Hi there.
I'm Hilary and welcome to Adept English.
This is day one of our seven day course, 'The Seven Rules of Adept English'.
Thank you for joining me.
Every day, for seven days, you will receive an e-mail with a link to a video like this
one attached to it, an MP3 file just of the audio, just of my voice and a PDF file so
that you've got a written version, a written transcript of what I'm saying.
Now, we're going to be introducing you to a different way of learning English language.
Different rules...a different way of learning.
Not what you've necessarily come across before.
Now the first thing to say is that this course is not aimed at beginners.
If you can understand what I'm saying to you or most of it - in this video, you should
be fine.
You are at the right level.
If it's really difficult for you to understand even with the transcript, it's probably better
to do a basic course first and then come back to us later.
This course is aimed at irmproving fluency.
That's specifically what Adept English enables you to do.
Now the reason why I've developed this course is because it's a very common experience for
people to learn the basics of a language, learn the vocabulary and learn the grammar
and have a working knowledge of a language, but that's very different from fluency.
Now Adept English aims to help you become fluent at English.
You may have had the experience where you can understand what's being said on your language
course, but then when you're faced with native English speakers and the way they talk, actually
it's really hard to understand.
There's a phrase in English [..like a..]
'Rabbit in the headlights' and what we mean by that - when a rabbit is caught in the headlights
of a car, it's..it's sort of frozen, it doesn't know what to do.
And I think this describes the experience - when you're speaking a foreign language
and you construct some sentences and you're speaking with a native speaker.
So you say 'your piece'.
And then they 'come back at you' with lots and lots of language and it's really fast
and it's really fluent and you're like this.... because you don't know...you don't understand
it and you don't know what to respond with.
Now this is because there's a big difference between learning the mechanics of a language,
learning the common words, learning the irregular verbs and being able to have a conversation
naturally, that's fluid.
And do that without great effort.
Now there are many many people in the world who automatically learn English as their second
language.
[It] Tends to be what's taught in school and if not there, you may have learnt it in college,
but it's very common to get stuck before you learn fluency.
And sometimes people give up or their language stays frozen in this state for many many years.
Now the problem is not so much with the students themselves, but it's with the teaching method.
And teaching methods often make it very mechanical.
This isn't how language learning happens for people in their native language.
I'm guessing that you're very fluent in your own language.
That you feel utterly confident and competent to speak it.
And that you do it really without thinking about it at all.
Now how did this happen?
Well, of course, like anybody else, it began to happen when you were very small, when you
were still a baby, in fact.
Every day you heard spoken around you, your native language.
And you heard it and you listened and initially a lot of it didn't un...you didn't understand.
And then, bit by bit, you began to understand it.
This is the natural route to learning a language.
If you observe any child, this is the way that they learn.
Later on, they learn to read and spell and write, but the first thing always that they
do is...begin to understand.
Understanding always always comes before speaking.
So small children will understand a great deal more than they can express.
Similar with learning a language.
So the first rule of Adept English is 'Understand spoken English first'.
So focus on this and your brain will do the rest!
The speaking of it, will be a much shorter step, if you can improve your understanding.
Don't worry so much initially about speaking and writing.
You've probably got a reasonably good idea of how to spell the words from your basic
language course.
The understanding is really the thing to focus on.
And the reason why we include a transcript is that you can check the words and phrases
that you don't know.
But it might be that when you read the transcript of what I'm saying to you now, the words and
phrases that you didn't understand when you heard them, make absolute sense when you see
them written down.
It may be that even when you see it written down, there are some parts of what I'm saying
that you don't understand, but you've got opportunity to check them in the dictionary.
Now what's really important is that you listen again, once you've understood, because that
helps anchor the word in your mind.
Now rules of grammar and vocabulary are also learned automatically.
That saves a lot of pain and a lot of trouble.
If you think about a child in English might say 'I buyed an icecream'.
Eventually they move to saying 'I bought an icecream' because they've heard often enough,
that this is the right way to say it.
Similarly, they might say 'I goed to the shop', but eventually they hear it enough times that
they begin to say 'I went to the shop'.
What they don't do is learn lists of irregular verbs.
Human brains have been learning language in this way for thousands of years.
Why would we make our brains learn language in any other way?
All the neural networks are there, ready and waiting to be used.
Adept English is not limited to this rule alone - there are six other rules.
But this first rule underpins everything else.
So 'Understanding First' and achieving understanding by doing lots and lots of listening to spoken
language.
Now Adept English aims to provide you with all sorts of subjects, contexts and give it
to you in a convenient and portable format.
So initially, you might be curious to see who I am and what I look like and to look
at the video, but I would imagine pretty soon that won't be necessary and I expect the way
that you may use this is to download the MP3 files which are fairly small onto a mobile
device and listen to my spoken English that way.
I'll give you an example from my personal experience of why I believe this method works.
When I went to university and did my first degree, I studied Latin.
So I learned all about the Romans, their art, their architecture, their history, their politics,
their literature and of course, Latin language.
Now crucially, Latin is a 'dead language'.
It was spoken by the Romans centuries ago, but we don't know how it was ...pronounced.
It isn't spoken anywhere in the world now.
So a 'dead language' because we don't really know how to say things.
And we focused a lot on written Latin.
Latin's complicated and the challenge was that it's good exercise for the brain.
So we would translate from English into Latin and from Latin into English, so lots of written
down Latin.
Absolutely zero Latin conversation.
Fair enough - it's a dead language.
Now at school, I also learned French and German.
Now when I think back to my French lessons, we studied it in much the same way.
We did a lot of written down French.
We learned a lot of vocabulary, we learned the rules of grammar erm....we learnt to spell
French words, we..learnt how the language worked.
Erm...we did a lot of boring text books.
Occasionally, tacked on at the end of the lesson, erm...there'd be a bit of French conversation,
but probably not very much.
How often did we hear French spoken by genuine French speakers?
The only time I remember this happening at all, was in the exam.
If we were doing a comprehension or a dictation, we might there.
But it was very rare.
The lessons were conducted in English.
So what happened for me is that at the end of the course, I had largely a written exam,
passed some exams, I passed, I did very well.
I got a good grade.
That was good for my school.
Was it good for me?
I'm not sure that it was that great.
It gave me the basics of French, but did it mean that I could go to France and have conversation
with French speakers?
No, it certainly didn't!
What happened to me at school as well though - I learned German.
And my experience in German was completely different.
For a start, the whole lesson was conducted in German, from start to finish.
Right from the very first lesson - even though we didn't understand to begin with.
But we did learn very quickly.
So there was that element and also I went on two German exchanges.
So I went to stay with two German families, each over a period of about 10 days, or something
like that.
And I found that the combination of the German language classes being spoken entirely in
German and of visiting Germany and living with a German family, this meant that I was
immersed in the language and it increased my skill immensely.
So German became 'a living language' for me.
Now most adults who might want to learn English don't have the opportunity to go on a language
exchange and live with a family for 10 days.
They perhaps don't even have the chance to go on a language course.
And even if they do, it's probably not going to be one where only the language you're learning
is spoken in the classroom, nothing else.
Now Adept English aims to help you make these conditions for yourself.
So it aims to help you, supports you, to learn English in small sections of your ordinary
day.
So that your understanding of English is vastly improved.
So, to sum up - Rule One involves understanding first of all.
Focus on this, by doing lots of listening to spoken English by real native speakers.
This will have the effect of improving your fluency.
That's probably enough for Day One!
Thankyou for listening to me and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Have a lovely day!