Shadowing Practice: Don't Waste Your Time Learning English Like This - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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How can you really learn to speak English confidently?
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How can you really learn to speak English confidently?
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Let me help you speed up the process by telling you in 10 minutes what I learnt 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.
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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.
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However, what most people don't know is that I've also tried to learn Italian, Malay and Japanese and I was less successful.
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Why was I successful in some of them and unsuccessful in others?
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What is it that worked and that didn't work and how can I help you become a more confident speaker of English?
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In this video I'm going to tell you five things that work and will help you learn English more effectively.
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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.
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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.
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Ready?
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Let's dive in.
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Right, number one, to effectively learn English and become confident, you must be focused.
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In English, we say to put the blinkers on or to have your blinkers on.
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If you've ever watched horse racing, you see the horses have these things on their eyes, right?
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So they cannot see.
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These are blinkers.
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So to put your blinkers on is to be very focused and only see one thing.
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because otherwise you're going to get distracted and you're not going to study.
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You've got to be really, really focused.
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My experience in Italy, did you know I actually lived in Italy and taught the Italian police?
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I was working for the Italian police as their English teacher.
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There are some interesting stories there, maybe for another day.
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The thing is, through those months I was there, I was there for two months, I picked up some Italian, right?
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Getting by in the coffees and in the shops and restaurants.
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And for about a week or two when I got home, I carried on practicing.
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But then I didn't have time.
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I was too busy and it just didn't happen.
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I wasn't focused.
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It wasn't a priority.
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And this is an important lesson I learned.
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You have to make things a priority.
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Otherwise, something else will come up and you won't do it.
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Oh, I've got my English class.
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No, but I've got this to do and that to do.
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I haven't got time.
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The biggest lesson I learned then was never to say I don't have time.
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Because what that really means is I choose not to do this.
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And I learned to change that.
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Whenever I said, no, I don't have time for this.
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No, no, no.
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I choose not to do this.
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That's the reality because you have time.
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If you don't do your English class, in that hour, you'll do something else, right?
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You're not gonna stop breathing for an hour.
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You'll do something else.
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You choose not to do the English study, always, right?
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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.
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Number two, be persistent.
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What a lovely word.
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Persistent.
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Persistent.
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And it means to continue or to keep going.
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I often tell my students that learning English is not a sprint.
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It's not 100 meters.
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It's a marathon.
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And you need to keep going.
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Right.
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Be persistent.
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The thing The thing is, if you go on social media, a lot of influencers will tell you, oh, you can get fluent in three months.
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You can learn English with these five words in 10 minutes.
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The thing is, right, us people on social media, we've always got one eye on the views and one eye on the education.
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And there's always a balance.
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And so a lot of influencers will try and convince you that it's easy.
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You can do it in three months.
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You can become fluent.
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It's not true.
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It takes time.
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If you go to the Cambridge English website, it'll tell you to move up a band.
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like a B1 to a B2, it will typically take, what, 200 hours of guided study and learning.
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And the higher up you go, the more time it takes.
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So very often schools and courses will run for one year or nine months to move up a level, taking into account, you know, space repetition and all of that.
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Nine months for a level, that's more realistic.
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It does take time.
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So you must be persistent.
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And the trick here is if you enjoy your study, you're going to be persistent.
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You're going to carry on.
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So do that.
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Enjoy your study.
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Find materials you enjoy, that you like, that are engaging, and that's going to help you a lot.
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Let's move on.
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Okay, number three is find your mojo.
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Mojo.
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What I mean really is mojo, motivation, right?
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Find your motivation because you need to be motivated to learn another language like English.
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One way to harness your motivation, I mean to get motivated, is to have specific and realistic goals and ones that you can measure, I think.
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Smart goals, right?
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But specific and realistic.
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So sometimes, 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.
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Okay, it's a nice ambition.
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I'm a beginner now, I want to be fluent in English.
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It's not very specific.
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What do you mean by fluent?
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And when?
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How long?
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And it's just too big, I think, and it's too far away.
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It's like the stars.
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Make it more specific and realistic.
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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.
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Something like that is much more specific.
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You could even say which topics.
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And a teacher will come and say, that's great.
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We'll take you from A2 to B1 in six months.
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That's basically it.
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And it's something you can measure, especially if you identify the topics.
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That's something, it's more specific, it's realistic, and it's measurable as well.
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So all of that can really, really help.
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Now, the thing with motivation is you need to feed your motivation.
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like your dog or your cat, if you have one.
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If you don't feed your pet, they will become lazy and tired.
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They'll have no energy.
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And ultimately, I'm afraid they'll die.
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Like your motivation, it'll disappear.
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So you must feed your motivation, right?
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What do you give your motivation?
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The best thing you can do is remind yourself why you're doing this.
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Why am I learning English?
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And maybe it's because, well, because you want to travel and speak to other people.
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If you're studying IELTS, actually your goal is not IELTS, right?
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Your goal is the reason why, because I want to study abroad.
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I want to actually work and live abroad or take my family abroad and have a better life.
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That's the why.
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And so in those difficult moments when your motivation is down, remember the why.
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Another thing you can do, and I did this when learning Spanish.
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I was living in Spain.
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I was there for about a year.
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I was there for a long time, but after a year, I decided to join some classes.
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And my roommate said, what?
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Why are you doing classes?
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I mean, we live in Madrid.
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Just go on the street and talk to people.
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And I said, yeah, I know I do, but I just, I always say the same things.
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And, you know, and I don't really know many people.
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When I went to the class, oh, it was just, my level went up because I was learning much wider language, vocabulary, grammar, but I was also connecting with people.
