hi there I'm Drew Badger the world's number one English Fluency Guide and in
this video I want to talk about using
your time wisely
so you can become a fluent speaker much
faster and its really being careful
about studying more expensive words when
you should really be focusing on the
cheap ones now I have a picture up here
I'll give you a second to guess what
that is maybe it's a radish or beet it's
supposed to be a tomato I'm not the best
artist but hopefully you know it kind of
looks like a tomato but I have this up
here because I wanted to tell a very
quick story that's related to this idea
that I'm going to share with you in the
video and this is my mother-in-law so my
wife is Japanese and her mother loves
going out and shopping she's a fantastic
cook she always makes great dishes for
whatever meal were making she has a
great palate so she could try different
things and she can really just make some
wonderful food but I'm always surprised
when she will travel really really far
just to save a few yen or a few cents in
American dollars on some tomatoes or
something like that so she has
particular stores that she goes to to
buy you know whatever things so some
stores are great for getting groceries
other stores are great for getting maybe
some frozen foods or something like that
but I'm always surprised when she could
buy you know a can of corn and it's the
same exact can buy the same company same
size but she will travel much farther
away to purchase that and save just a
little bit of money on that now this is
surprising to me because she and I you
know we just kind of think differently
she's a much better cook than I am but I
really try to impress upon her this idea
of remembering how valuable your time is
and thinking about the total price of
something like a tomato so if I walk
down stairs maybe I live in an apartment
building and I can walk down stairs to a
grocery store and there's a can of beans
or something there and I can buy that
for one dollar I might be able to take a
train somewhere and by that same can of
beans
beans
beans for 50 cents but when you think about
the time that I'm wasting on that the
actual time you can think about like
what your your salary or your hourly
rate is for something like that so if I
travel somewhere I'm saving money maybe
like that 50 cents or something but I'm
actually wasting a lot of time and you
can calculate my hourly rate based on
you know how much that can of beans is
worth maybe I buy some other things too
but you get the idea so the point of
this story is really to remind you that
the exact same thing applies when you
are thinking about the kind of jobs you
do the kind of maybe work you do and
even within your work the different
things that you do within your day some
of these things are going to be much
more valuable than others and so one of
the kind of cornerstone parts of my
teaching very simple idea is called 8020
so this is known as the principle of
80/20 or the Pareto principle and it
just means that when we're looking at
things pretty much any group of things
is going to be unequal so we're going to
have some things that are really
fantastic and other things that are not
so good and the curve here this is a
power curve it looks like this so if we
have let's see 10 things here 1 2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 so I have 10 things
right here that I count that properly 1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 I did fantastic I'm a
great English teacher but not so great
at counting anyway so looking at
something like this we can talk about
the the kind of different jobs that I do
maybe in my daily life as a person who's
just running a company so one of those
things like I could be answering like
personally myself answering customer
service emails or something like that
now if I do that my time is maybe like
you know let's say like 10 dollars an
hour so I can earn 10 dollars an hour
I'm actually spending or kind of paying
myself 10 dollars an hour by using my
time to answer customer service emails
when you know again these aren't like
things that like other people could do
but just as an example I'm doing that
and I'm really saving myself like I
don't know ten dollars by just doing it
myself but what am i losing by not
spending my time on something up here
like creating a new course so something
only I could do that's really valuable
so it's the same amount of time like
maybe I could spend you know ten hours
answering mails or I could spend ten
hours creating a course or a video or
something like that but if I create a
video then that time is worth maybe like
$1,000 an hour so you see the difference
now again it's the same idea about like
a tomato from one place or a tomato from
another place but your time is
incredibly valuable and if you spend
your time on things down here instead of
spending your time on the things up here
that are really powerful that are really
important then you're essentially
wasting your time so what I wanted to
talk about here kind of using this idea
with vocabulary so what I do in all of
my courses
my courses you know it's anything from visual guide
to phrasal verbs of fluency course the
art of conversation all of those things
apply the same idea to vocabulary
because a lot of these words up here
they're going to be used a lot more
frequently than the words you learn down
here and that brings us to the kind of
vocabulary for this video and that is
I'll just give a quick example of a here
a five-dollar word now a five-dollar
word is just a word that really it's
kind of meant to sound more impressive
even though it doesn't really
communicate much more information so
I'll give kind of an example here I
would classify the establishments
vittles as substandard I would classify
the establishments vittles as
substandard so if someone asks me hey
how was the restaurant and I reply with
this I'm really throwing out or giving
them a lot of five dollar words like
this I would classify the establishment
as substandard these are all examples of
