Many students of English ask "When will I be fluent? How can I become fluent? What
to do to become fluent? and the answer is to leap before you look! I want to give
you an example of how I learned a language other than English enough to go
on a 6,000 mile motorcycle trip all around Thailand using Thai that I learned
at a language school and bringing with me a food dictionary in English and
then a regular Thai- English dictionary. I wanted to leap before I looked into this
adventure to explore country and I was quite nervous about it
did I have enough Thai to be able to communicate with someone and it turns
out that I did. I learned enough before and during the trip to successfully
negotiate important things in the Thai language with people who did not speak
English and you can do the same in English you just need to leap before you
look. Get the basics of the language and then just try. I'm going to show you a
map of this long motorcycle trip I took all over Thailand eight months during a
year in the rain in the heat from town to town where many people
ok no one spoke any English because I'm crazy and I love to travel by motorcycle
and I love to eat and research things and write books about things I don't
know the only way to really do that is to immerse yourself and take a risk of
may be saying something incorrectly knowing the good-hearted people will
want you to succeed. If you have the basics of English you can use this
technique of leaping before you look to a stranger's for directions
or ask someone to help you i find the best restaurant
you don't have to be fluent in the English language and it's over 1 million
words. You do not need all of those you just need the basics and then the
courage to do it so let's look at the map and I'll show you the books that I
brought with me that helped me along this journey that I experienced in Thai
and you can do the same experience studying English in your own country by
finding English speakers that can help you or when you travel outside of your
country to a place where people speak English
Let's look at the map using this chopstick as a pointer I want to show
you what I meant by leaping before you look on a trip I started here on Koh Phangan
an island where I live and I took a the motorcycle on a boat over the ocean and
landed in the port city of Suratthani and road six hours over to Phuket
Thailand very popular with tourists than that went down to southern Thailand to
explore the potently spicy food there then when all the way up this narrow
part of the country to the capital Bangkok the City of Angels then I went
over to Kanchanaburi and when the road was washed out and I couldn't take the
bike took the bus all the way over to the edge of Myanmar or Burma and went
back to Bangkok and did I stop there
no I did not I carried on all the way to this track which is next to the country
of Cambodia and looked around the seacoast for great seafood then what up
the big belly of the beast itself all the way up to Chiang Mai in the north and
then looked around next to the Mekong River here in this area northeastern
Thailand and went back all the way to Bangkok and
all the way back down here to my island so that took eight months during the
course of a year to explore Thailand and I learnt I along the way because i had
to especially in areas like here in some places here where I was not able to find
an English speaker with whom to converse We had to use the Thai that I had learned
in my trusty food guide book and dictionary have brought with me I'll
show you in a second leap before you look people as I mentioned that went on
this long trip around thailand and that brought a couple of useful things with
me
This is the Lonely Planet's food guide for Thailand what was very handy was in
the back of this book where many definitions of food had the time where
and had a an anglicized version of it and what it was
so when I went around to these different villages to learn how to cook from the
grandmothers and aunties the experts in Thai. I'd point to a Thai word and they
would tell me how to pronounce it so I got an instant lesson and a great plate
of food and also with me I brought this phrase book this is from the Rough
Guides but it has many phrases in it so I didn't know the word for pots and
pans I could look it up and had basic things about verbs and grammar and
important phrases in Thai. Some of these words I learned when I went to a
language school but I really wanted to do this trip on a motorcycle just me and
my little guitar and a backpack to explore the food of the country and i
decided to leap before I looked into doing this and it took eight months
during the course of a year to complete this food mission but I went all over
the place and having those phrasebooks and this food guide book was important
and having a basic knowledge of the language maybe so
thousands of words was useful but I really learned along the way when I
found myself having to ask "Can you repair the flat tire on my
motorcycle
where can I buy guitar strings
where is the best part I stir-fried noodles in town sir uncle aunty grandma
and all those politeness terms that are very important in the thai language so
the idea is get basic knowledge of English and then if you travel or you're
interacting with native English speakers ask for help. Put yourself in the
situation where you need to ask something people will help you having a
small dictionary in your hand or on your mobile phone is useful but leap before
you look and try to put yourself in uncomfortable situations you'll usually
get what you want like the flat tire on your motorcycle fixed or guitar strings
or really great meal or a smile have an old Grandma or Auntie who's proud of her
native language and wants to help you
this is the way to do it in English leap before you look you don't have to go by
motorcycle. I'm crazy
so that's what I do for fun you may be normal and do it a different way but
whether you're traveling outside your country in a place for people use
English or you're in your home country and you find someone speaks English asks
for help and they will be given to you and you will learn
alright