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Hi, I’m AJ Hoge, one of the teachers of Learn Real English. And welcome to our video
course.
Now, let’s get started with Rule # 1 or Secret # 1. And Rule # 1 is to always learn
English phrases, and to never, never study just individual words.
So in this course we’re going to teach you a totally new way to
learn English, a totally new way to study English, so that you can speak English quickly,
easily, automatically, powerfully, confidently.
So what’s the old way of learning English? You know it because you learned it in school.
You’ve been using it for years and years and years. You
sit in a classroom. You’ve got a textbook. You memorize
lists of vocabulary words. You study lots and lots and lots of grammar rules. You do
lots of reading and little fake conversation drills and activities.
And this is the traditional old way of learning English but we
have a totally new and different way of learning it. And we’re going to teach you each part
of that, one part every day for a full seven days.
So let’s start with Part 1, Secret 1, Rule # 1…learn phrases, not individual words.
Now, of course, a phrase is a group of words. It’s a group
of words that naturally go together. This is very important. You
see, when you only study individual words, you are doing a number of things that make
learning difficult. Number one, when you study just an individual
word like a vocabulary, something in a vocabulary list, or
even in your notebook you write one single word and then you write the meaning or the
translation, here’s the problem. That word has no connections
to anything else. Therefore, it’s difficult for your brain to
remember it.
That’s why you have to keep repeating again and again. You look at that list and you try
to memorize it. And then the next day you forget and then
you go back and you try to memorize it again and again and
again and again and again. And maybe after a very long time you might remember it. But
most likely you’re going to forget it, especially long-term.
And yet that’s the way most students are learning English
and studying vocabulary.
Here’s another problem with just learning single words. When you study just single words,
you’re not learning any grammar. But when you study phrases,
you are actually learning grammar. It’s kind of an
effortless, easy way to learn grammar. You don’t need to think about rules. You don’t
need to think about anything. And yet, you will be learning
correct grammar when you study groups of words instead of
phrases.
Let me give you an example of this. Let’s just, y’know, take any phrase…like, um,
a simple, simple sentence. He was a bad dog. He was a bad dog.
Now, let’s imagine that you’re a new English student
and the word bad is new for you. Of course, I know you know it, but let’s just imagine
you go way back to the very beginning and your first year of
learning English and bad is a new word. Now the normal way of
studying that, you would write it down, bad, it would be in a little, y’know, a list.
And then you would study bad means not good, bad means not good. You’d probably translate
it to your own language. And then after lots and lots and lots of time, maybe
you would remember it.
Well using our system, you do something very different. You would write down that whole
phrase. He was a bad dog. That’s actually a full sentence.
Or you could just write down was a bad dog or he was a
bad dog, whatever. And then every single time you study or review, you would always, always,
always study the full complete phrase. You would
never just study that word, bad. You would study the whole
thing.
Now by doing that you’re getting free grammar. How do you know? Well, because first of all
you’re getting that verb, was, right? Was, and that’s
just going to stick in your brain, he was, he was, he was.
You’re also learning articles. You don’t need to remember what that means. You don’t
have to even worry about it. And yet you know that it’s
correct to say, in this situation, a bad dog. He was a bad dog.
Some people say a, he was a bad dog. Both pronunciations are correct. So he was a bad
dog. He was a bad dog.
A lot of students have problems. When do I use a, or a? When do I not? When do I use
the? And you’re trying to memorize all these super
complicated rules and situations for it. Forget that. It’s too
complicated. You’ll never remember it. Just study phrases and you’ll start to feel when
to use it, when it’s correct, when it sounds correct and
when it sounds strange, when it’s not correct to use those things.
And, of course, this is true for all grammar; all phrases; all vocabulary. By studying a
full phrase or even a full sentence, always, always, always, you’re
going to get lots of grammar. You’re going to learn which
vocabulary words go together naturally. And you’re going to know when to use them in
which situations. Because sometimes, for example, there might
be a situation where there are many words that mean the
same thing. And yet we typically use one of them.
Like, we might say he was a bad dog. That’s a common phrase, a bad dog, bad dog. We use
that word bad to describe a dog who’s naughty, who’s
not good. But we don’t usually say horrendous. Now
horrendous means super super bad, really terrible. And yet we don’t usually say he was a horrendous
dog. It sounds strange, even though the meaning is basically correct. Yet, in normal real
English, not textbooks, but real English, we just don’t
use that word to describe dogs, not usually. I don’t know why.
