Don't Waste Your Time Learning English Like This

how can you really learn to speak English confidently let me help you speed up the process by telling you in 10 minutes what I learned in 10 [Music] years 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 now then I've spent over 10 years 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 however what most people don't know is that

I've also tried to learn Italian Malay and Japanese and I was less success successful why was I successful in some of them and unsuccessful in others what is it that worked and that didn't work and how can I help you become a more confident speaker of English in this video I'm going to tell you five things that work and will help you learn English more effectively 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 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 ready let's dive in right number one to effectively learn English and become confident you must be focused in English we say to put the blinkers on or to have your blinkers on if you've ever watched horse racing you see the horses have these things on their eyes right so they cannot see these are blinkers so to put your blinkers on is to be very focused and only see one thing um because otherwise you're

going to get distracted and you're not going to study okay you got to be really really focused my experience in Italy um did you know I actually lived in Italy and taught the Italian police I was working for the Itali police as their English teacher there are some interesting stories there maybe for another day the thing is through that those months I was there I was there for two months I picked up some Italian right getting by in the coffees and and in the shops and restaurants and for about a week or two when I

got home I carried on practicing but then I didn't have time I was too busy and I it just didn't happen I wasn't focused it wasn't a priority and this is an important lesson I learned you have to make things a priority otherwise something else will come up and you won't do it oh I've got my English class no but I've got this to do and that to do I haven't got time the biggest lesson I learned then was never to say I don't have time CU what that really means is I choose not to

do this and I learn to change that whenever I said no I don't have time for this no no no I choose not to do this that's the reality because you have time if you don't do your English class in that hour you'll do something else right you're not going to stop breathing for an hour you'll do something else you choose not to do the English study always right so be clear about being focused making it a priority and saying I choose to do it or I choose choose not to but it's your choice always

number two be persistent what a lovely word persistent persistent and it means to continue or to keep going I often tell my students that learning English is not a Sprint it's not 100 meters it's a marathon and you need to keep going right be persistent the thing is if you go on social media a lot of influencers will tell you now you can get fluent in three months um you can learn English in with these five words in 10 minutes the thing is right as people on social media um we've always got one eye on

the views and one eye on the education and there's always a balance and so a lot of influence influencers will we'll try and convince you that it's easy you can do it in three months you can become fluent it's not true it takes time if you go to the Cambridge English website it'll tell you to move up a band um like a B1 to a B2 it will typically take what 200 hours of guided study and learning and the higher up you go the more time it takes 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 nine months for a level that's more realistic it does take time so you must be persistent and the trick here is if you enjoy your study you're going to be persistent you're going to carry on so do that enjoy your study find materials you enjoy that you like that are engaging and that's going to help you a lot let's move on okay number three is find your mojo Mojo what I mean really is Mojo

motivation right find your motivation because you need to be motivated to learn another language like English 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 smart goals right but specific and realistic so sometimes and I 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 um okay it's it's a nice ambition I'm a beginner now I want to be fluent in English it's not

very specific what do you mean by fluent and when how long and and it's just it's too big I think and it's too far away it's like the stars make it more specific and realistic 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 something like that is much more specific you could even say which topics and a teacher will come and say that's great we'll take you from A2 to B1 in six months that's

basically it and and and it's something you can measure especially if you identify the topics that's something it's more specific it's realistic and it's measurable as well so all of that can really really help now the thing with motivation is you need to feed your motivation it's like your dog or your cat P if you have one if you don't feed your pet they will become lazy and tired they'll have no energy and ultimately I'm afraid they'll die like your motivation it'll disappear so you must feed your motivation right what do you give your motivation

the best thing you can do is remind yourself why you're doing this why am I learning English and maybe it's because well because you want to travel and speak to other people if you're studying IELTS actually your goal is not IELTS right your your goal is the reason why because I want to study abroad I want to actually work and live abroad or take my family abroad and have a better life that's the why and so in those difficult moments when your motivation is down remember the why another thing you can do and I did

this when learning Spanish um I was living in Spain I was there for about a year I was there for a long time but after a year I decided to join some classes and my roommate said what why are you doing classes I mean we live in Madrid just go on the street and talk to people and I said yeah I know I do but I just I always say the same things and you know and I don't really know many people when I went to the class oh it was Just My Level went up

