hey guys welcome back to another video with me Lao today we have a very exciting fun challenging video for my Advanced and intermediate students some of you might have an intermediate speaking ability but your listening is a lot more advanced than you realize you need to understand this that listening and speaking abilities are almost always on different levels they're almost always at different capacities because even native speakers like me I'm a native speaker of English from the United States I have a different speaking and listening ability God I'm going to be talking fast in this
video I'm probably going to be I'm going to be messing up a lot but that's just because I'm trying to talk fast I'm trying to go rapid fire rapid speed as fast as we can here we go you need to understand that even like as a native speaker of English my speaking and listening are different okay like my passive and active vocabulary are different I can listen to anybody speaking English and understand most of the time what they're talking about unless they're talking about a very specific technical topic that I don't know about I can
understand what people are saying in general in English right but that doesn't mean I can speak like them right I can understand a lot of Accents in English that I can't do myself I can understand a lot of vocabulary that I don't actually use myself same thing in Spanish or any other language so this is just how the human brain and language works okay there shouldn't be like a confusion for you guys I see a lot of questions in the comments like how come I understand everything but I can't speak I talked about that in
a previous video you're not speaking cuz you're not speaking like you guys don't practice speaking enough you know you expect to be able to speak better when you don't even actually speak like you don't even actually talk to yourself in your bedroom and you need to be doing that but regardless your speaking is never going to be as good as you're listening why because that's just the way it is even for me my English speaking I wish it was as good as my listening ability I wish godamn I wish but it's not it's you just
have to accept that that's just what language is okay so we're going to get into topic we're going to get into the topic of the video today I have 50 questions I don't know if we're going to get to all 50 questions it's a lot but I'm going to try to get through as many as POS possible we're going to do rapid fire and I'm just going to be answering these questions these are questions for like getting to know somebody this is just going to be like how I would naturally respond if my friend was
asking me these questions okay so without further Ado where did you grow up I grew up in the state of Maine in the United States I lived in many small towns you know we moved around but I was always like 30 minutes from Portland Portland is like one of the most famous cities in Maine it's not really that famous compared to Portland Oregon okay most of the time when people think about Portland think about Portland Oregon and not Portland Maine but if you know anything about Maine if heard anything about Maine you probably know about
Portland Portland is like this kind of iconic coastal city in Maine and that's where I was born and that's where I lived in that general area like within like 30 minutes but even if you go like 30 minutes like north of Portland or whatever you get into like what is basically like small town Countryside I mean I'm talking like house in the woods not a lot of farms you know cuz like Farm culture Farm life is kind of a little bit dead in a lot of places in the United States nowadays but some people have
Farms it's just like a small rural Town kind of of Vibes I am from Maine I'm like Southern Maine do you have any siblings yes I have a brother a younger brother he is 21 he will be 22 in Maine he is my pride and joy I love him I see him like my child not really but I just love him so much and I'm very proud of him and he's amazing yeah I've always loved my brother ever since he was born there's like a five six year age gap between us and I was like
the big sister that always just loved him and wanted to play with him and you know if we fought like it wasn't like me initiating it like it was just him being a little torp but really we've always had like a close great relationship I've always just really prioritized having a good relationship with my brother he's just such a great kid and is crazy to look at him now he is a total man he is so mature and independent and awesome and yeah I'm really proud of my brother I already said that but yeah my
brother his name is Logan I don't know if I should be saying that but it doesn't matter what's a childhood memory that stands out to you the thing that I look forward to every year for like most of my childhood was going to Cape Cod Massachusetts it was like a family reunion a reunion that we did every summer for like a week or two in July I look forward to it so much because I had cousins that were around my age and we used to just play on the beach and have fun and it was
just like a time where we all got together we didn't see each other for most of the year because we all lived in different places so we got together in the summer for like a summer vacation in a cool place with like nice Vibes and it was just it was a great time I loved um going there it was fantastic did you have a favorite toy or game as a kid this question is hard because every year of your childhood you have a different favorite thing right like what is your favorite thing when you're like
seven is not when you're like 13 right so yeah it changed but um to generalize I feel like whatever device I had that played music was my favorite thing so when I was like 5 years old I had like a CD player with the headphones right I also had like a boom box like a CD player you know thing in my room like you know the speaker like that plays out loud music but also like my favorite thing was just putting on my headphones and have my own little portable CD player but then as I
got older I quickly got like an iPod like iPod Shuffle because those were invented and then I had an iPod touch as I got into like my tween and teenage years my headphones and my portable music device was like my escape from reality right like I feel like I was depressed and like unhappy with my childhood in a lot of ways so for me that was like an escape from reality you know it's like I could go into this alternate reality in my head I went into this other world of fantasy and music and it
just really helped me like escape from my family and from my life and everything and yeah I was like anytime we I was in the car anytime I was on the bus like always just headphones on listening to music like sometimes friends would want to try to like talk to me or my family would try to talk to me but you know I just have my headphones on I would get annoyed at them like what what do you want like I just want to listen to my music leave me alone and yeah I would listen
to music in my room and like dance or just like whatever like I just I'm I'm a big music listener to this day I always got to have like nice headphones and you know I listen to music on a regular basis I don't pay for a lot of subscriptions but I like I don't I don't pay for Netflix I don't pay for any stuff like that because I don't watch stuff I don't watch like movies and shows and stuff like that I just listen to music so I pay for Spotify but I don't pay for
any other things U yes I use Spotify I don't really care okay it's not because I don't like any of the others Apple music when I just I just started using it and I now I use it and whatever so I don't really care as long as I get my music I don't really care how I get it what's the best trip you've ever taken well I'm a digital Nomad so I'm always traveling I'm always on the go right I don't live in a like a place like I don't have a home right now like
I don't I don't live anywhere I'm just living everywhere I don't live anywhere cuz I live everywhere like I do slow travel like slow Nomad life I'll go somewhere and stay for like a month or two or three and then I go to the next country and whatever that's how it is most of the time so like right now I'm in Vietnam I got here like a little over a month ago and I'll probably stay for another like month and a half or whatever two months and then I'll leave and I'll go to another country
yeah so I don't really have like a favorite place because every place has pros and cons there's things I like about all these different places yeah right now I'm like traveling in Southeast Asia but you know most of the time in the past 7 years I've been in Hispanic countries you know in the Americas Latin America yeah I I can't say like what is my favorite trip but you know what the thing is though actually now that I'm in Asia I actually kind of feel homesick for um Hispanic America I really want to go back
because yeah I feel like my heart is over there I feel like that's my home even though I don't have like one home I just feel like that whole continent is like my home I feel like I need to go back I love being in Asia like being in Asia is amazing and this has been a trip of a lifetime and this was something that I wanted to do for years this was like big thing on my bucket list like this was a big dream of mine and I'm so glad that I'm doing it but
this feels like a trip to me and it doesn't feel like being home where like when I'm in Hispanic countries and the Americas I just I don't know I just feel like very at home like obviously yeah I speak the language but it's more than just that like it's not just a linguistic tie I feel like there's something emotional or's something mental that I have some kind of attachment that I have over there I don't know what it is but I just feel like I'll probably end up living my life there and yeah I just
feel like this kind of attachment there I don't even feel like I'm like really taking a trip when I'm there I just feel like I'm just kind of home even in different countries and stuff but yeah I don't know it's it's a hard question to answer I guess maybe the best trip then would be like this trip in Asia in general because this is like I really see it as a trip yeah it's it's awesome I'm enjoying it so much have you had a lifechanging experience yeah who hasn't I've had a lot have we not
all had a lot of life-changing experiences what kind of question is this like have we only had one or some people haven't had any what do you mean of course we've all had life-changing experiences I don't like this question but yeah I've had a lot of life-changing experiences huge things I mean I just I'd be talking all day if I were to get into that really I mean when I just like think you know in general about my whole life like what is probably the like the biggest thing yeah I guess I could say like
my mom died when I was 14 like that was a huge life-changing experience there's been so many things so it's like I don't even know if that even was the worst thing like it was pretty bad but I don't I don't know if it was like the worst thing because but really when I think about life changing experiences like I don't know if really any of them have been bad like really bad like they're all just kind of like things that happened and then there was kind of positive and negative things that came from that
I don't know so it's not even really about like positive or negative it's just something that changes your life so it could be anything you know I mean going to live in the Amazon in Ecuador for 4 years that changed my life I mean like a lot of things changed my life I can't really give you a lot of specifics because there's just so many what's something you're really proud of H what am I proud of a lot of things I am 27 years old and I have pretty much done most of if not all
of the things on my list that I like wanted to do basically like dreams that I had you know in my 20s I mean I mean like early 20s and like teens and like as a child like pretty much done everything that I wanted to do that I dreamed about like when I was teenager kind of I guess or I don't know like all my goals I feel like I've accomplished them except there's one there's one thing left there's one thing that I haven't done and that is I would like to have children I don't
have children and I really want to I'm at the point where like that's really the only thing that I know for sure that I want to do I've already crossed off a lot of things on my list of things that I want to do and want to accomplish and I'm really happy to say that and so like really the only thing that's left or like only big thing is to have kids I really want that and I know that I will make it happen and I don't know when it's going to happen but what was
the original question oh yeah what something you're really proud of um okay I got distracted from I'm proud of doing this YouTube you Channel I wanted to make a YouTube videos and be a YouTuber since I was a kid since I first discovered YouTube when I was a kid I'm proud of myself for like traveling you know going to all the places that I've gone to doing all the things that I've done and I'm proud of myself for just kind of like listening to my intuition listening to my heart and just kind of following that
going after things that that interest me and excite me next question do you have any unique skills or talents I think I learn things pretty quickly I think learning languages is pretty easy for me I feel like I'm good at ating like pronunciation I feel like in general I have a good memory um like I'm good at memorizing stuff helps me in like learning languages helped me a lot in school like in school I often didn't have to really study I mean I could just study for like a minute and just kind of like look
at okay this this this and just kind of like memorize it like I remember once in school you we had to learn like all the different bones in the human body what is it like 206 bones or something it's a lot of Bones and so we had this like page this piece of paper with like a skeleton on it and like all the bones labeled and I just kind of like okay that's that that's that and I just kind of like skimmed it and then flipped it over and was able to like get most of
them like it's not photographic memory I don't even know if that exists you know it's not perfect but like I can memorize things like relatively easily they just kind of stick in my mind I just see something and like okay got it that kind of made School easier for me but the funny thing is like for example I was good at math because a lot of math is just memorizing like right like okay you see this kind of equation and you have to apply this kind of formula and you just memorize like step by step
like all the steps of what you're supposed to do and so I just would memorize it right but if you ask me to explain what it is that this math problem represents like what does this formula represent like if you ask me to like try to visualize this you know this mathematical concept and try to explain it um I can't I didn't know what I was doing really like I couldn't I couldn't visualize and I couldn't see how this could apply to like real life problems and stuff well I mean a lot of it doesn't
a lot of the math we learned in school was like totally useless but some of this stuff you know it has some basis in the real world and some situation and some context and I just couldn't I couldn't wrap my head around that so I didn't know what I was talking about or doing I just could follow like steps you know what I mean but it's not like I don't have creativity or I don't have um the ability to do more abstract things like cuz I don't know I mean I was also good really good
at like writing and stuff but maybe that's just kind of like you memorize words in the English language through like reading and stuff and then your vocabulary is better and then you can write when I write English like I can write academic English amazing like super good academic professional sounding English you know my vocabulary just comes out of nowhere and I know how to write really good in English when I talk I sound like a basic person like I sound like just a random gringa like a random person um when I write English I can
sound like very academic and professional I don't know what it is but yeah it just I have to like think about it but when I'm just talking fast that's just not the language that comes out of me that's just not what naturally comes out when I focus and like okay I'm trying intentionally to write in a certain way I can do that so I don't know I just remember in school a lot of things were easy for me but do you know the funny thing is like I hated school I hated school because I hated
being told what to learn and what to do and like I just wanted to do what I wanted to do like I just wanted to learn what I wanted to learn and just do what I wanted to do and I hate s I hated sitting at a desk all day at school and just being trapped there and having to wake up early I hated it I didn't want to do it I wanted like to be homeschooled but U my family didn't let me so are you more introverted or extroverted people always ask me this question
and I don't know how to answer yeah I mean for most of my life I would have just been like yeah I'm introverted lately in my life I've been feeling like I'm actually both like I'm somewhere in the middle because I totally can get energy from socializing or from being alone I just tend to be alone more often like I'm just alone most of the time because I need to focus I need to focus on the things that I want to do in my life and I don't connect with just anybody and I'm always traveling
