Oh man, I've stirred up a bit of a storm!
"ATTACKING other people's business!"
"I smell a RAT!"
"Dirty competition!"
I'm going to speak English in this video,
because I haven't had time to write a script,
I haven't had time to practice,
and I'm a little bit worked up, as well,
so if I spoke Vietnamese, it would probably come out really goofy.
You can turn on the subtitles if necessary.
Oh, and I might swear a little bit.
Just a warning.
So, by this time, most of you have probably seen the video that I released a few days ago,
where I showed my parents some clips of Vietnamese people speaking English, and asked my parents if they understood it.
And you also probably noticed that the clips I chose to use were clips of Vietnamese people trying to teach English.
Now, I knew when I made this video that there was going to be controversy and debate over it.
I knew some people were going to say:
"Oh, you shouldn't do that, Dan."
And some people were going to say:
"This is awesome."
But I've been really surprised by the comments from people saying things like, "dirty competition."
The reason they're saying this is because at the end of that video I included a promotional spot for ELSA,
the pronunciation app that is sort of my partner/sponsor.
And so, basically what these people are saying is that the purpose of that video that I made
is to cause these other English centers to lose students or even fail altogether,
so that ELSA will become more popular, and I'll make more money.
It's completely ridiculous, both the "competition" part and the "dirty" part,
and I'm going to explain why.
First of all . . .
"Competition"?
You know, I've really never though that I was competing with any other channel.
Like, in the case of my channel and Elight, we each produce less than an hour of content a month,
so there's no reason that people can't watch both.
With respect to classes and teaching,
I already have way more people who want to study with me than I can possibly teach,
so even if some other center completely collapsed, I couldn't take all their students.
And then competition between ELSA and a place like Elight?
They're completely different things.
ELSA is a pronunciation app.
That's it.
Elight, on the other hand, is a school.
They have course, teachers, and all that stuff.
So, again, there's no reason that both of them couldn't be successful.
How would the failure of one lead to the success of the other?
Ok, so that's the "competition" part, and now the "dirty" part.
First, some people are saying that the entire video is basically an advertisement for ELSA.
But the promotional spot for ELSA comes at the very end of the video,
and it's a long video: fifteen and a half minutes.
Most people are not going to watch the video until the very end,
so they're never even going to see the part about ELSA.
So if the whole video is just an advertisement for ELSA,
it's not a very effective one.
I mean, have you ever been watching TV and seen a fifteen-and-a-half-minute commercial come on,
and then the product that they're advertising doesn't even get mentioned until minute number fourteen?
And then, as far as the main content of the video goes,
I agree that it would have been dirty if I had, like, just made shit up:
"Did you know that the teachers at Elight
EAT BABIES?"
And I also think it would have been a bit unfair if I had gone through and just nitpicked every little pronunciation mistake.
Like, take this clip, for example:
Now, she does make a mistake in that.
She says "shees always" instead of "she always."
She adds a little 's' sound in there.
And also her intonation and rhythm are pretty unnatural and strange,
but I didn't focus on that in my video. I just asked my parents if they understood,
and in that case they did, and in some other cases, they didn't.
I think that asking a native speaker if they understand someone's pronunciation is a pretty basic and fair test,
and if you fail that test—
it doesn't mean you're stupid, it doesn't mean that you've failed at learning English—
but it does mean that you've got a problem,
especially if you're an English teacher.
And that leads me to my final point,
which is just the general accusation that the main reason I made that video was to make money,
and, specifically, to make money at the expense of others.
Fuck no.
Now, I will make money from that video.
I've monetized it on YouTube, I have my supporters on Patreon—
thank you guys for your support—
and I'll also make some money from the ELSA promotion.
But even if I had none of those things—
no YouTube ads, no Patreon, no ELSA promotion—
even if I couldn't make a cent from that video, I would still do it.
Because, one, I think it's important for you guys to hear the message that there are times where you'll think your English is good,
and natives won't understand it.
And secondly, I would have still made it, because I think that those other teachers and centers, like Elight . . .
they need to take responsibility for their mistakes, and try to fix them.
Teachers are in a very special position,
where we can potentially do a lot of benefit for our students,
or we can potentially do a lot of harm.
So, for me, making that video had nothing to do with money.
It has to do with professional responsibility.
I mean, you can't just call yourself an English teacher without being very careful about what you teach.
Now, there are a couple of extraneous points that I want to make.
The first one is that not all of the people who I included in that video are at the same level of incorrect pronunciation.
Ms Hoa, for example.
Her pronunciation is kind of weird sometimes, but overall it's not really that bad.
This woman, I think her name is Tuyet,
her pronunciation is actually quite good.
I included the mistake that she made with the word "graduate," because . . .
well, I thought that it really did illustrate an important point of high-level students . . .
not being careful enough with long, difficult words.
This girl, the one who talked about she and her husband going out to "die,"
I don't know what her name is, but her pronunciation is pretty good, as well.
Something else, I hope you didn't draw the conclusion from my previous video that you should never study with a Vietnamese English teacher.
I've met some Vietnamese English teachers who are very, very good,
and some who speak the language almost perfectly.
And even those who don't speak it perfectly,
I would say as long as they acknowledge their own shortcomings to their students,
and let you know that maybe you should double-check some of the things they teach you,
I think that's fine.
Also, there were some people in the comments who said that it was unfair that I was just taking isolated clips
and showing those to my parents,
and that if there had been more context, my parents might have understood.
Yeah, maybe.
There might have been some cases where that would have happened,
but take this clip, for example:
So, my parents heard the part about birthday dreams and wishes coming true.
So they understood the context, but they still couldn't understand what she was trying to say at the beginning.
So don't expect that context will really help you that much.
In my experience speaking Vietnamese to Vietnamese people
and hearing Vietnamese people speak English with me . . .
there are a lot of cases where the context just . . .
it just doesn't help.
And now, a few things just about the channel.
In a couple of days I'm going to be posting a video about upcoming classes,
with information about how to register, and all of that.
Keep your eyes open for it.
Also, at the very beginning of September, I'm going to be making a trip to Australia,
and I'm planning to make a video there about Australian English.
So you will see that eventually,
but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get any other videos up before that one.
So don't worry that I've stopped making videos. I will return.
And finally, the response to my previous video has really been amazing to me.
The negative response, first of all,
but also the much larger positive response.
A lot of really supportive comments,
some people sent me really meaningful and supportive messages.
I just want to say I appreciate you guys.
I am really happy that I was able to make something that was meaningful to so many of you.
And I hope I can make more videos that are that meaningful to you in the future.
Peace.