STOP Speaking Classroom English

Vanessa: Are you ready to hear one of the  

biggest secrets about learning English? Listen up.  You may have spent a lot of time in the classroom  

with an English teacher who taught you lots of  rules of English, and it is true that English  

has a lot of rules just like any language. But did  you know that in order to speak fluent English,  

there are a few rules that you need to break?  If you're someone who loves to break rules,  

this is a dream for you. But if you are a rule  follower, you're going to need to take a deep  

breath because these are essential rules to break  if you want to be fluent in English. So today  

I'm going to help you stop speaking classroom  English and start speaking real fluent English. 

Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com,  and today to help you with this important lesson  

of stopping speaking classroom English, I've  created a free PDF worksheet for you with all  

of the rules that we're going to talk about  today, how they're taught in the classroom,  

and how you should use them or break  them in order to speak fluent English,  

lots of sample sentences and ideas to help you  improve your English skills. You can click on  

the link in the description to download that free  PDF worksheet that goes with this lesson today. 

Let's get started with rule number one that  you should break to speak fluent English.  

Let's imagine that someone calls you and you don't  recognize the number, you don't know who it is,  

and they say, "Hi, is this Vanessa?" And you  think, "Oh yeah, that's me, but I don't know  

who you are." Well, in the classroom, you would  be taught the phrase, "To whom am I speaking? To  

whom am I speaking?" This is very formal. You  might hear this in a TV show using old proper  

English from a long time ago. But in daily  conversational English, we would not use this. 

So what could you say instead? If someone calls  you and you don't know who they are, you want to  

ask, right? But what's a good question? You could  ask, "Who am I speaking with?" Or you could just  

simply ask, "Who's this?" You're using the word  who instead of whom? We rarely use whom in daily  

conversations. So you're switching up the grammar  of this and you're saying, "Who's this? Who am I  

speaking with?" And technically this phrase, "Who  am I speaking with?" breaks another important  

rule that we'll talk about a little bit later. Classroom English rule number two that we often  

break in fluent English, that's this one. "There  are a lot of problems with this plan." Okay,  

this is grammatically correct. "There are a  lot of problems with this plan." But you know  

what? In fast conversational English, you're more  likely to hear, "There's a lot of problems with  

this plan." As a contraction, there is, but this  is wrong. This is incorrect, "There is problems."  

The word problems is plural, so technically we  need a plural verb. "There are problems." But in  

daily conversation, and you will hear me use this  a lot in my English lessons because it's just the  

way that we speak, and that's what I'm trying to  teach you, daily conversational English. We will  

use the contraction of there is, there's, with a  plural object. "There's a lot of problems." Well,  

it's incorrect technically, but it's used  all the time in daily conversational English,  

so I give you permission to use it. Classroom English rule number three  

that is often broken in advanced fluent English,  it's this one. "If I were from France, I would  

speak French." This is grammatically correct. It's  a beautiful sentence, but do we use this in daily  

conversation? Maybe like 15% of the time, 20% of  the time. Instead, what are people more likely to  

say? Well, you're more likely to hear the first  part of this differently. "If I was from France,  

I would speak French." So technically,  it should be "If I were," because we're  

talking about a strange verb tense, a verb case  in English, the subjunctive tense. So if you said,  

"If I were from France," this would be correct.  But instead in daily conversation we say, "If I  

was. If I was from France, I would speak French."  This is what you're going to hear more often. 

There is one phrase I'd like to show you that  we use equally both tenses. It's this phrase,  

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." We use this  as a warning. If someone is standing too close  

to the edge of a cliff because they want to look  at the river down below in the valley and they're  

getting a little too close to the edge, you  might say, "Ah, I wouldn't do that if I were  

you." But you could also switch it and instead  use the incorrect verb, but it's commonly used  

in daily conversation. Instead you could say,  "I wouldn't do that if I was you." Both of these  

are equally used, so you're going to hear both.  And even though was is incorrect, it's used all  

the time, so I give you permission to use it. The fourth classroom English phrase that is  

taught in the classroom but is not often used in  daily conversation is this tricky one about verb  

tenses. "Before I started learning English,  I had thought it was impossible." Here we're  

using "I had thought," because it's an action that  happened before something else in the past. But  

really in daily conversation, we just simplify  it. Instead, you're more likely to hear this,  

"Before I started learning English, I thought  it was impossible." Here we're just changing,  

"I had thought" to "thought." And this is kind  of good news, right? Instead of using a more  

complicated verb tense, we're using a simpler one  because that's what's really used in daily life. 

