Hi there, I'm Drew Badger, the English Fluency Guide, and it's a great pleasure to see you
in another video. Today we're going to be talking about psychology, how you think, and
how that affects your fluency training to become a confident speaker. Should be an interesting
video, hope you like it. If you have more questions or comments, please let me know
down in the comments so we can keep the conversation going.
Very briefly, if you're new to the channel, I talk about usually four things about language
learning on the channel, the top one, you're going to have words and phrases dealing with
particular topics so going fishing or going to the doctor, what vocabulary to use for
that. A little bit more down, this is almost like a tree here but the fundamental things
about language learning like pronunciation and grammar here, because those things affect
all of these other ones.
You also have, more further down, particular learning strategies so you learn what's important
to learn, why you should be learning it, what are faster ways to learn. Even lower down,
the most fundamental and most important is your psychology so how you think. A lot of
channels on YouTube and just lessons in general. Usually focus more on these two things up
here, but I like to cover these a lot more just because those are more important. If
you focus on these and get them right, all of this stuff becomes much easier.
This video is almost a response in my previous video on the channel where I was interviewed
by a local Japanese radio show. I got a comment on that video saying the person was a little
bit offended because I used the word America to say what country I'm from. Now, especially
out here in Japan, people use the word America instead of the United States of America to
describe where people are from so if I say, "Oh, I'm from America," they know I'm talking
about the US and not Brazil or Bolivia or Mexico, even those places, even though those
places are in North America so the North American continent or the South American continent.
I can see how a person might say, "Oh, I'm offended by that, why are you saying you're
from America and not specifically the United States?" Well, they are kind of two reasons
for this. The first one is that it's just faster to say. Now, the second reason is because
other people understand what I'm talking about when I say that idea. Often, language is a
living thing and people will change a word or something to make it faster, easier to
say, this is why people get nicknames or why you might take a product like a cotton swab.
These are the little things that you clean your ears with. That's the regular name for
the product, a cotton swab, but the popular brand name for that, at least in the United
States, is the Q-tip and so people will, for any kind of cotton swab, they might just say,
can I have a Q-tip or pass me a Q-tip and people understand what you're talking about.
It's a conversational shorthand. Again, just a way of being able to express what you want
to say much faster and people understand what you're talking about. This video isn't really
arguing that it's correct or incorrect to say something like that but I want to make
a different point about the idea of telling someone that you're offended by some language
that you're using. Now, if I want to make this incredibly simple, imagine if we have
two people here. We're going to draw this person, make sure you can see that.
All right. We're going to have person one and person two. Person one may think that
something, saying America describing the United States is an offensive thing to say. Again,
this is not about right or wrong, this is just thinking about this person here. This
other person over here does not really care if America is describing a country name or
not, but there are two different ways of these two people thinking and this becomes really
important for fluency for one big reason. That one is that fluency is a skill, it can't
be bought. You can't take it from someone, it can't be given to you, can't be stolen
from anyone, it's a skill that you develop.
To develop a skill you need to be really more like ... What's a better way of kind of drawing
this? Thinking about yourself as moving out into the world and affecting the world around
you. I'll just kind of draw it. I think I got my people reversed over here but this
person here ... I'm going to reverse them now because I drew all these arrows over here.
Let's say this person is the one who does not get offended by saying the United States
is America and this person does, so this person is affecting their world and that's another
way of saying that if other things happen to them they are not affected by that.
This other person over here is doing the opposite, they're living according to what other people
do to them. The reason this is a more powerful strategy just in life and for language learning,
as I just mentioned, is because it's a skill that you have to develop. You can't get fluency
from somebody else and so you don't want to develop a mindset that's saying other people
can offend me by what they say. I want to make this really important because I think
in my entire life I have never once thought or said to someone that word that you use
to me is offensive. There are a number of reasons for this but probably the most important
one is this idea right here.
If I think that someone says something and that offends me, that means that that other
person or some whatever person is changing my behavior instead of me deciding how I respond
to a particular thing. Again, this video is not about whether it's correct or incorrect
or really offensive or not to call a country like the United States, America. It's more
about encouraging people, if you do have that kind of view, to think about why it might
be helpful to not have that point of view.