There’s no real rule about it. It’s just that’s what we usually do. And every language
has these kind of word combinations that are more common, and
other word combinations which just aren’t used typically.
How do you learn that? Well you can’t learn it from any rules because there are no rules
about that. You have to learn it by studying phrases always.
Always, always, always study phrases. Review phrases.
Whenever you learn a new word don’t just write down that individual word. Write down
the full phrase, or even better, the full sentence that it’s
in. Always include the words that are around it. This is going to
help you improve your English speaking ability much, much, much faster Even better, when
you write down the phrase, also write down where the phrase came from to remind
yourself of the whole situation. So you might, let’s say you find a new word in a newspaper
article. Well first of all, let’s say the word horrendous.
You’re reading a newspaper article or you’re listening to the
radio and you hear that word horrendous. Hm, that’s new, what is that? And you write
it down. But you’re not going to write down just that
single word.
You’re going to write down the whole phrase that it was in. And then you’re also going
to make a note, you’re going to put down, y’know, this
came from a newspaper article about the economy. And this is
going to trigger you, it’s going to remind you, give you a memory cue, a memory reminder,
of the full situation. So now you’re not only getting
just this single word. You’re getting the full phrase or sentence
that it’s in and you’re also reminding yourself where that sentence came from. What
was the general topic, what was the general situation.
And in this way you’re getting a lot of extra grammar which you’re learning unconsciously,
easily. You don’t have to think about it but you’re
learning it anyway. Your brain is learning it, even though you might
not know that. And you’re also learning when certain phrases and certain words are
used and when they’re not used. You’re learning which
situations it’s used, or they are used in. And you’ll, of course,
know that in other situations you don’t use.
Because as you learn more and more and more phrases, you begin to get this feeling of
correctness. And you begin to know when to use certain
words, how to use them, and you’re also, how to use the
grammar correctly as well.
This is so important. It’s such a simple, simple little secret, a simple little trick,
a simple little rule. And yet it can totally change the way you speak English
and learn English. It’s very, very important. So never,
never, never study just an individual word, one word, always study the phrase or the sentence.
And always, always, always make a note where it
came from. And you want those phrases and sentences to
come from real English, which we’ll talk about more later, not from textbooks.
Here’s another advantage of studying phrases and full sentences and always knowing the
situation that they came from. Phrasal verbs, you guys know
about them. You know all about phrasal verbs that are a
frustration for so many students, right? Y’know, to be knocked out or knocked up, have totally
different meaning, right? Knocked out is a phrasal verb,
it’s a two-word verb, it’s a verb phrase. And to be
knocked out means to like, it’s like in boxing or sports, you get hit and ugh, it’s
like you’re asleep, right? Boom, knocked out on the floor. To be knocked
up means to become pregnant. We use that for women.
Now there’s no way if you just look at the individual words to know the meaning, right,
knocked out, knocked up. It’s not logical. You just have
to learn each one individually. But if you just try to study lists and lists and lists
of phrasal verbs, you’re going to become very confused.
You’ll start confusing one with the other. You’re going to forget and it’s horrible
and you don’t want to do that. It’s not effective. It doesn’t work.
But if you learn those phrasal verbs from real situations, real
sentences, real articles, real audios, real speech, and then you always study them in
the whole sentence. So then you know the situation, right?
If you, if you get the whole sentence, the fighter knocked out the other fighter. And
you’re always studying that full phrase or sentence, the
fighter knocked out the other fighter. You’re going to just
naturally know. Y’know, you’ve got that word fighter in there, helps you to remember
the situation. And it helps you to remember the meaning of that
phrase, knocked out.
Or you could say the woman got knocked up by her boyfriend, right? So now you’re like,
ah yeah, boyfriend, it gives you…it gives you a clue.
It gives you an idea of the meaning of that phrase. And you’ll
know that you always use that phrase in situations that describe pregnancy. This is much better
than studying lists and lists and lists of phrasal
verbs.
So what’s our first rule, what’s our first secret? Always, always, always study phrases,
groups of words. Always write down a note about where the phrase
came from to remind you of the situation. And no
more, never again, study just individual words. And that’s all. That is powerful Secret
# 1, Rule # 1 for learning to speak fantastic amazing English.
Start using this rule immediately today, okay?
We’ll see you tomorrow for Rule 2. Bye-bye