Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, AJ Hoag,

where AJ's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the

boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills. Here's AJ with a quick piece to help you learn to

speak fluent English effortlessly. I'm AJ Hoag, author of Effortless English Learn to Speak English

Like a Native. High-level success with English. So we're talking about mastery of English at a very,

very high level. Because success means different things to different people, right? What is success?

You decide. You decide yourself. So you decide. You want to just have basic conversations in

English, maybe travel to an English-speaking country and make reservations, have some small talk,

basic friendly conversations with people. Fairly simple. Maybe that's enough for you. That's fine.

That's totally fine. You decide your idea of success. Your independent learning. That's what is great

about independent learning is that we all decide. It's like a sport. It's the same thing if you were

doing a sport. I'll say you wanted to play golf. And how would you succeed at golf? What would

success be? You would decide that. Maybe you're like me with golf and you just want to play a few

times a year and maybe just with some friends or family. For you, success with golf is just you can

basically hit the ball and play a full game and not be too slow so that everyone doesn't get mad at

you because you're too slow. That could be success with golf. That's my golf success. That's all. I

don't care about my score at all, really. I try to do my best, but I haven't played in years. My first

motivation for golf was to play golf with my dad because my dad loves, loves, loves golf. So I really

wanted to learn so I could spend some extra time with my dad. You know, you go out, it's a slow

game. Four hours or something. So it was nice and I played with my cousin, Phillip. So that's all,

right? Other people, they start to play golf. Maybe they want to reach a certain score, a certain

average score. In golf, this is called a handicap. But maybe they say, I want my score to be under

90 because in golf, low is better. Or I want my average score to be under 80. Right? You just decide

that. You don't have, it doesn't matter, right? Who decides? You decide. And then you succeed or

you fail. But you're deciding what success means. Right? And then, of course, at the highest levels,

you have people who want to be professional golfers and make money. And then even at that level,

there's, you know, there are people who are trying to win the major tournaments and be number one
and other guys, they just want to make enough money to live, you know, just to feed their families.

Right? So so so it is with English. Some of you just want to have very basic conversations. Maybe

do a little traveling. Simple. Listen to some podcasts like this. You know, maybe you've already

reached that level. And then some of you want to reach a very, very high level. Right? You want to

be totally fluent. You want to be close to native speakers, you know, close to a native speaker level.

And that's also great. And that's what we're talking about today. Today, we're going to listen to a

success story. I've got some of my VIP members, students have agreed to or decided to make

videos talking about their own success stories and Carol's group, the effortless English friends

group, they're a group that gets together and they practice talking and chatting with together. They

have made some great videos. I'm going to start sharing them with you. And the first one is from

Carol herself, who she's French and she has achieved a very high level of English. So we're going

to just listen to a little part of her interview today because in her video where she talks about her

English success, she discusses something that she did. She discusses a few things she did. But,

you know, she joined the VIP program. She was using effortless English, but she also did something

else as she listened. It's called and I call that I call it deliberate practice. I not only me, but it's it's a

you'll find this in some books, for example, to talk about this phrase deliberate practice. Deliberate

means you're you're focused. You're trying to do it. It's not passive. It's not lazy. It's not distracted,

right? Deliberate practice. So let's listen to a little bit to Carol and then we'll come back and discuss

her ideas. Share my screen and pull up YouTube. OK, here we go. Oh, and you can see me on this

camera now. All right, there you go. Here we go. This is Carol. Sure, my name is Carol and I live in

France. I started learning English in 2018 with Eiji. I found him on YouTube. Can remember it was a

video about the movie technique. He immediately caught my attention. I liked his style and his

energy. I then read his book, which I can recommend to every English learner and teacher. And

soon after that, I became a VIP member. OK, so just as she introduces herself, you know, she's

Carol from France and she talks about back in 2018, she wanted to, you know, she was trying to

improve her English. She found me on YouTube first. Then she read my book and then finally she

joined the VIP program. I needed to improve my English because I had a job opportunity that I didn't
want to miss. Ah, OK, and it's always good with success stories like this. I always am curious why,

like, what's the motivation? Because motivation is very important with learning English. Why do you

want to do it? Right? If the reason is just some test in school, you know, a lot of people that's not

very motivating. So for some people it is. But for a lot of people, it's not very good motivation. I think

real world motivations are better. Something like getting a this is very common that people will find

effortless English, join effortless English, be very motivated because of a job opportunity of some

kind. We've heard many success stories where they in the beginning, at least, they were motivated

by job opportunities. Other people is travel. Other people just love languages. Other people want to

make friends internationally. But job is very common. So no need to say that my motivation was

really high. And my goal wasn't just to be good at English, but I wanted to be one hundred percent

fluent. OK, so this is important, too. Her goal, she had a high goal. She wanted mastery. Her goal

was to be one hundred percent fluent. So not just kind of good, right? If you just want to be kind of

good in English, it's totally fine. It's OK. But she had a higher goal, total fluency. Nice. And this is

Marjan. He's interviewing her. He is another VIP member who's doing the interviewing. So I didn't do

these interviews. They interviewed each other, which is really cool. And he has his own success

story, which we'll listen to a piece of it soon. And I'm putting all of these on YouTube. So you'll get to

watch. You can go on my YouTube channel and see the whole thing or on my website. You did you

have any difficulties on your way? Yeah, so this is important. Did you have any difficulties? Right. So

we all start off with good motivation, usually in life when we have goals. I'm going to do it. And then

what happens? We always have difficulties. There are always problems. It's never 100 percent

easy. Your learning process. I would say that the hardest point for me was repetition. And this is

great because this is I know I keep pausing. You can go see her whole video without me pausing,

obviously. Go watch the whole thing yourself, because I just added it to YouTube. So this one's on

my YouTube now. You can watch Carol's whole video. Just listen to her. I won't be talking. But. This

is very important. This is something that a lot of people struggle with, not only English, any skill you

have to have repetition, anything you are trying to do that is a skill, a performance, something you

must do. Sports, for example, languages, many things. You have to do a lot of repetition. I
mentioned golf. Think of like professional golfers. They how many times do they practice their golf

swing? Their basic golf swing. You know, it's it's hundreds of times every day. So how do they avoid

being bored? Injujitsu, you guys know I'm doing jiu-jitsu. You know, like we practice many of the

same techniques, you know, every single week, you know, it's I'm doing the same, many of the

same techniques in class. And then they repeat every month or every year. It's a cycle at White Belt.

There are these, you know, there are a certain number of techniques and you just have to keep how

do you get good at them? You have to keep repeating and repeating. How do you not get bored? So

this is a very important question. Of course, I knew that to learn a new language, I would need a

massive amount of repetitions, but I've never liked it. I could get past this difficulty first because HHS

course offers a big diversity of topics. OK, so now she's going to talk about how did she overcome

this problem of like she doesn't like repetition? I don't either. I get bored easily. So she said, like,

how did she overcome this this thing of, you know, not getting too bored from repetition? So she

said, first of all, a good thing is that the VIP program and all my other courses to have a big diversity

of topics. Right. So I'm not just talking about one thing every lesson. It's not just one thing. And I try

to choose interesting topics that are helpful or interesting to you for your real life. You know, a lot of

English books, they're just talking about the weather and or some some fake travel story with fake

characters or stuff like that. So boring. I find it boring. So I try to talk about, you know, topics that

help you in your life, in your job, and your with your relationships, with your health. Right. It's it's like

real stuff, things you would normally listen to in your own language. So that's one thing that helped

her. She said that the courses all have you know, a lot of different topics. So it keeps it more

interesting. And then I also used a few techniques, which I can share with you today. First technique

I used was that, of course, I would listen to my VIP lesson every day, but each time I would focus on

a different topic. For example, day one, I would focus on vocabulary. Then day two, I would focus on

natural English slangs and idioms. Day three, I would work on my pronunciation and do some

shadowing. The second technique was that I crossed a lot of different sources. So for example, let's

imagine the VIP lesson is about self confidence. Then you can go on the internet and watch a video

on that topic. You can. OK, great. And I'm going to end this here because you can go see the whole
her whole video. So I just wanted to get those two main points and then now we can go back and I'll

end discuss them. Please go watch her whole video because it's really fantastic. OK, so two things.

And I'm calling this deliberate practice, right? So she did. She said that when she listened to the VIP

lessons, right, she had to repeat the same lesson every day for like a week or two weeks. So how

do you not get bored? So number one, what she would do is she would repeat it. But each day,

focus on something different. This is a very important thing to do. And this is also, like I said, this

works for something like, say, learning the guitar or some music. It works for sports. You're

repeating the same thing, but maybe you're working on a different part. You're focusing on a

different piece, a different small skill. So she gave the example. She's listening to VIP. So maybe

one day she focuses just on the vocabulary, right? Maybe the first day of the new lesson. She gets a

new lesson. What is she listens and reads it? But what does she focus on? There's so many things

to focus on. So she'll just focus on learning the words. Just learn the new words. That's all. And then

the second day, she doesn't do exactly the same thing. She listens to the same lesson. So

repetition. Yes. But her focus is a little different on day two. Maybe focuses on slang and idioms and

phrases more. A little bit different focus. Day three, she listens to the same lesson again, repetition,

but different focus. Day three, maybe she focuses more on pronunciation. She's already listened.

She's already learned the vocab. She's already learned the idioms and phrases and slang. So now

she's going to focus more on pronunciation, like listening carefully, very carefully to my

pronunciation, how I'm saying all the words, how I'm pronouncing everything, the rhythm, all of that.

And then day four, she listens again to the exact same lesson, the same one again. But now maybe

she does some shadowing. I've talked about shadowing before. It's a great technique, right? Day

five, maybe she focuses on something else. Day six, she could go back to vocabulary again to

review it. Day seven, you get the idea, right? But she's deliberately, meaning she's, she's choosing

to focus on something specific each time she listens and does that repetition. This is called

deliberate practice. And there's, there's some good research and a lot of experts out there and

athletes and coaches who will tell you this is very important for improving any skill. This is how you

do it. This is how you get lots of repetition, but continue to improve. So like, what's the opposite?
What if you don't do that? Well, maybe some people, they just listen. Let's say they get the lesson,

but they just listen every day, but they're not really focused on anything like day one. They listen to

the lessons. Okay, I'm listening, but it's kind of passive. They're not focusing on vocab. They're not

focusing on anything. It's just listen. Okay. And then the next day they just listen again and the next

day they listen again and the next day they listen again. Will they improve? Yes, of course. They're

still going to improve. They're still going to learn new vocab, but they'll improve more slowly than

someone like Carol. Right? Because they're not really being deliberate. They're not choosing to

focus. Their learning is less active. Right? It's a more passive kind of learning. So what Carol did is

much more active. She's actively deciding to focus on something and then the next thing and the

next thing. It's really interesting because this does connect to Jiu-Jitsu. Jiu-Jitsu is like wrestling. It's

a martial art that I'm practicing myself. And it's very difficult. But there's exactly, there are a lot, a lot,

a lot of Jiu-Jitsu coaches who give the same advice. So in Jiu-Jitsu we do sparring, right? It's just

like kind of fighting, right? Practice fighting. And if you fight a lot, you will get better. Of course you

will. Just the experience. You will improve. However, if you, each time you fight, you think about one

thing you want to do, that you want to improve, want to learn, then you will improve faster. Right? So

maybe, you know, yesterday I went yesterday and I had like two techniques. I just, I just wanted to

focus on my standing up kind of wrestling skills because they're very weak. I'm terrible. So I decided,

I'm going to improve, I need to improve this. So yesterday when I was practicing fighting, of course

I'm doing everything, right? But I was really focused on those two things, right? Consciously,

deliberately, I chose I'm going to focus on these two things. I have a specific focus. Try to improve

these two things. Because you can't improve everything all at the same time. You know, you will, as

you listen to English or as you do something, of course, you will kind of naturally be improving a lot

of things. But when you focus on something, you'll improve even faster. So this is basically what

Carol did, did with the VIP lessons. And the other thing she did, the other great thing she did, is that

she would go deeper. She would find extra content, extra videos, extra, you know, whatever, extra

audios, extra books, extra articles, extra English about the same topic. So she gave an example. So

for example, maybe the topic, the VIP lesson topic is self-confidence, self-confidence. So she would
listen and each day, you know, focus on something different. Then also, she would go on the

internet and look for other audios, other videos, other books, other websites about the same topic,

self-confidence in English, of course. So she would get more repetition, probably some of the same

vocabulary from my lesson. She would see it in those books or she would hear it in a different audio,

right? So she would kind of stay in that same topic. This is also a great, great, great idea. So as you

use effortless English, you know, I talk about repetition a lot, I encourage you to do this deliberate

practice, do this deliberate practice. And I think the two things that Carol mentioned are both

excellent methods. Very, very, very good. So number one, each day, listen to the same lesson, but

focus on a different skill. This will keep your mind fresh, so you won't get bored. And then the

second thing to do is that you want to... One second, I guess I got it. The second thing to do is to go

deeper. So each VIP lesson or Power English lesson, whatever, any of my lessons will have a topic.

So maybe after a few days, you're listening to the lessons, you're understanding it more. Go do

some research online on the internet and try to find more things, more English, audio, and text about

that same exact topic. Go deeper. Great, great, great advice. And Carol has succeeded. She

speaks very, very, very fluently. She's now a leader in our VIP community. She organized and is the

leader of this... They call themselves the Effortless English Friends. They're VIP members who...

They're all quite successful, very, very motivated, and they talk on Zoom or Skype and practice their

English together. And it's the strongest conversation group. In our Effortless English community

family that I know about. They're really, really motivated. I've talked to them several times. I'm going

to talk to them again next month. So really, I think you can get some great advice from them

because they did it. Obviously, I'm a native speaker. I grew up speaking English. I have a lot of

experience teaching people English so I can help you. But on the other hand, of course, English is

easy for me. Started when I was a baby. Started when I was a baby. So it's also nice to hear from

students, learners like Carol and like these other members you'll hear from soon. Because they are

like you. They're in the same position as you. And they have achieved great success. So you should

listen to their advice for sure. All right. Let's get into our chats, live comments, and chats. All right.

Let's see. We got a lot of people saying hi, I think. Okay. One second success story. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Just a lot of people saying hi from various places, India, Thailand,

lots of Asia. So right now it is good. I'm talking to you from Japan. It's daytime in Asia. So we've got

people from Asia. Although Peter Cruz says hello from Mexico. Costa Rica. Nice. Good. And again, I

will be posting these videos. They've made four already. So four different VIP members have made

videos. And I really love it. They're interviewing each other. It's really great. And there will be more.

I'll add them to my YouTube channel so you can go there and hear directly from the members

without me. I'm not, and I didn't even interview them, right? So they're interviewing each other. So

it's good. You can just hear in their own words what they, their experience, problems they had, how

did they overcome the problems, and how did they finally succeed? I think this is very, very useful.

Okay. Sahadat Alam says whenever I talk to someone in English, I have to translate in my own

language first. Then I speak my, then I speak English. Help. So I think that's something that, you

know, everybody does. And I think it's actually, this is, this is something that's common in all

different skills where you first, you've got to think about it first before, right? We, we want to have

mastery so that finally we do it without thinking, right? We just want to do something and we do it.

You want to say something, it just comes out. You're not thinking about it. You're not translating in

sports, right? And let, let's just say, I don't know, again, I'll use basketball. People know basketball.

You're trying to shoot the basketball, right? And maybe at first you actually have to think about it a

lot. You're thinking like, oh, you know, you're thinking about the technique. I don't really know

basketball technique, but let's say, you know, you're like, oh, you got to keep your elbow in and, you

know, maybe your back straight and some coach tells you different things to do. And for a while

you've, you actually, they have to think about these things. This is, this is true in Jiu Jitsu. I have the

exact same problem in Jiu Jitsu, where when I'm fighting, I'm constantly having to remember, oh,

grab here, move, move my leg here. You know, I'm trying to remember all these little details. And

this makes me very slow sometimes. But guys who are very good, like at the black belt level, they're

not doing that really, or very little, right? They just kind of react naturally. They don't, they're not

constantly thinking about everything all the time. They kind of, they're, it's, things just happen in a

very natural, effortless way, which is why it's called effortless English. So Sahadat and anyone else,
you probably, you just need more time. You need more time listening, especially lots and lots and

lots of listening helps a lot. And then eventually, of course, more and more time speaking. And this

will, you know, more and more, you'll have phrases and sentences that will become, you'll use them

so much, or you'll hear them so much that they'll just become automatic. You don't think about them.

