MASTERCLASS: How To Build a BRILLIANT Vocabulary

guys what's up we are live and I'm very excited about this video we're gonna talk about how to build a brilliant vocabulary so going from basic vocabulary to a brilliant vocabulary that makes you feel super good competent expressive confident in English Okay so we're going to talk about how to transform the way you express yourself in English by building a bigger vocabulary and how this is going to help you finally understand native speakers more so welcome everyone who's joining I announced yesterday that I was going to do this video I just finished the outline for

it like right before right before going live so there's a lot we have to talk about as always a lot of information I want to share with you guys and insights into this topic and I just have to say I'm actually really surprised that I'm talking about vocabulary because my focus throughout being the English coach and everything like that it's it's really been fluency mainly and pronunciation okay I've talked about grammar and then recently like in the last few months I had this big epiphany where I was like oh my goodness I really need to

be talking about vocabulary and I realized how this is such a struggle and a pain point for English learners but I think the reason why I didn't talk about it so much before is because I had not put in the thought to understanding the problem and coming up with the solution like I feel like it's pointless to just talk about something if I don't know the solution and so I literally spent months okay you can talk to the people on my team they will tell you I spent months thinking about this problem with vocabulary the

problems it caught it causes and the best ways to solve these problems and we're going to talk about all of this right now on this live video you can consider it like your introduction Master Class to vocabulary okay so here's what we'll do I'm gonna go through everything that I have in my notes I'm reading the comments as we do this and then we're gonna do questions okay you guys because I'm not good at multitasking most people are not I just have to get through everything that I have to say and then I can take

your questions and stuff for that and stuff like that okay okay so here we go and we're gonna make this a little bit interactive as well the first thing I want to do is I want to make sure you're in the right place do you even need to be having this conversation with me right now okay do you even need to improve your vocabulary because some of you probably don't okay some of you probably have a great vocabulary maybe your vocabulary is even better than mine okay so let's talk about you know whether or not

you need to actually improve your vocabulary so first of all you know you need to work on your vocabulary if you feel repetitive in English does anybody here feel repetitive in English like you're always saying the same words over and over the same expressions over and over and you just don't feel like you're like you have variety you know in in your speech in your words you just feel repetitive I remember that when I was a Spanish learner back in college that's how I felt okay I would say like oh how are you how's it

going that's nice thank you um that's interesting okay I would like this I would not like that and like I could express myself I could talk I could say what I wanted but it's almost like my language skills were just so basic and I know a lot of people feel this way in English and they like describe it like caveman English or something you know like you can get your point across but you don't feel great and it's it's a hard work it's a chore and in your native language you're just like oh my gosh

my native language is so easy I'm so expressive you know how to use your own idioms that you have in your language you can tell jokes you understand your own cultural references so you just fit right in with your native language but with English there's that barrier right there's like maybe you don't understand the jokes because you don't understand parts of the culture or you know stuff like that okay if you're missing technical terms you might not understand what people are talking about where you work in the office okay if you don't know certain cliches

certain jargon you're going to be lost and the worst part is it sucks it feels really bad and sometimes most times I think we try to save face okay do you guys know this expression this is like we don't want people to know that we don't know what they're talking about so we we smile we're like oh yeah I get it I get it we laugh at the jokes even though we don't get them you might even lie without realizing it you might be like oh yeah yeah I understand keep going even though you really

don't understand okay so all of these things can come down to vocabulary okay if you don't have enough words you're not going to be able to express yourself well or understand other people okay so now sometimes expressing yourself might come down to just simply a lack of confidence or you know a thick accent that people can't understand or maybe you don't understand someone else's accent that's not what I'm talking about those are separate problems okay what I'm talking about is you understand like you understand the accent you understand the pronunciation but you don't get the

meaning behind what somebody is saying okay also because maybe they're not being literal maybe it's an expression that's not literal at all right but native speakers know how to understand it because we grow up with the language right by the way I want you to rest assured it's 100 % possible to achieve a high native level vocabulary in a language okay and we'll talk more about that in a second so anyways you feel repetitive in English next you know you need to work on your vocabulary if you overuse words like thing and something and you

struggle to be specific okay one of the true marks of somebody who's advanced in a language is that they can be very specific they know exactly what they mean they say what they mean they mean what they say and they're able to use the right words they don't necessarily have to be advanced words that are multi-syllable okay like me am I using very advanced words right now no okay but I'm able to put everything in the order that I need for you to understand my message okay so by the way I don't know if I

said this in the beginning of the video um but especially for those people that are just hopping on we're talking about vocabulary we're talking about what you need to work on to improve your vocabulary how to express yourself better we're going to talk it talk also about what to focus on and how to study okay so like how to actually fix these problems and then at the end I'm going to tell you guys about our new vocabulary course basic to brilliant vocabulary that we just launched yesterday it's open for enrollment and the link is in

my bio for more information on that but let's go back to what we were talking about I just jump right into videos I just jumped right into teaching I forget to like paint the full picture and let everybody know okay this is the agenda anyways now that I got through that um okay so again you overuse words like thing in something okay these words are the go-to words for so many language learners and for the same thing for for me in Spanish when I was more of a beginner okay you overuse words like oh that

thing over there because you don't actually know what that thing is called but that thing has a name right so you want to learn the names of the things around you so you can be specific because when we're able to be specific in a language my goodness it feels good okay that will improve your confidence if you're struggling with confidence there's a big chance it could be because you simply lack vocabulary it is so hard to be confident when you don't look and sound competent okay so just let that sink in a little bit it's

just the truth okay not trying to be mean not trying to be anything just we're here to learn and understand these problems together and solve them together so also abstract words for or words that are there to represent abstract ideas or feelings right so you might be talking to your friend and they're like oh you know how's your day going and you're just like um I just feel um you know like when um something happens and then you just you know like okay you get what I'm saying right it's like you don't have the word

