welcome to the effortless English show with the world's number one English teacher AJ Hoge where AJ's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the boring textbooks classrooms and grammar drills here's AJ with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly hi I'm AJ Hoge the author of effortless English learn to speak English like a native and this is the effortless English show the show that teaches you to speak English powerfully I was standing with my knees bent in a deep stance called a horse stance
my legs were shaking pain shot up through my thigh muscles the top of my legs up into my hips and into my lower back I was pouring sweat sweat was beating up on my forehead and running down my neck my karate uniform was already wet in the back in the chest from the sweat coming off of my body I looked down at my legs looking at them shake vibrating it was it was strange it was like they were completely uncontrolled I couldn't stop the shaking it's like they had their own brain their own mind and
my legs were quite thin actually because at that time I was only 13 years old and I I grit my teeth uh you know clenched my jaw tightened my teeth and my jaw and just told myself mentally silently to keep going keep going don't stand up in front of the class the instructor walked back and forth looking at us they were probably 15 students with me all around my age 13 14 years old all of us had our knees bent we look like we were riding a horse in fact it was called a horse stance
so when you you squat down you bend your knees actually more than 45 degrees almost 90 degrees like you're squatting down looks like you're riding a horse except there's no horse there's nothing supporting you only your own leg muscles the instructor looked at us all of us struggling all of us with our legs shaking and he calmly said reverse punches each knee son counting in Japanese 1 2 3 I'll count in English since this is an English show with each count we punched we used all the power in our hips we tried to use our
our exhausted legs to pop our punches out punch staying in that deep stance the instructor calmly walked around as he came behind me he tapped my leg a little with his hand and he said AJ lower and then he just moved on and I already exhausted my legs shaking uncontrollably I willed myself I used all of my self-discipline to lower myself a little deeper another inch into this stance and my muscles screamed with pain and exhaustion he just kept counting four five six seven and each time he passed someone he made a little comment to
one of the students more power from your hips more snap with your punch deeper stance deeper stance all of us were sweating it was a hot day and we're inside this oven of a room with no air-conditioning and the teacher sensei porta we called him since a is the word for teacher in Japanese and his last name was porta there's a middle-aged man of fact when I think about it he was probably about my age right now thin guy super calm in the three or so years I studied with since a bored I guess was
about two and a half years I don't think I ever heard him shout never he never shouted at anybody in fact I don't think I even ever heard him really raise his voice and he kind of had a commanding voice when he wanted to you know deeper stance one two a little bit loud but he never yelled there was never any anger in his voice he was always perfectly calm but it was amazing never seen anybody so calm he continued counting eight nine ten eleven with each count we continued punching and we're all we're all
dying at this point because this is just almost like a torture this just keeps going on and on eventually I look over I see out of the corner of my right eye one of the students stood up couldn't take it anymore needed to rest his legs since a four to never yelled he didn't say anything just looked at him kind of stared at him for a second and the student saw that the teacher was looking at him took a breath and lowered himself back down into the stance again on and on it went and all
of his lasted longer than we ever imagined we could and after all we were just kids at this point you know 12 13 14 year old kids and somehow without yelling about screaming with without scaring us using any kind of fear he managed to push us to our limit or perhaps as I said Shh perhaps I should say he managed to get us to push ourselves to our limit the reason I'm talking about since a porter right now is that uh last week on Twitter and Facebook I asked for suggestions for today's show for topic
I couldn't think of a topic I wanted to talk about so ask for suggestions there were many many good suggestions but one of them caught my eye and caught my attention and it was from someone on Facebook that said AJ talked about one of your teachers that inspired you maybe when you were younger and I thought about it I thought about it and I thought about it and sadly I couldn't really think of any teachers from school that truly inspired me not really and so I was about to ignore that suggestion and look at some
of the other ones and try something else and then I remembered since a porta and I remembered this moment especially well come back to sensei port in a minute let me go to Twitter in fact and answer a few questions and when I come back I'll talk about how you can find the best teacher the best coach for you what should you look for when you look for a school I know you're using effortless English and that's great hopefully you like my lessons you like my style but I know also that many people in the
audience many listeners many members would like to actually have a face-to-face teacher go to a school so I'll talk about how since they porta and his example can help you find the very best teachers in life not just with English but in all areas of life whenever you're looking for a teacher or a school the first twitter all right our first Twitter question comes from Xu CTP and she asks what specific steps do I need to follow she's a teacher to help teach my students with the effortless English method mm-hmm that's a very complicated and
