How Cristiano Ronaldo Transformed His English

What's up everyone? I'm Andrea, your RealLife  English Fluency Coach, and today we have an  

incredibly inspirational lesson for you. But before we get into it, I want to let you know that  

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Cristiano Ronaldo has many accolades to his name.  Obviously he is one of the best football players  

to have ever lived. Not only that, but he's a  successful businessman, a pop culture icon and a  

millionaire. He is also however a philanthropist,  meaning that he does a lot of charity work.  

And what's most relevant for us is that he  is a successful English language learner.

So whether or not you are one of his  millions of fans around the world,  

you and him have something in common:  you're both on an English language journey! 

You and Cristiano probably had a similar  start with the language.

This video that has recently gone viral shows a very young  18 year old Ronaldo, in fact when he just  

joined Manchester United and he barely spoke any  English. However, if you contrast that to his most  

recent interviews in English, the improvements  are remarkable.

Although his improvement is amazing he does still make mistakes. However mistakes are a secondary priority for him.  

The most important thing for him is getting his  meaning across, so the most important thing for  

him is to communicate clearly and effectively.

So he doesn't let his mistakes affect his confidence.

In fact on and off the pitch Ronaldo is known for  his amazing confidence.

He doesn't care if people laugh at his mistakes and as you can see in this video, he actually values effort over perfection,  

when this young fan tried really hard to speak  in Ronaldo's native language of Portuguese.

Going back to this interview of an 18 year  old Ronaldo just arriving in Manchester.  

What you can admire about this is that even  knowing very little English, Ronaldo put himself  

in a vulnerable position. He knew that he could  make a fool of himself but he didn't care. Do you  

know why? He didn't because he didn't feel sorry  for himself. In fact what he did was laugh it off,  

which is a great attitude to have sometimes. It  doesn't mean that you shouldn't make the effort  

or that you can always do this, but in certain  moments it's a good attitude to have so that you  

don't get too down on yourself or frustrated  by the fact that you can't express yourself.  

What you can later on do is go home and reflect  on the situation and think about how you could  

improve on it next time or make sure that it  doesn't happen again in the same way, which  

is something I'm pretty sure Ronaldo probably  did as well. While we can certainly admire his  

attitude here, there is something to learn from  Ronaldo's mistakes he said, "No understand."  

Although most natives will forgive you for  answering this way if you have a very basic  

level, once you are an intermediate or a lower  intermediate learner you need to have better  

conversation or etiquette. At this level you're  going to be in situations where you're not quite  

understanding what the other person is saying to  you. So it's best to avoid any of these words or  

expressions. Instead of saying "what?" you could  say "sorry" or "excuse me" or even "pardon."

"Pardon" or even "I beg your pardon," which is a  little bit more posh and a little bit more formal,  

is probably a little bit more British than  American. They would probably rather say "sorry"  

or "excuse me." Any one of these would have been  better than saying "no understand." Other options  

are "sorry, I didn't quite catch that"  or "sorry, can you repeat that please."  

You could even speak more informally and say "say  that again please" or even taking this informal  

expression and making it a little bit more  polite by saying "can you say that again,  

please?" These are great survival phrases  and some others could be "what do you mean?"  

or for example, if you're the one speaking  and you cannot think of a particular word  

you could even say "how do you say blank?" and  the blank word could be spoken in your native  

language. Or instead you could say "how do you  say...?" and then give a sort of description,  

hoping that the person that you're speaking to  might know the word that you're looking for.  

Now let's take a look at this fun  clip from the Jonathan Ross Show.

We actually made a great lesson on British  accents and we even spoke about Sir Alex  

Ferguson's Scottish accent. So if you'd like  to have a look at that lesson, you can click  

up here or in the description  box below to watch it later.  

Now let's hear Cristiano talk about motivation in  this quick clip.

Obviously motivation is going to be a very important factor in your success of learning English.

What Cristiano is saying here 

is that mentality is the most important thing.  Your mindset is going to determine whether or not  

you will be successful. This is probably one of  the most inspiring things about Cristiano Ronaldo,  

as well as his work ethic, which to this day  no matter how successful he becomes remains  

incredibly high. This can be a great lesson  for English language learners everywhere,  

because no matter how successful you become or how  fluent you become at speaking in English, you can  

always keep working and always keep improving. So  whether you're a fan of Cristiano Ronaldo or not,  

I really hope that you enjoyed this lesson and  that you've taken something away from it that's  

going to motivate you, that's going to help  you to achieve your English learning goals.  

So in this lesson we took a look at  all the great things that Ronaldo does,  

but what about the things that you should not  do? Well if you head over to RealLife English,  

our second channel, you'll find a great  lesson that we did on the 7 Things  

not to do when Speaking in English. So I highly  recommend you check that lesson out next.  

Now which famous sports star or celebrity  would you like us to feature in a lesson next?  

Leave your suggestions in the comments  below and I'll see you in the next lesson.