Vanessa: Are you ready to hear one of the
biggest secrets about learning English? Listen up. You may have spent a lot of time in the classroom
with an English teacher who taught you lots of rules of English, and it is true that English
has a lot of rules just like any language. But did you know that in order to speak fluent English,
there are a few rules that you need to break? If you're someone who loves to break rules,
this is a dream for you. But if you are a rule follower, you're going to need to take a deep
breath because these are essential rules to break if you want to be fluent in English. So today
I'm going to help you stop speaking classroom English and start speaking real fluent English.
Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com, and today to help you with this important lesson
of stopping speaking classroom English, I've created a free PDF worksheet for you with all
of the rules that we're going to talk about today, how they're taught in the classroom,
and how you should use them or break them in order to speak fluent English,
lots of sample sentences and ideas to help you improve your English skills. You can click on
the link in the description to download that free PDF worksheet that goes with this lesson today.
Let's get started with rule number one that you should break to speak fluent English.
Let's imagine that someone calls you and you don't recognize the number, you don't know who it is,
and they say, "Hi, is this Vanessa?" And you think, "Oh yeah, that's me, but I don't know
who you are." Well, in the classroom, you would be taught the phrase, "To whom am I speaking? To
whom am I speaking?" This is very formal. You might hear this in a TV show using old proper
English from a long time ago. But in daily conversational English, we would not use this.
So what could you say instead? If someone calls you and you don't know who they are, you want to
ask, right? But what's a good question? You could ask, "Who am I speaking with?" Or you could just
simply ask, "Who's this?" You're using the word who instead of whom? We rarely use whom in daily
conversations. So you're switching up the grammar of this and you're saying, "Who's this? Who am I
speaking with?" And technically this phrase, "Who am I speaking with?" breaks another important
rule that we'll talk about a little bit later. Classroom English rule number two that we often
break in fluent English, that's this one. "There are a lot of problems with this plan." Okay,
this is grammatically correct. "There are a lot of problems with this plan." But you know
what? In fast conversational English, you're more likely to hear, "There's a lot of problems with
this plan." As a contraction, there is, but this is wrong. This is incorrect, "There is problems."
The word problems is plural, so technically we need a plural verb. "There are problems." But in
daily conversation, and you will hear me use this a lot in my English lessons because it's just the
way that we speak, and that's what I'm trying to teach you, daily conversational English. We will
use the contraction of there is, there's, with a plural object. "There's a lot of problems." Well,
it's incorrect technically, but it's used all the time in daily conversational English,
so I give you permission to use it. Classroom English rule number three
that is often broken in advanced fluent English, it's this one. "If I were from France, I would
speak French." This is grammatically correct. It's a beautiful sentence, but do we use this in daily
conversation? Maybe like 15% of the time, 20% of the time. Instead, what are people more likely to
say? Well, you're more likely to hear the first part of this differently. "If I was from France,
I would speak French." So technically, it should be "If I were," because we're
talking about a strange verb tense, a verb case in English, the subjunctive tense. So if you said,
"If I were from France," this would be correct. But instead in daily conversation we say, "If I
was. If I was from France, I would speak French." This is what you're going to hear more often.
There is one phrase I'd like to show you that we use equally both tenses. It's this phrase,
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." We use this as a warning. If someone is standing too close
to the edge of a cliff because they want to look at the river down below in the valley and they're
getting a little too close to the edge, you might say, "Ah, I wouldn't do that if I were
you." But you could also switch it and instead use the incorrect verb, but it's commonly used
in daily conversation. Instead you could say, "I wouldn't do that if I was you." Both of these
are equally used, so you're going to hear both. And even though was is incorrect, it's used all
the time, so I give you permission to use it. The fourth classroom English phrase that is
taught in the classroom but is not often used in daily conversation is this tricky one about verb
tenses. "Before I started learning English, I had thought it was impossible." Here we're
using "I had thought," because it's an action that happened before something else in the past. But
really in daily conversation, we just simplify it. Instead, you're more likely to hear this,
"Before I started learning English, I thought it was impossible." Here we're just changing,
"I had thought" to "thought." And this is kind of good news, right? Instead of using a more
complicated verb tense, we're using a simpler one because that's what's really used in daily life.
Let's go on to our final phrase that you will learn in the classroom but is not really used
in daily conversation, and that's this one. "In which car do you want to go?" This just sounds
so odd. But do you know why this is taught in the classroom? In fact, my English teachers told me
this as well even as a native English speaker, this was taught in English classrooms in the
US. "In which car do you want to go?" Here what they're trying to do is avoid using a preposition
at the end of a sentence. So you will still hear people say, "You should never end a sentence in
English with a preposition." Here the preposition is in. But do you know what? This is used
all the time in English. So let's switch this around and hear how much more natural it sounds
when we end a sentence with a preposition, because that's what people really use.
"Which car do you want to go in?" All of a sudden it feels so much better to say that.
The word in is at the end of this question. Yes, we are ending this sentence with a preposition,
but who cares? This is how people speak. Which car do you want to go in? And you know what? You
can use this type of English in business and academic English as well. It's really just a
rule that people say in the classroom, but it's not really anything that's used in real life,
even in these more formal situations. To help you remember this, and also just
a little joke, I heard a great joke about not ending a sentence with a preposition. Let me
tell it to you. There was a new student that went to Harvard. When he met one of his classmates,
he asked his classmate, "Where are you from?" The student looked at him, saw that his shirt
wasn't very clean. He didn't look very rich, very intelligent, and he said, "Where I'm from,
I know not to end a sentence with a preposition," because he asked, "Where are you from?" and from
is a preposition. So the new student said, "Oh, sorry, where are you from, stupid?" Because really
the thing here is that the question, where are you from is totally fine, but that other student
wanted to have a snobby response. "Where I'm from, I know not to do that." But in reality
it's totally fine to say, "Where are you from?" So he just kind of made it a little bit humorous.
So did you enjoy breaking some rules today? I hope so. If you would like to continue leveling
up your English and speaking real English that people actually use in daily life,
I'd like to encourage you to join me in my course, The Fearless Fluency Club. In the
Fearless Fluency Club, you will master real English conversations, not classroom English,
so that you can go into the world and actually speak the way that other people are speaking and
understand real English conversations. My student, Ildiko, from Hungary said,
"This course is fantastic. I like the most that you teach us real English." And that's
my goal here at Speak English with Vanessa is to expose you to real English, not what you learned
in the classroom that's not really going to help you when you travel to other countries, when you
speak at a business meeting, when you're watching an English TV show or a movie. This is where the
Fearless Fluency Club will help you because you will have the tools it takes to actually use
English and understand real English in the world. And right now, if you join the Fearless Fluency
Club this week, there is a special sale, a discount on the course. It is $100 off. Usually
the course is $199 per level. There is a beginner, intermediate, and advanced level. But this week
there is a $100 off discount, so you will only pay $99 per level. This is available only this week,
and there is a link in the description so that you can join me finally speak and understand
real English and save a lot of money. Hooray! Well, thank you so much for learning English
with me. And let me know in the comments where are you from. Use this correct question in the
comments and let me know where you're from. I hope to see you again next Friday for a new
lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye. But wait, do you want more? I recommend
watching this video next where you will immerse yourself in a real English conversation with
David. David was living a very interesting life until he got caught by the police. Why did he
get caught by the police? Well, you'll have to watch that video to find out. I'll see you there.