Filed Under: Habits, Learning English

What are some small tweaks you can make to your routine to make sure English happens?

December 16, 2020 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

A lot of people struggle to turn up every day and get their English study done — and you’re probably one of them.

But often, all it takes is a few tweaks to your habits and routine.

It’s much better for me to go running in the morning.

It gives me more energy throughout the day, most of my good ideas come while running, and I end up sleeping better at night if I run early.

But you know what it’s like.

You get up, make a coffee then the computer goes on. Before you know it you’re checking emails and then something else comes along, and you end up going straight into work (or whatever else) and the running—or English study—gets left until later.

For me, there was a simple solution.

I sleep in nothing but a t-shirt and my pants (stop thinking about it) and when I get up, it’s bloody cold.

So now I get dressed straight into my running stuff.

I’m still not going to go out until I’ve had my coffee and checked my emails. But it’s much harder to forget to go out running completely when you’re already dressed for running… and so it happens, consistently, every morning.

It’s all down to habits.

One action—putting on running clothes—naturally leads into another — actually doing out running.

What are some small tweaks you can make to your routine to make sure English happens?

Think about it.

Now, the next question is what are you going to do in that time? And what is the optimal, most effective way to set up your routine?

That’s what we’ll do in MEFA.

If you want a place I recommend you add yourself to the waiting list:

https://www.doingenglish.com/MEFA

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: fluent english, thinking in English

Should you be trying to “practise” thinking in English?

December 15, 2020 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

If you’re worried about how to practise thinking in English, you’re doing something very wrong.

You don’t “practise” thinking in English.

You either do it or you don’t.

Now, walking down the road fantasising in English… yes… when you’re at, say, the supermarket, having English in your head… yes.

And you can try to consciously make this happen…

But if you’re doing things right, you shouldn’t *need* to make it consciously happen – it should happen anyway, all by itself.




First, the better you get at English, the more you’ll think in English.

Second, the better the way you learn English, the more you’ll think in English right from the start without your first language ever getting in the way.

I learned Japanese to a very high level (not perfect, but enough that I worked in a Japanese company all in the language, and worked as a translator for a while, too). Personally, I never had any problem with translating in my head – I always “thought” in Japanese right from the start, even if in the beginning when it wasn’t much. If I’m speaking Japanese, my head is all in Japanese. And it was always like that.

But I had a big advantage compared to most people: I was a terrible student at school and failed languages (French in my cause). So I had no bad habits.

Basically, if you’re studying grammar rules and trying to combine those with words when you speak… or learning via translations in your native language… then it’s only natural you’ll “think” in your native language. Because it’s the way you learn that’s causing the problem.

My recommendation:

  1. When you’re doing something in English, don’t try to “learn English” — instead, just do. And do as much as you can in English.
  2. But also have a block of time every day where you are intentionally studying English (so that your English grows) — but the key here is a balance between learning and just doing.
  3. Stop trying to speak with grammar and words, and instead learn (and speak) in larger “chunks” (which is how native speakers speak).
    If you’re stuck with your English and not moving forward, don’t worry.

I can show you a better way to learn.

MEFA enrolment will open for January 2021 on Dec 24th.

This is normally the fastest-filling month of the year and if you want a place I advise you to add yourself to the waiting list:

https://www.doingenglish.com/MEFA

Note: I’ll be closing the waiting list for this month on Dec 20th.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: Learning Vocabulary

Is it useful to learn vocabulary only?

December 15, 2020 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

This is a question that came up recently:

Is it useful to learn vocabulary (only words) in English instead of phrases? How can I easily remember these when I start to speak?

So this is two very different questions, and they have contradictory answers.




Yes, it’s always “useful” to learn vocabulary.

All words are used somewhere, after all. But that doesn’t mean that memorising lists of words will be the best thing for improving your English proficiency (it almost definitely won’t be).

Once you hit the intermediate level, just learning more vocabulary won’t do much (or anything) for your fluency. In fact, it might make it worse. Learning random vocabulary also won’t do much for your naturalness — in fact, it might make it worse.

The point is, if your goal is to speak more fluently and naturally, no just learning more and more (only) words won’t help much and there are much better things you can do.

More: memorising only words is the worst way to “easily remember” them.

The reason is the same as why it won’t help build fluency and naturalness much — with few exceptions, we don’t speak in individual words.

We speak in “chunks” of language (and yes, phrases are a kind “chunk”).

Human memory isn’t designed to learn random individual bits of information and remember it — it’s designed to build information into a network, with every bit connected to something else. There are many ways I help my clients do this, but the quickest and simplest is to learn English in context, not from lists, and learn in larger blocks of English (phrases and chunks) and not in tiny bits (words).

Anyway.

You get the idea.

If you’re stuck with your English and not moving forward, things like “just learn more words” really aren’t going to help you much.

I can show you a better way, but it’ll be a shit-ton of work and my time is very expensive. So it’s only for people who see real value in better English.

If that’s you?

MEFA enrolment will open for January 2021 on Dec 24th.

This is normally the fastest-filling month of the year and if you want a place I advise you to add yourself to the waiting list:

https://www.doingenglish.com/mefa

Best,
Julian Northbrook

Filed Under:

Just Because Your Grammar is “Correct”, Doesn’t Mean You Sound Natural

November 24, 2020 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

A couple of weeks ago, current MEFA member Tung Yen made a very insightful comment about the Week 8 homework.

The important part is the bit about “the rain is heavy”, which is being taught to English learners as “correct” English, but is in reality quite a strange thing to say and very unnatural in almost all contexts.

Hi Julian,

Thanks for your comment on my week 8 homework

I’m writing this email because I think I just witnessed the problem of YouTube English learning materials after watching this week’s feedback.