around and moving around and and so I just end up being a most of the time because socializing is just kind of like this is kind of like a distraction from my life in a lot of ways and things that I want to do I'm very picky about my my socialization if I if I don't connect with somebody in the way that I want to connect I just like get bored of it I just end up most of the time not socializing much but if the connections are good and like if I'm hanging out with
people that really give me life and stuff I really enjoy hanging out with and you know it can give me energy but yeah I mean probably I'm I'm an introvert if you have to put me in one of those boxes yeah it's just like when you're alone you can just have like peace and quiet you can just 100% focus on your things but like I said the socialization is really good if the social interaction is really fun and really great or it's really like mentally stimulating the conversation is really good whatever then it can definitely
give me more energy make me feel so much more alive and so much like better and like healthier and just like awake than if I had just spent the day by myself right so that's why I feel like I'm somewhere in the middle and I feel like most of us probably are whether you realize it or not I feel like it's not so black and white I feel like it just really comes down to what types of interactions are we having so in this video I was like really trying to talk fast okay so this
is like me trying to talk fast okay I'm so I'm not going to be actually talking this fast all the time when I'm with my friends okay when I'm with my friends like I definitely talk more like in a normal Pace a normal like slow like more like relaxed normal cuz I'm really in real life I'm like a really relaxed chill mellow person so honestly people who talk like this 100% of the time they give me anxiety they're too intense they need to relax they need to calm down but I wanted to do this for
the video to really challenge you guys because like some people do talk like this and if you and if you can understand me talking like this then like you don't have any excuse for like understanding you know any other people like like U American English speakers who talk fast whatever because this is basically how it sounds I mean unless they have like a super different accent than me I feel like if you can understand me you can understand most people and and and people say like oh but I can't understand other native speakers I don't
believe you if you think that you can understand me and not other native speakers you need to go right now and YouTube and watch other videos that are like this style like this is called like a talking head video where like somebody's just sitting and talking to the camera and looking at the camera you need to look for other videos like this I promise you can understand most of what they're saying movies are a whole different thing okay you should not be basing your listening ability off movies movies are freaking hard I consider myself fluent
or advanced in Spanish there's a lot of stuff in Spanish movies that I'm like what wait what did he say what is it because you got to understand number one it's a script it's not real like that's not people spontaneously talking it's not like natural off the cuff you know write write what popped into their head right in the moment natural speaking right it's this rapid fire back and forth um script yeah and it it's just a bit too polished and perfect and just that's not that's not what real life is it's also a lot
easier to understand a monologue than it is to understand a dialogue okay you got to understand that as well and also it depends 100% on the movie so there going to be movies that are going to be or in TV shows going to be really hard it's going to be ones that are like really easy it just depends okay but I really don't think you should base your listening ability off like movies and TV shows like in general I think you need to like watch YouTube videos and you need to listen to podcast and that
will tell you your English listening ability cuz I know like when I listen to my podcast in Portuguese is somebody just talking about a topic just a monologue I understand almost everything they say but then like if I were to watch a movie like a Brazilian movie where there's just this like kind of really like messy slang like back and forth dialogue of random topics and nothing's connecting and whatever yeah I might be like what wait what what did they say and when you're in that situation in real life you can just be like what
did you say like you can just ask them to repeat or whatever you can listen to the TV shows and movies but like don't feel bad if you don't understand everything you know what I mean like I had a Spanish that was like really high level like everybody was like oh my God Spanish is so great and there were movies that I'd watch and I'd be like what are they saying so you might have a higher ability and you're feeling like it's worse because of some movie or TV show you're trying to watch that is
like hard it's hard okay it's hard and remember your speaking and listening ability are not going to be the the same they're going to be on different levels they're probably going to be like that forever cuz that's just the way language is I mean mine are like that so thanks for listening to the end oh my God if you listen to the end you're like wow really amazing like one of my true fans and I really appreciate that and I'm really grateful for you and I could even say that I love you yeah it's been
a fabulous time here and um if you want more videos like this like please tell me in the comments please cuz I love making videos like this and people will hear me talking normally and they'll be like oh it's too easy it's too slow I'm like that's how we really talk okay that's real life I'm surprised I didn't like mess up my words more because I was talking so fast wow I'm really impressed with my own ability to just rabid fire talk like this because they normally don't talk like this okay anyways I'm talking too
much all right let's end the video now thank you bye see you in the next video bye-bye
