In my experience the most important thing to address first is mindset.
And what I mean by that is I'm going to teach you how to think and more importantly in this case how
not think.
Now remember this is a fresh approach for lifetime learning.
So this is not going to be your traditional academic plan.
And in order to fully embrace that we need to talk.
We're going to talk about specifically the word student.
So right now I can feel your energy because there are two different kinds of people.
Either you reacted in an anxious way did you feel tense when I said student or did you think oh OK I'm
ready.
So if you're like me and you had a great experience as a student and that was where you were successful
you probably have no negative emotions tied to that work.
Not OK.
But you do have habits tied to that work.
If you had a negative reaction I mean you probably had a negative experience.
Maybe you hated school maybe you weren't that great at being a student.
So this is good for you.
So this will be really refreshing.
OK.
What I want you to do is think of the word student all of your memories attached to it and let it go.
Today you stop being an English student and you start being an English learner and brace yourself.
You are an English speaker teacher.
Tom No I'm not.
My English is terrible I can't speak.
I don't care.
This isn't about how confident you are.
This is about what you do and you're not learning English to stay in a corner and fill out your exercises
and that's it.
So when you're a lifetime learner you need to use it and don't worry I'm going to help.
You might think I have no one that I can speak English to.
Don't worry I'm going to help.
For now all I need you to do is trust me and let go of being a student.
Now let me tell you why.
So what I find is that when people are students it's a similar approach to a car for example you can
study the car you can study the aerodynamics the color of the paint the chemistry of the paint.
I don't know all of these different components but a car is not made to be studied.
It's me to be driven.
You got to drive it in the same way with English.
We spend so much time on grammar exercises on prepositions on reading and analyzing.
But you don't use it.
English is made to be spoken English is global.
Like that's a cool part and I will bet any money that that's why over half of you are studying it.
It's a global language that connects you for business for culture pop culture just really cool stuff.
I'll be honest it's just cool.
So we're not going to just study that car or look at the car in the garage.
We're going to drive it.
I'm going to teach you how to use your English now that you're an English speaker and a learner and
not a student.
By the way there's nothing wrong with the word student.
It's just that words hold power and memory.
And we're going to choose the words that help us break through our obstacles and get to the next level.
Now another thing with mindset is I want you to let go of another interesting or important component
of being a student in that test taking this method does not involve tests you're not going to take a
test after a certain point and think Yes I'm fluent I'm done you're done when you die.
That's this plan.
This plan is for life.
So I want you to forget about tests and scores.
Now those of you who are bad students in school you're probably super happy.
And those of you who weren't good students you're probably feeling a little anxious like.
But if I don't take a test how will I know if I improved.
Don't worry I gotcha.
I want to show you how to measure progress.
Later in the course for now I just wanted to let you know there are no tests.
This is real life.
Now the next thing you might be thinking Is this teacher probably is going to tell me grammar doesn't
matter.
But I know I need it.
Of course grammar matters but we're going to approach grammar differently.
I don't really care about labels for the sake of labels because in real life when you're having a conversation
you're not going to stop and think how do I use the past progressive here.
You don't have time in a real life conversation.
So my goal with grammar is to help you tell a story.
Someone to teach you how to think about it.
Like if you want to tell a story about a certain kind of event in the past then you look up the grammar
that you need for that with the goal of telling that story.
For example punctuation o punctuation.
I love it and it's the one thing I see all the time that's not being valued and that's not being used
to.
I'm going to teach you why punctuation is important.
Not because I'm a grammar nerd which I am but because it changes your story if you want to be clear
and understood that's why you use punctuation.
So this is the kind of connections that we're doing we're not saying grammar and punctuation to pass
that test or do it exercise correctly.
But it's because I want you to tell the story correctly.
I want someone to understand your text message or your e-mail thing.
So this is how we're going to change the way we think about learning.
Now the other component of studying in the traditional sense is that you memorize and I do believe that
there is a time and place where that's useful.
But this is not it.
So when you're at this level and you're learning English for life memorizing doesn't help you.
Again that specific kind of recall is not easy to access when you're having real conversations or when
you're watching a TV show or sending a quick email to a colleague.
So instead when we do learn vocabulary I'm going to teach you things like using personal examples if
you like making flash hard that's fine you can still use that technique but I don't want you to put
a new word on one side and the definition on the other.
I want you to put a new word on one side and then a sentence using it in an example about you about
your real life.
This is the way that I teach my learners when I give classes to learn prepositions to learn vocabulary
to learn phrasal verbs and collocation because it stops being about and my memorizing a phrase over.
It's about finding an example in your real life and that emotional personal connection that's what your
brain will recall in the moment.
So it takes away the middle man that I like to call it the middle knowledge holder and you immediately
connect your need your memory your personal example with what you're saying in the moment.
So it's a much faster process.
It's a much faster way to remember the right thing at the right moment.
And another really important component about the mindset is that you have to.
And this is going to be an effort for some of you.
You have to accept that you won't be perfect.
You have to accept you won't understand or know everything.
I want you to accept wait for that you're going to make mistakes and that your mistakes are O.
K. so I want you to relax your shoulders.
I can feel some of you tensing up relax because this is a big part of a healthy mindset for learning
for life.
You need to be ok with making mistakes don't wait until you know all propositions in how to use them
before you speak.
You just need to do it.
And when you observe native speakers you'll notice that we make mistakes I make mistakes.
This video that I made for you I had to film it five times because I kept making mistakes.
That's OK.
So I want you to be OK with that.
I want you to be OK when you're ready.
Your accent.
Yeah.
Talking about you your accent although accent reduction lessons in accent reduction techniques are helpful.
I want you to be OK with it.
You know I see people that really judge themselves harder than they are judged by society like you might
think oh they're going to know I'm a foreigner or I'm going to be judged.
Honestly it doesn't matter.
No matter how much you try.
There are very few people that can completely eliminate their accent.
In fact even as a native speaker we have biases about regional accents.
Someone from the south in the US has a different accent and a different judgment than someone from the
north east or someone from the West Coast.
So even within the language itself for native speakers there are differences.
And that's not the most important part.
If you have a little accent I'll be honest.
Most people find it very endearing and I like to think of it as wearing it with a badge of pride because
that means that you know more than one language.
That's amazing.
A lot of you watching this are multilingual.
You're polyglots.
So a little bit of accent I think is a point of pride but I want you to think of it that way.
Now I'm not saying don't reduce your accent.
Of course we're going to work on that too but it shouldn't be shameful.
So I want you to think about that.
Embrace it love it because at the end of the day part of that has to do with loving yourself and self-love
is a big part of language learning because it affects our confidence again.
Which of these does not belong.
A.
I need to use what I learn.
Maybe I will not memorize vocabulary.
See I should never make mistakes or D.
I will appreciate my accent.
If you said C I should never make mistakes correct.
You should make mistakes and you will make mistakes and I promise it will be OK.
Good work.