Filed Under: Learning English, Speaking, Speaking English

“My mind went blank when I’m trying to speak English…”

July 28, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

I work with high-level English learners speaking in business, work and day-to-day life. This is a very common problem.

There could be a couple of reasons why it happens.

But the biggest are:

  1. You haven’t learnt the language well and
  2. You’ve practised in comfortable situations.
  3. A third problem is that people simply don’t know what to say (i.e. their English is fine, but they don’t have anything to say).

Let’s break this down.

We tend to think of fluency as being one thing, but that’s not true.

Fluency is actually FIVE things.

They’re all happening in your brain together, and that creates the illusion of fluency.

The first of these things is what we call “encoding”.

You haven’t learnt the language well

Have you learnt the English you need, in a way that properly puts it into long-term memory where it can be found and used?

If you’re memorising random words from lists, that won’t work. You need to learn them on a deeper level, together whith the phrases, expressions and chunks they are commonly used in. There’s a detailed (and free) training here which will get you started with this kind of “deep” learning.

You’ve practised only in comfortable situations

Another one of the five elements is what we call ‘cognitive load’. And this is the most common reason your mind might “go blank”.

It’s like your computer. If you’ve got a hundred programmes running at once, they’re all going to struggle to run smoothly. Eventually, you get the blue-screen of death, and your computer shuts down. But if you close everything down and just let one program run, it’ll do so efficiently. Or, to extend the metaphor, “fluently”.

What this means is, if you’re not confident and you panic and get flustered, you’ll struggle to speak because your mind will be taken over by other things – the panic and the fear and the fight-or-flight response that comes with it.

There isn’t enough “RAM” left for speaking well.

A lot of the time this is caused by practise in easy, comfortable situations (like a conversation teacher or partner), but not enough is scary, real world situations (see here for an article and video I wrote about this).

The solution is to free up your brain as much as possible.

Learn English in the right way (study this free training), know WHAT to say and HOW to say it in conversation.

Then get good (and get over your fear) by using English in scary in real-world situations.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: Learning English, Pronunciation

Is English pronunciation also hard for native speakers?

July 27, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

Yes and no.

It’s not hard in the sense of having to learn it in the way someone learning English as a second language does. We learn our “palette” of sounds along with our first language as kids.

But there are plenty of things we mispronounce, just like, I’m sure, people in your native language.

A couple of years ago one of my clients pointed out I was pronouncing the word “taciturn” wrong (taKIturn). I’m not sure when or why I picked up the incorrect pronunciation – but of course, as soon as I realised it was wrong my pronunciation simply changed (and no, it wasn’t difficult to do).

Being a “native speaker” means being completely unconscious of the way you use language. And yes, that means unconscious (most of the time anyway) of the imperfections, too.

My speech is full of imperfections.

No excuses or explanation — because I honestly don’t see why justification is necessary.

Humans are wrong about most things most of the time. Who cares if I make a mistake with my English.

But, and this is the important part, herein lies the paradox of language learning. You go to school and English classes focus exclusively on accuracy (it’s easy to measure, after all). Yet in reality, there is no true “accurate” model of English because the English I know is a collection of my own (often flawed) experiences.

And my experience of life (and therefore English) is very different to anybody else’s experience.

Of course, the concept of a “standard English” exists.

But that’s all it is.

A concept.

As an aside, a great exercise for developing good pronunciation—particularly rhythm and good “chunking” skills—in English as a second language is “Shadowing”. I’ve got a free guide here, for anyone who wants it.

Best,
Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: Learning English

What should I know before studying English more?

July 13, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

First, you have to be clear about what your goal is.

Because if you’re not clear about what your goal is, you’re just going to be all over the place and learning in an unstructured, messy kind of way, not really knowing what you’re doing.

I know this all too well because I was just as messy and unstructured when I was trying to learn Japanese. I eventually fixed that mess but only because I made my goals clear.




So before you start learning English any more, ask yourself these questions:

  1. What do I want to do?
  2. What countries do I want to go to and what do I want to see there?
  3. What experiences do I want to have?

You might wonder “why does this even matter?” but the point is, if you’re not clear about what exactly you want to do with your English, then you’ll never be able to get the rest right because you won’t know what to learn.