because I was learning much wider not language vocabulary grammar but I was also connecting with people I was making friends I was talking to people in the same boat as me we weren't in a boat idiomatically we were in the same situation and it was just it was great to connect with others and when when my motivation was lagging we could cheer each other up and say you know keep going connect to others it was invaluable the best thing I ever did even though I was living in Spain at the time joined a Spanish course

um and finally I think a nice thing to do is to reward yourself when you reach a goal or part of a goal um just give yourself a pat on the back I can't reach but reward yourself say great I've done it I've done a month study I've studied every day I've I've learned to speak about this this and this great go to the cinema go and buy yourself a book give yourself a little reward keep the motivation going feed your motivation let me feed you with some more ideas moving on to number four number

four is Big Goal small steps now this is related to the motivation but so having a big goal is great breaking it down into small steps is really important what you're going to do step by step 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 um for 10 kilometers and you go it's going to take ages that isn't great 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 around and there are steps small steps and you think oh yeah that's doable little things you'll achieve on the way that's great so when I arrived in China many years ago I knew that I wanted to speak Chinese and I really wanted to speak to a very high level I was a bit like I'm a beginner I want to be fluent in Chinese but I also realized that's not going to work so I broke

it down I thought right what am I going to do the first year I'm here I want to be able to communicate with family and friends that was key second I wanted to be able to have daily conversations with people on the street in the shops thirdly I actually wanted to be able to work in Chinese to function in Chinese so I broke that down into three goals each one a year 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 8:00 in the morning boom to class an hour and a half and then go to work and did that for eight months and that took me up to like an A2 level and I was able to talk to family and friends very simple like pass me the sugar and I like this things like that the key was Big Goal small steps you see the small steps help you focus on the present moment on the now when you've got big goals you start thinking oh God it's so much it's too much it's overwhelming the

more you think the less you are present um you're lost in your thoughts to avoid that to be present small steps because the small step helps you focus in the present moment and it works much much better so if you've got your goal of getting let's say a band seven in IELTS think about small steps first three months the next three months the next three months what are you going to do how are you going to reach it Big Goal small steps let's move on number five practice Lots you see the big state the big

mistake a lot of students make and I did as well um although I'm going to blame my teacher at school with French is we studied too much we just studied and by study I mean reading and reading learning the rules learning the grammar reading reading a bit of listening it was all passive it was study we weren't actually practicing we weren't speaking writing very little right and that's what happened at French and so you know I got to the age of 18 having studied French for 10 years and I couldn't speak that's ridiculous so it's

so important practice Lots 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 you can practice speaking out practice making phrases changing phrases you can use the speaking success system that you can learn from my videos um you can practice in the real world you can practice online with classmates or students or teachers um online is the real world as well right or face to face it doesn't matter but as you're studying practice as much as you study and that

will help you become a more effective learner and a more confident speaker of English next right Point number six hang on Keith you said five I did I know all right you can call this a bonus if you like or Point number six and that is review and I couldn't leave you without telling you how important it is to review to become an effective learner and speaker of English review because well there's a lot of Science and theory behind this do you remember teachers will probably know ebbing house Herman ebing house and his learning curve

or his well his memory curve some call it a forgetting curve that 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 goes down there's a lot of Mythology around this and even you know ebing house he was the researcher and he was the the person undergoing the research he was the candidate if you like 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 um there's also spaced repetition Theory right this is what most of the apps like du lingo work with that you learn some words and then the next day they come back again few days later they come back again 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 so there's a a recycling of language reviewing and recycling basically hugely important very valuable quite easy to do just find time remember don't say I don't have time it's I don't choose to do it or I choose to do it

the choice is in your hands okay so there you have it five or six different ways to help you become a more confident speaker now I realize I am mixing research and anecdote here right and you know that's what I did to build my online course I speaking Gold Course um it's a mixture 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 um but also anecdote my own learning experience in fact the speaking success system is based on my own experience of

learning languages um you can watch a video about that actually straight after this one if you like um 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 that's it for today listen thank you so much for taking the time to be with me um if you've liked it you know what to do if you subscribe you know what to do and listen I can't wait to see you in the next video keep going be focused persistent motivated

and all the rest of it take care my friend bye-bye [Music]