- Here's a very common problem that I see
when talking to potential clients
about them and their English.
Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook from DoingEnglish.com.
A very common problem that I see
when talking to potential clients about their English
and what they need to do, the changes they need to make,
to see improvement in their English speaking
is that their thinking about the process,
about what they have to do,
is far, far too simplistic.
Language, you see, is quite complex,
and when it comes to speaking a second language,
there are many different things going on
all working together to produce the illusion
of fluent, smooth, natural-sounding English.
Let me demonstrate this with an analogy.
I go to the gym four days a week.
I cycle there and I cycle back.
On Monday, two days ago,
it took me 11 minutes to cycle home.
On Tuesday, it took be 24 minutes to cycle home.
Why?
What's the difference?
Same routes, same bike, the weather pretty much the same.
Why did Tuesday take me so much longer to cycle back?
Or to put it another way,
why was my cycling performance on Tuesday so much worse?
Well, it's quite simple, really.
Tuesday are leg day in the gym,
not my favourite day, to be sure.
And after doing 100 barbell squats, 50 dead lifts,
as many prisoner jumping squats as I could actually do
without falling over, and then some hamstring curls
to top it all off, I was not exactly in peak condition
for cycling home up the mountain atop which we live.
Or, to put it more simply,
on Monday, my legs were full of energy.
On Tuesday, they were not.
This is a very simple example,
but one that applies directly to speaking English.
If you're very, very tired, you won't speak as well
as you would if you were well-slept and full of energy.
Again, it's a very simplistic example
but it's an illustrative one.
We think of fluency as being a single thing.
You either are fluent or you're not,
but that's actually not true.
You see, fluency is actually a set of multiple processes
all happening in the brain at once that produce together
the illusion of fluent, natural-sounding speech.
There are actually five elements of fluency.
One of those is something which we call cognitive load,
which simply means how much stuff
you've got going on in your head.
If you're tired and you're stressed
and you are panicking and worried about something,
that will drag your performance down
because your brain is having to allocate resources
to all those other things.
Whereas if you're well-slept, you are calm,
you are focused, your brain is able to allocate
all of its resources to the task at hand.
Again, a very simple example, but the point is
is speaking the language is actually quite complex.
It is multifaceted.
There are many, many things going on together,
and simply the words and phrases of English is not enough.
You've also got to develop your thinking, your mindset,
the way that you see language,
as well as your understanding of the world
and the people that you are speaking with.
For more on that, head over to DoingEnglish.com/FreeTraining
and check out my free training, where I tell you
the five key changes that you need to make
and go into quite a lot of detail with those
and how you can implement those changes in your life.
Alternatively, if you want my help
to master the English language fast,
head over to DoingEnglish.com/Talk
and book a time to talk with me personally
about how I may be able to help you
to master English in record time.
Don't expect it to be cheap.
You get what you pay for.
But if you need to get the English language nailed ASAP,
that's what you're gonna want to do, DoingEnglish.com/Talk.
This then is it for me, Julian Northbrook for another video.
If you found this useful, give it a thumbs-up.
If you hated it, give it a thumbs-up anyway,
and I'll see you in the next one.
Bye bye.
(rock music)