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I was making friends.
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I was talking to people in the same boat as me.
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We weren't in a boat, idiomatically.
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We were in the same situation.
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And it was just it was great to connect with others.
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And when my motivation was lagging, we could cheer each other up and say, you know, keep going, connect to others.
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It was invaluable.
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The best thing I ever did, even though I was living in Spain at the time, joined a Spanish course.
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And finally, I think a nice thing to do is to reward yourself.
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When you reach a goal or part of a goal, just give yourself a pat on the back.
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I can't reach.
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But reward yourself.
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Say, great, I've done it.
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I've done a month study.
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I've studied every day.
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I've learned to speak about this, this and this.
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Great.
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Go to the cinema.
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Go and buy yourself a book.
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Give yourself a little reward.
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Keep the motivation going.
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Feed your motivation.
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Let me feed you with some more ideas.
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Moving on to number four.
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Number four is big goal, small steps.
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Now, this is related to the motivation, but so having a big goal is great.
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Breaking it down into small steps is really important.
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What you're going to do step by step.
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If you've ever been walking in the mountains, if you like rambling, right, sometimes you say you go out rambling, you say, right, we're going to go in a big circle for 10 kilometres.
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And you go, oh, it's going to take ages.
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That isn't great.
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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.
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And there are steps, small steps, and you think, oh, yeah, that's doable.
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Little things you'll achieve on the way.
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That's great.
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So when I arrived in China many years ago, I knew that I wanted to speak Chinese.
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And I really wanted to speak to a very high level.
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I was a bit like, I'm a beginner.
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I want to be fluent in Chinese.
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But I also realised that's not going to work.
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So I broke it down.
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I thought, right, what am I going to do?
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The first year I'm here, I want to be able to communicate with family and friends.
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That was key.
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Second, I wanted to be able to have daily conversations with people on the street, in the shops.
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Thirdly, I actually wanted to be able to work in Chinese, to function in Chinese.
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So I broke that down into three goals, each one a year.
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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.
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Eight o'clock in the morning, boom, to class, an hour and a half and then go to work.
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and did that for eight months.
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And that took me up to like an A2 level.
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And I was able to talk to family and friends, very simple, like pass me the sugar and I like this, things like that.
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The key was big goal, small steps.
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You see, the small steps help you focus on the present moment, on the now.
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When you've got big goals, you start thinking, Oh God, it's so much.
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It's too much.
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It's overwhelming.
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The more you think, the less you are present.
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You're lost in your thoughts.
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To avoid that, to be present, small steps, because the small step helps you focus in the present moment.
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And it works much, much better.
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So if you've got your goal of getting, let's say, a band seven in IELTS, think about small steps.
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First three months, the next three months, the next three months.
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What are you going to do?
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How are you going to reach it?
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Big goal, small steps.
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Let's move on.
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Number five, practice lots.
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You see, the big mistake a lot of students make, and I did as well, although I'm going to blame my teacher at school with French, is we studied too much.
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We just studied.
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And by study, I mean reading and reading, learning the rules, learning the grammar, reading, reading, a bit of listening.
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It was all passive.
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It was study.
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We weren't actually practicing.
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We weren't speaking, writing very little, right?
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And that's what happened to French.
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And so, you know, I got to the age of 18, having studied French for 10 years, and I couldn't speak.
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That's ridiculous.
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So it's so important, practice lots.
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Wherever you are now, and as you're studying, whether it's with videos, my videos, or with a book, as you study, practice at the same time.
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You can practice speaking out, Practice making phrases, changing phrases.
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You can use the speaking success system that you can learn from my videos.
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You can practice in the real world.
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You can practice online with classmates or students or teachers.
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Online is the real world as well, right?
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Or face-to-face.
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It doesn't matter.
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But as you're studying, practice as much as you study.
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And that will help you become a more effective learner and a more confident speaker of English.
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Next.
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Right, point number six.
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Hang on, Keith, you said five.
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I did, I know.
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All right, you can call this a bonus if you like, or point number six.
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And that is review.
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and I couldn't leave you without telling you how important it is to review to become an effective learner and speaker of English.
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Review because, well, there's a lot of science and theory behind this.
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Do you remember?
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Teachers will probably know Ebinghaus, Herman Ebinghaus and his learning curve or his, well, his memory curve.
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Some call it a forgetting curve.
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But after a certain number of hours a lot of people say 24 hours you 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 the learn your learning goes down there's a lot of mythology around this and even you know ebbinghaus he was the researcher and he He was the person undergoing the research.
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He was the candidate, if you like.
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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 going to forget a large amount.
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There's also spaced repetition theory, right?
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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.
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A few days later, they come back again.
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that spaced repetition and it is 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.
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So there's a recycling of language.
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Reviewing and recycling, basically.
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Hugely important, very valuable, quite easy to do.
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Just find time.
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Remember, don't say I don't have time.
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It's I don't choose to do it or I choose to do it.
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The choice is in your hands.
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Okay, so there you have it.
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Five or six different ways to help you become a more confident speaker.
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Now, I realise I am mixing research and anecdote here, right?
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And, you know, that's what I did to build my online course, IELTS Speaking Gold course.
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It's a mixture.
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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.
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But also anecdote, my own learning experience.
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In fact, the speaking success system is based on my own experience of learning languages.
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You can watch a video about that, actually, straight after this one, if you like.
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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.
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That's it for today.
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Listen, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me.
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If you've liked it, you know what to do.
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If you've subscribed, you know what to do.
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and listen, I can't wait to see you in the next video.
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Keep going, be focused, persistent, motivated and all the rest of it.
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Take care, my friend.
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Bye-bye.

