  preparation for those exams, and as you know being  

an expert English teacher and knowing about high  frequency vocabulary, they're not getting the high  

frequency vocabulary that they need first. Those  are the words that they need to know first -- that  

form the foundation to learn the rest of the  words. So, the third thing that happens is,  

by focusing on these test difficult tests, they  end up also studying really difficult vocabulary  

words that are very rare -- that they don't need  yet. They do need them...they will need them at  

one point, but not yet. And so that the focus on  difficult vocabulary, test prep, grammar too much,  

yeah, and then also maybe also a lot of  difficult texts, texts that are over their head.  

Yes. One of one of my first experiences as an  English teacher, this is like my very first  

experience. I was teaching back in the States. I  taught for three years at an intensive program,  

and the school provided the textbook. And on the  first lesson, one of my students brought me her  

textbook, and she was from Japan, and she had  highlighted and translated into Japanese about  

50 words on one page. Wow. And I'm like, Oh  my goodness. This is too too difficult. And  

that's a common problem here as well. Yes. Yes.  Yes. A lot of what you're saying makes sense.  

Um, going back to the grammar, I love grammar,  but even I as a teacher, I need to pull away from  

it sometimes. Even when I choose what to teach,  there are times where I pull away for for a while  

because I'm like, I've done enough of that. I need  to focus elsewhere, you know. There are a lot of  

skills out there. Grammar is just one of them,  adn overfocusing on just one aspect of language,  

just one aspect of communication, I feel, is  is a mistake that you want to avoid as you  

create your studies. Grammar is important, in my  opinion. You do need some direct attention. You  

can't just pick all...pick it up, like, all of  it with a degree of...high degree of accuracy.  

You need some practice. But too much of a focus  is...too much of anything...is not a good thing.  

Um, this is important. Balance is  important, and of course, um, you know,  

once you get into any kind of vocabulary lesson,  whether it's conversational idioms or, you know,  

academic English, business English, you  have to control the volume. How much are you  

presenting at one time? How much are you trying  to absorb at one time? And of course, the level.  

Um, you know, even if you say, Okay. Five words  is appropriate for this lesson. Okay. Five is a  

good number, but which five Which five vocabulary  items? Are they level appropriate? Again too much  

of anything... It's great to have ambition, but  you need to go at your level when you're studying  

any skill, be it reading or grammar, etc. And I  do love the fact that you are passionate about  

reading. I do think people need to remember that  it is one of the major skills of communication,  

um, but even so, you can't spend all  your time reading and thinking, Yes,  

I'm studying English. I read every single day. I'm  like. Great. You read every day. What else are you  

doing? So there's a question: how? How should  people be reading in order to learn English? In  

order to gain fluency? Do you feel that there's a  right way or a wrong way or just different ways?  

I think it goes along exactly with what you  just finished saying about balance. Right? So,  

I'm a fan of Paul Nation. He's, I think, kind of  a legendary linguist language teacher who's had  

tremendous influence in the field, and he talks  about the four strands of a language course or  

the four ways to balance the way you study.  So, one of them is getting meaningful input,  

and that could be through listening or reading.  Another way is to get or to produce...so there's  

input and then there's meaningful output. So,  that can be writing and, of course, speaking,  

and then he also says we need to focus on fluency  -- um, improving our reading speed, our speaking  

speed as well. And then his fourth strand is the  language focus strand, which is grammar discourse,  

structure, vocabulary, and all of that. As far as  the right way to read, um, so let's start out with  

the wrong way. So, I mentioned my student, who  had highlighted like 50 words on one page. Yeah.  

Um. That's the wrong way to read, and I have  a name for that. I call it torture reading.  