to say right now I am whatever you're feeling okay just whatever that word is boom right there are so many words to express what you're going through in English I mean some off the top of my head let me think you could be feeling disappointed you could be feeling uh overwhelmed you could be feeling disrespected okay um there's so many words to express something that's going on internally and again the more you can give specific names to everything around you to your ideas okay to your feelings to the objects around you the more specific you

are the better people will understand you okay and the better you'll feel when you communicate that's another thing when people don't understand you in English how do you know if it's because of your accent maybe it's not your accent maybe it's not your pronunciation maybe they don't understand you because you're not communicating a specific idea this actually happens a lot when I communicate with non-native English speakers um and they're saying something I might have to ask for clarification like okay sorry what do you mean by that obviously it depends on their level because the more

advanced a speaker is the more aware of these things they are and advanced speakers can self-identify when they are being vague they might even stop themselves I even do that sometimes I'm like okay wait let me start over I'm being vague okay and you're not gonna understand this you can identify when the next person won't understand you right okay but if you can't if you're not at that level you need to get to that level and again the solution is building your vocabulary and we haven't even talked yet about active versus passive vocabulary because you

might have a really strong passive vocabulary where you understand a lot of English but then when you have to speak it's a whole different story and I don't actually have a lot of time to talk about active versus passive because I didn't include that in my notes and we have so many other things to go over but we're going to talk about that in the course a lot so you'll get it there um next you know you need to work on your vocabulary in English if you feel quote so much smarter in your native language

does anyone here feel like that where you're just like uh I wish they could hear me speak Spanish I wish they could hear me speak Russian I am so smart I am like one of the smartest people I know but then you speak English and you're like oh my gosh everybody must think I'm so dumb you know that feeling sucks and I'm actually going to tell you guys a very personal story about when I went through something like that a little bit later on it was humiliating okay so I'll tell you guys that story in

a little bit but you know another one you need to improve your vocabulary if you struggle to talk about a variety a variety of topics in conversations so let's say maybe you have mastered the everyday introductions like Hi how are you your name my name what do you do for a living maybe you've mastered that and maybe you're able to communicate okay with people at work let's say you're a programmer we tend to attract a lot of programmers into our courses you're able to talk about coding and you're able to talk about all kinds of

things in English but then maybe you want to go on a date with a girl and this girl loves psychology and she just wants to talk to you all about psychology and you're just like I don't know how to talk about narcissists I that that would be an awkward conversation for a first date but yeah like I don't know how to talk about these things and you just you it'd suck you know so you want to have a vocabulary that is basically equal to your native language okay so what do I mean by this I

mean that in your native language if you're able to talk about things like psychology okay you want to also have those skills transfer over into English and have the vocabulary for that but if there's something you don't talk about in your native language there's no need for that vocabulary in English okay and we're going to talk about this a little bit later because it's one of the eight basic principles of building your vocabulary right studying stuff that's relevant to relevant to you everybody has different vocabulary needs because everybody has different interests also by the way

your vocabulary expands and contracts naturally over time this is something I just thought of it was not in my notes but it's something I wanted to mention for example my brother right now is into cryptocurrency I don't know if you guys are into crypto the market is crashing everybody's freaking out right now um and he has been talking to us a lot about cryptocurrency so now I'm learning about cryptocurrency and I'm adding all kinds of words to my vocabulary that I did not know before like let me let me think of some off the top

of my head well first of all the currencies like ethereum Doge uh what else what else am I learning decentralized okay like all of blockchain like I'm not just learning the words I'm also learning what they mean and how to use them so my vocabulary is expanding in that area however there are words that I used to use when I was a child that I no longer use and I was thinking about that the other day too it's really interesting like the things we say when we're kids that we don't say anymore as adults so

anyways just something interesting to think about the same thing is going to happen for you in English okay or in languages it'll happen in your native language it'll happen in English but the basic idea here is whatever you're able to talk about in your native I'm sorry in your native language you want to be able to talk about in English so think about the things you know in your native language okay what are your hobbies what are your interests what's your job what are the things you could just talk about for hours because it's like

a favorite conversation it could be video games it could be marketing it could be entrepreneurship it could be blogging it could be just being a mom you know talking about your kids and like oh my gosh my kid got this rash and I don't know what to do and there's a lot of mom groups on um on the internet where you know people gather and they talk about these things um so anyways there's that now two more that I have for you you know you need to work on your vocabulary if you feel intimidated in

the workplace because your English is quote so basic okay so this is one of the easiest places where you can feel intimidated because if you have a job where you work in English you're working most likely mostly with native English speakers these are people obviously who grew up speaking English and they use the language a certain way they have certain you know phrases idioms expressions that are part of their everyday communication and you might not know what half of that stuff means and so it makes you feel incompetent okay it makes you just lack confidence

like you just don't open your mouth you're like oh my gosh like you know I'm not gonna understand them they're not gonna understand me I'm just going to keep to myself and pretend I'm shy even if maybe you're not shy and that's not cool you know you don't want to live life like that you want to talk to your co-workers like go out and have a beer with them after work if that's something you're into or or whatever like raise your voice speak up in a meeting and share an idea you want to be able

to do this without feeling intimidated because of the difference in ability basically ability to express yourself they have words that you don't have they have expressions they have understanding that you don't have but as soon as you get to that level or you know start working your way up there you're gonna feel better because that is one of the ways to increase confidence by the way there's three ways to increase or four I was talking about this the other day with some of my students there's three or four ways to increase your confidence okay one

is changing your mindset just change the way that you look at the world and boom you can instantly have more confidence okay but sometimes it's not that easy sometimes you actually have to increase your ability because it's hard to be confident when everybody around you is better than you at something okay so sometimes the answer is increasing your ability and that's what we're talking about here and the last one I have for you guys is you know you need to work on your vocabulary if you don't understand native speakers and actually we already talked about