Again, it's a tricky but the people who become fluent are the people who affect their world
rather than letting the world affect them. It's a very simple idea but it's profoundly
important. Again, you can see this in an example something like I'm offended by that. If someone
tells me they're offended by something I say, I say, "Okay, well I understand." There's
not much I can really do to affect that person's behavior but they're trying to change the
way I do something so that they can feel better about a particular situation or whatever.
Even if I say, "Okay, I'm sorry. I understand that might be offensive to you and I'm going
to apologize for that," I don't know that that really helps that person become better
or more able to affect change around them other than being able to do things to other
people. Hopefully this is not too confusing, but when you think about other people controlling
you or you trying to control other people, if even if a person says that they are offended
by someone saying that the United States is called America, if you're offended by that
and you get that other person to change their view or to apologize, that doesn't really
help you.
You're trying to control another person based on the way you feel but fluency, again, it
doesn't matter how many other people you can control, you're still not going to improve
your own fluency. You might be able to maybe get, I don't know, something from people but
as far as skill development goes you really need to think about how do I move out into
the world and control the world rather than having the world control me?
Hopefully, this is not a confusing idea. I didn't want to write a long thing about this,
I just thought it was an interesting topic. Again, I can see why someone might think,
"Well, I'm also in the continents of America, North America and South America," but again,
this is just talking about conversationally. When people often develop a shortened term
for something like that, lots of people are going to use it and instead of feeling offended
by that you might just think, "Okay. Well, I understand other people will do that," and
without accepting that you might just think, "Okay. Let me develop in such a way that I'm
not worried about what other people are doing to me for my own development." Does that make
sense?
Hopefully ... I know sometimes I'll make videos like this where I'm not just teaching you
a bunch of vocabulary but these videos really are important. They're what helped develop
me for my own learning. I don't wait for other people to teach me anything. I don't wait
for other people to tell me what to do. I go out into the world and I determine what
I'm going to think or what I feel about something.
People could say hateful things to me. Part of being a person making videos on YouTube
is you're going to get hate sometimes, it happens, and it can be really harsh for a
lot of people. For me, I just think, "Okay." Well, if people have a good criticism of what
I'm doing or they disagree with something, that's great. If you've got some arguments
and you have an idea about how to make it better, I'm here to get better. Again, I'm
not going to sit and cry about other people if they say something and I feel offended
by it that. That's why ever since I was very young I think I never really worried about
that, even though every day you have the opportunity to feel offended or to feel like you don't
like certain language or something like that.
Hopefully this makes sense, I don't want to go on too long about that, but this idea of
you controlling how you feel, it's really important and it's hard if you ... Sometimes
you're going to be like this person and sometimes you're going to be like that person, that's
really tricky to do so I might think, "Well okay, I'm going to not be offended by this
but I will be offended by someone using a country name in a way that I don't like."
You have to ... You could do this but it's much more difficult. It's a lot easier to
just pick one and stay with that because, again, it's going to affect other aspects
of your life, how you learn, how you think, your mental health. See, I'm basically happy
most of the time, pretty much all the time really because I don't worry or wait for other
people to tell me how to feel or wait for something outside of myself or my situation
or something like that to determine how I feel. This is especially important if you're,
again, learning a second language you will encounter people who will laugh at you for
how you speak and it's going to happen.
My own family will laugh at me sometimes. I will say something and my wife or my mother-in-law
or somebody in my immediate family will laugh at me, and it's okay. I just think, "Ah, okay,
I learned something." I can be offended by that or I can think, "Maybe that's an opportunity
to learn something." Hopefully, this video is not offensive to people but we'll see.
If you are the kind of person who can take some advice and think, "Oh, that's interesting,
maybe I can think about that in a different way," then you will most certainly improve
from that. But if you are waiting for other people to do what you want them to do when
it comes to something that you must develop from within yourself, you're going to be waiting
for a long time.
All right. Well, hopefully that makes sense. If you have questions or comments below, let
me know. It should be an interesting video, we'll see. Maybe it won't get so many views,
I have no idea, but hopefully you found it interesting. Do like this video if you do
find it interesting and post comment down below, let me know what you think. If you'd
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