Um, and so it's like, you know, reading it's  basically...there's a high percentage of noise  

in the text that doesn't have any meaning,  and that's the wrong way to read. If you have  

a really high motivation, you might be able to do  it, but my experience is that if I'm listening or  

reading something that's way beyond my level,  I actually end up losing my motivation. Um so,  

torture reading is definitely not the way to go.  Three other kinds of reading that I think are good  

are...the the first one is called intensive  reading, which is reading for language study,  

where you focus on, uh, structure in the text,  um, comprehension questions, um, discourse,  

which means like you know, what does "it" refer  to in the text? Or what does this pronoun refer  

to? So, you're focusing on language, and we call  that intensive reading, and that's important and  

needs to be done. Another kind of reading that  Paul Nation also recommends is called fluency  

reading or speed reading. So you choose a really  easy text. You try to read for speed, and you  

measure your reading speed, and then you might do  a few comprehension questions to make sure that  

you get it, but your goal on fluency reading is to  improve your reading speed, and you can do fluency  

reading, um, out loud as well or read aloud. And  so you can work on fluency that way. For example,  

you can you can read a text for one minute that's  very easy and then see....and then mark the spot  

to how far you read and then start over at the  beginning and read again for one minute and then  

see how many more words you read the second time.  Um, I got that idea from William Grabe, who's a  

reading teacher in the University of Arizona  system. And then my favorite way is big...I  

call it big, easy reading or big fun reading. Um,  and that's extensive reading, where you read lots  

and lots of easy texts for pleasure. So, those  are the three ways I would recommend reading:  

a little bit of intensive reading, a little  bit of fluency reading, and a lot of big,  

easy reading. Right. Right. I know, um, just  from my kids going through the public schools  

very early on, they taught them this five-finger  rule about opening up a book to a random page and  

scanning it and seeing how many unfamiliar words  there are on one page. And ,you know, one, two,  

three, okay. Four is a little challenging.  Five -- it's probably pushing you past,  

um, your level of comfort, and it's not going  to be enjoyable. We go into that zone where,  

you know, you talk about torture reading. If it's  too hard, you're not going to...Panic...you're not  

going to enjoy it. It's going to be frustrating.  If there's, you know, 50 words for your student  

on that page alone, what about page two? There's  another 50 words. Now you're at 100 unfamiliar  

words. It's above your level. It's going to  be too difficult. It will not be enjoyable,  

and you won't be able to retain 50 to 100 words on  that day, so it's too much. So, the question is,  

okay, I like the idea of pleasure reading, fluency  reading. Where should people be turning then?  

It's like, well, I don't want to go to, like,  children's books. Even children's books can be,  

um, inappropriate in the sense that  they can pull in vocabulary that's not,  

um, everyday vocabulary. So, how can language  learners, meaning, let's say older teens and  

adults, where can they find appropriate texts for  them to practice reading? Right. That's a really  

good point you made about children's books.  So, children's books, um, have rare...more  

have rarer vocabulary than conversation between  adults, and so yeah, so you're going to find,  

um, that children's books might not always be  appropriate for a second language learner. Yeah,  

and so, what we have is an area of literature  which some people call learner literature, uh,  

language learner literature, and basically those  are called, um, graded readers. So, graded readers  

are published by all the major publishers. They  have probably thousands of of them available,  

um, and so that's one way that learners can get  lots of interesting input at their level. These  

books are written for English language learners,  and they use special vocabulary profiling systems  

and vocabulary lists that are targeted for English  language learners, and they're more appropriate,  

I think, than children's books or books for young  people that are written for native speakers. Yeah.  

Yes. Yes. Yes. Agreed. Um, and when I do my own  texts and I write, I try to refer to the high  

frequency word lists to remember where I need  to stay in terms of the range of vocabulary,  

so it's something that, if you are writing texts,  teachers out there, for your language learners,  

use the resources out there to guide you so  that you're using the high frequency vocabulary  

appropriate for the level that you're targeting.  We're talking about reading. You and I probably  

love to read in our own free time, and yet there  are people who say, "I don't like reading much.  

