hi this is aj and welcome back for secret number three now the last secret the last rule was maybe your favorite right no more grammar rules good news for you but this one is probably the most important rule this is really the central key it's the main one and this rule or this secret is this learn with your ears not with your eyes again learn with your ears not with your eyes of course we're teaching you how to speak excellent english speak and to speak well you have to have excellent listening see speech comes from
listening here's the problem in school you mostly learned with your eyes what did you do you read a lot of textbooks you watched the teacher write a lot of stuff on the board maybe you listen to the teacher explain english in your language so you're less you're hearing your language not english in your classroom but in general what's happening is you learning learning learning with your eyes that's what happened and maybe still happening now i don't know hopefully not not after today so there's a big problem with this see when you're when you're just reading
and trying to learn grammar rules for example by reading grammar books and you're trying to learn vocabulary by reading vocabulary lists and you're trying to read english dialogues and then you're doing written tests and then you're doing all these written activities and written drills none of that is helping you with your speaking and that's why you probably read english much better than you speak it or understand it it's a common problem it's because in school you learned with your eyes all the time or most of the time and you did very little learning with your
ears listening listening listening is secret number three and it's probably the most important one you gotta listen a lot you've gotta listen to a lot a lot a lot of english that's the key to great speaking there's a lot of research about this a lot of academic research excellent research that shows that listening is the way you improve your speaking not reading not practicing speaking in a mirror or something no it's lots and lots and lots of listening lots of it now this is so obvious but let's think imagine a baby a little baby little
american baby will say this little american baby of course needs to learn english so how will we teach this american baby to learn english will we buy grammar books and try to make the baby study grammar no we won't we could try but it won't work would we try to force the baby to read immediately of course not so how does this little baby learn english one way and one way only listening for six to 12 months that baby just sits there and listens listens listens listens listens listens to the parents mostly and maybe brothers
and sisters and maybe other people in the family speaking english constantly and of course when parents speak to a baby they don't speak difficult english they speak very simple easy english and eventually the baby starts to learn a few words like mommy daddy maybe food really simple stuff but they start to learn a little bit and that's the beginning and then they start learning you know groups of words two words three words together all of this is happening through listening and for a while the baby can understand a lot the small child can actually understand
a lot of english but cannot speak very much this is natural and normal that the listening level is higher than the speaking level and then eventually of course the baby will start to speak one word and two words in the beginning and then phrase bigger set phrases and then sentences and it just keeps going and that baby learns to speak excellent english through listening by learning with the baby's ears and that's what you have to do you have to go back and start learning english now change the way you're learning it instead learn it like
a baby learn with your ears lots and lots of listening now like a baby you should not focus on difficult listening this is another problem that schools have and a lot of students have maybe they do practice some listening but when they do it's so difficult like they're listening to sample toefl tests and things like that extremely difficult vocabulary very academic and formal not really natural normal english for normal situations and it's so difficult that you cannot really understand it easily and automatically if you do that if you listen to english that's too difficult your
learning will be very very very slow you want the opposite like a baby you want to listen to lots of easy english easy listening is the key easy listening will give you great speaking that's what all the research shows is very powerful so you probably need to be listening to things that are much easier than you think here's my basic rule for listening you should listen to something that you can understand 95 of it without a dictionary 95 percent that means you don't need a dictionary at all because the other five percent you can easily
guess right if there is a new word or a new phrase that comes you can guess the meaning because you understand everything else you understand the situation you understand most of it so you can kind of guess the meaning of that new word and that's how you learn naturally new vocabulary that's how i learned it all as a child growing up and it's how you should be learning it too with your ears listening to very easy english now eventually you listen and listen and listen and you understand 100 percent well then it's time for something
a little more difficult not a lot more difficult a little more difficult and then you listen to that again and again and again when it becomes a hundred percent then you find something a little more difficult in this way you will rapidly increase your ability here's what else happens after six to 12 months it depends on the person you will find yourself starting to speak english automatically correct phrases and words will pop out of your mouth boom they'll come out without you thinking at all just like your language when you speak your language you're not
always thinking about vocabulary and translations and all this stuff no it just comes out boom you want to say something and it comes out that's what will happen with english but first you need to focus on listening and just listening for six to twelve months it's okay if you speak a little bit but mostly you should be doing lots and lots and lots of easy listening every day how can you do this go get some easy audio books easy audio articles you can get my lessons you can get our lessons and put them on an
ipod and every moment you have listen be listening listening listening to this english all the time when you wake up in the morning listen to english you know just 10 or 15 minutes when you're going to work or to school or you're at home you know cleaning the house whatever listen to english some more 20 minutes 30 minutes when you have a break during the day at lunch listen to english 10 15 minutes when you're going home at night or making dinner listen to english 10 15 20 30 minutes before you go to bed listen
to english again 10 15 20 30 minutes by doing little pieces of listening all through the day you can easily listen for a total of one to two hours every single day and when you do that you will find you will make big improvements or it takes usually about six months maybe less for you maybe more depends on how much you listen depends on how easy it is easier is better so that's it that it's simple this is such a simple rule learn with your ears not with your eyes and one last note your listening
ability should naturally and always be higher than your speaking ability see what happens is your listening ability pulls up your speaking ability it happens automatically you don't need to think about it it's easy all you have to focus on is listening and as you get better and better listening your speaking will naturally improve it's like it pulls it up pulls it up pulls it up pulls it up now the only problem some people have is psychological you might have stress and nervousness and things like that that cause you to have problems when it's time to
speak we'll talk about that later in our courses we we help you get rid of nervousness so that's not a problem anymore but for this secret this rule all i want you to do is focus on listening learn with your ears not with your eyes simple and easy very very powerful alright i will see you tomorrow for our next secret it's also a very good one and very very powerful one remember this is a whole system so you need to use all of these all seven of these secrets i mean each one of them is
powerful but when you put them all together it's a super powerful system that will give you excellent english speaking all right i'll see you tomorrow have a great day bye
