Hello welcome to LetThemTalkTV and today a much requested video. it's all about how to get your
English from intermediate to advanced. Now a lot of you tell me that you are stuck at intermediate
now. In life you don't want to be stuck anywhere not on a desert island like Robinson
Crusoe and certainly not at an intermediate level of English I want to be quite clear
that what I won't be suggesting in this video is that you cover your house with post-it notes
banana. shoes
This is a pen. Also what I won't be doing in this video is the obvious. Well, I will actually I'll
just tell you very briefly right now you need to read, write, speak and listen. Do a lot of
that stuff and you will definitely improve but again that's obvious and you should be doing that
already and we've already got lots of fantastic advanced grammar videos as well on this channel
such as this one. One thing to consider though that you may be doing better than you thought.
For example I know 10 words of Russian perhaps and if I sat down in a room for an hour
with Svetlana I could learn 10 more and so make a 100% improvement in the time it takes to heat up
a samovar. Now if you have a low level you notice your improvement but if you've already got a good
intermediate level of English if you already know say 2 000 words if you learn 10 more words
you're hardly going to notice but you are still improving so keep on keeping on. So with that in
mind let's start with my tips and tricks to get you to advanced level. Tip number one: Learn and
use words of Anglo-Saxon origin. Now this sounds like a strange way to start but trust me on this
and this is especially true if your language is a Latin language Spanish French, Italian,
Romanian Portuguese etc but it does apply to everyone whatever your first language is now our
instinct is to take the easy path to use a word that readily translates from our own language
and often it works. For example here's a simple one PREFER now if you have the word
prefer something similar in your own language the easy way is to use it in English
for example “I would prefer to live in bangalore than Austin, texas.” which is perfectly
correct - the grammar I mean I haven't been to either city so I don't know which is better.
However, a native speaker is more likely to say I'd rather live in Bangalore than Austin
now RATHER comes from the old English hrathe dubious my pronunciation there but something
like that and it means without delay that was the original meaning and quite often the Anglo-Saxon
words they sound better than the Latin equivalent because after all English is a Germanic language
and just to get you started here are six examples of Anglo-Saxon words that you can sprinkle in
your conversation they are everyday words albeit advanced ones that you should know at this level
and any google search will give you lists of English words of Anglo-Saxon origin but
be careful the words really have exactly the same meaning as the Latin equivalent and I'll leave it
to you to do the research. “I'm fed up of living in the city I yearn for the great outdoors.”
“Our business was beset by difficulties from the start.” “20 people were arrested in the
aftermath of the riot.” “The plight of refugees in this country is being ignored.”
“I was dumbfounded by his stupidity”. So tip number one learn five Anglo-Saxon words a day
also make a comment and use at least one in your comment.
Let's move on to my second tip use subtitles but not in the way you think. You're probably already
using English subtitles when you're watching English language series or films or perhaps you're
not using any subtitles at all and if if you aren't then power to you
but here's a trick I've discovered which I find useful I think you will too.
Next time you watch a film or a tv series in your own language, not in English, in your own language
switch on the English subtitles if you're able to do that. Have you ever had the
experience of watching a film in English and you don't know what the hell they are saying
or perhaps you get fifty percent or thirty percent or ten percent it's so frustrating that in the end
you just read the subtitles and you don't pay any attention to the English anymore. Now when
you watch something in your own language you understand 100 percent you understand
everything and then when you see the English subtitles you get these moments of realization,
these eureka moments, when you think ah! that's how you say that phrase in English
so for example, if you're Japanese and you put on English subtitles on a Japanese series
and then you see yoroshku onegaishimasu you see the translation in English you think I
always wondered how to say that in English and then you think ah that's how you say it.
Of course you have to make sure that you keep on reading the subtitles because you don't need them
but that's the whole point. if you don't read the subtitles then it's not going to work is it? So
make sure you focus on the subtitles and try it out try it out and you'll see that it's extremely
effective the other unexpected consequence of doing this by the way is that you see how good
or how bad the translator is and I've seen so many translation train wrecks which makes you realize
that a lot is lost in translation. Just one example of many. I once saw an English film in
Spain I can't remember the name but I do remember that there was a medical setting and I was
reading the Spanish subtitles so I was learning Spanish and in English the line was I know a man
who had TB. TB is the acronym for tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is an infectious disease of the lungs
but somehow the line was mistranslated in Spanish as conozco a un hombre con una tele
“I know a man with a television.” Hh my god TB not TV which of course made no sense in the context
and all these baffled Spaniards in the cinema were wondering why while discussing health issues the
protagonist out of the clear blue sky announces that somebody he knows owns a television set. Now
if you have had any examples of bad translations let us know in the comments because I love these
kinds of stories. I didn't want to leave that grammar so my next tip is for grammar bingo.