Never did." You know, and yet you're learning  a new language, and you and I are saying, "Hey,  

it's one of the skills you need to give attention  to." How can...what can you say to people who say,  

"I don't enjoy reading." Yeah. That's a...that's  a really important question, and I think one of  

the first things to think about...is if you don't  experience pleasure while reading, you might want  

to think back to your experience with it, and  maybe you have had an experience where reading  

has been taught for basically testing. Right? So  there's an author we mentioned. We talked about  

her in our conversations previously. Donalyn  Miller, who has a book out called The Book  

Whisperer, and I'll just read a quote from her,  from that book. She says, "Endless test prep  

is the number one reason that students come to my  class hating to read. They don't think test prep  

is one kind of reading; they think it is reading."  So, that might be, at least according to Donalyn  

Miller, in her book The Book Whisperer...that  could be one major reason why, um, people haven't  

fallen in love with reading. I was lucky. My  father read books to me when I was a little kid,  

um, growing up, and I can I remember those  times with him. I also had experiences where,  

on a few occasions, I read a book that I couldn't  put down. Um, and it was just lucky, you know,  

just...I just picked up this book and, okay, I'll  just start reading. And then next thing you know,  

it's, like, three in the morning, and I can't stop  reading it. And some people have a name for that.  

They actually call it a "home run book." Um, and  I guess, I would just say, you know, a home run  

is a baseball term, right? So, when you hit a home  run and you hit it hit the ball out of the park,  

and everybody goes, "Yay!" It's a highlight of  baseball. Like, if you don't know about baseball,  

a home run is a...is an exciting moment in  baseball, something really good happens. But,  

um, yeah. So, I guess I would say, if you haven't  had a lot of pleasure with reading yet, um,  

you could you could change maybe the language how  you say, and say, "I don't like to read" and then  

"yet" put the "yet" in there, and then believe  that somewhere out there there's a home run book,  

uh, or a home run story waiting for you to read.  Or a home run writer, blogger... There's probably  

some writing stuff that's going to resonate  with you, so you haven't found that yet exactly,  

but there's so much. Yes. Right. There's so much  wonderful information out there to consume. Yeah,  

um, and we're very lucky because we  have the internet to access it all. So,  

yes. Now, I love what you said. You had a book  and you couldn't put down. You probably even  

reread it, right? And I have some of those books  too. I love physical books. I have some books,  

you can tell by the spine how much opening  and closing I did. Of a favorite novel. Yeah,  

but that means you're getting something  out of the text, and as a language learner,  

there's a pleasure reading, and, hopefully,  some of you have found that home run book,  

that home run story, and you've read it and  reread it, and you're like, I like that. But  

even if you're working with a more academic text,  the question is, are you reading it just once and  

is once enough? And isn't there more that you  could do with that text? So, I like to ask,  

"How much can a learner get out of a single text?  How much do they try to get out of a single text?  

You just read it and you're done? Answer those  comprehension questions and boom! Move on to  

the next? What do you think? Well, that's a good  question. Um, if it's...if it's literature, um,  

yeah. You know, if it's literature, I like to hear  it, um, and so you know, I might read it silently,  

um, but then I might also want to read  it aloud. Yes, recently...I think the  

famous author Cormac McCarthy recently passed  away, and his books are very dark and scary,  

but I'm listening to his books read aloud  by a professional actor. It's a very,  

um, powerful experience, and uh, so if  it's literature, if it's oriented towards  

poetry or yes or literature that kind of  thing, you definitely want to hear it,  

um, you can read it out loud yourself, but it's  it's actually, you know, some some people are  

really good at reading out loud. There are  professional actors that read these books,  

these audiobooks, and it's pretty cool to  listen to them. Yes. You can do that. Yes. Yes.  

For academic books, um, I think rereading is okay.  I think it's good. but I think that science seems  

to suggest that for academic books. you know. one  or two readings or rereadings is good. but you  

actually want to quiz yourself on the material.  and that brings up a different whole set of  

subjects of how to go about quizzing yourself.  writing quiz questions. putting them on flash  

cards. and things like that. That's the way. If  you really want to remember material from a book,  

it's better to quiz yourself on the material  than it is to actually reread it. At least,  

that's what I've heard. No. True. There's  a couple things I love what you said.  

Um, first of all, because I I do have some poetry  out there on my online store. I do. I've chose,  

um, 15 poems and I read them because  I want people to see them, read,  

them but then also look at the text and read along  with me silently, enjoying it, because I do think,  

yes, you can read, but you can also read along  listening to someone read. That's a different  

experience. Right. It's a really interesting idea  that you mentioned that you have poetry out there.  