this a little bit so if you don't understand the jokes the cultural references stories when people tell stories if your eyes just glaze over and you're like oh my gosh and you you're thinking in your head like I'll just try to laugh at the key points to pretend that I understood that's not good and I know all about that because I've done that before and occasionally I may or may not still do it in Spanish or when someone's giving you instructions this is really important especially at work if someone's giving you instructions and you don't

understand how are you going to be able to do your job well right um I'm pretty sure without even asking anybody I'm pretty sure people have gotten in big trouble over stuff like this before like even maybe gotten fired right just from doing something wrong at work simply because you didn't have the words or whatever okay so here's the idea vocabulary is the key one of the keys to expressing yourself better in English but it is the key that we're talking about in this video okay and for some English learners remember at the beginning I

said not everybody has to work on their vocabulary well after we went through that list of you know you need to work on your vocabulary if hopefully you've been able to self-identify do you need to work on your vocabulary or not okay next a little insider information for you guys a native English speaker okay actually first let me ask you a question how big is your vocabulary in English active and passive like what do you think it is do you know what it is okay do you think you know like do you think you have

5 000 words in your vocabulary and by the way when I talk with you guys we always talk about the same thing here we're talking about English so there's a lot of words in my vocabulary that you never hear because I don't talk to you about other topics like being a mom going on a hike stuff like that but if I did you know you might not understand me as well a lot of people say oh I understand you so well part of the reason besides the fact that I speak clearly is the topic that

we are discussing is one that you are well acquainted with it's one that you know well um so how many words do you think you know in English do you know three thousand do you know five thousand do you think you know ten thousand okay here's the deal native English speakers on average have about twenty thousand words in their vocabulary okay with University educated people tending to have around 40 000 words so those are like the targets just so you know if you want to have like a high native level vocabulary that's actually more than

twenty thousand okay high native level would be thirty to forty thousand okay now here's the here's the thing those are just individual words right what about expressions what about fixed phrases uh what about phrasal verbs what about cliches what about popular sayings that we just grow up knowing right that that takes it to a whole new level and I'll just pop this in here right now even though we're going to talk about this later if you try to learn all of these words by studying lists like oh I'm just going to grab this list of

100 phrasal verbs I need to know okay we're talking about well over 40 000 words and expressions okay studying the list I don't know how to say this is not going to be effective there's go there there's so many better ways you guys to study vocabulary and I'm actually I apologize if that came off a little bit harsh because I realized that actually not a lot of people know this and so you are doing the best you can you're trying to learn and maybe you don't know that there's a better way so I was laughing

about it but I caught myself because I'm like oh my gosh that's so mean like sometimes people don't know that they're not doing something the best way that they can be doing so anyways I apologize about that but anyhow so yeah basically there there's a big gap and if that's you know hopefully that explains to you though like where you might be where you want to be and there's a lot of work ahead of for you but you can do it right you can get there and I really want you to walk away with this

confidence today that um where you are now is not where you have to be forever or where you will be forever so a really important thing is one learning to enjoy the journey and two being confident even with where you are like trying your best like even if you don't have the whole vocabulary you want to have yet okay anyhow before we jump into what we are going to talk about next I want to tell you guys a very embarrassing story okay very humiliating embarrassing story but I think it's important okay so here's the deal

you guys probably know that I speak Spanish I learned Spanish I started learning when I was a teenager I lived in Argentina for a while my husband is from Argentina so Spanish is an everyday part of my life now but the way we communicate just so you guys know usually he communicates in Spanish and I respond in English and vice versa that's just how we do it so one day I was working I had this job where I was a sales representative for a company I sent an email about it this morning if you guys

are on my email list you got this email so go read it but anyhow I was on the phone okay actually let me back up so I was a sales representative for a company and I'm actually sorry I'm just worried that I need to check the time because I don't know if this if Instagram will let me make a live video longer than an hour so I better not make this longer than an hour it has cut me off before so I have to be careful okay back to the story so I was a sales

representative at a company fifth time I've said that now and sales was actually new for me where you have to like you know talk to potential clients tell them about the products help them decide you know what they're gonna get and hope that they don't decide to go call the competition right after and buy from them instead right so sales is a really high stress job it's hard I was new in this but anyways in this company I think there was one other person that spoke Spanish so one day I was talking to my manager

and I told her I spoke Spanish and she's like oh my gosh we can totally use you we need to send Spanish-speaking clients your way we can make more sales you can make more commission it's going to be amazing one second I might have something on my lip okay it's gonna be amazing and um I was a little doubtful because I was like yeah I'm fluent in Spanish but this job is hard in English so imagine doing it in Spanish but I didn't want to let them down so I was like okay I thought it

was actually I thought it was a great opportunity to practice my Spanish I was like oh this is awesome I'll get to talk to clients it's gonna force me to improve my Spanish even more little did I know I was like setting myself up for failure because it was so hard most of the people I spoke to were kind you know they were patient with me because I would you know Spanish wasn't my first language and I was nervous and stuff but I remember this one day this man called and he was so like down

to business and then he just started going off on me because I was not explaining things well okay it was me I was not explaining things well and so he starts going off on me and yelling like I don't understand you and you're saying this and please send like like what did he say like I want to talk to somebody who actually speaks Spanish you know how many times have you heard that like pass me to somebody who speaks English right that's like so offensive but sometimes it's true it's like I am the client I'm

calling to get a problem solved and you're not helping me right oh it's stressful though you guys oh my gosh um has anybody here cried over a situation like this because I certainly have so anyhow that was kind of like my wake-up call trying to deal with this guy being on the verge of tears you know on a sales call him just yelling at me about my language skills and that's when I was like you know what I can't do this I don't want to do this this is too stressful and I knew I was

also leaving the company soon I wasn't going to be working with them for a long time so I did not feel like it was worth my time and effort to work on my vocabulary you know since I was leaving in like one or two months so I basically had to set up a meeting with my boss and um explain the situation and she did not understand because to somebody who's not fluent in a foreign language they don't understand or someone who speaks one language they don't understand what it means to be fluent but not fluent

enough to do a certain job right so I really had to explain to her like no look I can tell jokes at the dinner table with my in-laws um and I can speak Spanish on an everyday-day basis but what you're asking for is high level you know sales professionalism that I barely have in English and now you want me to have it in Spanish I'm sorry I'm simply unqualified and I'm not capable and it was so embarrassing to have to admit that and I had to beg I had to beg them to not send me