Be clear about your direction and focus on your goal. That’s my advice.

Hope that helps.

I help high-level English as second-language speakers live freer in their work and day to day life without English becoming a barrier. If that’s you, you might like to sign up for my daily English tips to speak better English.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: Getting English Done, Learning English

Are you really too busy for English… or are you making excuses?

May 17, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

One of my MEFAers made an interesting comment:

I always ask myself: am I looking for a way or an excuse?

For example, I registered MEFA almost at the end of the enrolment time. I have a two-month-old baby, who is a sleeping-time killer. And because of that I almost decided to register in the next season instead of this month. But then I asked myself if I didn’t spend the time to study, would I use it wisely? I then realised the baby is just an excuse.

Small children are a real-time killer.

Believe me.

I know.

And there are plenty of other time killers (for example, the last week I’ve lost huge amounts of time to train a new member of staff; frustrating in the short term, but an excellent investment long term).

But GaDii is very, very right:

The time that you DO have available is going to get used somehow, so the real question is… are you using it wisely, or are you wasting it?

My son was born, I went from having all the time in the world to do things to having very little time. But in truth, I got MORE done than ever before. Because now I was forced to prioritise, focus and use time wisely. No more, “I’ll do it later” because later baby would be awake and crying.

I’m not saying you must prioritise English.

But I am saying if English is important to you, and especially if your English is causing you pain and frustration… you’d be rather silly not to prioritise it.

I can help:

https://www.doingenglish.com/mefa/

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: Learning English

The English Diagnosis Problem

April 8, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

Asking random people on the internet how to level up your English is about as useful as asking your aunt on Facebook why you’re sick.

It’s unlikely to fix your problem and you’ll end up frustrated with all the conflicting advice that doesn’t match you personally.




To get help that is actually customised to you and your situation, consider joining the next available MEFA group.

The place to go is here:

https://www.doingenglish.com/mefa

Or if you’re not sure if the course is right for you, send me an email (julian@doinglish.com) and I’ll tell you.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: Fixing Mistakes, Learning English

Japanese city manager tells employees to “play around” to fix birth rate issue

April 6, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

“Japanese city manager gives speech telling new employees to “play around” to fix birth rate issue”

That was a headline in Soranews24, a news site that publishes Asian news in English. Honestly, the headline was bizarre enough I checked to see if it was Fake news.

It’s not from what I can tell.

According to Soranews24, Mr Shimura said:

“I’d like you to play around as much as you can. And not just play around in groups of men, or groups of women, that’s easy. I want you to play around with the opposite sex. If you do that, then I think maybe the birth rate problem will go away a little bit.”

He then continued with:

“I have a special request for the men. I know we’re always told about gender equality and equal gender participation, but when it comes to playing around, I’d like it if the men made the effort to ask out the women.”

Subtle.

For context, Japan has a birth rate problem.

There are a lot of people in older generations, but comparatively fewer people are having kids. And this is causing a load of economic problems, not least that tons of money is going out of pension funds right now, but very little going back in.

But still.

Play around to fix the problem?

Yeah.

Subtle.

As a guy I guess I can see the appeal. Not that I’d be much help in increasing any birth rate now, as I couldn’t have kids even if I wanted to (I had the snip just over a year ago).

Typically though, this is an example of a fix — a bizarre one not to be taken seriously, to be sure, but an example all the same — for a surface-level problem without looking to the deeper, underlying problem.

Fewer people have kids in Japan because it’s a logistical nightmare. Working hours are very long, daycare hard to get. For many women having kids is synonymous with ending their career.

So yeah.

Playing around probably isn’t the solution.

Just like I can say with a high level of certainty that learning yet more grammar and memorising yet more vocabulary probably isn’t the solution to your English problems. Again, you’re looking at a surface level problem and ignoring the deeper root cause.

Enrolment for the May MEFA start is slowly but surely filling.

If you want a place, go here:

https://www.doingenglish.com/mefa

After you enrol, I recommend you go straight to your bonuses (which I’ll send you immediately after you enrol) and study the two-hour seminar I did in Taipei last year — it goes into these “deeper root problems” and talks about what you need to do to fix them.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook