- Are authentic, real texts and audios
designed for consumption by native speakers better for
improving your English speaking as an intermediate
to advanced English learner than materials designed
for intermediate to advanced English learners?
Wow, that was a mouthful.
(upbeat rock music)
Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook from doingenglish.com,
here to help you, the intermediate to advanced
English learner, master the English language
and speak it extraordinarily well in daily life, business,
and whatever situation it is
that you happen to be using English.
Let's talk a little bit about the materials that you use
to study and improve your English speaking.
Very common question that I get is,
"Is authentic, real samples of language, texts, and audios,
"or whatever it happens to be, that are designed for use
"or consumption by native speakers better
"for the intermediate to advanced English learner
"to improve their English than materials designed
"specifically for English learners?"
Okay, so this is a good question.
And the simple answer to this is yes,
but also no.
First off, what you've gotta kind of understand here
is that when designed well, when designed properly,
materials designed for the English learner to use
and study to improve their English, are just as good,
just as real, just as authentic
as any other sample of English,
whether it's designed to be consumed
by native speakers or not.
The only difference is whether it's being designed
to be consumed by native speakers or not,
or whether it's being designed
as something to study for the English learner.
Problem, of course, is that most people have been exposed
to bad, poorly designed,
crap materials,
and this kind of makes them think
that all materials tend to be crap.
More on that in a second.
Authentic texts and audios, samples of language,
whatever they are, tend to be better
than English learning materials
when it comes to learning what I call
"type two language."
And by that, I mean very specific vocabulary phrases
and expressions and chunks of language that are used
in very very specific areas and topics,
and things that you might talk about.
If you're not too sure what this is,
and what the difference between type one, type two,
and type three language is, I recommend that you
check my book, "Master English Fast."
Link in the description, or head over to
masterenglishfast.com where I talk about this
in a lot of detail.
Really we can't go into detail about the difference
between all these three different types of language here,
in this simple video.
This said, again, when designed properly,
materials designed for English learners are just as real,
just as authentic as anything else.
As I already mentioned, the problem is,
is that most people have at some point in their lives
been exposed to really badly designed materials.
Strange, stilted, awkward, unnatural sounding dialogues
and texts that just sound bizarre.
Because you know they've, whoever designed it,
had a vocabulary list, and they've tried to just pack
as much of that vocabulary into a single story,
or even worse, into a few short example sentences
as possible, and what they've ended up with
is really strange sounding language
that isn't actually representative
of how those words and phrases
and expressions of things are actually used at all.
This is bad.
This is not good at all.
Because what you're actually doing
when you study badly designed materials
that are stilted and inauthentic and sound unnatural
and strange is putting strange unnatural language
into your head, and the data that you're putting
in your head is then messing up your perception
of what is natural and what is not,
and just confusing you more than any benefit
that you're actually getting from them.
I've done research on this.
I did a series of research projects based around
the textbooks that Japanese junior high school students use,
and I know here I'm talking to people
who are already at the intermediate to advanced stage,
and this research was based on beginners,
but the reason I studied these people and these textbooks
in particular is because they tend to be the first materials
that Japanese students will ever study,
and therefore it really forms the base of their English,
so it's a really good area to research.
One of the projects that I did,
one of the studies that I did ask
Japanese university students to look
at phrases and expressions,
chunks of language that I showed to them,
and to judge how natural, how common, how frequent
they thought they were in native speaker language.
And what I did, is I designed this study so that
it included samples from these textbooks as well,
and the result was quite disturbing,
in that the items that they believed to be the most natural
actually didn't come from native speaker language at all.
They came from these textbooks, and they actually weren't
judged to be natural by actual native speakers,
meaning that for the students that I studied,
at least, their perception of what is natural
and what is not in English was actually quite messed up
by the original data that they had put in their head.
The textbooks.
So in this sense, yes, 100%, if it's a choice between
authentic, real materials designed for native speakers
and badly designed materials that really are not
representative of how English is actually used, then 100%,
throw those materials away and go with the real ones,
designed for native speakers.
But know this.
There is a big big downside to authentic,
real texts and audios.
