Learn English Fast: 4 Hacks to Native English

Hi.

I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.

Do you want to make your English more natural?

Of course.

Let's talk about it.

Of course, you want to speak English naturally.

No one wants to speak English like a textbook, but maybe you're like me and you're impatient.

You want to learn now, fast, without waiting.

I want to learn how to play the piano now.

I want to learn how to speak all the languages in the world now.

Maybe, you want to speak English naturally now.

But, unfortunately, these things take time.

As they say, anything worthwhile takes time.

But today, I have a little secret.

I'd like to share with you four English hacks that will help you to speak more natural English

right now.

A hack is kind of like a shortcut.

An easier faster way to do something and these four words that we're going to talk about

right now are things that will help our English to sound more natural immediately without

having to study tons of lists or books.

You'll just change these four words and boom, your English will sound much more natural.

Let's start with the first one.

The first one is changing the word receive to the word get.

You might have noticed that there are a ton of expressions with the word get in English.

In fact, I made a video about some of those top expressions up here.

You can check out that video if you would like.

If you would like to sound more natural and more conversational, I recommend saying get

instead of receive.

I received your email.

I got your email.

You can use this in maybe business conversations or in a business or in a business email.

Sometimes, I use it in emails when I want to be more formal.

Really, most of the time you can use get.

You can change I received your text message to I got your text message.

I received your package in the mail.

I got your package in the mail.

When you use got or get in these situations, it's just going to sound so much more comfortable

and more common in daily conversation.

All right.

Let's go to the second hack.

My second suggestion for helping you to sound more natural right now is to change prefer

to I would rather.

Now, native speakers do use the word prefer, but it's more common to say I'd rather when

you're talking about something that's your preference.

Let's take a look at a quick example.

If someone asks you do you want to listen to Queen?

You might say "No.

I prefer to listen to quiet music when I'm studying."

Or you can make it even more natural and say "No.

I'd rather listen to quiet music right now.

I would rather listen to quiet music right now."

I'd rather or I would rather.

Let's imagine that your coworker is trying to plan a meeting and they ask you "Can you

have a meeting tomorrow afternoon?"

You could say "No.

I prefer to do work in the morning."

Or even better, you could say "I'd rather do work in the morning.

I'd rather have a meeting in the morning."

I would rather and then you can state your preference.

It sounds great.

All right let's go the third one.

The third hack is changing many to a lot or a lot of.

You probably learned many, much in your elementary school textbooks, but today I'm here to tell

you if you change it to a lot of, you're going to sound amazingly natural.

Let's take a look at a quick example.

You might say "I ate many cookies."

Okay.

It's grammatically fine.

But if you want to sound even more natural, you could say "I ate a lot of cookies.

I ate a lot of cookies."

You can change this pronunciation to be linked together and say "I ate a lot of cookies.

I ate a lot of cookies.

I ate a lot of cookies yesterday and now I don't feel so well."

We just talked about many, but I want to let you know that with the word much, much is

often used in negative situations.

You can use both much or you could use a lot of.

Both of these are commonly used, so you might say "There isn't much coffee left.

There isn't much coffee."

Or you could say "There isn't a lot of coffee left."

Here, we have a negative sentence.

Isn't is is not.

You could say "There isn't much coffee left" or "There isn't a lot of coffee left" and

both of these are perfectly natural.

The fourth and final hack to help your English sound more natural right now is changing the

word very to the word really.

The only time that I use the word very is if I'm emphasizing it kind of in a funny way

very loud, like that.

Let's take a look at a quick example.

You might say "The concert was very loud."

Okay.

Grammatically, it's fine.

But if you want to be even more natural, you could say "The concert was really loud.

The concert was really loud and it was too loud for me.

I had to go it was really loud."

For me, I might say very only if I was saying the sentence like this, "The concert was very

loud" kind of emphasizing that word almost in a comedic way or a strange way.

I recommend using the word really in these situations.

Let's take a look at couple other examples.

You could say "I haven't been to the beach in a very long time."

No problem.

It's fine, but you don't want just fine.

You want amazing.

Right?

Let's say "I haven't been to the beach in a really long time."

We're just changing very with really.

Beautiful.

Now, it's your turn.

I want to use all four of these English hacks to speak more naturally right now.

My question is would you rather get a lot of really fresh warm cookies or a lot of really

expensive glasses of wine?

What's your preference?

Can you use all of these expressions in your answer?

Write a comment below and I'll try to give you some feedback and help you as much as

I can.

Thanks so much for learning with me and I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson

here on my YouTube channel.

Bye.

The next step is to download my free eBook, Five Steps to Becoming a Confident English

Speaker.

You'll learn what you need to do to speak confidently and fluently.

Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more free lessons.

Thanks so much.

Bye.