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Video 1 - What Should You Focus On To Improve Your English Quickly?
Now before we do that, I want to ask you a question. What do you think you need to focus on to improve your English quickly? You know, all languages have a shape. And that shape, we can call grammar. And all languages have meaning. You've probably studied lots of vocabulary. That's the meaning of the language, the words. Now, which should you focus on? Should you focus on that grammar or should you focus on that vocabulary to improve your English?
Well, actually that's kind of a trick question. The answer is neither. And to explain why that is, I want you to watch the video below which is a magic card trick. Now, we're going to explain to you later what magic has to do with what you need to focus on to improve your English. Now, in this magic card trick video there's going to be a lot of fast English. Now, if you don't understand everything, don't worry about it. The main point is the magic trick.
Watch the magic trick and then when you're finished, watch Video 3 where Aaron is going to explain to you what that has to do with where your focus should be.
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Video 2 - Watch this Magic Trick to Understand One of the Biggest Mistakes of English Learners
Remember, don't worry about understanding the English in the video above. Just watch the card trick.
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Video 3 - Effective English Learning - Seeing the Big Picture
Let's talk a little about what the card trick video has to do with English language learning. You see, that video is not really about the card trick. It's about the fact that because we are looking at the card trick, we miss so many details. The clothes of the people changed, right? The table color changed. Even the background color changed. But how did you miss that? I missed it the first time I saw it. The reason we miss it is because our attention is limited. We can only focus on one thing at a time. And when we do that, we miss all the things that are happening around it.
Now, what does this have to do with English language learning? Well, in many ways, English language learning is a lot like the video. There are many things happening, many things going on. And when we focus on the cards themselves, we miss the bigger picture. And what is that bigger picture? Well, the bigger picture is fluent, confident, English communication. You see, what many of us do is we focus all of our attention on grammar rules and learning vocabulary and translating from our native language into English and back again. And when we do that we miss our chance to really develop our listening and our speaking and our communication skills.
Now don't get me wrong. Grammar and vocabulary are very useful. You probably spent lots of time learning grammar rules and studying vocabulary, and that's great. That's one of the reasons you can understand most of this video now. But there's a limit to that. At some point, you need to turn your attention away from the grammar and vocabulary study, and look at the bigger picture of English fluency. You see, you've built a nice base. Now, you got to do something different, and that is to start using English. You got to use what you've learned in order to become more fluent, and to become a better speaker and a better listener because that's what fluency is. Fluency is that ability to communicate and understand natural English as it's spoken, and to speak smoothly and to listen and understand easily. That's where you need to be.
Now, what's the best way to do that? How do you do that? How do you increase the amount of time that you spend using English? How do you increase the amount of contact hours that you have with English in meaningful ways? Many of you probably live in a place where you don't have much opportunity to speak with native speakers or with English speakers, and you probably don't have much confidence, if that's the case. So how do we do this?
Well, look. I don't want to overload you with too much information but I want to give you some questions to consider. First, how have you studied English in the past? And how have those study habits prevented you or stopped you from seeing the bigger picture? How can you turn your attention from your focus on grammar and vocabulary and translation toward more speaking and more listening in meaningful ways? Please consider those questions.
Now, in Day 2 of our free English course, we're going to give you a free audio lesson that you can download, and using our method that we teach you, you can put that to use to start answering some of these questions. Also, we're going to give you more information on how you can increase and improve your English speaking and listening, and ultimately improve your communication ability and your confidence.
Finally, please make sure that you add us to your email contact list in Gmail or Yahoo or whatever. Our email address is info@deepenglish.com. That's important. If you haven't done it, please do it because that will make sure that you get our email into your inbox so that you can continue with the lessons we're going to send you. Okay, we'll see you tomorrow.