Is it yours? Is it written for language  learners? No. Well ,I chose...there's two  

poems that I wrote myself, the two original  ones, but in the collection, I chose, um,  

poems that I've shared at livestreams. These are  poems in the public domain, um, so Robert Frost,  

um, Dickinson. So things that are in the public  domain, and I go over some key vocabulary to make  

sure it's comprehensible, and then I really want  people just to enjoy the experience of listening.  

There's listening to understand, but when it  comes to poetry, it is art. It's beautiful,  

and I just also want you to enjoy it. I want  the pleasure to be there from the listening  

experience -- to hear the music of the language  as well. It's out there. It's a cool thought.

Yeah poetry works, um, for language learners. One,  because it's short and even though the text might  

be difficult, you have a a small amount of text,  so you can do it. But it also seems like there  

might be a place for learner literature oriented  poetry. Yes. We control the level a little bit,  

so that's kind of like a little bit of a thought  I'm going to put it back in the back of my head.  

Language learner poetry. I've dabbled with  my poetry, and the poetry that I've shared is  

not too complex. Keeping that in mind, um,  but the other thing that you said is, um,  

there are texts available online for students to  to read, and they're often somewhat short. You're  

not reading a book, per se. It's usually a short  story or an article, and I would say when you're  

reading, you can read silently. There's often an  option to listen and as you read along silently,  

which is a different experience. That could  be reading too, but also when you're done,  

even if there are comprehension questions, I  like to encourage people pause, stop, reflect,  

and ask yourself, "What did I just read? What  were the key points?" Quiz yourself. Can you  

retell? Can you summarize? And then the step  further, especially with poetry, is can you react?  

So you're not...it's not just this  isolated, passive experience, where,  

"Okay, I read. I got the input. Move on." I  think you want to work with the text, ideally,  

um, and I know.. Poetry seems to be perfect for  that. Yes. Yes. Yes. I want a provoke thought. So,  

hey, anybody interested in poetry...or you think  you don't love poetry yet, check out my collection  

and I might get you to love the poetry that  I've chosen. Um, something I know we both  

have in common is we've written texts for language  learners. Um, because we want people to read. Um,  

how do you go about crafting the texts that you  write for learners? What elements do you consider?  

Right, exactly. So, the problem is how can,  you know, the first problem of communication is  

getting someone's attention. I think, um that Chip  and Dan Heath in their book Made to Stick said  

that, but, um over the years, I've studied about  story and how stories are structured, and so, um,  

one of the things that stories have, um, they call  it the inciting incident or a critical incident.  

Um, in a murder mystery, it's the dead body on  the street corner that somebody, you know, like in  

Law & Order, they always start out with a critical  incident, and those Law & Order crime dramas.  

Um, so recently, we've...me and another guy, um,  my colleague John and I have produced a set of  

stories about sports for low-level English  Learners who are athletes at a university  

here in Japan. And um, we start out with a  critical incident like a moment...we start out  

in the action, so it's like, you know, let's say  right now in in Japan the baseball player Shohei  

Otani is a big deal. He's a world famous baseball  player that's playing in America right now,  

and you could say, you know, Shohei Otani was born  in Japan blah blah blah, and that's not really  

starting in the action. You want to say, you  know, um, you know...we want you know...we want  

to you know Shohei stood at the at the plate,  and he swung the bat. You start in the action.  

That's one thing, but then we want to...also he's  the main character. You want to have a character  

in your story, but the character...to make him  interesting and compelling, needs to be facing  

something challenging, difficult. So um, the  story experts call this conflict or trouble.  

And then the next thing is he's got to get  out of the trouble or at least try. Right. So,  

if he fails to get out of the trouble, or  if he fails to hit a home run or whatever,  

then that's the sad ending. But if he's  successful, then you have the happy ending,  

so you have the critical incident, and then the  character who experiences that and who experiences  

trouble in trying to get something and then tries  to get out of it. Hopefully, he does at the end,  

so those three elements character plus trouble  plus, I call it, um, attempted extrication. It's  

actually not my word. It's another story expert  by the name of Jonathan Gottschall, in his book,  

The Storytelling Animal. So, it's character  plus conflict plus attempted extrication.