Spanish-speaking clients because they wanted to keep sending them anyways and I was like I don't want to do this then I had to you know um explain to my co-workers why they could no longer transfer calls from Spanish speakers to me they'd be like Stef what's going on so then I had to admit to everybody that my Spanish is good but it's not that good okay so it really sucked um and here's the thing that I realize in all of this I had the luxury as an English speaker of turning down that work and saying

I don't want to do this without it really truly affecting my career or my paycheck very much do you have that luxury probably not because the reason most of you are learning English is not just because you like the language okay because then maybe you could learn Swedish or German it's because it is the language that the world uses to communicate there are more opportunities for English speakers so that means you're going to be able to provide a better life for yourself for your family have more opportunities for places where you can live around the

world where you can work where you can study how much money you can make okay so it's like you don't have that luxury that I had and that's the part that it's kind of like a hard pill to swallow you know but then you gotta get right back up up on the horse again and get to work because it's like that's the way the that's the way the cookie crumbles are we gonna cry about it this is the way the world is we gotta just roll with it so anyways what I can say is I've

learned from that situation and I'm glad that I can come here today and help you guys through this kind of stuff and I understand what it is and where it's like but your situation is different and it's not like mine was because I had that luxury and unfortunately you guys don't but again we're not just gonna sit here and cry about what we can't change about the world right we're gonna face the challenge and you know facing challenges builds resilience okay so when you come to a workplace something you need to keep in mind is

not only am I able to do this work but I'm doing it in a foreign language okay so that should give you some confidence in yourself and it should help you be a little easy on yourself when you're you know maybe not as good as the other English speakers around you okay remember you guys this is a journey but I know where where I see you guys in the future so I hope you see yourself there and I know that you know together we can get you there so that's my embarrassing story someone says oh

my gosh you're using a lot of sayings yes I think that happens when I start storytelling when I start storytelling it just comes out um when I'm just talking about basic English stuff it's you know just basic English stuff okay so moral of the story is more competence equals more confidence more when you're more competent okay when you're able to do something better you know better ability more ability equals more confidence so what do I have you written here next okay so basically the key to expressing yourself better and finally understanding native speakers is increasing

your vocabulary again this is the main theme great now we get to now we get to talk about what to focus on and how to study what to focus on and how to study because as I was saying earlier there are a lot of study methods out there that I don't endorse that I don't think work that are not optimal okay for your brain okay basically when I teach languages when I teach anything I always try to work with your brain not against it because your brain has a natural way of absorbing information and it

there's unnatural ways it can absorb information but why would you want to do that it's like hitting your head against a brick wall right and hoping that something magically pops in right that's dumb okay so basically you you have to first start with where you're at okay what when we talk about increasing your vocabulary what are we talking about we're talking about learning more individual words okay so just random things like what is that thing called what is that thing called remember we talked about abstract words um concrete words things you can actually see versus

things you can't see you need to learn more phrasal verbs right and then the alternative for a phrasal verb which is usually like a Latin root type word that most people already know you need to learn more idioms more jargon okay jargon is like the the words that people overuse within certain industries okay like industry jargon like for example within the realm of entrepreneurship you're going to hear the word sales funnel a lot sales funnel sales funnel what's a sales funnel well sales is a word you might know funnel you might even know that word

but what is a sales funnel so understanding the meaning behind the jargon it's not just the individual words it's like what is that thing understanding that thing and understanding how it works right that's a big part of vocabulary because if you know a word but you have no idea how to use it right that's not good and by the way one of the biggest mistakes learners make is they use words like immediately they just think they can add it to their vocabulary right away um and then you hear people making these really unnatural sentences or

using using too many idioms for example which doesn't sound natural or using words incorrectly because they don't actually understand how that word is supposed to be used and that happens a lot with slang okay because slang is very specific terminology meant to be used in a certain way and if you just find a slang word and go cool I like that word I'm going to start just you know flowering my language with that word boom all of a sudden you can have a problem where people are like I'm sorry why are you saying that that

does not make sense or it sounds like you're trying too hard right and I don't know about you guys but when I'm learning a language I don't like looking like I'm trying too hard we we want to make it look effortless oh my goodness right standards are high you guys standards are high okay next you have to learn technical terminology for whatever your work is maybe you're a doctor maybe you're a nurse pharmacist okay there's all kinds of words that you use in your native language now you got to learn those in English next expressions

the things people say that they just that just come out that are um they're fixed phrases but they're like uh how would you say this an expression is different from a fixed phrase because a fixed phrase is not necessarily an expression I'll just say that um but like that's the way the cookie crumbles that's the way the cookie crumbles but that's also an idiom so anyhow idioms are not always expressions expressions are not always idioms we're not going to get too far into that we'll talk about that more in the course though and then there's

cliches there's sayings so there's all kinds of word groupings individual words and word groupings that make up this thing called vocabulary and improving all of these areas is what improves your vocabulary and helps you express yourself better and understand people better okay so there are eight basic principles for building your vocabulary right for learning and remembering okay because one of the biggest problems you have is you don't remember the stuff that you study and learn now we only have time to go through three of them right now I'm not going to go through all of

them um just three we'll go through all all eight in the course I'm gonna get some water I'm thirsty hang on okay this is my big water bottle it comes in very very handy I call it my water canteen okay okay so um eight basic principles we're only gonna go through three the first one you should only focus on learning words in context okay so there are words all around us right there are words all around us and all kinds of content and contexts and that is how you want to learn them you want to

extract from what's around you you do not want to study lists of words that were randomly created by somebody else who thought that those words would be important to you because maybe those words are not important who knows but beyond that it is studying lists is not optimal practice for the brain that works against your brain not with your brain okay that is not how the brain remembers because there's no context and the way we remember things is like there's a spider web okay there's a spider web in your head and it needs to connect

to lots of different things so how many of you can remember where you were when you learned a certain word okay this happens to me all the time like I'll learn a word and then I remember the context in which I learned it where was I what was around me who was I with what happened why did that word even come up in conversation right so that is how the brain members by creating a spider web that's connected to individual things and then all these spider webs are connecting in your brain okay to help you

remember things that's how you remember your experiences that's how you remember new words that's how you remember important information and when something is not connected it's just like floating out here like a little detail it's not part of the web okay so the brain goes bye-bye you're not important I'll see you later I'm not gonna remember you take care so we don't want that right so you want to study words in context now I have a little example and I don't even think this is the best example but we're just gonna go with it okay

I have three words for you now these are big words okay but they're important they're good to know but I'm just using them for this example so the first word is conundrum conundrum do you know this word second word is accolades accolades do you know this word third word is ostracize ostracized do you know this word okay so we're just gonna study this as a list conundrum this is a confusing and difficult problem or question accolades this is an award or privilege granted as a special honor or as an acknowledgment of merit ostracize this is

to exclude someone from a society or group okay now imagine having 20 of these words and now you have to learn all of them what I don't even remember these three right so now I just have a couple sentences where I use these words and let's pretend you're reading this in the newspaper okay so it says the current situation is proving to be quite a conundrum while accolades are being passed out left and right to politicians who don't keep their word anyone who questions them is being publicly ostracized okay so boom all of a sudden

you have context you have a story you have something happening right and maybe you don't know those words and what they mean but now you can go look them up and be like I'm gonna go find out what that word means because I want to know what the heck is happening to these people in this story okay so that like heightens your interest basically in the subject and anytime your interest is heightened in anything boom memory retention kicks in okay and your brain is like primed for learning and absorbing new information so you gotta study

in context next okay you gotta study words that are relevant to you not random again not random words always always always relevant words so you gotta find where these words are where are these words these words that are so relevant to you okay you get to be like a hunter okay you get to hunt these words you get to find these words obviously in the course that I run I'm gonna show you how to do this because as you guys can see there's a lot of information here there's no time for me to do this

all in one live video that's why the course is an eight week course because I'm gonna break everything down take you through it step by step you're going to have an experience that is going to help you truly understand how to learn these new words start adding them to your long-term memory and being able to use them right away anyways so again think of your lifestyle your job your hobbies your interests you can even make a list of all these things in fact I recommend that and ask yourself where is my vocabulary and my native

language what am I able to talk about okay and then a tip just start finding content okay that has those words in English and start extracting vocabulary really analyze it and be like what is here that I don't know okay most people when they consume content actually this is I'm giving you guys a fourth principle okay it'd be extracting right the extracting vocabulary most people they understand they understand content because you can understand a lot through context so it tricks your brain it makes you feel like you know it already but maybe you don't know

it maybe you don't know it enough to actually use it this is why you have to get really detailed and structured with your study if you want to improve your vocabulary actively and not passively wait for your vocabulary to just expand on its own if you want to do this actively you have to extract vocabulary yourself and really analyze every word every sentence and the way words are connected to each other because maybe there's an expression there that you never realized before you know that it is an expression or maybe there's a a fixed phrase

that you're like oh my gosh I just realized I see that all the time in English but I never use it I never realized it was a fixed phrase it's not just a random you know creative set of words because there's you know certain ways to communicate through fixed phrases and through creative communication and I don't know maybe it's like 50 50. maybe we use 50 fixed phrases and 50 creative communication by the way I just thought of this on the fly on the fly see that's another one um and I really like this explanation

so I'm gonna just pat myself on the back there creative communication versus fixed phrases um so you have to identify what is what because if it's a fixed phrase boom you can take it like a magnet and stick it to yourself and be like all right I'm gonna grab that and I'm gonna use that and I'm gonna grab that I'm going to use that but if it's creative communication obviously you know somebody else created it you can take it and use it if you want or you can learn how to make your own creative communication

okay um the last thing I'm gonna say about the eight basic principles so this is actually going to be the fourth one now always always when you learn a new word check the pronunciation because generally we learn words by reading them okay and you want to make sure you're saying it correctly because English is the worst language it is not phonetic at all and um so many people go around pronouncing words incorrectly the English learners because they don't know how to pronounce something because they never looked it up when they learned the word and this

is especially true of you guys who are super super smart okay in your native language and you're like reading articles all the time in English and you understand exactly what you're reading and everything but then when it comes time to opening your mouth people are like I'm sorry what okay so um just keep that keep that in mind and this was the case with Renzo when I met him my husband um he could read English and understand I don't know 85 percent or more maybe but when he would speak to me I was like what

are you saying so always always check the pronunciation okay now it is time to talk about our new vocab course all right you guys I'm really excited about this and we'll talk now for 15 minutes about the course I'll answer questions and we will wrap it up so the video doesn't get too long um but basically like I said in the beginning um I created this vocabulary course because I realized how important it is for you to increase and improve your vocabulary but more importantly I put in a ton of time to thinking about the

most methodical approach okay to solving this problem for you so courses with me are not just me teaching in a video like this or something like that okay this is the coaching this is like the type of coaching that I do so there's going to be videos like this live coaching videos in the course and as you can see I can put in a lot in one hour but basically what I do is I like creating experiences for my students because this is one of the best ways for you to learn is through having an

experience not watching a video okay not doing something on your own not you know getting a course and just doing it DIY style on your own okay but actually having an experience right so what you could expect basically is that you join the course and on week one you're gonna get a project I love doing this every single week this is my project-based teaching method I give you a project where all you have to do is steps one through ten or whatever complete this complete this complete this it seems really simple but then when you

