Filed Under: English fluency, English learning, Speaking English

Why conversation apps might not help you be fluent in English?

August 26, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

A lot of people make the huge mistake of thinking that conversation apps will magically make them fluent in English.

But that’s not normally true at all.




See, relying on conversation apps ALONE is probably not enough to make you fluent in English.

And it’s the same with just relying on conversations with your teacher or with somebody on italki. And the reason why you won’t get automatically fluent by using apps or speaking with your English teacher/peer is that you’re in a comfortable setting. You feel relaxed when you’re talking to them. And that comfortable setting gives you a false sense of just how good your English is, when in reality… it’s probably not as good as you think it is.

Instead, what you need to do is start with the hardest things, the difficult conversations. Because if you find yourself in high-pressure situations, everything else becomes easier.

Let’s take this analogy for example:

I used to run marathons. I had years of practice with running. I trained in the nice, flat, paved streets of Tokyo. It was so beautiful and everything was easy! I didn’t have to stumble and fall while training, so that was great. But then I ran a marathon for the first time in West Cork, Ireland.. and it was an absolute shit show. I ran through hills, mountains, flooded sections everywhere, and it was even raining! It was absolutely horrible. But after all of those, did I perform well? Hell no. However, when I trained in that environment (no matter how absolutely horrific it was) every other marathon I ran was easy in comparison. And that was because I already got through the worst one.

And the same can be said with learning English. You’ve got to go through difficult, high-pressure situations so everything else becomes easy. But apart from going through hard situations in English, you’ve also got to find the balance between focus intensive learning and using English in relaxed settings.

In fact, you can learn more about this approach (or what I call the Two Track Method) and other useful ways to learn English efficiently. You can start with the free one-hour training I created, which will tell you more about learning English the best way.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English learning, Speaking English

How can I avoid sounding monotonous in English?

August 25, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

There are quite a few things you can do, and several exercises that I use with my ESL clients for doing just this.

For example, three of the top ones:

  1. First, learn to chunk your English properly (this is the number one big thing; native speakers don’t speak in words and rules – they speak in chunks and pronounce language in chunks. Until you learn to articulate your English in the same way, you’ll always sound flat and monotonous — if you’re not sure what “chunking” is or how to do it, have a look at the free training I created here).
  2. Learn to vary the speed of your voice for effect (it’s not true native speakers speaker “fast” – we speed up and slow down all the time.
  3. Practise extremes: one of my favourite is reading aloud in an exaggerated, extreme way. You wouldn’t speak like this in an actual conversation, but by exaggerating in your practise, displaying emotion, anger, excitement, drama etc. in your speech will feel more comfortable.

There are more, but that’ll get you started.

Best,
Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English Improvement, English learning

I found that my English stops improving. What can I do with it?

August 24, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

When you were first learning English, sure you’ll see that you’re improving very fast.

But that’s only because you actually don’t really know anything then. You didn’t even know one English word.

And let’s say you only know a couple of English words as a beginner. And then you learn more words (either during your relaxed time or in your focused intensive learning). That’s already a lot of English! And of course that’s huge!

But see, learning English (as in any language) is exponential.

This means that the difference in the amount of learning you have to do increases more and more the bigger your progress is.

But to a certain extent, the answer to what you can do to improve your English depends on your situation… because everybody’s situation is different.

On its simplest level, if you want to improve your English (as my coaching clients did), you can start with a two-step process. It’s what I like to call the “Two Track Approach” which is:

  1. Focused intensive study (grow your bank of phrases, expressions, chunks, etc.)
  2. Relaxed usage and exposure (i.e., watching English TV programmes, reading English books, etc.)

But again, this depends on what level of English you’re in and what you’re actually aiming to improve on.

If you want to learn more about the Two Track approach (and other useful English-learning methods), you can start with the free training I created.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English Improvement, English learning

How can I improve my English to an advanced level in a short period of time at home?

August 23, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

I learned Japanese to a very high level (fluent enough that I worked in a Japanese company, in Japanese) “at home”, and it’s also what I teach my clients.

When I say “at home” I guess you mean without classes. But honestly? Classes or no classes is simply a preference.

They’re neither sufficient nor necessary to improve in English, anyway. Or, in my experience very effective. The quality of ESL schools in most countries is fairly dubious at best…

So-called English teachers who’ve never learned a second language themselves, who still think “grammar and words” is the best way to teach, who have no clue about any of the developments in second-language research and who are reliant on textbooks (whether they’re appropriate to the student or not) so he (or she) doesn’t have to put any real effort into lesson planning…. yeah, you get the idea.

Anyway… I digress.

To improve in English two things have to happen:

  1. You’ve got to put time into learning and growing your English (study).
  2. And you’ve got to do stuff with that English (preferably real things, in the real world – none of this “speaking to practise” rubbish, which is just kinda pointless).
    If you do those two things every day, you’ll improve.

Find some good learning materials that match what you want to do in English (so if you want to speak well in conversation, find materials that give you natural, accurate samples of dialogues and conversations) and spend time every single day studying them. Then take the English you’ve used and use it in the real world (again, use… none of this “speaking to practise” bullshit).

Improving is as simple as that.

But BOTH steps are 100% necessary.

And of course, make sure you’re using high-quality materials to learn from. Textbooks and notoriously crap, and you should avoid anything that’s basically just “grammar and words” teaching. Ultimately, if you’re learning the wrong thing it’s all a waste of time anyway.

Also, if you have mindset/ confidence issues, you’ll also need to sort those out (you can use the best method in the world and the most amazing learning materials… but if you don’t do anything with it because you don’t have the confidence or think you can’t, well, it’s all a waste of time).

If you want more detail on what method you should use, what materials are best as well as the mindset side of things, I created a free training which shows you the 5 key changes you’ll need to make to see faster progress — you can access it by going here.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: Speaking English

What is the quickest and most efficient strategy to speak English for non-native English speakers?

August 20, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

I’m going to say something controversial: there isn’t actually a “quick” way to learn English.

There are English-learning methods you can use to learn English efficiently… but it’s certainly not quick.

Because the quick way is actually the slow, consistent way.

But for most people, the main thing you will want to do is change the way you learn and speak English. Non-native English speakers have learned English as a system of grammar rules and individual words. So, if this is how you learned English, you’ll end up speaking using these rules. And instead of sounding natural, your English becomes quite robotic.

If you’ve learned that way in school, what you need to do (first and foremost) is to unlearn it. Rather than focusing on grammar rules… focus on “chunks” (a sequence of words that are stored in a native speaker’s brain (you can learn more about “chunks” in this video.)




And, we have all of these chunks of English encoded in our long-term memory. So whenever we speak, we just pull all of those chunks out of our memory and use them. And these could be short or long… and that’s why we speak very fluently and efficiently. We don’t actually need any of these “rules” to be able to speak native-like.

So, again, if you want to speak English quickly and efficiently, don’t focus on words. Use chunks and speak confidently. But if you really want to sound like a native English speaker, I have a free guide here you can use to start speaking like a native English speaker.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English learning

Does sleep impact my English learning?

August 18, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

If you’re tired and lack sleep… it is going to impact your English learning.




It’ll affect your ability to focus, stay motivated, and retain what you learn.

And this goes with your other activities as well.

Including how well you perform in English (i.e. when you’re actually using and speaking it).

I’ve also had my fair share of extreme insomnia. I would just lie awake night after night and just not able to sleep. Sometimes I can even go an entire week with just 2-3 hours of sleep. And you know, whenever that happens, my ability to speak English clearly (even though English is my first language) just plummets.

So, yes, sleep is extremely important.

A great example of how sleep affects your English ability is with one of my coaching clients. She was really struggling with her English until she had a breakthrough. She started to build a healthy routine: exercising, changing dietary habits, and yes, sleeping. And that was completely transformative. Because just sorting out your issue of sleep will just make everything fall into place.

Again, sleep is important. And it’s definitely something you need to consider doing more of if you want to speak better English.

Anyway.

If you’re looking to improve your English, start with the one-hour free training course that I made. You’ll learn the 5 changes my clients make to learn English faster and with less hassle.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook