and you have watched her wonderful lessons _and so have you watched her wonderful lessons

and you know that she is Niharika, _and here we are here together today, so we thought

that why not come together and have a video for all of you guys _I think we should tell

them why we decided to make this video _yes _so the other day we were having a coffee

together and we were just going through our comments and we saw how people are really

coming up with this request that we shoot a video together, so we were like why not?

Let’s just do it, _absolutely _you know _absolutely. So we thought that let’s just

start with ‘how to learn English?’ because there are so many people who come up to us

and they are like, ‘okay how do we just start learning English, how do we go about

it? So we thought that yes why not help our people to learn English. _Yeah and they also

wonder you know, how could we improve? How could we get better? And here we are, I think

we have listed quite a few ideas together that we brain stormed, and we have come up

with few suggestions for you all. _Yes, so we have ten simple steps for you, to learn

English _yeah _and we’re gonna start with something very, very simple which is think

in English, what do you think about that Michelle? _Yeah I think, ‘thinking in English’ is

pretty important because it helps your fluency and restricts your mother tongue, _Exactly,

_what do you guys think about it? _So you know what happens very often is, a lot of

people when they try to learn a new language, _yeah, _and they feel that, you know it is

so tough learning a new language, _yeah, _you know it’s not the language, _yeah, _I really

feel that it’s because they think in their native language, so when you think, _ya sure,

_i your native language, and then you try to speak English, ta-da, that’s the mistake

that you do. _yeah, yeah, yeah… _So people spend a lot of time in translating, so even

like native speakers if incase if they are rally fluent with two different languages

and they end up thinking in a different language and speak in different language, even they

get stuck, so I’m sure it’s very difficult for the learners as well. So what I really,

really believe in is that you need to start thinking in English. _Hmm, _So maybe what

you can do is, you know say for example, you are planning your day, _Hmm, _o when you are

planning your day, _Yeah, _why not think in English, right? _absolutely, for your daily

routine, _umm, yes or maybe you are in a restaurant, trying to order some food, wondering what

to eat, so when you are thinking about the food, the different dishes, _yeah, yeah…

_that you’ve ordered, so why not think that in English. Yeah, I mean, I think your first

step should be just to think in English and you know not at all go there to that zone

where you think in your mother tongue, I mean there should be kind of a restriction or barrier

in your mind in thinking in your mother tongue when it comes to talking in English, but otherwise

it’s a great idea to use your mother tongue as long as you’re conversing with people

cannot talk English, _yes, _that’s what I was saying, I think it’s a very good point

there, _so people, make sure that you start thinking in English, _yeah, so she’s made

a very good point there and now that she is talking about thinking, I think we should

also talk about talking, you know because that’s the next step, so when you think,

then you talk, so talking to yourself, how about that? _yeah, _So quite often it happens

that you know that we really don’t get people to talk to in English, and quite a few of

my students who’ve come up to me and told me, I don’t really get anybody to talk to

me in English, coz everyone around me, you know, speaks in my native language and I go

like, yeah that’s quite possible problem _yeah, _and we need a real solution for this.

So my suggestion for such a problem is that why don’t you talk to yourself in English,

yeah, I mean, I know that sound a bit crazy, but then yeah, like, I mean, what you could

do is you could just plan like 2-3 minutes long conversation and you could go in front

of the mirror, you know and talk to yourself, and look at how you appear when you talk in

English, and this is not regarding your appearance, _yes, _this is more about your body language

because when you try and speak a language, you are not just you know communicating, it’s

your body language, you know the verbal and the non-verbal coming together, so I think

it’s a good idea you know to plan an introduction about yourself, like, who you are, where you

come from, what’s your profession, you know and going in front of the mirror and go like,

‘Hi, my name is Josh and you know and I’m from so and so country and my profession is,

I’m a teacher, I’m a blog writer, and etc., etc. So I think that’s a good way

to start talking in English, _it does, _when you don’t have someone around you, yeah,