$5 words or just words that are meant to
impress people rather than communicate
information in a simple way that most
people would do so these kinds of words
like this are further down on you know
how how commonly these words are used so
in this area down here and the more
expensive like like a word like vittles
like you're never going to hear that
ever so learning a word like this is
going to be really expensive so it's
expensive for your time and that means
you're essentially taking time over here
to learn a word like that when you could
be spending that same amount of time and
learning something that's much more
powerful and that you're going to use a
lot more frequently in a conversation so
these things you'll hear them in
conversations as like a five dollar word
or a ten dollar word and it's again just
that idea of being an expensive sounding
word like you have an expensive
education so you learn these words in
some very thick books and now you're
trying to use them in casual
conversations where they make you sound
really I mean you're trying to make
yourself sound more important or you can
use the word pretentious so you're
trying to make yourself sound more
important than you really are just by
using words that are not really
necessary so often in conversations
native speakers will use these kind of
as a joke but some people use them
seriously but a lot of non-native
speakers are also learning this
information to pass tests when none of
this is used in a regular conversation
so what that means is you're essentially
spending time very expensive time
learning these words that you don't
really use instead of using this time
over here to learn something that you're
actually going to use in conversations
does that make sense so this is a very
common word actually or this is a common
phrase a five-dollar word you'll hear
wow that's that's a $2 word are you used
a lot of $10 words in that conversation
or in that sentence so you'll hear
different variations of this something
related to this you'll also hear the
million dollar question so the million
dollar question is and again it's that
same idea of something being really
important so
important so in five dollars but you've got a million
dollars up here so what's the really
important question or what's the really
important thing like if I'm working at a
company and the the president says well
we need a new plan for establishing some
kind of project because sales are going
down what are we going to do and then
someone who replies well that's the
million dollar question isn't it so
again it's like if we can find an answer
to that that's going to be very helpful
obviously so people are just kind of
making a joke that that's the million
dollar question that's the important
question what's going to happen with
that so hopefully you found this this
idea important remember that not all
words are created equal some words are
used a lot more frequently than others
and so when you're spending your time
learning this you can take this idea of
just a word that sounds more educated or
something that maybe like you learned it
in school like a higher level education
like a master's degree so a master's
student might learn a word like this but
how much are you paying to learn that
word so in all of my programs I take
like even something like the fluency
course we'll have a lesson set and in
that lesson set will feature a
conversation a real conversation between
native English speakers and from that
you know there could be thousands of
words that appear in the conversation
but we focus on teaching the most
important ones so we'll have maybe a
glossary that has maybe like you know
300 or 400 words that you should
remember
remember
remember but then videos that really focus
specifically on teaching these most
interesting most commonly used things
and again it's just applying this idea
of 8020 because you want to focus on
things that are used more often than
these expensive $10 words hundred-dollar
words or $500 words up here now I can't
really give more examples than this but
I hope you understand the idea and why
it's so important so focus on the things
that are used most frequently in
conversations if your goal is to become
a confident speaker as fast as possible
spend your time with the things that are
used often and you will become fluent
faster does that make sense well if
you'd like to learn more about our
programs you can visit English anyone
com
com
com click on the link in the upper right of
this video so we can learn more about
the fluency course talk about this idea
specifically and how we teach you the
most conversational that most commonly
used conversational speech and help you
learn it very quickly but not only
teaching you the vocabulary actually
showing you how to develop the habits
that help you communicate so you can use
everything you learn automatically and
fluently well that's it for this video I
hope you have enjoyed it and my picture
of a tomato up here do comment in the
comment section down below let me know
if you have any questions about this
idea or if you have any more maybe you
can think of some $5 words on your own
that you learned that maybe you just
don't use in conversations ever but
again they can be impressive so
sometimes they're fun to learn but
remember focus on the things you're
going to be using most often in
conversations and that's going to help
you get flowing faster have a fantastic
day keep practicing and one final thing
people have been commenting in videos
saying that I need to pause more when
I'm talking let me know if you agree
with that or not I like the way I speak
and actually it feels almost too slow
for me but let me know if we get a lot
of people you know somebody posts a
comment that says I should pause more
maybe I will maybe I won't we'll see
we'll see what happens in the comment
section down below bye bye click on a
link in the upper right of this video or
on the link in the description below
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