Before I sent out my email, I did some research about some of the most common mistranslations Mandarine speakers make. And I found a video which literally listed 22 example of mistranslations we make and the host also corrected all of them.

Unfortunately, even though he gives us “correct” answers, some of them are still unnatural. Like one of the examples he pointed out – “The rain is big” is not correct. But “The rain is heavy” is correct but extremely unnatural.

This channel has more than five hundred thousand subscribers and this particular video also got five hundred thousand views.

Now I realise how “dangerous” it is to learn English on the internet. I remember when I was watching this video, I was like “oh! Wow! I made this mistake too.” Or “Gotta remember this and so I don’t make the same mistake next time.”

I did feel a little bit odd but it’s an English learning channel, what could go wrong? Right? So I didn’t even check how people really use it using the tools you taught us.

And it turns out, “The rain is heavy” is still wrong and doesn’t make it any better.

Sure, there are some good materials but there are also lots of “fake” good materials that a non-native speaker couldn’t spot.

Now I’m so overwhelmed. I just couldn’t believe that it’s so easy to find out the “Fake” good materials on this random point. I really wanted to share my experience with the group.

Have a nice day
Tung Yen

Exactly.

While “The rain is heavy” is grammatically correct, it’s very unnatural and almost never used.

It only has 3 hits from English-speaking countries in the data bank which I teach MEFA members how to use in Week 5, and all of those are used as part of longer chunks (e.g. “when the rain is heavy and…”) rather than as a complete expression.

The point is, quality of materials matter.

Enough so that I wrote an entire Ph.D. thesis on the topic.

Just because something is grammatically correct, doesn’t mean it is good English. Native speaker English is characterised by people saying the same high-frequency (and highly natural) chunks of English again and again.

And learning to speak English well is more about learning to select these high-frequency, highly predictable, and very natural sounding chunks yourself.

And that starts with building good intuitions about English.

Not studying grammar.

And not learning random rubbish from lists.

So how do you build these intuitions?

That’s something I help you do in MEFA:

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

Best,
Julian Northbrook

Filed Under:

Julian’s New Non-Sexual Man Crush

November 24, 2020 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

Do you ever see a person and think they’re the coolest person you’ve ever seen?

I’m writing this email from a cafe near my apartment that I love. And there’s a guy sitting at the table opposite.

My new non-sexual man-crush.

He’s old enough to be my dad (not that that makes any difference).

Black casual suit, with a crazy art t-shirt.

Sandals.

Rings, badges down the lapel of the jacket, jewellery and eye-liner.

damn, he looks GOOD.

Really good.

I’m not going to take a picture, because personally, I think that’s super rude. But the whole impression is of someone who has the most amazing stories to tell.

When I was younger, I was into some pretty extreme fashions. I used to wear eyeliner, all black and with some pretty crazy hairstyles. I’ve had it green, pink and ever colour in between. I’ve had dreadlocks, braids and at one point plastic tubing.

Sometime around the point I finished art university, met my now ex-wife and got married and had kids I lost interest in the kind of goth-rock “alternative” lifestyle, and I stopped caring about things like that. I also think I started caring more about how people saw me — possibly a byproduct of living in Japan, where—and I’m sorry to say this—people give far too much of a shit about “keeping up appearances”. I was concerned that people saw me as a responsible dad, a husband and a diligent worker.

And I’m still those things now.

I no longer live with my kids—which I don’t love, but it was better than the alternative for everyone—and I’m no longer an employee.

But when I see people comfortable in their own skin?

Different to the so-called-norm?

I love it.

Well, I’m defiantly still different from the norm.

But everything I’ve said above has a lesson to be learned for you, speaking English as a second language.

You’ll never be a “native speaker” because the very definition of “native” is born into a country and its culture. You can be highly-proficient, or “native-like” but you can’t be native simply because the word actually has nothing to do with how good at English you are.

But that’s a GOOD thing.

You have your own culture, your own stores to tell, and a different perspective — and THAT is huge. It far outweighs the fact you might still make mistakes (although that can be fixed), and it far outweighs the fact you may speak with an accent (something which I don’t think you should fix, though you should aim to be clear and easily understood).

Understand other cultures.

But don’t be them.

That’s not you, and it shouldn’t be. Because you have other things to offer.

If this sounds like an approach that fits with your way of thinking, you can and should consider enroling in MEFA this month, which is now open for enrolment.

The place to go is here:

https://www.doingenglish.com/MEFA

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English Grammar, Natural English

Why do native English speakers sometimes use incorrect grammar?

October 19, 2020 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

At school, you were taught grammatically correct (but often weird sounding) English. But in reality, the way people use a language isn’t this simple.

Sometimes we simply make mistakes.

Some things—like “there’s people”—we say are clearly wrong, but so frequent everyone says it.

Some things we say are very natural but ungrammatical, others are grammatical but unnatural. In fact, Michael Lewis argues that English can never be “correct” or “incorrect” – it’s all about the context, and what we’re trying to do with what we say. You see, sometimes we say things deliberately wrong or in a weird way for dramatic effect.

This topic came up in a recent member’s Group Coaching Call, so I made a video talking about it:




The point is, real language is messy and fully of subtitles. Research in Conversation Analysis is very clear about this, and the idea is not new. But what it means is,  if you want to perform at a “nativelike” level in English, then the approach you take to learning must go much, much deeper than simply learning surface level grammar rules or words.

What if you need my help doing this?

If you’ve already reached a fairly high level in English, but you’re struggling to go beyond that and understand the subtitles of how people speak, as well as speak at a native-like level yourself, you might be a good for for the MEFA Group Coaching course – Information Here.

Best,
Julian Northbrook