_it builds your confidence, _yeah it does, _it does. So what’s the next thing that

would really help you in learning English? Well I feel that, one should work in their

fluency and not really focus on grammar, what do you think Michelle? _I think that’s a

great idea because grammar is so boring, I mean whenever I think of to a pronoun it turns

me off, _absolutely, well do you think, people are gonna ask you that, hey can you define

what’s a pronoun or what’s a noun? _No I don’t think they would any day and I don’t

think it’s important for communication either. _Absolutely, so what we totally believe in

is fluency, _Um-hmm, _and not focusing on grammar. _yeah that makes sense. _yeah, well

you know when it comes to fluency, you need to pay attention on your communication _hmm

_skills _yeah _It’s not really grammar, of course grammar is gonna help you when you

wanna write good English, _yeah, yeah, yeah… _but when it comes to communicating with people,

_Um-hmm, _I really feel that it’s your fluency and not grammar, _yeah absolutely coz fluency

kind of includes your vocabulary as well, so if your grammar goes wrong it’s perfectly

fine but, if you don’t have the words, you are at loss, because you don’t know what

to say, _right. _I think you made a wonderful point there. _So when people think that you

know you have to work on your grammar, and not your fluency, well they are absolutely

wrong, because when you end up thinking, Oh my god, am I going correct? Am I saying the

right tense? And that is when you start stammering or that is when you get stuck, _yeah _while

you’re, _yeah, _communicating, so, well yes, grammar is important, _it is, _but what

I believe is, your focus should not be on grammar but more on _fluency, _fluency, yes.

_Fluency, absolutely right, and you know that takes me to another point coz as she said

that grammar is not so important but fluency is, the same way quite a few people are saying

that pronunciation is not important, okay? But I don’t really agree with that, coz

the way you speak, is very important, for another person to understand what exactly

you are saying, _yes, very true. _isn’t it? _So _very true, _So if I end up pronouncing

a word wrong here, she may not be able to understand what that is, _yeah, I’ll be

like, um, okay… _yeah, so for example we have the word ‘address’ & ‘address’

okay, so these are two different words and address is like a verb which means when you

introduce somebody in a speech or in a gathering, and address is the place where you live, which

is a noun, so just with my pronunciation, I can make a whole lot of difference with

the way my message, you know, with people to understand, _very true, very true, _ what

I’m trying to say, so, but problem here is that pronunciations gets very boring sometimes,

you know and people are like, how do I make all these you know proper gestures and how

do I put my tongue in the right place, and my mouth on the right place, to speak the

right thing, so for that I got a very interesting thing here, If you want to learn pronunciation,

I think tongue twisters are great idea, yeah? Coz they are lot of fun, you know and you

don’t have to think about where you need to put your tongue because you can twist it

the way you want so for that Niharika, you are in for a challenge, _okay… _yeah, I

have something written with me, because I can’t remember it, so I’ve just written

it down, but you are going to face the brunt of it. So I’m gonna speak a tongue twister

and I’ll ask you to repeat that, okay? _Okay, I’m gonna try, _So, yeah, let me try this,

listen to carefully, okay? And yeah you can try that as well, please and I’ll be glad

if you could do that, so “the thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne

throughout Thursday.” _Wow, _How’s that? _Am I really supposed to do that? _yeah, _okay

let me try, can I read it too? _Okay, there you go, _Okay, well “the thirty-three thieves

thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.” Okay, was it okay? _Yeah that

was good, _okay let me try again, okay, “the thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled

the throne throughout Thursday.” _Yeah, you got it better now, yeah, so look at this,

this helped her pronounce the words correctly and this also helped her with the fluency

which she was talking about, you know so you get the speed, you get the correct pronunciation

and trust me grammar goes away, it’s not the most important thing you know when it

comes to communicating your message, _True that. _So as I was talking about fluency you

know, and stressing words with ‘address’ and ‘address’ as you just heard, I think

