Julian Northbrook sends daily email tips for speaking better English – Click the button on the right, sign up, and you'll get a new email every day packed with ideas and tips for speaking better English.
Should you consider joining MEFA if you’re a non-native English teacher?
Good question.
I’d say yes, of course, but then I’m biased.
But here’s what one of my star students, Gilda said:
All client results should be considered an indication of what’s possible, not a guaranteed result. There are many factors involved in your success, not least how much time and effort you put in (and Gilda put a lot of effort in).
Information here:
https://www.doingenglish.com/MEFA
Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook
Is Vocabulary an Indicator of Intelligence?
Generally speaking, yes.
But at the same time, no, not really.
It’s a good indicator of education. Which of course, goes hand in hand with intelligence.
Intelligent people tend to read more.
And people who read more are naturally going to know more words… and be more intelligent because they learn more from reading.
Make sense?
The thing is tough, when it comes to speaking or writing, what’s important is how succinctly and clearly you express yourself.
A big mistake a lot of people make–native speakers included–is thinking that big, clever-sounding words are intrinsically more intelligent sounding. They’re not. And a sure-fire way to make yourself look pretty silly is by using them where it isn’t appropriate. Or worse, in an incorrect way.
Daniel Oppenheimer of the University of Princeton researched this and found the most intelligent sounding essays were ones that used simple vocabulary. It showed confidence and made the good ideas stand out.
The people who tried to use clever words in order to make their work sound more intelligent, on the other hand, just confused their reader. And often, it seemed like these people were actually trying to hide the fact they had nothing interesting (or intelligent) to say.
So yes and no…
While it is true intelligent people do tend to have better vocabularies…
… correlation doesn’t equal causation.
What matters is how effectively you use the words, phrases and expressions you know.
And that’s what we focus on in MEFA:
https://www.doingenglish.com/MEFA
Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook
Just over a year ago I ran the Taipei Marathon, which was particularly difficult as I was having several “daily issues” at the time.
And I sent an email about it to the Doing English Daily Newsletter, as I do with most things.
Anyway, one of my Top MEFA Girls replied with this:
Oh wow, Julian congratulations.
Thank you for sharing with us the details of this experience. It’s so great to know that once we reach a level our overall performance won’t be affected by daily issues.
Congrats again and have safe travels.
And my reply:
Thank you!
I’ll be honest and say there was a point I desperately wanted to quit… but REALLY glad I didn’t!
The “daily issues” she’s referring to were my super-hectic schedule, insomnia and overall lack of training (I did LOADS in the months before, just not in the weeks before).
But she’s totally right.
Get the ‘Good Shadowing Guide’ to build physical fluency fast here.
With any skill, once the motor skills and neural routines are hard-coded, they run largely automatically.
Yes, more sleep, rest and training probably would have shaved a few extra minutes off my time. But those extra benefits would have been minimal.
The months of preparation beforehand, building muscle, practising controlling my breathing (the big breakthrough for me that time) and doing a shit-ton of interval training to build stamina ensured that.
English is the same.
Factors such as how tired stressed or “out of practise” you are will make a difference. But once the hard-coded routines kick in, the English skill you’ve built will just flow on autopilot.
Well…
Assuming you’ve hard-coded the right English in the right way.
‘cos if you haven’t even done that you’re fucked.
But don’t worry: when it comes to building “muscle memory” for speaking English well, ‘shadowing” is an excellent exercise to use. Trouble is, the way many people use it is totally wrong… and so they’re just spinning their wheels and not getting anywhere with it.
Which is why I create the Good Shadowing Guide, which you can get here:
https://www.doingenglish.com/shadowing
Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook
P.S. Here’s a mid-race selfie:
What is the best English learning exercise?
Shadowing?
Dictation?
Perhaps the ‘432 Exercise’?
Well, if your goal is building topic-specific fluency, fast, then the 432 exercise is defiantly near the top of the list and close to being “best” (if you don’t know how to do this I include a 30minute detailed training as a free bonus with MEFA which I’ll send you by email right away when you enrol using the link below).
Ultimately the best English learning exercise is the English learning exercise that is right for you, now, and will fix your specific problems and help you achieve your specific goals.
Shadowing works really well… IF it’s the right exercise for you.
Same with dictation.
Same with everything you could possibly do to improve your English.
Which is why in MEFA I teach you a system, complete with a range of exercises for different weaknesses, situations and scenarios… then help you to customise that information to YOU personally via the weekly group coaching calls.
There’s information about the course here:
https://www.doingenglish.com/MEFA
Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook
A study reported in Men’s Health magazine says 91% of women prefer their sex loud and vocal.
In fact, most said the louder the better.
Others said the only time silent sex is “sexy” is when you’re doing it in public and trying not to get caught…
And only 9% of women surveyed said they were satisfied by quiet sex where their guy didn’t make any noise, moan or say anything.
Now, while I might now know way around the bedroom pretty well, I’m certainly not an expert on the **psychology** of good sex. So the following is pure conjecture on my part.
But…
These percentages make perfect sense to me, because generally speaking—though this is somewhat culture-specific—people are ALWAYS very uncomfortable will silence.
It’s the way we’ve evolved.
For our ancient ancestors, small talk was how we worked out whether someone was friend or foe. According to small-talk researcher Justine Coupland, silence suggests distance between people. Which suggests a potential enemy. Conversation fills the gap — closes the distance — and creates bonds between people. It connects us and brings us close.
So good relationships (whether work-related or personal) come from good communication.
Now, I’m not saying you should make small talk while you fuck.
But I am saying that being loud and talking dirty is a form of communication, and like any kind of communication when done right it serves an important purpose – it closes the distance created by silence.
Doesn’t matter whether it’s personal or business, either…
In English speaking cultures if you’re sitting in silence and not contributing to a conversation, people probably aren’t seeing you in a positive way.
I can help you fix this in MEFA:
https://www.doingenglish.com/MEFA
Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook
Stop trying to “edit” your English speaking as you speak.
That ain’t a good strategy.
In fact, it’s a bloody terrible strategy — and it’ll lead to all kinds of bad habits.
Like being slow and awkward when you speak… and normally making MORE mistakes and sounding LESS natural than if you just let go or the need to speak well.
The same is true of writing.
Im terrible for trying to edit my work as I go. But really, this just slows me down and kills the flow I what I want to say.
So been experimenting with an app called ILYS.
Basically, you set a word count you want to reach—for this email I’ve set it at 300 words—then start writing. But the app hides the screen, and it disables the delete key. You can’ delete, can’t see what you’re doing, and you can’t stop until you reach the word count.
You’re forced to just write.
There’s nothing else you can do.
What this does is force you to write in free-flow. All you can do is type. Keep moving forward.
The result is, what you want to say flows much more smoothly, and comes out sounding much more coherent and concise.
On the other hand, If I try to edit as I go, my mind isn’t able to flow in the same way, because I’m constantly stopping and starting, interrupting my thoughts.
Now, the downside of this of is you have more editing to do at the end…. BUT it’s never as bad as you expect. In fact, there usually isn’t much to change at all… if anything. Yesterday’s email just needed a quick spellcheck. That was it. So not only does the end writing—like this email—flow better, I get it done much, much, MUCH faster.
Now, speaking is a little different.
There’s no written record, and you can’t change what you’ve already said before it goes out to your listener.
But there is a way you can “edit” your conversations after you have them to turn them into extremely effective learning experiences so you don’t make the same mistakes next time.
It’s called “retrodictive learning”.
And I teach this method in Week 6 of the MEFA course:
https://www.doingenglish.com/MEFA
Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook