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

Filed Under: Business Conference, Conference, English confidence, Public Speaking, Speaking English

How can I speak English more efficiently in conferences?

August 17, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

There are two ways to speak English efficiently when you’re attending conferences.

Here’s an extract:




The first thing is repetition.

Repetition is the key. You need to expose yourself to the type of English they use in those conferences as much as possible. What can be useful is to find recordings of past conferences or similar conferences which you can try and integrate into your usage time. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. You can just play those recordings in the background as you clean your house, or whatever it is you’re doing.

But you can also use these conference recordings as your study materials. Find out the topic-specific language that may be slowing you down. Try to point out what it is you’re having problems with. Then learn where the possible holes are so you can be more efficient when it’s your turn to speak (or ask questions) in conferences.

Now, the second thing is to stop worrying too much.

You have to go easy on yourself because it will get easier over time. And if, for example, you’re asking questions at a conference, you just have to prepare beforehand. Ease your difficulty in speaking up in English at conferences by preparing for it. But, the reality of it is… you probably can’t prepare for what you need to say all the time. So if that happens, just go easy on yourself. Instead, try to attune your brain to different ways of approaching English and being in English speaker mode. Because speaking the type of English you want to do is just really going to come from doing more English over time.

So yes, you need to stop worrying about English. But at the same time, you also need to study and prepare for what type of English you need for these types of conferences. Find the balance between focus intensive studying and relaxed English usage. There are several ways you can do this, but if you’re interested in the methods I use the best place to start is the one-hour free training that I created. You’ll learn the 5 key changes my best clients make to improve their English as higher-level English learners.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: Burnout

On the consequences of burnout and importance of doing nothing

August 16, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

In the spirt of full disclosure: over the last two months, I’ve been suffering the effects of burnout.

I’ve been exhausted most of the time, sleeping a lot and struggling to find the motivation to do anything. Reality also becomes detached and distant, and I’d find myself unable to remember what day it is or what I’d been doing for the days previously.

It’s getting better now (I’ve been resting a lot and have help).

And I’ll write more about this another time.

But for now, I want to share an email I wrote more than a year ago when I was in New York. Some of the things it talks about are out of date now (for example my PhD is long finished), but it contains an important message that I believe everyone should pay attention to.

Indeed, it’s one I needed to remind myself of, too.

—– START —–

These last couple of days I’ve been thinking a lot about doing nothing.

You’d think it’d be easy.

But actually, it’s really not.

Now, for context I’ve been doing my friend Hitomi’s “One Day One Unit” online course.

And this got me thinking about something I want to do, but have never seemed to be able to get to grips with.

Doing nothing.

What tends to happen is either I’ll be busy with something, and this will force me to use my time effectively.
Take last week: I had to get my final PhD thesis edited and submitted by Sunday evening (to be in on Monday morning). But I also had to keep going with various tasks like videos, these daily emails and MEFA homework feedback. So every morning I’m up early with a clear plan, checking everything off my list so that I can get on with the main, long and difficult task of editing a thesis from lunchtime.

And I’m super productive!

But at the end of the day, I’m totally exhausted and dead.

Then there’s this week: I’ve got plenty of time to do nothing. But I’m NEVER doing nothing. Because what happens is I get up late. Then faff around procrastinating. Of course, I’ve still got to do videos and MEFA homework feedback…. but I’m putting it off until later. I’m not doing ‘nothing’, because I’m thinking about having to do all these things and can’t just switch off as I should.

Like today, when I had to work out. It took me 15mins once I actually did it… at 5pm, after thinking about how I can’t be bothered since 9am.

So at the end of the day, I’m STILL totally exhausted and tired.

Instead, here’s the conclusion I’ve come to:

Doing nothing is an important and time-consuming task. Just as important as proofreading a PhD thesis or any of the other things I do. And it needs to be given priority.

And just like anything else super important, this means I need to get up, get everything done.

Then I sit and just do nothing.

Doing nothing is a task. An important one to be scheduled like any other.