About This Lesson

In this lesson, you will learn effective techniques for improving your English speaking skills by focusing on key elements that contribute to language learning success. Drawing from over 20 years of language learning experience, this lesson will guide you through the importance of focus, persistence, and the right practice methods. Whether you're preparing for the IELTS speaking test or simply aiming to boost your conversational fluency, these insights will help you become a more confident English speaker, enabling you to use the shadowing technique effectively.

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

  • Focus: The act of concentrating on a specific task or goal.
  • Persistence: The quality of continuing steadily despite problems or difficulties.
  • Prioritize: To arrange or deal with in order of importance.
  • Blinkers: A metaphor for staying focused, derived from a horse racing term.
  • Distraction: Anything that prevents you from concentrating on something else.
  • Shadowing Technique: A language learning method where you listen to a native speaker and repeat what they say in real-time.
  • IELTS Speaking Practice: Exercises aimed at preparing for the speaking section of the IELTS exam.
  • Shadowspeak: A specific type of practice in which learners mimic native speakers closely, enhancing pronunciation and fluency.

Practice Tips

To effectively use the shadowing technique, it's crucial to find materials that match your current English proficiency level, ideally those that you can relate to. You can utilize a shadowing app to access recordings of fluent English conversations or speeches. Start with short clips to maintain focus and practice regularly. Aim for clarity over speed; it's better to perfectly imitate a sentence than to rush through it.

During your practice, pay attention to the intonation and rhythm of the speaker. Try to capture the nuances in their speech patterns. If the video or audio is too fast, do not hesitate to slow it down until you feel comfortable. Balance your practice with regular IELTS speaking practice to familiarize yourself with the exam's format while also applying your shadow speak skills in various settings. Remember, consistency is key! Establish a schedule to help you practice effectively without feeling overwhelmed. Over time, you’ll notice significant improvements in your confidence and ability to communicate in English.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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