Let's go on to our final phrase that you will  learn in the classroom but is not really used  

in daily conversation, and that's this one. "In  which car do you want to go?" This just sounds  

so odd. But do you know why this is taught in the  classroom? In fact, my English teachers told me  

this as well even as a native English speaker,  this was taught in English classrooms in the  

US. "In which car do you want to go?" Here what  they're trying to do is avoid using a preposition  

at the end of a sentence. So you will still hear  people say, "You should never end a sentence in  

English with a preposition." Here the preposition  is in. But do you know what? This is used  

all the time in English. So let's switch this  around and hear how much more natural it sounds  

when we end a sentence with a preposition,  because that's what people really use. 

"Which car do you want to go in?" All of a  sudden it feels so much better to say that.  

The word in is at the end of this question. Yes,  we are ending this sentence with a preposition,  

but who cares? This is how people speak. Which  car do you want to go in? And you know what? You  

can use this type of English in business and  academic English as well. It's really just a  

rule that people say in the classroom, but it's  not really anything that's used in real life,  

even in these more formal situations. To help you remember this, and also just  

a little joke, I heard a great joke about not  ending a sentence with a preposition. Let me  

tell it to you. There was a new student that went  to Harvard. When he met one of his classmates,  

he asked his classmate, "Where are you from?"  The student looked at him, saw that his shirt  

wasn't very clean. He didn't look very rich,  very intelligent, and he said, "Where I'm from,  

I know not to end a sentence with a preposition,"  because he asked, "Where are you from?" and from  

is a preposition. So the new student said, "Oh,  sorry, where are you from, stupid?" Because really  

the thing here is that the question, where are  you from is totally fine, but that other student  

wanted to have a snobby response. "Where I'm  from, I know not to do that." But in reality  

it's totally fine to say, "Where are you from?"  So he just kind of made it a little bit humorous. 

So did you enjoy breaking some rules today? I  hope so. If you would like to continue leveling  

up your English and speaking real English  that people actually use in daily life,  

I'd like to encourage you to join me in my  course, The Fearless Fluency Club. In the  

Fearless Fluency Club, you will master real  English conversations, not classroom English,  

so that you can go into the world and actually  speak the way that other people are speaking and  

understand real English conversations. My student, Ildiko, from Hungary said,  

"This course is fantastic. I like the most  that you teach us real English." And that's  

my goal here at Speak English with Vanessa is to  expose you to real English, not what you learned  

in the classroom that's not really going to help  you when you travel to other countries, when you  

speak at a business meeting, when you're watching  an English TV show or a movie. This is where the  

Fearless Fluency Club will help you because you  will have the tools it takes to actually use  

English and understand real English in the world. And right now, if you join the Fearless Fluency  

Club this week, there is a special sale, a  discount on the course. It is $100 off. Usually  

the course is $199 per level. There is a beginner,  intermediate, and advanced level. But this week  

there is a $100 off discount, so you will only pay  $99 per level. This is available only this week,  

and there is a link in the description so that  you can join me finally speak and understand  

real English and save a lot of money. Hooray! Well, thank you so much for learning English  

with me. And let me know in the comments where  are you from. Use this correct question in the  

comments and let me know where you're from.  I hope to see you again next Friday for a new  

lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye. But wait, do you want more? I recommend  

watching this video next where you will immerse  yourself in a real English conversation with  

David. David was living a very interesting life  until he got caught by the police. Why did he  

get caught by the police? Well, you'll have to  watch that video to find out. I'll see you there.