Because it just means try to get out of trouble.  So yes, getting out. Right. So yeah, you're  

more of a master storyteller than I am. When I  write my texts, I tend to do, um, non-fiction,  

and I'm looking at high frequency words, but you  are leaning towards those happy endings, like  

overcoming something, extricating, um, oneself  out of the situation, so I think I think one  

thread that we have in common, hopefully not just  the only one, but one very important thread is  

positivity. That element of positivity. And to me,  it's become very important. You talk about what  

you're passionate about. Um, one of my passions  is "Happy studies!" And I really do mean it from  

the heart because I want the overall experience to  be a positive one. Not all of it is going to be,  

um laughter and happy...There's always  going to be challenges in any experience,  

um, but I do overall want language  learning to be a positive experience. So  

given that you focus on positivity as you  write your own text, why do you feel that  

positive psychology has a place in language  learning? Yeah. That's a great question, and we  

talked about this a little bit before, but it's  like learning a second language is kind of, um,  

it's...when you're speaking in a second language,  you feel like you can't be your full self. Yeah.  

Recently, I was hearing...listening to a vocal  coach say that uh your voice is your personality  

and and, in a sense, it's kind of like hard to  truly express my voice in a second language,  

and therefore, my personality doesn't come all the  way out. Yeah. Um and so that's stressful. That's,  

you know, we talk about in language teaching  the affective filter. Right. The level of  

stress that a learner feels in learning a second  language, and that stress can hinder or stop  

learning and acquisition, so, um, we need to be  encouraged and inspired and feel empowered...feel  

power so that we can we can speak and learn  and express ourselves in a foreign language.  

And so I've got on my website...I've got a lot  of stories that are based on positive psychology,  

based on research in positive psychology, but  made very simple and easy to understand for  

English language learners. So in a word, that's  my answer to your question. I hope that covers  

it. Yeah, it does. It does. And I thought  of another thread that we do have in common.  

Um, as a writer, you draw from experiences, and  obviously our life experiences extend beyond ESL,  

um, you know, teaching English as a second or  foreign language, and I'm curious to ask...I  

know a little bit about your other interests,  um, other than being a teacher. How have other  

experiences informed your teaching, your writing?  What have you drawn from, like, what, yes,  

what have you drawn from outside of ESL? Sure,  um, I'll just give one answer about that. So,  

my family, all of my my parents, my grandparents,  my grandfather, and my son, they're all musicians.  

Um, I also am a ukulele hobbyist,  um, but there's something about  

two aspects of music. There's this technical  side of music, the technical skill,  

and you need to be able...you need to be able to  play the notes. You need to be able to finger the  

the ukulele correctly, play the notes. Right. Your  technical skill is important, but you also need,  

um, for lack of a better word, showmanshi,p  charisma. Um, and in language teaching and  

language learning, we need skill -- technique,  grammar, technical parts of language, but we  

also need, um, communicative energy, like you  know, the energy to communicate well, and that's  

something that we can always develop and grow.  Even as a native speaker of English, I can I can  

always work and to try to change and transform,  um, to power up my communicative energy. So,  

from the world of music, I  kind of can see how that fits,  

um, into the world of communication or goes  both ways from the world of communication it  

also goes into the world of music. So yes, yes.  What you're saying makes me think of the concept  

of self-esteem, and how it's not just that one  person feels confident overall in every aspect  

of their life. There can be certain situations  where the self-esteem lowers. Right. It decreases,  

and I felt that, um,...every day...yeah. Yes,  as a...aspiring, I'm not aspiring, I am partly  

a musician in that I can play the piano, and  I can play a little bit on the accordion,  

um, but you know my confidence lowers a bit when  I'm asked to perform for other people because I  

haven't done it as much. Um, you know, put  me in front of a large group of students,  