And the result of this is that at the end of the day, I’m relaxed and energised. I sleep better, think better and get up better.

Now, this is very relevant to you.

But this is getting super long, so I’ll talk about this more another day. in the meantime if you want my help mastering English once and for all, consider joining us in MEFA.

https://www.doingenglish.com/mefa

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

P.S. For interested people: on August 30th I’ll be doing another “special” live training event. This time we’ll be discussing how to help your kids learn English along with you.

If you don’t have kids this won’t be of interest.

But if you do, you’ll probably want to be there.

As always this event will be free to active MEFA and EES members (I don’t have any plans to make it available to anyone else).

Filed Under: English fluency

Does getting drunk increase English fluency?

August 16, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

Interesting question.

Yes, getting drunk can increase your English fluency… but only within reason. Because once you reach a tipping point (i.e., if you drink too much), you’ll just rapidly descend into a mumbling mess. You’re just not going to make any sense in English or even in your native tongue for that matter.




Now, the reason having a drink helps with your English fluency is the same reason why having a drink helps with social anxiety. See, alcohol switches off a part of your brain that stands in the way of your self-sabotage. Alcohol helps block that part of your brain that makes you think stuff like, “I’m not good enough!” or “I better shut up, they’re going to think I’m stupid!”

Alcohol, in a way, is kind of like an anaesthetic. It suppresses that part of your brain that overthinks, so you’ll naturally feel more confident to just go for it. You give far less of a shit about your mistakes. You get to focus on the DOING of the process rather than the self-destructive analysis and what people might think of you.

So, yes. Essentially, in terms of fluency (and if you want to look at it on a table for scale)… getting drunk does reduce your cognitive load. (Cognitive load is what we call the multiple things happening in your head, you can learn more about this in my coaching classes).

Once you remove self-destructive thoughts in your brain, you’re going to find yourself caring less about your English. Then it will no longer hamper your English fluency.

But if you want to sound like a native English speaker (even when you’re sober), you can start with the free guide I made here.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: Speaking English

Will using hard words in English make me sound smarter?

August 13, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

There isn’t exactly any particular word you should know to sound more intelligent. In fact, using hard words in English doesn’t automatically make you sound smarter.




But… it depends on whom you’re talking to and what the context is.

A lot of people assume that if you use these big, difficult-sounding, sophisticated, complex, flowery words in English… people will think you’re an intelligent person.

Not really. That’s just not the case.

Let me put it this way:

There’s this book I’ve read written by a guy named Ammon Shea. So, in his book, he said that he read the ENTIRE Oxford English Dictionary (the huge multi-volume ones, mind you) which took him a whole year. And by now you’re probably thinking “Oh, his English might have improved then.” But no, not really. In fact, he concluded that reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary was a total waste of time. All it did was give himself a headache… and learn words that he’ll probably never even use.

And it’s the same when you try to use hard words in all your conversations. And when you insist to use these hard words (even if there’s no need to use them)… then you’ll just end up confusing the person you’re talking to.

See, a true advanced English speaker is somebody who can use English very flexibly, regardless of how complicated the word is. What I mean by this is if you use hard, very complex English words, you’d have to use them in a way that will make sense. But if you communicate things in a very simple way, you’ll sound far more intelligent.

Again, you always have to think about whom you’re talking to. And if what you’re saying will make sense to them.

An example of this is if I use the word “chunk” with my (now ex) PhD supervisor. I won’t use the word “chunk” with her because it’s just too vague. Instead, I’ll use more specific words like “lexical bundles” because it would make much more sense to her. But again, this is because I’m talking to her regarding an academic topic.

Whereas if I’m talking to my coaching clients, I will use the word “chunks” because it would make more sense to them. And they’d know exactly what I was talking about.

Again, it depends on the person you’re talking to and what you’re actually talking about.

By the way, speaking of “chunks”.

If you’re looking to speak clearer, more natural-sounding English learning to chunk your speech well will make you sound much, much more intelligent than simply filling your sentences with fancy words. That’s why I made this free guide to teach you how to do this.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook