Hey!
Hello!
Hey!
Hi!
How's it going?
Pretty good.
This is my friend and fellow ESL teacher, Stephanie.
Hello!
And she's here to help us with answering some questions from the GNE audience.
So I want to mention: so you know how smart she is...well how smart both of us are!
We have Masters have teaching ESL and over ten years of experience, each of us.
So together you're getting twenty-plus years of English teaching experience
Lots of experience.
And Stephanie has a Masters in African studies, so she knows about culture and stuff.
Yeah.
So we're to help you with a question that I've gotten a lot from the GNE audience.
What books do we recommend for intermediate English language learners to enjoy and to
improve your English?
We each have a book recommendation.
So if you're ready, we can share them with you.
Just before we share them, I want to tell you that if you want a free sample of the
GNE video course, you can come to gonaturalenglish.com/7steps.
It's a great way to learn more and see if GNE is right for you.
Yeah, check it out.
It's great.
So, okay, Stephanie, what's one of your favorite recommended books for an English learner,
the intermediate or higher level?
Yeah, definitely this is a little more advanced book but it's not super difficult.
The name of the Book is "Me Before You" by Jojo Moyes.
It's a last name and the book title is "Me Before You".
It's actually going to be coming out in a film soon, so that's kind of of exciting.
I always love reading books first before I watch the movie.
Yeah But this author, Jojo Moyes, has really captured
the female experience.
She has these characters that I just fall in love with, like from page one, like there's
some kind of challenge that this woman has to overcome.
She's maybe, you know, got some issues in her life with her family or financial issues
or something, and she has to overcome them.
And, of course, there's a love story.
Oh it's so sweet!
And she meets this guy that she, you know, has this relationship with, but it's kind
of like a slow, you know, coming.
It keeps you interested in reading, right?
Very interested, yeah.The characters are just so well written and I just fell in love with
all the characters and I highly recommend that author.
All of her books are excellent, but "Me Before You" is great.
"Me Before You".
Yeah, it's great when you can find a book that you can get into, that you enjoy, that
you can't wait to go back to reading.
You know ? Yeah.
I love that.
It'll really help your English too if you're reading a little bit every day.
That's so important for your English fluency that if you can find fifteen minutes out of
your day to read in English.
And, you know, be an active reader.
Don't look up every word.
Right But you know, look up some words, keep a little
notebook next to you, you know, jot down ideas, questions.
You can improve your English a lot.
Yeah I like that idea of being active reader.
That's really important to think about because if you're just reading and not actually picking
up new vocabulary, I mean it's still good that you're reading, but you can enrich your
experience, you can improve faster if you're being an active reader.
So taking notes like you said or writing down new words or writing down questions you have
about the worker.
So there's so much you can do wit books.
We were talking in another episode, actually, for the Go Natural English podcast...which
if you didn't know there... a Go Natural English podcast if you prefer to listen or if you
want to have some additional Go Natural English in your life...we're talking about ways to
practice and we're talking about creating a book club.
Yeah!
So, you'll have to listen to that episode.
We won't tell you everything here.
But check out that episode for steps, practical steps, on how to start your own English book
club.
Yeah, it's great.
So speaking of taking fifteen minutes or thirty minutes or however long...even ten minutes
is good, of time to read every day...the book that I want to recommend talks about doing
that exactly.
It's called "The Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod.
And I love this book.
It's a very practical, motivational guide that encourages us to wake up early and take
a little bit of time, even if it's just ten minutes, to do, I think it's five or six different
things, let me see if I can remember.
To meditate.
To visualize the things you want in your life, so you could visualize what it would be like
to be fluent in English.
To say some affirmations to yourself, so for example, "I am a great fluent English speaker".
Yeah, something you really want in your life, right?
Exactly.
Exercise.
Did I say visualizations?
I did.
Yeah.
And reading.
So, I think that's five things.
So, reading is a really important part of that.
That's interesting.
Totally.
Yeah, no, reading is so important for developing yourself, your thoughts and it can change
your life.
I mean I agree.
I love reading.
I don't always do it every day but when I do read, I feel so good.
I feel good, too.
Yeah.
I like to end my day actually with reading.
I don't have a lot of time in the morning to read but I like before I go to bed to really
calm my mind.
You know, I think there's studies actually that show that if you can read before you
go to bed you're much more likely to sleep better.
Instead of being on your phone.
Oh yeah.
Like that addiction to checking your social media every time before you go to bed.
I don't recommend reading on your phone.
I mean if you have to, you have to.
Right.
But it keeps you awake, that light on your phone.
There's some kind of stimulation.
I mean it's distracting because you look at other things at the same time right?
So, if you have a real book or maybe like you have a reader, like a kindle or something,
I recommend using that.
I mean you could use your whatever, iPad, iPhone or other devices.
That's fine.
But just stay focused.
Yeah.
Just stay focused.
It'll be way more relaxing.
Sometimes I feel like, "Oh I don't have time to read."
But, you know, what I do is I set a timer.
Oh, that's good.
For ten minutes.
It actually feels a lot longer than ten minutes, especially if you're not used to reading in
English.
If you never read in English, if you rarely read in English, set a timer.
Start with five minutes.
That's good advice.
And every day you could add a minute.
Yeah.
And then you'll just see oh it's easy.
And also you can increase your speed.
Totally.
Which a lot of English language learners need to go because they have to take tests.
Oh my gosh.
This is huge.
Or they have to go to university.
They have to be able to increase their speed.
Oh my gosh.
We've both worked with a lot of aspiring TOEFL or IELTS test takers . We could talk about
that a lot.
Yes.
Right.
That maybe is another video Maybe next time.
Cool.
Well alright, just to remind you again to come to gonaturalenglish.com/7steps where
you can try a sample course and we hope to see you there.
All right.
Bye!