kind of long answer what second than me Oh water hmm excuse me in fact I did a full teacher training course a couple years ago and it was I think was about two months long so to really train a teacher it requires a good amount of time so I can't give you a full deep answer to this question but I give you a few suggestions quick suggestions and basically what you'll see me do if you ever watch a video of mine from one of my seminars first thing I do is I create a story a
meaning story a simple funny little story the story should always be easy for the students so you have to know your own students to know what's easy for them then I identify maybe a couple words or phrases or grammar something that might be a little difficult for them that might be new for them I teach them those new phrases with actions with gestures with actions and repeat and repeat and repeat until they completely know the new phrases after that then I use the mini-story technique if you have my courses if you have my lessons then
you know what that is I tell a story asking lots of questions and so they get even more repetition of those target new phrases and you know to tell a story maybe it takes me 30 minutes depends sometimes longer sometimes a little shorter and then finally I would tell the same story again using a different point of view changing the grammar so if the original version of the story was in the past then I might tell it again in the present and in the future something like that those are the basic steps repeat every day
that's my fastest teacher training that I can give you all right okay ah let's see understand but my question is should of doing okay this is a common question noon creative says I listen to lesson one and understood the mini-story but my question is what should I do in order to go to lesson number two so this is a common question I get from a lot of members who have my courses who have my lessons and they want to know when should they go to the next one so there's not a strict tough rule about
this but I have some general suggestions general guidelines first of all always always always repeat the audios or videos in a lesson at least seven days in a row seven is the minimum so you have lesson one it has several audios so day one you listen to all of the audios even if you understand everything even if they all seem easy it doesn't matter on day two you repeat them again on day three you repeat the same ones again day four day five day six and day seven repeating every single lesson at least seven times
before you move to the next one now you might go longer you might repeat more seven is the minimum many of our very best members the ones that get the best results repeat more ten days in a row or more fourteen days even perhaps even longer so even if it feels easy to you you might repeat more just to learn more deeply that's very helpful it's powerful the other reason you would go longer would be if the lesson still felt difficult to you if after seven days of repetition you still felt like there was some
part you didn't automatically understand quickly it still seemed a little fast something like that then repeat keep going to eight days nine days ten days 14 days 20 days there's no upper limit the only upper limit is if you really really start getting completely sick of the lesson and getting bored then you could go to the next one and then you could even still come back and review that first one again at a later time so that's my best suggestion for when you go forward at least seven days more is even better all right back
to sensei Porta my inspiring teacher from my youth so another reason I I thought of talking about sensei porta was that last week I talked about the movie whiplash interesting movie it's got a sort of the opposite of sensei porta in that movie a drumming teacher a music teacher who is just super tough and and horrible and really negative and mean and cruel and I think a lot of people watch that movie and well some people watch that movie and think that guy's terrible thank God I don't have a teacher like that but I know
some people watch that movie and they think maybe if I had a teacher like the guy in whiplash someone who was mean and pushed me maybe I would get better results maybe that's true but in my life after observing many many many teachers after being a teacher myself for God so many years 15 almost 20 years maybe I don't think so I don't think the whiplash type of teacher that kind of army style of yelling at students and making them afraid and trying to find their weaknesses and trying to break them it's not the best
method of teaching or coaching in fact that method only works I think in one situation and that is a military type of situation and in that kind of situation what is the teacher trying to do the teachers trying to get rid of the weak people and only to find the very very strongest that's the whiplash style that's the military style of teaching get rid of everybody except the very top the toughest and the strongest that's not very useful for most people it's not actually very effective for most situations either you want to find a great
coach let's just imagine you want to learn how to play music we'll play the guitar I think the sense a porto style of tea of coaching is the most effective see the thing is that man was able to push a bunch of thirteen-year-old boys to their limit he made us find our own self-discipline to keep going why did we do it because we wanted to please him because we respected him so much he was such a calm guy but he was always very respectful to us like I said he never yelled at us he never
