Hi there. I'm Drew Badger, the English Fluency Guide and I am sick with a fever right now,
but I'm here for you because I'm going to help you get a date with a native English
speaker. Now, I talk about it this way because when I explain this to students again, and
if you haven't seen this video already, I talk about often doing the opposite of what
natives or not natives or what most people are doing when they're trying to learn a language.
So forgive me if my brain loses me because I'm struggling over here with a cold and the
flu I guess something like that. But anyway, the information is valuable. So listen carefully
to this. Now, when I explained to people about doing
the opposite like most people are doing for that thing, and in this thing I'm talking
about language learning, what you will see if you scroll down in the comments below this
video, you will probably see people asking, hey, let's make a conversation partner group
or whatever and let's have a have like a partnership or let's meet and speak with each other. So
most people are doing something like that, which means you should not do that thing.
Now, you might find someone to practice with, maybe you will, but there are a lot better
ways to do that, more efficient ways, and I'll talk about that in this video.
So I talked about getting a date with a native English speaker because honestly, you really
want to be practicing with native speakers. When I was learning or just beginning to learn
Japanese, I didn't want to sit and talk with other beginners of Japanese. How is that going
to help me? I want to find native speakers even if they don't know much about the language,
just like parents most. Most parents don't know much about their language to teach it
to their kids, but they know how to explain things in a pretty simple way, or just even
say one word or two that they can make that easy to understand. So just because you're
learning with a native speaker doesn't mean they are a good teacher of that, but most
people can teach a little bit and it's usually going to be better for your fluency than trying
to learn with someone who's going to spend a lot of time explaining how rules work. So
you want to understand that, you want to own the language and that's what's going to help
you become a fluent, confident speaker. So when I talk about getting a date, number
one, you do not want to go to an English language learning video and ask other people there
to practice speaking with you. Now, this is really the biggest mistake people make and
this is searching in the wrong place. As an example, I would not go to a bakery looking
for a fresh cuts of meat, something like that. I would go to a butcher for that. If I want
to catch a great white shark, I'm not going to go to a freshwater lake. I need to go to
a saltwater ocean for that. So you have to go into the right place where the people are.
So if I'm a business owner and I'm looking for customers or something like that, I have
an ice cream store, I'm going to go where people are on a hot day. They're going to
be sitting out at the beach or something and they're going to be looking for some ice cream.
So I go to where the people are that I'm interested in.
And so that's the first thing you want to be looking for where native speakers are.
And right now, we're watching this on YouTube and there are lots of native speakers, but
they are not watching this video unless they are maybe a teacher or something like that.
So what you do is, you go to actually where native speakers are and look for those videos
about the things you're specifically interested in and then start, maybe it's about cars or
about whatever. It could be about some very specific, maybe you want to grow purple tomatoes,
or you make stuffed animals, or whatever that thing. You can find information about anything
you want on YouTube made by native English speakers. And all you're doing is you're looking
for people that share your interests. And this is what I'm talking about, about getting
a date with someone. So you have to think about it like a personals
ad. So the personals are when you open up a newspaper or now you see this online, these
are like men looking for women, or women looking for women, or men looking for whatever and
these are where like, "I'm a tall, blue-eyed, black haired man, I have a good job, but I'm
looking for a woman and this is the kind of woman I'm looking for." So these are called
personals ads. Now, the second biggest mistake that English learners make is, they actually
have no specific idea of the kind of person they want. Most people are just happy to have
anyone, like please, like please practice speaking with me. And that's begging and people
don't want to sit and practice with you mostly because if you've ever encountered that problem,
it's because I don't know anything about you or really probably don't know much about teaching.
And so students, they expect a lot from a native speaker like, "Oh why do you do this?"
And they asked lots of questions about people who really don't know the answers to those
things. So again, thinking about it like a personals
ad that you write for the newspaper, you have to think about who you are and you have to
think about specifically who is the kind of person you're interested in. So do you like,
like a speaker who interested in certain kinds of activities, or they like reading certain
kinds of books or watching certain kinds of movies, whatever that thing is. Now, when
you start thinking about this, YouTube itself becomes a giant personals ad. So me, here
I am, you can look at me and learn all about me and understand more about who I am and
my interests just by watching my videos. And I talk about English language learning more
really myself and my personal things that I enjoy. But you will find things like that
when you're on YouTube looking for that kind of information.
So if you go to right here on YouTube and you look in English for raising horses, or
keeping pet turtles, or whatever it is you're interested in, you first develop the kind
of person you're interested in. Like do you like someone who's a little bit shy? Or do
you like someone who's more outgoing? Do you like a person who is interested in... Whatever
that thing is. But you create a profile of the kind of person you're interested in and
then go to that video and then make a comment in that video and just build the conversation
from there. I talk exactly about how to do this in the
fluency course. There's a whole step-by-step about what to say and how you begin the conversation.
What are the specific things you could notice about that person? How do you say that? How
do you begin that? So I won't talk so much about that in this video, but you get the
general idea. So the two big things, most important thing is, go to where the fish are.
So if you're going to fish, go to where the fish are. Don't go on land looking for fish,
go to the where the fish are. Number two, be specific about who your target
is, what kind of fish do you want. And then when you're searching for the right kind of
fish and you know what kind of fish you want, it really becomes much easier to find that
person. Native speakers are all over the place and they're excited to practice with you if
you find them in the right way. But you have to be looking for them as a friend, someone
who could be sharing an interest with you rather than someone who's just going to be
some free teacher for you and you're going to get lots of advice from them, or they're
going to answer lots of questions that they probably don't know the answers to. So you
have to be honest and you have to be specific about what you want. But I've done this as
I've found lots of Japanese people to speak with even when I was back in the United States
and of course, it's very easy to find them here in Japan to practice my Japanese.
Well, that's it for this video. If you'd like to learn more about that, again, taking people
step-by-step through different challenges like this, I do that through every lesson
set that we have in the fluency course. And all of our lesson sets really actually showing
you how to meet native English speakers to practice with. Again, this is what I do my
way because I didn't do it by using like a Skype lessons or something like that. So I
recommend you actually go out and you can meet lots of friends if you do it the right
way, which is exactly what I show people how to do.
Anyway, if you'd like to learn more about that, you can click on the link in the upper
right of this video or just gets started right here on YouTube. Follow the advice I've given
you so far and you can start meeting people today. It's pretty cool. Anyway, enjoy the
rest of your day. Do post a comment in the description or in the comment section below
this video. Let me know if you've already tried to do that. But think about some people
you've connected with and just say hello, but don't look for other people to practice
with here. Find some natives. Don't be worried about that. Natives are excited to practice
speaking with you if you contact them the right way. Have a fantastic day and if you'd
like to continue learning with me right here on YouTube, do these three simple things right
now.
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