That's right grammar bingo. I love grammar bingo and believe me this can be hours of
fun alone or with a friend or with family even if you're watching the dullest most mundane drama,
TV show, film. Ones that you wouldn't normally watch if somebody paid you somebody paid you the
equivalent of the national debt of Venezuela but this game will elevate this terrible drama to the
giddy heights of Citizen Kane so don't throw away your old dvds of “Hottie and the Nottie”
with Paris Hilton or Alvin and the Chipmunks the Squeakwool or Deathbed the Bed that Eats
This is how you play: You select a few grammar points that you are learning
and you award each one points according to how difficult and how common they are so
just for the sake of simplicity. I'll just give you three;
the future perfect, the past perfect continuous and the subjunctive. Let's say the future perfect
if you find that one in the drama you get one point a lot of students have difficulty with the
past perfect continuous but on the other hand it's fairly common so we'll give it two points.
The subjunctive is used but it's much less common and it's quite rare in English so you give it
10 points. So you watch the movie and every time you hear the grammar you shout
“grammar bingo” and then you review the item and collect your points. At the end of the film
the team with the most points is the winner. “One day I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of
a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.” Grammar bingo! Past perfect continuous.
Yes! My next tip is read and watch things that are about 10 percent too difficult for you
what do I mean by this if you're reading something in English which is too easy
you're going to give up because it's boring or if you like it you're going to continue
but you won't learn anything. If it's too difficult it's going to be so frustrating
you're going to give up you don't understand what's going on and you give up pretty quickly
what you want to do is to hit that sweet spot where you understand most things
but there is always some vocabulary and some expressions that you don't know but your English
is good enough to understand it from the context. To fill the gaps if you like let me demonstrate.
I looked at the table and I saw something interesting.
I picked it up and I thought is this a pen? I looked closer and said yes, yes this is a pen
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that
they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect
to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.
Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy
man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. LONDON. Michaelmas Term
lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather.
As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth,
and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling
like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft
black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning,
one might imagine, for the death of the sun. The first quote was from my upcoming masterpiece
This is a Pen available soon at all good bookstores but you're probably thinking
it's too easy. I'd sooner eat a kilo of Marmite on burnt toast than read that crap and you'd be right
it's for someone with a beginner's level of English which is not you. next we had
the first page of Harry Potter if you have a good intermediate level you should understand
it all except perhaps for a few words maybe drill or beefy. Next was Bleak House by charles dickens
you'll need an advanced level to understand that there's lots of complex vocabulary so which one
should you be reading? So by reading something which is just a little bit above your level each
time you pick up an English book you'll move up the scale and of course I can't underestimate the
importance of reading to improve your vocabulary just make sure that it's something that keeps
your interest. My next tip is memorizing a passage learning by heart used to be very
common but it's kind of gone out of favor in the last few decades but there are three good reasons
to memorize passages from literature poems. Firstly memorizing is scientifically
proven to improve your memory and your cognitive functions. Secondly you'll learn lots of new words
and expressions and you can use the passage like a library and take one of those words or expressions
and use it in the right moment in an email in a business meeting in a conversation and thirdly of
course you can impress your friends at a party by speaking your favorite passage by heart.
Dishonor not your mothers now attest that those whom you called fathers did beget you, be copy now
to men of grosser blood and teach them how to war.
pringle anybody?
My final tip is to read the dictionary. Get a good dictionary and go through it and find
words that you don't know and then go on to google and find examples of usage
don't read all the dictionary just concentrate on finding those interesting
words words that pique your curiosity and imagination. Sounds stupid but I've
done it and I'm not stupid - don't comment about that please. Strange as it may seem,
I don't have a paper dictionary anymore. I always check online. I threw out all my paper
dictionaries during the great Maria Kondo clear out of 2018. I guess the dictionaries didn't
spark joy so I gave them away. So do as I say not as I do I'm sure you've got a dictionary somewhere
anyway for the purposes of this demonstration I'm going to find three words from the first
page of the oxford paperback dictionary that I found online and here they are. Aardvark
aardvark is an animal found in south africa. Now you I know you're thinking you're thinking
well that's not important I don't really care about that the name of a stupid animal
that's where you're wrong you're wrong firstly it's it's the first noun in the English dictionary
consequently lots of businesses call their company Aardvark Limited why because you're first
on the list if you're looking for a plumber in your area you'll find first on the list
Aardvark Plumbers and enough people are too damned lazy to look beyond the first entry so that's what
they choose so just the name aardvark gives your business a head start over your competitors so yes
it's an important word in English. ABLAZE which means on fire “the building is ablaze,”
Abide by means to respect and follow the law “the law is the law and we must abide by the law even
if we don't agree with it otherwise it's anarchy.” Follow those tips and let us know in the comments
how they go and do add some tips of your own if you think I've left anything out
stay mellow see you next time.