do it you go oh my gosh like this works this is why it works wow I've never done this before I'm so glad I'm doing this and then at the end of the week I do a coaching video like this because you know you turn in your homework and then I look through all the students homework I take notes on what people are doing well what they need to improve so that I can give feedback I collect questions and then I do feedback and every week is completely different and you will never ever be able

to guess what I am going to give you in the next week somebody asked me today can I have a sneak peek of your course I just want to see what it's like that's impossible with my courses because and those of you who've done my courses you know that this there's no sneak peek I could give because every week is so different it's not like standard basically it's not like I'm just gonna share vocabulary with you oh by the way this course is not that kind of course I'm not just going to teach you vocabulary

because can you imagine how much time that would take for me to like teach you 200 new words or something like that oh my gosh that would take a lot of time and it would not be effective so in this course what I do is I teach you how to learn vocabulary how to absorb it and acquire it the best strategies that work okay and then I give you tasks one task a week that will help you implement what you learn and start acquiring the vocabulary that you need for your life to express yourself how

you want to express yourself everybody's vocabulary needs are different so I think it's insane to you know just I mean unless I were making a course with like oh the most common vocabulary you need to know but I honestly think that what we're doing what we're going to do in this course is so much more important and powerful um than something like that so that's why I'm doing this as a course as opposed to something more traditional so what else can I say this is an eight-week course it's live in the sense that there's going

to be a week one a week two we're gonna have a bunch of students everybody's gonna do it together okay um if you fall behind obviously that's okay this is not regular school I'm not gonna scold you and say you fail no you have lifetime access to the course you'll be able to do it again and again and again and what I'm trying to do what my goal is for the first eight weeks and I call it the the course is eight weeks but I'm calling it the first eight weeks because I want the learning

to continue in our study group after the eight weeks so for the first eight weeks I'm just gonna teach you and show you and you're gonna have an experience that will help you understand how to study but then you have lifetime access to our community and I expect the students to continue studying together using the methodologies that you're going to learn in the course so that means studying together that means studying individually that means studying the way that I show you to study that means posting your your content posting your homework okay creating new assignments

for yourself right it's going to be really great it's going to be very transformational very active it is not the kind of course where oh you have to come to class and we're going to do you know small group classes with eight students or four students and then we're gonna do big group classes because I am such a big believer in not wasting people's time and I know how to teach in a way where I know when to bring people together and I know when to make them do stuff on their own okay and that

that's just the simplest way I can say it and you just have to trust that I know what I'm talking about and we offer a 14 day money back guarantee so if you're scared like oh my gosh this sounds good but I don't know you can join do the work see if it works for you see if you like the method see if you like the community see if you like me and then you can decide whether you want to stay with us long term or not okay so that's I think the most important points

eight week course weekly like schedule there's no overwhelm in this course by the way I don't know if you guys have ever seen or bought courses where it's like 300 videos in this course we have you know 50 or 100 hours of content I don't believe in courses like that because I can teach a lot in one hour I don't need 500 hours to teach you what you need to learn so that you can take action and get the results okay so just putting that out there It's very effective the stuff that we do and

I only teach you what you need to know to be able to take action and get those results and then of course we do the coaching video so it's not going to be overwhelming it's not going to require a ton of your time to watch videos and stuff like that you watch the video you learn what you need to learn you get your task you start working because I'm sorry the the real learning takes place and this is a quote that I made I don't know if you guys saw this the real learning happens when

you do the work not when I talk about it so when I talk about it stuff is good it helps you understand but then you have to do the work okay so I just want to mention the goals of the course uh one goal number one help you achieve a high native level vocabulary okay now this isn't gonna happen overnight honestly okay right we need we need to be honest here and and set the expectations but here's the thing when you learn certain strategies and you put them in practice and then you have ongoing support

it's totally possible okay when you achieve it is going to depend on you okay and your time your schedule what you need to learn where you're at right now but that's the goal of the course and the course will show you exactly how to do that okay and it will help you and will support you along the way so goal one help you achieve a high native level vocab level of English vocabulary two a goal of the course help you get immediate results I want you to start feeling your results immediately and you will okay

and I want you to enjoy long-term success I don't want this to just be something that works right now okay it's going to help you get immediate results now and set you up to have long-term success with your English communication another goal of the course I want you to learn the best methods for long-term memory retention okay not just like how to memorize you know 10 words fast so you can just memorize them no long-term memory retention so there's again we're going to be using methodologies that work with your brain not against it and it's

so funny you guys I have to say this I am not a like psychologist or like a person that studied the brain a neuro what are they called scientists but I just observe things around me okay I just observe how people learn how I learn and then I came up with all these conclusions based on my observations about best methodologies best practices and then I did the research about the brain and I was like oh my gosh yeah I figured this out before even reading the research so that was really cool and it was really

cool to know that everything I'm going to be teaching in this course is lined up with what the research says about optimal memory retention and stuff like that um next another goal of the course is to help you guys have a safe place to practice with and a supportive community if you have never been in one of my courses or communities before you might be like why do I need a community just wait just wait you'll see it makes a huge huge difference you know people in our community they become friends for life practice partners

they go visit each other okay they go to each other's countries to go on vacation together it's insane next I want you guys to have a fun life-changing experience I don't want this course to be boring so it's not it's not going to be boring and I want it to be life-changing so I designed it in a way where you'll go through it and you'll be like oh my gosh if you do the work though okay that's that's the thing it's uh obviously it's not going to change your life if you don't do anything with

it but you have to follow the steps step by step and just trust me on this and finally of course I want to just set you on the path to success with your English vocab so you can look back fondly on this memory years from now and go ah I remember when I did that course with Stefanie it was so great and um you know just enjoy this amazing vocabulary okay so in the course there's going to be a lot of coaching you know also we're going to talk about all of these things you know

and I'm going to be really paying attention to what people are struggling with in the moment so I can address all of that on a weekly basis okay so if people are like oh I'm really struggling with remembering these words I'm really struggling with knowing what kind of vocabulary I should focus on personally or whatever I'm going to be answering all of those questions and just guiding everybody week by week it'll be a very personalized experience in that sense so yeah you're gonna get content community and coaching eight weeks and then I'm gonna unleash you

okay and you get to stay in that community for life and I want you to continue using the strategies for years to come okay because like seriously you guys feel improving your vocab I probably don't even have to say this but it literally will open so many doors for you and I want to get those emails where you're like Stefanie I got a job you know I got this I did so well in the interview I knew exactly what to say and how to say it and thank you okay because then I know that I'm

doing my job okay so I this is how it works I help you and then you let me know that I've helped you okay now we can do a key a bit of Q and A oh my goodness we have three minutes I really hope that this doesn't cut me off and let me see if there was anything else I wanted to say about this I feel like there was but now I don't remember oh yes you guys if you're thinking of joining please please please join right now join today and here's why because before

the course starts and we start next Thursday okay before the course starts we're doing a mini speaking challenge in our private community and you can take advantage of that so you're going to get a lot of speaking practice okay and conversation practice before the course starts because the course starts on Thursday enrollment closes on Tuesday at midnight all the information is linked in my bio so just check it out there if you're like well what time zone is this in okay just check it out there um thank you so much if any of you guys

have to make a faith jump before enrolling in a course this is the right woman to do it with improvement guaranteed yay and by the way I love how you said a faith jump we say a leap of faith a leap of faith but jump faith jump that's creative that goes back to creative communication okay how to activate passive vocabs because this is a common problem um the answers sounds so stupid you have to make it active okay no but here's something that I say when something becomes a regular part of your life then it

automatically becomes active so let's say you're trying to learn you know car mechanic vocabulary or something but it's passive it's like you kind of know it you understand it when people say it but you don't use it the minute you start talking to people about mechanics and the cars that you fix and all this stuff that's when it's going to become really available in your mind my fear is to use a lot of words but use them in the wrong way because in my head I think in Portuguese and translating everything in English yeah and

that's a common problem a lot of people learn words a lot of words and use them in the wrong way but I'll show you guys how to avoid this and it's a lot of it is going to come down to seeing those words repeatedly in different contexts so that your brain can actually understand how that word is supposed to be used because someone can tell you how to use the word but sometimes that doesn't matter you actually literally have to see a word a hundred different ways or 20 different ways for your brain to click

and go oh that's how to use the word that's when to use the word that's when not to use the word and one of the mistakes that you know beginner learners make is they learn a word and they go yeah I can use this word this is a great word and then they're just using it wrong all over the place I'm guilty of that so I can say it I've done that before how to contact you for participating in the course you guys the link is in my bio okay and like I said join today

because I really want as many people as possible to participate in our speaking challenge the more people that do it the better it's going to be um and it's just going to be a lot of fun and it's gonna help you get to know people in the course so that when the course starts you'll already like have your buddies if you know what I mean nope there's no limited space in the course for our first round of enrollment so we're enrolling students everybody is welcome that's the beauty of this online learning thing and the way

that I teach right since I don't do like small group classes or anything like that um you know everybody's welcome I'm a content writer I face issues in copywriting in particular when I just don't think something creative word wise oh yeah this can help you for sure for sure I don't know what strategies you use currently but I think this can definitely help you ah yeah okay someone says thank you for my YouTube videos you've learned a lot from them that's awesome I will get back to YouTube you guys eventually but it's just been rough

I've been busy working and juggling juggling do you know that word I've been juggling a lot of things so YouTube has not been a possibility for me right now but I have not forgotten about it okay I'm scrolling up to see if I missed something that I can answer maybe right away because there was no new comments how can I know if the new words I'm using are out of context in terms of formal and informal this comes naturally with time and practice in the beginning you might not know and you might just have to

roll with it and be like I don't know okay but with time you will know and I'm going to give you strategies so that when you learn new words you'll actually be able to classify them and know is this formal is this not formal where should I use this when should I use this how should I use this okay I'm not going to scroll up anymore because I was just getting lost I know people with great vocabulary and poor pronunciation and vice versa exactly and that's why I said at the beginning of the video this

is not the case for everybody some people don't need to work on their vocabulary and you need to identify yourself if this is you you need either way you need to know do I need to work on my vocabulary do I not I'll tell you guys right now as a Spanish speaker I've got fluency I've got pronunciation I've got understanding native speakers vocabulary is the one thing that if I were to work on anything in my Spanish I would work on vocabulary and I would do it with the methods I'm going to teach you I

love these methods so much you guys that I even started using them myself I just haven't been able to use them as often as I want because I've been creating the course for you guys but I can say wholeheartedly I adore these methods and I don't know I just love it what else is there much social media tasks involved in the course okay so this sounds like a question that's coming from someone who is in my fluency breakthrough challenge you will be posting your homework okay in our private Facebook community but it's private so you

don't have to worry about doing anything public um but yes every single task will get posted in the community okay a lot of the tasks though you do by yourself like in your own home first because you know it's vocabulary you're going to be working on extracting vocabulary and and mining for it and digging for it and classifying it and studying it but then there are other elements too like um talking with your your peers okay so it just depends social media is just a tool and we're going to use the tool to help you

achieve the goals that I mentioned earlier like reaching a high native level vocabulary getting results learning the best methods or just using social media as a tool what else can I take the vocabulary course and the challenge course yes the challenge or fluency breakthrough challenge starts in July I will be honest every course that I make is going to require four to five hours of your time a week okay so just keep that in mind so that when you're planning your courses if you're thinking of overlapping courses you have time like right now we have

a bunch of students who are finishing the daily English program and some of them are probably thinking oh maybe I want to join this I don't know can I handle the workload especially because in the daily English program like the last two weeks are some of the most intense weeks but it's up to you it's up to how much time you have the priority that you give to each thing etc what time is the course is it every day okay so um every week on Thursday at 4 pm Pacific time you are going to get

access to new material okay that material is going to include whatever lesson I need to share with you whatever task I need to give you for the week so you get it you go through it and then boom the same day you're able to start completing the homework okay your project your task and then the following week is when I do the live video to give the group feedback and everything so you don't have to worry about showing up for anything if you can't make the live video don't worry you can watch the replay that's

how it is that's the structure of the course because um the way we learn one of the best ways to learn is like getting the information and then just doing the work right you don't necessarily have to show up to learn something I know a lot of courses are structured like that okay but that does not work with a lot of people's busy schedules and with all of our time zones and plus what I'm going to teach you does not require that type of delivery right there are certain things maybe that you need to have

delivered in that way like for example if I want singing classes I'm going to want to be with somebody who can hear me sing okay and then give me feedback right direct instant feedback that's what I would prefer but then again there are singing courses where it's just like hey just do the course on your own I don't know I wouldn't prefer it for singing but for building vocabulary I think it's totally possible how much hours each class it depends it depends um some are going to be half an hour some are going to be

a whole hour okay maybe more maybe less but that really does not matter unless you're worried about not having enough time because again remember you guys I teach a lot and I teach it fast and the stuff that I teach it's like the you could re-watch the video you're like oh my gosh there's a lot to digest there I'm gonna watch that video again all right so I don't like bragging about like oh my course has so and so many hours in it because I don't think it's about the hours I think it's about the

quality of the content the quality of the teaching and all of that stuff and I think based on the hearts a lot of you guys agree with me awesome yes I I guess your assignments are going to be on fire yeah you guys I'm super excited about this by the way I want to shout out the daily English program also all my students there the creating that program you guys was the catalyst for me to understand truly how to deliver a transformational course the methodology we use in the daily English program for anybody who's in

that program it's the same that we're gonna do in the vocabulary course it's the here's the lesson here's what you need to know here's the homework and then boom here's the feedback video and you daily English students you guys know how powerful and effective this is and this is probably going to be the only methodology I ever use when I create courses because it's just so powerful and I just figured it out one day and I realized it worked that's the best even though the video is for I think you mean the course is for

learning vocabulary it will also help with grammar yes actually that is a really cool like side I don't know what I'm trying to say here but I don't have the word for it right now side effect I guess that's what I was trying to say of um the kind of studying we're gonna do is that it actually will if you're an observant person which I'm going to teach you how to be if you're not this course can even help you improve your grammar so it doesn't it won't explain grammar rules and why something is the

way it is but it will really help you internalize a lot of patterns that you come across okay how can we pay for this course you guys we accept credit debit and PayPal okay and the link is in my bio okay so just go to the page read through it okay and if you have any questions even if you think it's a dumb question just send me a message or send us an email okay some people say don't say very for instance say destitute instead of very poor but does it sound natural to say destitute

in everyday English no you guys I've I have a highlight in my stories about people that make this kind of content they are not serious English teachers they don't know what they're talking about they're just trying to get clicks they're desperate for attention they don't know what to teach what people actually need to learn and so they pull this content out of their ass basically they do it because they see everybody else doing it and so they think oh this this is popular this is what people want and we use the word very all the

time in English so you don't ever have to be afraid of that word or any word and you're not going to sound smarter just for using other words or dumber just because you use very there's so much more that goes into communication than just individual words by the way that is a telltale sign when people talk about stuff like that of somebody who does not truly understand language acquisition okay so just anybody can call themselves an English teacher online or an English coach or whatever and they can even have a certificate they can even work

as an English teacher that does not guarantee that somebody understands language acquisition and how to help you acquire language okay so just keep that in mind as I always say choose your teachers wisely now what English level should I have to take part in this course whatever level you have now is fine because if you're understanding my video and participating you're definitely at the level you need to participate in the course and by the way some of my courses I say oh this is for more advanced learners or something like that but this course this

course even if you are at a lower intermediate level you can totally do it as long as you understand English because it's about the methodologies you're going to learn yeah PayPal is blocked in my country okay so I hope that you can either use credit or debit and guys get creative okay like if you're like oh I don't know if I can do this but I really want to it's gonna help me like just get creative think how can I make this a reality for myself like I'm not even kidding maybe there are people in

your family who could help sponsor your education you don't have to put it like can you buy this course for me but hey like I'm trying to improve my English so I can one day provide more for my family whatever could you help sponsor my education oh what do you mean by sponsor your education well I'm trying to get this course that I know is going to help me and I'm trying to find five people who can give me however much you know it is so you can get creative there was a one of my

students who confessed to me recently she's like I did not have money for your daily English program she's like I wanted it so bad she's like I just I ended up asking for money so I could have it and she's like I was so surprised you know people gave me the money they wanted to support me so I know money can be a problem sometimes you guys but that's why I say get creative I had to get super creative when I wanted to study in Argentina and I had no money I did so many things

I can't believe I made a fundraiser I got people to donate items to like this big basket okay and then I sold raffle tickets okay I sold raffle tickets and I made my own raffle and then the winner got the basket of stuff and I got the money so that I could go to Argentina that was one of the fundraisers that I did then I did a fundraiser where I it was a GoFundMe okay and then um I I actually went in a shopping center and I just asked people if I if they could spare

any change okay and I think it's crazy that I did that but I was so desperate for this educational life-changing experience that I did whatever it took to to get it okay so I just want to put that out there as like a little nudge a little inspiration for whoever needs it let me see anything else about the course you guys okay I think we're done with questions about the course okay so that's it again if you guys have well stuff you're so brave yeah I don't know if I'm brave or if I was just

desperate okay I think desperation helps us do brave things I think that's just the truth okay so you guys it was a pleasure speaking with you thanks for watching this video I talk so much I can see my lips are very dry so I'm sorry not very pretty but that's okay all right so you guys again I look forward to seeing you guys in the course and um um any other questions send us an email don't hesitate DM me I'm here for you I am here for you okay and I'll talk to you guys soon

yeah let's call it a day that's right bye guys