I get excited and energized. I have experience  doing that. Put me on a stage with a piano, and my  

hands start shaking. I know the feeling. But I've  recently overcome that ...at least faced the fear  

and done it, and I think that's something that  I've drawn from to build my overall confidence,  

and also again, I seek out those experiences  occasionally, here and there, to remember what  

it is like to put yourself out there and overcome  fears, or at least face them. The first thing is  

just to face them, and I I did that. Recently,  I have not...I've never...I had never done a  

recital, and then I recently said yes to one, and  I got on stage and played, and I made mistakes. It  

wasn't perfect, but I was so happy that I just did  it, and it made me feel better for having tried,  

and I think that's something that I can bring now  to my teaching to remember the courage that it  

takes to try and to put yourself out there. That's  a good point. It's a good point in the sense that  

it helps you feel what your students might be  feeling when they're asked to speak up in class,  

for example. Yes. I remember being called on  in my Japanese class once, and I could feel  

my heart pounding out as the 25 students waited  for me to make a fool of myself, you know, so  

um yeah. So, it is good to put yourself out  there and remember what it's like to be in  

a not necessarily a panic situation,...no...but  uh but uh an uncomfortable enough situation that  

pushes you to grow. Yes. Agreed. Agreed. Oh good  conversation. We can go on and on, but we're going  

to end soon. My final question is...you mentioned  only in passing "my site," but can you tell us,  

um, what would you like learners to know about  the site that you offer? What do you offer?  

What's there? What's available? Sure. Maybe I  can send you some screenshots later or something,  

but my website is called ReadOasis.com, and it's  been online for about 12 years now, maybe more.  

Um, and basically, the the tagline  is "Learn English with stories."  

Um, we've got a few other words here. It  says, "Power up your English for work and  

school. Learn the fun, fast, better way  with stories." And um, we have...a it's a  

premium site, but we have three tiers that people  can sign up for, um, and uh I'd be happy to tell  

you about those now if you'd like, I could do  that, um, so we have a a Lifetime Master Plan,  

which is a pretty expensive one $247 for lifetime  access. It includes two live coaching sessions.  

Um, the goal for that group would be, like, try  to read two million words, which experts seem  

to say equals about one year of study abroad in  an English-speaking country. We have a one-year  

access for the Expert Plan, we call it, for $79.  And the goal for that one would be try to read  

500,000 words in maybe a year. And then I have the  Cup of Coffee plan, which is$5.97 a month, and you  

can cancel anytime. All of these you can cancel  after one month and get a whole full refund.  

Um, but since we're doing this together, um, I  thought I would offer a discount... pretty big  

one of 20% with the coupon code "Jennifer," so um,  if anybody wants to sign up using the coupon code  

"Jennifer," you can get a 20% off. Yeah. Please  and um, that's a pretty big discount, so I think  

it's a pretty good deal, and the site's been used  by thousands of learners. It's stood the test of  

time. I think people will probably enjoy it, and  get a lot out of it if they were to use it. So  

and again texts at their level -- interesting,  engaging, compelling. Lots of rich features.  

Audio and uh different things. You know, there's  a lot of different features, um, goal setting and  

audio and 10 different levels ,and there's quizzes  on high frequency vocabulary. There's a lot of  

material on the website, so if you're looking  for a way to integrate reading into your studies  

because you feel you have not given this skill  enough attention, this is a possibility...and  

affordable. Yeah...yeah. Joey, thank you so much  for taking the time to talk with me and to share  

everything you did. Look forward to another chance  to talk to you. Awesome. All right. Thank you.  

I hope you enjoyed the interview with Joey.  He's a dedicated educator who wants to offer  

quality reading resources to engage learners  and help them build fluency. On ReadOasis.com,  

Joey has carefully crafted texts for language  learners. You can read for pleasure, read to  

learn, read to get inspired, and read to build  your English language skills. On ReadOasis.com,  

you can use the coupon code "Jennifer" to receive  your exclusive 20% at checkout. I'll put the link  

in the video description. Thanks again to Joey  for sharing the discount, his expertise, and his  

passion. That's all for now. Please remember to  like and share the video if you found it useful.  

And hey! Check out my poetry collection. It's one  of the digital downloads I'm currently offering.  

You can get the PDF and two MP3 audio recordings:  one with music and one without. As always,  

thanks for watching and happy studies! Follow  me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon.  

And don't forget to subscribe here on YouTube.  Turn on those notifications thank you [Music]