insulted anybody because he was so respectful because he was so confident we admired him we wanted to be like him and we also felt that he cared deeply about us we could tell now since a porter he didn't give many compliments almost never he didn't insult us but he also didn't compliment as much he wasn't always saying good job good job good job not his style but here's the thing because he almost never did it when he did it really meant a lot if he said good job good punch good kick something like that Wow
you got really excited you tried not to show it but you know you always would feel inside like a little your heart would beat a little faster you know a little smile get on your face he said he said I was good today that's great I think those are the best kinds of teachers and coaches the ones you love the ones you want to impress because you respect them so much and you love them so much and you feel that they respect you they're the ones that get the most from you there are different kinds
you know some of them do say good job they praise more they compliment or others like sensei Porter not so much but there's always at heart a deep respect that you feel for them and you and you know that they also feel it for you they show it so how does this help you well let's say you're looking for a conversation partner something as simple as a partner to practice your English with yeah someone you want to meet with online or in person and just chat with just practice speaking English just for fun so there
are lots of opportunities lots of people you could find that do this you could go to a web site like I talked EECOM where they have lots of conversation partners in many different languages and you're going to find lots and lots of people there who speak English or native English speakers and you can pay them to chat with you or I think you can sometimes even do an exchange so you don't have to pay money you talk to them in your language if they want to learn your language and vice versa so anyway it's very
important the kind of person that you choose for this situation very important I mean in the end of the worst possible situation I think you might find get somebody like the whiplash guy who's going to correct every single mistake you make who's going to make you feel terrible and stupid and embarrassed that would be the worst situation unlikely I think but uh but still possible you can imagine what might happen to you if you got someone like that for most people someone like that would destroy their confidence I mean here you are at effortless English
trying to rebuild your confidence after years in school the last thing you want is a conversation partner who makes you feel embarrassed or stupid or foolish more likely would be somebody who just doesn't care very much maybe they have kind of low energy yeah they talk to you but they don't make much effort they don't inspire you very much they don't give you much motivation they don't encourage you very much just kind of in so so that's the normal thing it's the same if you were trying to find a conversation partner or a tutor in
your own town face to face again most just kind of so-so if you actually looked for classes or schools yeah the vast majority unfortunately mediocre meaning not good maybe not terrible just kind of you know if you've ever been to a in English class or English schools you know what mediocre means mmm so so again why waste your money on that you know you're in most cases you're probably going to be paying some kind of money to be chatting with someone or to be attending some kind of class or course so to do it with
somebody who just gives you no energy who doesn't motivate you it doesn't encourage you does it make you feel more excited more confident about your English it doesn't seem to care that much doesn't and therefore you don't really respect them that much you're going to get poor results you can have a very poor experience with that kind of tutor or conversation partner or coach or teacher so what are you looking for you're looking for that sense a poor that kind of person what are the characteristics how can you find out how do you know if
they're that kind of person or not well let me give you a few traits a few things to look for number one energy enthusiasm now it doesn't mean they have to be crazy like me and yelling and good that's my style it's fine but all people are not are not like that since they Porto was not like that as I said he didn't praise people all the time I usually praise a lot he certainly didn't run around and jump around and go crazy like I do but yet he still had energy right it was a
little bit of a quieter energy but it was there he had a kind of a power an energy you could feel it and especially if you meet people in person even through video like this on skype for example you can feel it so if you try a conversation partner online with Skype or something you feel their energy right you talked to them for 10 minutes 15 minutes to try them you kind of notice right do they do they have energy so they have a little bit of power is their voice loud are they talking kind
of quiet you can look at their their posture right since they poured I had straight posture his shoulders were back Ryan his chin was up he had strong eye contact that shows energy mental energy emotional energy notice that when you're choosing a tutor or a partner number two you're looking for dedication and some kind of discipline in other words they should care you want to feel that they really care about what they're doing if you're paying them any kind of money at all even two dollars an hour you want someone who cares how do you
how do you notice that how do you find that out it can be tricky right I mean everyone will say they care if you ask them directly but how do you know if they really care well if you're on an online website like I talked II read the profiles you'll notice the people who don't care they maybe write two sentences they don't give me they don't give you much information that kind of shows that they don't care that much not that important to them the people who care more will give you doesn't mean they have
to write a long long one but they'll give you more information they'll tell you more about themselves they'll tell you how they think they can help you for example be looking for that in a profile or if you're meeting someone face to face again interview them a little bit ask them you know well how you know do you have other students what do you do with them how do you help your students just these simple questions will give you an idea of their dedication the ones that don't care they'll just kind of be very vague
in general oh well you know I just talked to you and we'll see what happens you know they'll be very vague again you'll you'll be able to feel it if you're noticing pay attention the ones who are committed they tend to be more a little more organized and they're going to they'll bill tell you clearly how they can help you know they might say look I'm going to I'm going to give you a lot of it I'm just going to chat with you about what you like but I'm happy to change you know if you
want to talk about business we can talk about that if you want to bring topics then we can talk about your topics if you prefer I could bring articles or things or suggested topics right they're going to talk to you and try to find out what you want and they're going to try to be helpful to you that's how you know if they're actually dedicated right we loved since a porta because even though he made us work really hard we knew that he was trying to help us be the best he was trying to help
us get better to reach our own goals I mean we were all there taking karate for our own reasons some of us you know wanted to do it for sport some of us were being bullied or had been bullied and we wanted to defend be able to defend ourselves we all had our reasons and so he was there to help us achieve our goals so when he was tough with us we knew it wasn't for his ego it wasn't to make him feel like a tough guy or something we could sense that we could tell
he was doing it to help us get stronger and that's why we loved him he was dedicated to helping us so energy and dedication and I guess the third thing I would look for which would just be a personality match and in other words their personality their style fits you the main thing I look for in personality I suggest you do too is that they are respectful that they are respectful of you they respect you as a person they respect you as a learner that means they respect your time if they show up late you
know 10-15 minutes late to your meeting all the time that's not respecting you very much if they come and they're not prepared at all if that's not respecting you if they come and they're they're hungover because they were out drinking the night before or they're just kind of tired that's not respecting you they treat you like you're foolish because you you don't speak English well that's not respectful either so look for that as well so look for those three things whenever you look for a coach conversation partner anybody that you'll be working with and you
know this goes beyond English too if you were going to learn to play the guitar you'll be the same three things I would recommend for a guitar teacher same for sports doesn't matter all right let's take a few more Twitter questions and then I'll get you little news tell you about what I'm doing what's happening in effortless English I've got a new publication my book was published in a new version and I'll talk to you about that after Twitter back to Twitter all right okay this is a about an idiom 92 bakery asks uh I
want to know the meaning of the of the idiom sweep her there sings my teacher taught me the idiom sweep her on her feet and I want to know the meaning and can I say I will sweep you on your feet okay um that's a great little idiom but it's that phrase right it's actually a little bit incorrect oh no error correction don't worry relax I just want to make sure you use it correctly so the correct way to say that is actually sweep her off her feet off her feet not on her feet and
when you sweep we usually use this for women when you say you sweep a woman off her feet it means you're super romantic it means you make her fall in love with you so sweet uh this may be you know in one of my old hitch lessons I did about a movie lesson about the movie hitch I actually taught this phrase sweep her off her feet because it's in the movie it's in the beginning of the movie so if a man sweeps her off her feet he sweeps her off her feet what does he do
he's he does something super romantic and it makes her feel love for him so can you use it in the future I will sweep her off her feet I will sweep you off your feet definitely you can use it for the future so this might be something if you're really a confident guy you could go up to a girl and say I will sweep you off your feet now after you say that do something romantic follow it up don't just say it and then don't do anything she'll be expecting something amazing if you say that
I will sweep you off your feet so maybe not that moment but sometime during that week do something cool do something romantic I don't know buy her a bunch of roses or do something even more creative but it's usually it's a create kind of a creative romantic gesture a creative romantic action that's how you sweep a girl off her feet usually now if you're really good with words some guys can sweep a woman off her feet simply by using romantic words good luck with that thank you to bakery that come back to us and tell