I need to emphasize more on this topic, coz this is a very common problem and I think

you might have faced the problem with this as well, so this is essentially a problem

of word stress, _right, _so this specifically about syllables, which means different parts

of the word and which part do you need to stress, _yes, _right? So just like address

and address, I have another example for you, have you read the reader’s digest? You know

you must have read it, and that is a noun, okay where we stress on ‘di’ right, and

you say ‘DI-gest’ okay? There’s another word, ‘diGEST’ as you see, I stressed

on the syllable here ‘diGEST’, you know and just did the stress part. Now this is

a verb, as in you are digesting your food and digesting your food, _Yeah, _So I hope

you got the difference there and this is what it means when it comes word stress, you know,

stressing the word correctly. Do you know what is the best technique to learn this?

_Um-hmm, _Listen to the native speakers, _Yeah, _or people who can communicate fluently in

English, or have spoken English for most of their lives and as you hear them speak you

know, you will understand how to stress a word correctly, what do you think? _very true.

Absolutely. So that reminds of something, well you know a lot of people they really

enjoy singing English songs, _yeah they do, yeah. _Yes but they get stuck when speaking

in English, _absolutely, _Now if you enjoy singing teen why not learn from music and

singing, _yeah that’s pretty cool, right? _yeah so sing along, so when you sing along,

with these awesome English numbers you know you go to a pub, you go to a club, you just,

at home listen to some great music, you know, I think singing along with the songs is a

great idea, what do you think? You know I think it’s amazing because it connects so

well with what I was talking about, so I was talking about is a photograph, the word stress

story, so that bring to my mind that you know there’s this particular word, which lot

of students have a problem with the word ‘photograph’ you know coz it has different stress on the

word you know when you talk about different forms of the word for example, photograph

okay where you stress on the ‘pho’ then it goes to photography you know and it sounds

so different suddenly and then you say photographer and you know you suddenly stress on ‘grapher’,

so it just completely changes and that makes me think of a lovely song, have you heard

that song, you know photograph by Ed Sheeran, _she’s gonna sing for us, yes, _really?

_yes, yes, you have to, everybody want to listen to her beautiful voice, right? I’m

not really sure that it is beautiful, but I can just give it a try, I think she is taking

revenge because I asked her to do the tongue twister, _no, but she really sings beautifully

and you have to hear her out, go for it, _well I’ll try my best you know, please don’t

blame me if it’s too bad, okay so you know this particular sentence in the song really

clicks me, “so you can keep me inside the pocket of your ripped jeans” that it goes

on and on, _awesome, _it was just a try, _you guys agree, she sings beautifully, right?

Yes she does, so yes you know sing along these beautiful songs, because lot of songs contain

different phrases, different expressions and music, music always stays, right? So enjoy

music, sing along and that should really help you in learning English as well, _definitely,

so keep it up, listen to more music and practice word stress, _True, so Michelle you know there

are many times, when people really get stuck with tenses, so do you think you can help

them out with tenses? Yeah I think I could, I have a suggestion for that, because when

you are trying to learn a new word, you know for example, you learnt the word ‘write’

okay, write means the verb, as in to write something w-r-i-t-e, so when you use that

word, the next time when you are trying to use that word you will use it just the same

way, you know, you could possibly say, ‘I have write a song for you’ you know and

there comes a problem, _exactly, and people really get confused, _yeah, so that’s practically

wrong, I mean you might know that, if you know some grammar, so yeah, ‘I have write

a song’ is a wrong sentence so what you need here is another form of the word, right?

So I could say I have written a song for you. Now how do I know this? Well I know this because

when I learnt the word ‘write’ I tried to learn its different forms, for example,

write, wrote and written, and you always use have with written you know, and that makes

easier for me to, _correct, you know how to use the word correctly you know in a grammar

context so that’s just a way to help you out, _so yes so learning words really helps,