Like I said, they tend to be good for learning
type two language, but when it comes to learning
the all important type one language,
the super common, super high frequency,
super high utility phrases and expressions and chunks
of everyday conversational language,
whether it be in day to day social situations
in business situations or what have you,
real authentic texts and audios designed to be consumed
by native speakers for whatever reason it is
that they are consuming them tend to be pretty ineffective
for the English learner trying to improve their speaking.
And this is quite simply because those authentic, real
texts and audios are not optimised
for the needs of the language learner.
Simply put, for you, the English learner,
to get all the common phrases and expressions
that you're gonna need for day to day conversations,
small talk, chit-chat, or wherever it is
that you're using English, you're gonna need
an absolute tonne of this real, authentic text and audio
to be able to get the same result as you'll get
from a well designed optimised material
for English learners.
Take a film, for instance.
I mean, one film will have lots of great language
that you can study and learn and acquire, and use yourself,
but a film is two hours long.
And don't just think that you're gonna be able
to take that two hour film, watch it once,
and get all of that language in your head, internalise it,
hard code it in long term memory, make it your own,
and then be able to use it yourself
in your own conversations.
Because you won't.
That's not how language learning works.
Language learning is a constant, repetitive,
iterative process of input, output, repeat.
Input, output, repeat.
For you to be able to get all of the useful language
out of a two hour film, you've gotta go through that film
again and again and again, constantly re-learning
the language contained in it, practising it, hard coding it,
internalising it in long term memory,
and then making it your own.
Doing that with a two hour film,
you're either gonna spend a long long long time doing it,
or you're gonna miss most of the stuff in it.
Materials designed for language learners,
on the other hand, can be highly optimised.
The materials that I make
for extraordinary English speakers,
the weekly lessons that we do, are super optimised.
We take real conversations,
we write them into a story format, cut away all of the crap,
and leave you with a single short story
that can be used to learn a whole tonne of language
very very quickly and effectively.
The audio for these stories
is about two to three minutes long.
Well, compare that with a two hour film.
You're gonna learn about the same amount of language
from the two of them.
But which is gonna be easier to repeat and to use?
Obviously it's gonna be the one
designed for English learners.
So in conclusion then, I guess the question is
not which are better, but which are more efficient.
In terms of better, real authentic materials
are always gonna be better than badly designed
learning materials, always, no questions asked.
But that doesn't mean that they are more efficient
than well designed materials for English learners,
which can give you all of the language that you need
in day to day conversation, business,
whatever situation it is
that you are learning to speak well in,
much faster and more efficiently
than these authentic or real texts can.
I mean, if you have nothing but time on your hands,
then just go with the stuff for native speakers.
If, however, time is a problem, you don't have much time
to really study the English language, you know,
say you've only got 30 minutes to an hour a day.
Well, using real stuff for native speakers,
and actually studying that, it's gonna take you
a long, long, long time, whereas with materials,
such as the ones I make for extraordinary English speakers,
and some of my other courses as well,
British Stories, for example, will give you
all the language that you need
in a very very concise format.
If you want to know more about mastering
the English language and speaking it remarkably well,
check out my book, "Master English Fast,
an Uncommon Guide to Speaking Extraordinary English."
Simply put, it does what it says on the tin,
and it will show you,
the intermediate to advanced English learner,
everything that you need to know to take your English,
as it is now, and drag it up
to the highest possible proficiency levels.
It comes in paperback format, as an Amazon Kindle book,
and regardless of which one you get,
you get the complete audio version included for free.
You've just gotta register for the resource area
listed in the back.
To get more information,
click on the link in the description,
or head over masterenglishfast.com.
Right, that's it from me.
Julian Northbrook, signing off from another video.
If you've got a question of your own about the language,
or mastering the English language, ask away in the comments.
If it's an interesting question,
I'll answer it in a future video.
If it's boring, forgive me,
but I'll probably just ignore it,
because I'm done with boring.
If you found this video useful, give it a thumbs-up.
Subscribe to this channel if you're new,
share it with your friends on Facebook,
do whatever you want with it, and I'll see you tomorrow.
Same time, same place, for another video.
If you found this video informative and helpful,
you're also gonna want to check out this video,
which talks about taking the massive task
that is the English language, and shows you
how to break it down into small, bite size chunks.
And then also this video, which is gonna show you how
to take the passive English you've already got in your head
and make it automatic and fluent for your next conversation.