us on Twitter if it worked right okay let's see a few people just saying oh thank you so much thank you for your teaching well thank you I you know there's this great thing that happens with with teachers like sensei porta these these wonderful teachers and their students I saw it at that young age when I was 13 years old and I now see it in effortless English in my own life and that is this when the teacher is or even tries to be inspiring and caring and respectful they attract students who are similar who
are also inspiring who are wonderful who are helpful who are respectful we're just great people sensei Portas school was filled with those kind of people I mean it's one of the best experiences I've ever had in my life learning karate if we want to pronounce it in the Japanese way karate with sensei Porta not only was he a great man his senior students you know his kind of assistant instructors were also just amazing people and everybody in that school all the other students the adult students and the young students the kids I don't know is
it's because he attracted those kind of people and then those kind of people all working together I know inspired him I know he enjoyed and loved teaching because he had those wonderful students and it's the same way I feel you know I tried be inspiring I try to do my best sure I certainly try to be respectful and I certainly care about you and I've noticed that our members are effortless English members are also wonderful and caring and positive and because you're so wonderful and caring and positive and you you say these wonderful things to
me on Twitter and and and when I meet you face-to-face and in VIP webinars it gives me that amazing feeling of inspiration - you inspire me you give me meaning you energize me and then of course I take that energy and try to give it back to you and so you give it to me I give it to you it wouldn't work if it was just one way it was just me trying to do it all the time I would get burned out I couldn't keep going and if it was you just you saying this
stuff to me you probably get sick of it too but you say it to me has idea back and forth we're giving each other this amazing positive energy we're inspiring each other that's why it's a community it's not just me it doesn't work if it's just me it doesn't work if it's just you it works because it's all of us doing this with each other inspiring each other so thank you one more Twitter question and then on to the effortless English news okay let's see um funny videos sorry I'm looking for one specific one here
okay um so that this is just a general question but it is again it's a common one it's a common worry that people have this is so this is the one I was looking for and I don't know how to pronounce this Vietnamese name so new mune buh one but I says AJ you know I've been listening for many months but I feel like I still am not able to speak completely fluently please give me your advice now the numbers that I get in these kind of questions change you know I've been listening for three
months I've been listening for six months I've been listening for nine months I've been listening for four months you know so I get this kind of question very frequently people get worried I understand you know the same thing happens in my own Spanish learning you know every now and then I kind of freak out and I get worried oh my god I've been doing this for four months you know where I've been I've been listening intensely for two months and I'm still not fluent and I don't know you know it's normal I freaked out about
it too we all do right I think the reason we do is because well first of all we have a vision of perfection in our mind when we say fluent many times what we really mean is perfection perfect I don't speak English perfectly yet right it's never good enough guess what you never will speak it perfectly because I don't speak it perfectly in fact just in this show what at the beginning of the show right I was struggling to say the word should right I messed up the pronunciation a few times I'm a native speaker
this being English but I don't know 45 years I speak professionally people pay me to come and speak and I had trouble pronouncing the word should so guess what you're also going to have problems it sits with you for life relax about it so that's my first bit of advice for this the second piece of advice is that if you really are have been listening intently let's say let's say six months and six months is a nice general guideline you've been listening intensely for six months but you feel like you're not really getting much progress
with your speaking that is a sign that you might need to change something around six months six to nine months I would say so this this particular person said nine months so that is a sign nine months of listening and using the system and feels like well not speaking fluently I don't know what fluently means to this person so it depends but let's just say you feel like you're not making a lot of progress that's a problem you should be after six months you should notice some very significant progress you should notice some big improvements
in your listening and your speaking both not perfection but you should notice some big improvements after nine ten twelve months you should really notice some very big improvements so if not then you're probably not quite doing things quite right so let me give you a few suggestions to improve things one of the common problems I see in this situation is that there's not enough deep learning that the person is trying to go too fast they're trying to rush through the lessons because they feel like oh these these early lessons are too easy for me so
I want to get to the more advanced lessons so maybe they only spend four or five six days on the beginning lessons and rush and go to the next one in the next one in the next one they're not learning deeply they think that they need advanced vocabulary to achieve fluency that's not correct quite the opposite what you need is tons I mean lots and lots of repetition especially of the easy stuff the most common what is easy anyway easy just means most common that's all I mean you know one word is really not easier
than another might be when word might be a little more difficult to pronounce if it's longer or has some strange sounds but but in terms of just fluency and one word is not more difficult than another it's just how much you hear it the reason one word starts feeling much easier is because you're hearing it more you're getting more repetition it's a more common word people use it more frequently and the reason another word might feel more difficult is because you don't hear it as much because it's less common so for fluency just for speaking
not understanding just speaking you don't need those uncommon words very much you need to totally master the common words totally mastering those common words 3000 4000 5000 words of English something like that totally mastering them will give you fantastic fluency but to get that you have to repeat them hundreds or thousands of times so that means go more slowly repeat more even if a lesson seems super easy to you repeat at least seven times and as I said our best members usually repeat 14 days or more now doesn't mean that's all you can also be
reading up books and audio books and you can do other stuff too but every day at least repeat that lesson again and again and again 14 times or more so you're not noticing the progress you want in your speaking repeat more and listen to easier stuff not more difficult stuff right that's the key if your speaking is not improving you want to go back you want to go to easier listening not more difficult I know a lot of people think they need to do the opposite my speaking is not improving so I need to listen
to more difficult stuff no no no that's the wrong direction to go if your speaking is not getting better easier go back take a step back take two steps back to easier material easier audios so easier audios and repeat them more often that is what will help your speaking and finally as a third little thing that you could do you could do maybe 10 15 minutes of pronunciation practice each day which I've discussed in other shows and I will again in the future so that's the other thing you could also do but the most important
things easy-listening easier easier easier and more repetition so more repetition easier listening a little bit of pronunciation practice that's it that's what you do if you feel like your progress isn't improving in speaking alright effortless English news time what's going on in the world of effortless English and learn real English and all that well first of all I mentioned that I have a new publication it's actually much my same book effortless English but we have a new translation of the book a new version in a new language the Spanish version so if you understand me
right now speaking you don't need the Spanish version if you're a Spanish speaker right read the English version get the English audiobook version however you might have friends you might have family who are at a lower level that's why I'm doing the translations so that people who are at a lower level of English can learn about the system so if you're a Spanish speaker and you have friends or family that you think would benefit from the effortless English method but they're a little bit lower level so they can't really read my book in English or
they don't want to they're scared to then suggest the Spanish version of the book which is just English sin is flesh so in Glaceon is sweat so English without effort is what that translates to in Glaceon it's wet so where can you find it on Amazon so you can find it on the any of the Amazon sites actually so including Amazon dot it's the spanish amazon the spanish amazon has it the mexico amazon has it and the american and canadian amazon sites also have the spanish version of the book so i recommend that for lower
level spanish speakers more translations of the book are coming so right now we have the print the book translated in vietnamese you can buy that at a on a Vietnamese bookseller website or at a Vietnamese bookstore in Vietnam MC books they are the publishers of the Vietnamese version now we have the Spanish version in glycin s where so which you can get on amazon.com any of the Amazon sites the next two translations that are coming will be Japanese and Italian those versions hopefully ready sometime by the end of the summer maybe the end of the
year I don't know more translated versions coming soon the next big piece of news personal news from me is that I am traveling this is the last show from Japan for a while until the end of the summer so I'm going to San Francisco next flying out to San Francisco so our next effortless English show will be from San Francisco and in fact I'll be in San Francisco for a month or so then we'll be going to Spain during the month of May kind of middle end of April through May there will be no effortless
English shows oh why because I'll be hiking I'll be walking the Camino de Santiago it's a long hiking path in northern Spain I'll be doing that with Joe Weiss of learn real English but I'll have some cool pictures to share after that amazing trip so when I pick back up with the shows in June I'll do at least one show about the Camino and the Camino experience but we have a few more shows before that happens so the next show in a week or two will be from San Francisco California USA and that's all as
usual go to effortless English club.com to learn more about my courses or my book see you next time have a great day bye for now you
