Hi there. I'm Drew Badger, the English Fluency Guide, and in this video I'm going to show
you exactly how to learn English by yourself, so without a teacher or even just watching
videos here on YouTube. I want to just explain one powerful principle for that. But first
I must apologize because I am a bit sick. This series of videos I have here, I wanted
to make them, I didn't have much time. I have a fever right now, but I was excited to make
this. But this principle is to do the opposite of what everybody else does. Do the opposite
of what everybody else does. So if I had to put you in some country and
you had to learn English without any kind of teacher or any resources or anything like
that, but you could look at what other people were doing to learn, all you would have to
do is look at what most people do and then don't do that. I know this sounds a little
bit funny, but it's really the truth because most people, they learn the traditional way
and they don't get fluent. So the most important thing, even if you're thinking like, "Wow,
I've got all these different things I need to learn. I need to improve my vocabulary
and my pronunciation and my listening ability and all this other stuff." If you don't know
how to do any of that stuff, the smart thing to do would be to look at what everybody else
is doing and just do the opposite. As an example, if you see people sitting and
looking in textbooks, you would know not to look in textbooks. Now you might find some
valuable information there. But if you look at native speakers who learn to speak from
a young age without a textbook, then that should tell you, who is the better person
to model, the better person to copy? Should I be watching native speakers or should I
be watching other learners who are not successfully speaking? So that's just one example of how
you should do the opposite, or you should kind of use that as a very simple key because
most people in general are not doing that thing successfully because they're, again,
not copying the right thing. So you can apply the same rule in business
or pretty much doing anything else where you have a few successful people doing something
and then everybody else doing not that thing. So it's particularly important in business
where you see a whole bunch of people doing one thing, then you should not do that thing.
So you should be doing a particular different thing, do the opposite at least. But even
if you don't know what to do, think, "People are learning with textbooks and they're not
becoming good speakers. They're learning with textbooks and they're not becoming good speakers
and this is what everybody does. So I should not do that. I should not use a textbook."
So that's kind of one rule you would learn. Okay, what else are people doing? If you have
a good example of what to do, that's even better. So I always talk about the traditional
learner in the classroom. Again, this is not your fault if you learn this way, it's because
that's how every teacher does it and everybody learns that same way. But you also have the
example of what native speakers are doing in the classroom or I guess the classroom,
the real world. So they're all learning. You have native speakers who are learning and
you have non-native speakers who are learning as well. But they're learning in two different
ways, it's opposites. They're doing the opposite of each other. So one is using a textbook,
one is not using a textbook. One is learning the difficult vocabulary that you might find
on a written exam and the other is learning the casual conversational speech that you
really need for communication. Does that make sense?
So whenever you're thinking like, "What should I do? I feel a little bit lost." So this video
is a little bit for those people who are maybe trying to figure out how to learn by themselves.
Maybe they don't want a teacher or they don't want a guide like myself to show them exactly
how to do things. That's fine if you like to learn that way. But the important thing
is that use this, we call this like the North Star, your guiding star. So the North Star
is the star in the sky that doesn't move. All the other stars are moving around it.
So this is your like the pole star or the important star in your life for your learning.
So you're looking at that and you think, "Okay, the most important principle is to do the
opposite of what everybody else does." Then you apply that across all of the different
things, the different ways you could be learning or the specific skills or habits you want
to develop. So if people are learning pronunciation by trying to repeat certain sounds that aren't
really used in conversations, then do the opposite. Watch what natives are doing and
notice that natives are not really learning word by word. They're learning how to blend
the sounds of their words together and so that's how you develop good pronunciation.
So anytime you're learning like this, hopefully this video just makes you feel much better
about learning or it gives you a better direction when you're thinking about what should I do
next to improve? So I'm always telling students that your ability
to communicate is basically what your weakest habit is. So if your grammar is really bad,
even if you know a lot of words, then you should not be learning more words. You should
focus on improving your grammar, just by practicing, learning the things, the patterns that natives
are using in real conversations, and then practicing those. So you think about the thing
that you need to work on the most and then do the opposite of what everybody else is
doing. That's what's going to help you become a fluent speaker faster. Well, if you'd like
to learn more about how to improve, you can click on the link in the upper right of this
video where I apply all of these things. I do the opposite of everything that most people
are doing, and that's why my students get great results. So you can learn more about
the fluency course by clicking on the link in the upper right or on the link in the description
below this video. If you'd like to keep learning right here on YouTube, just do these three
simple things right now.
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