They just come out. And then this will increase more and more and more. Your thinking will be, your

translating will be less and less and less. So just take some time. So don't, don't feel bad about it

because it's quite common. Just keep going. Yeah. I like what Ilana Khan says. She says, for me,

the best way for success is to be focused and to master the process itself. Think less about the final

goal. I am like this too. Like in dieting, think only about, thinking only about numbers makes me very

stressful. Right. So in other words, focusing on just what you're doing each day and just being, and

just really focusing on having good quality practice and not worrying too much about the result. The

result will happen eventually. Don't get too stressed about it. So like in dieting, if you're trying to be

healthy or lose weight, don't focus too much on, you know, I must, I must lose 10 kilograms in two

months. And instead you just focus each day, eat healthy, eat healthy, eat healthy and exercise.

Right. And you just focus on doing those habits, making those nice healthy habits and enjoying them

every day. And then naturally you will lose weight. So that's what she's saying, you know, with

English, just focus on listening every day and doing what Carol talked about. But having a focus and

enjoying it. I think that's a big part of it. Learn to enjoy the process. And naturally, yes, your English

will improve. Like Olga said, HH 365 day challenge really helped me succeed. Right. The 365 day

challenge is to do English every single day, at least a little bit. Never skip a day. No break. Never

skip a day. Never skip a day. It's, it's about making that consistency, focusing on that instead of the

goal. That, a lot of people that does help them. Serde fuego divino, to be of divine fire. Nice. Can

your VIP program help me go from intermediate to advanced English level? Yes, that's exactly what

it's for. How much time is necessary? Probably about six months to do that. If you are motivated, if

you do what Carol talks about, if you're, you know, you're doing it every single day for a couple,

couple hours at least. You know, the people who are very motivated, six months, they can make

quite a big jump in six months, especially if you're already at a kind of intermediate level. So
something like that, six to nine months, it depends. But something like that. Mohamed HW says, you

talked about consistency. How can we apply it in real life? I think the main thing is, with consistency,

is you focus on doing a little bit every day. Instead of, instead of focusing on doing a lot, you focus

on doing a little, but every single day, never miss a day. So again, like Jiu-Jitsu, Jiu-Jitsu for me. I

can't do a lot of Jiu-Jitsu every day because my body cannot handle it. Okay. I would love to. You

know, there are some of the guys at my gym who are much younger than I am and tougher than I

am physically. And some of them train, you know, two times a day. They train morning and then they

train again at night. Every day, six or seven days a week, they're doing that. I couldn't do it. I would

be injured all the time. I would be so tired all the time. There's no way I can do that. So other guys

might like train super, super, super hard, you know, maybe one, two, three days a week, but they're

going really hard. And then the other days, they're exhausted and really, really tired. Right? That's

trying to do a lot. But when you typically, for most people, when you do a lot, a lot, a lot really hard,

the next day, you're tired. You're, if it's English, you're mentally tired. You're just, ah, it's something

you can do, but it usually need to kind of build up to it. Or you have to be super motivated. If it's a

physical skill like exercising, you got to be quite tough physically to do that. Not everybody can do it.

But what you can do is do a little bit every day, a little bit every day. So you don't forget things so

that your brain is constantly getting a little bit better, your body is improving a little bit. And this is

what I do with Jiu Jitsu. So I train kind of hard three days a week. I go to class and I'll fight, you

know, sparring and I'm kind of, I'm tired the next day, but I try not to become exhausted. So I'm

fighting hard, but not like a hundred percent, right? Like maybe 80% effort. So next day I'm kind of

tired, but next day, what do I do? I watch videos. And this actually does help. It's helped my Jiu Jitsu

quite a lot. I watch videos and try to learn techniques and try to, you know, listen to coaches and

different teachers and YouTube and all kinds of stuff. Just to try to think of like, oh, if I'm having

some problems, oh, maybe I can improve somehow. And then when I go back to class and training,

I'll try to use some of those ideas. So I'm doing some kind of Jiu Jitsu every day, at least for my

brain, but not for my body. My body, I can't do it every day, but my brain, I can. Right. So it's the

same with your English. So instead of trying to do like eight hours every day of English, and then
eight hours and eight hours and eight hours, do two hours a day, but every day, never take a day

off, never miss a day. Right. And even if you have a really, really, really busy day and you're, you're

sick and feel terrible, at least do 15 minutes. So you still do even just a little bit. So every day you

get some English, even if it's just a tiny bit, even if it's just 15 minutes, even your worst day, a terrible

day, you still don't skip it. You still do it. Even you're lying in bed, you're lying down in bed, and

you're, um, you're, uh, you know, sick, feel terrible. You still turn on some English while you're half

awake and you hear, listen to some English for 15 minutes, 30 minutes. Okay. That consistency is

very powerful. You won't notice it after one day, but after six months, when you think back, you'll

realize you have improved so much just because you did even a little bit every day, every day, every

area of day. And that's something everyone can do. Right. Everyone can do that. You know, some

people do listen to English eight hours every single day. Some people are super motivated and they

have a lot of time. And then they, we have done that. We did a challenge where people did huge

numbers of hours every day. It was amazing, but, um, not everyone can do that. Right. Some

people have very, very busy schedules. They're, they're working and then they have families and

children and, and maybe just, they just get tired listening to English that much. So everyone can't do

a lot every day, but everyone can do a little every day. At least do something. That's consistency.

That's how you do it. And then you can increase it a little bit, little, maybe it gets more and more

after some time. Even in the hospital, do English says, yeah, good point. Even if you're in the

hospital, bring your phone with you and your earphones. Tiago Cap says, do you still live in Japan?

Yes. Uh, our Mido from Mozambique. Hello. Said says, you've grown older, sir, watching you from

the past years. Yes, indeed. We all do. Don't get sad about it. Usually people will get sad like, oh, it's

sad, AJ. You're getting older. But I think it's a bad idea generally to do that. Try to change that

attitude. I mean, I don't care, but, um, I mean about anybody, if, you know, to look at them and say,

oh, it's so sad, they're getting older. Why is that bad? It doesn't hurt them. But what's bad is you're

programming yourself to think getting older is bad. Getting older is negative. And so what happens

when you start to get older, because you will, right? Then you have all these negative feelings and

beliefs about getting older. Oh no, I'm getting older. I hear people say this. I hate it. Okay. I hate it. I
don't like listening to other people talk about it. But you'll never hear me saying, oh my God, I'm

getting older. Way, way, way, cry, baby. I hate it. Don't do that. Okay. That's not, yeah, we're all

going to get older. You will become, you know, whatever your age, if even if you're 20 now,

hopefully you live a long life, you're going to be 40 someday. You'll be 50, you'll be 60, you'll be 70,

you'll be 80, hopefully. There's no point crying about it. This is why I learned this from my

grandmother, both my grandmothers, right? There's no point. Don't cry about getting older. It's part

of life. Be happy that you're getting older, that you've lived that long. And yeah, there are problems

when you get older. Physically, your body starts to have some problems and gets weaker.

Eventually it happens, right? You can still say quite active though, quite healthy. And there are other

things about getting older that are wonderful. They tend to be more spiritual and emotional and

mental. We don't hear about these so much in our media, in our movies, in our culture, because our

culture just focuses on youth, youth, youth, party, party, fun, fun, being young is the best, being old

is terrible. But, you know, traditionally, you know, every age has its strong points, its good points.

So, don't fear it and don't cry about it. Including death, you have to make peace with the fact you will

die, and you're going to die, everyone's going to die. And you've got to make peace with that and be

at peace with that, right? Which I think requires a spiritual, religious practice, an understanding. And

I think everyone should ask these questions and explore this. The point is though, is how do you

age well, right? You're going to get older, you're going to age. How do you do it in a way where you

get happier and happier and happier as you get older? That your life has more and more and more

meaning, that you stay active, you're still active, you're still learning, you're still living your life until

you die, right? So many people look around, less than Japan, but certainly America. Look around

and you see people who are 50 years old, it's like they're already dead inside, like mentally and

emotionally. They don't do anything new, they don't learn anything, they're lazy, they sit around

complaining about being older all the time. What's the point? If you're alive, you're here for a

purpose, so keep living. So don't feel sad when you see people getting older. Don't program yourself

to have that thought, that belief, okay? Don't do it. Instead, try to find examples of people who are

older, but they're still active, they're still doing things, they're still learning, they're still interesting,
right? They're still happy and alive. I've always done that and I still do that. I still, I find people who

are older than me are 70, 80, 90, but can they do everything the same as 20 years old physically?

Of course not, but they're still active, they're still learning and exploring and happy and interesting. I

love those kind of people. People like Steve Kaufman who's still learning languages and I think he's

in his 70s, or Steve Maxwell still doing Jiu Jitsu and strength training and traveling and it's great. It's

great. And there are some wonderful things. I'm much happier now than I was when I was, you

know, I'm 54 now. When I was 24, man, I'm so much happier now. My life is so much better now. So

don't fear it, guys. Don't fear it at all. Okay, see, Daniel Boran says, I personally watch a lot of videos

about TED Talks, podcasts, tutorials about what I want to learn. Exactly. And this is what Carol was

talking about. She'll, so whatever she'll find a certain topic, maybe it's the topic of the VIP lesson and

for that month or that week. And then she goes and finds all these other things like this, podcasts

and videos and tutorials and websites. And she just learns everything she can about that topic, you

know, in English. So it's great. It's a great, great, great way to do it. Cool. Guarav Thakar says, AJ,

your style of learning and your fasting advice both really work for me. Thank you. Oh, that's great.

Good. Thank you. Gabrielle Cervantes says, do you recommend reading books in English to

improve? Yes, I always recommend that. If so, what's the best technique to get the best out of it?

There is no technique. Here's the good news. There's no technique for reading books. Just read

them and enjoy. That's all. Enjoy it. Choose books you like or are interested in. You can use a

dictionary to find new words sometimes, but don't do it too much because then it can, you know,

make the book kind of boring. If it's too hard, if you're using a dictionary every word, okay, find an

easier book maybe. But yeah, absolutely. Read, read, read, read, read books on interesting topics

for you. And that might be fiction. It might be nonfiction, your choice. Why is the A sound? Kristielle

says, why does the A sound in English have a sound exempt? I guess you're meaning why does it

have so many different pronunciations? For example, that, T-H-A-T, right? The A sound is a. In the

word attempt, attempt, it's a. You pronounce that same letter, a. Pizza, attempt, that, apple. And

then there's also a, like father. There's also, it says its own name, say, like the word say, S-A-Y, say.

So that's a lot of different ways to pronounce the same letter. Why? I don't know why. Don't ask why.
Okay. Sure, there's some reason if we look back at the history of the English language, we could

find reasons why. But it's not going to help you. You just got to learn these things. So you just learn

each word, each word's pronunciation as you find it. Okay. And don't worry too much about why

does A have so many, I don't know. Okay. It's English. Sorry. You know, this is one of the great

things about languages like Japanese, Spanish, Italian, that don't have this problem really, right?

Spanish, you can look at a Spanish word and you know how to pronounce it immediately. You look

at it, even you've never seen it before. But the Spanish rules of writing and pronunciation are, you

know, very consistent. And I think that if I give you a general reason why with English, it's because

English is a, is a probably a more modern more recent mix of different languages, right? Kind of

German, Germanic languages. Because if you look at England itself, the history of England, you

know, fairly recently, so well, I don't know, 1,000 years ago, you know, you had the Saxons, the

Anglo-Saxons and in England. And then you had the Vikings, the Scandinavians, the Danes, right?

Denmark, Norwegians too, I think, invaded. So then now that's two groups mixing, okay? And those

Danes and Norwegians stayed there in parts and then married with the locals, right? And they kind

of became one. And then you had the Normans from Northern France who spoke, who were actually

Vikings who came to, who came into Northern France, they controlled that, they became, they were

French speakers and then they invaded. And so then you got this, you know, French and these

Latin languages, but basically French mixing then with the more Germanic languages and

Scandinavian. And so it creates a big mess because these have different pronunciation rules and

different ways of writing, right? So now you get, you've got a word in English and you look at it and

maybe it has a kind of a, maybe kind of a French spelling, but the pronunciation got changed to

more of like a, you know, old English, Anglo-Saxon type of pronunciation and it can become really

confusing. This happens all the time in English. So you learn the general idea of the letters, the

pronunciation, but then you really got to learn whole words. And this is just, this is just a challenge

with English. It's just a, you know, part of the, part of learning English. Malmau says, are any VIP

members received a Zoom invitation and attended the first meeting? Well, the first meeting is still

coming. I'll send another Zoom invitation probably tomorrow. Just a reminder with the link again. So
if you're joined the VIP program, you, if you join it right now, you all get that email and you can join

our meeting, but don't worry, we're going to do more meetings in the future. Silver says, what do you

think about spending most of your time alone? Is it good for making peace with yourself? Uh, it just,

yeah, everyone's different, right? If you enjoy more solitude, solitude means time alone. Some

people quite like to have a lot of that. Some people, some people hate it, right? This is kind of

introverts and extroverts. I think if, as long as you're, you find that it's, you know, it makes you

happier or you enjoy it, it's totally fine. Yeah. So a lot of people like to spend a lot of time alone

reading and um, just walk, going for walks and, you know, I have that kind of quiet, peaceful life

that's totally fine. Strong power says, how can I tell everyone is if they're doing the wrong, boring

method, I tell them and they laugh at me. Yeah. You know, don't worry about them. Show them. I

think it's better to show, show, don't tell. What this means is you just improve your English and

become great at English and focus on yourself. And you then you're showing everybody, you're like,

look, I'm improving. They'll see it. Right? You don't need to tell them. You don't need to tell them, oh,

you should change. You should do this. Yeah. You know, you can mention it. If someone asks you,

wow, your English is getting better or what are you doing? Then you can say, oh, I'm doing effortless

English, you know, check out the website or check out the podcast or something or the book. But

um, you don't need to bother people about it. Okay. If you mention it and they say, oh, that's crazy.

Then just, you don't, don't say anything again. Right? Let them do what they want. Oh, Malmousie

said, I'm a VIP member. I didn't receive an invitation. Just send an email to members at

effortlessenglish.org and we'll check on it and get you the link. Cool. Meghna Sahu says, I accepted

the 365 day challenge last year in April. After that, I have, I improved a lot. Yep. So we got two more

months, two more months, and then we'll talk about it again in April and see how did everybody do.

You know, mine was for Jiu Jitsu. I've done quite well with it. If I count video study, and I do count

video study for the reasons I mentioned, I've probably watched Jiu Jitsu videos. Oh, I don't think I

missed any days. Did I miss any days? I have to go back and check, but almost none. And of course

I've been going, I've been practicing three days a week, very consistently too, physically. So yeah,

I'm doing pretty well with the 365 day challenge. And I hope you all are with English that you're
listening every day. And it's great, Meghna, that you have had some good success because of that.

Nice. Donaldson says, I'm on cloud nine because for the first time I am participating in your English

course. This is a nice little idiom. Thanks. Cloud nine to be on cloud nine means to be very happy.

I'm on cloud nine. It means I'm really, really happy. I'm not quite sure where that comes from. I have

to get online and search for that. Why do we say that? I don't know. Daniel Boran says, I have

trouble with the British accent, but I can understand the American accent. The British accent seems

more difficult to me. Any advice? Well, do you need the British accent? First, I would ask you that. If

you don't need it, then just focus on American English. This would be my first advice. Just focus on

American English. That's fine. If you need English, the British accent for some reason, maybe you

need to travel to England or something or whatever, then you just got to, you're going to have to

listen to it more. You're just going to find more videos and audios, podcasts, just try movies, try to

find a lot of British stuff and listen to a lot of British stuff for a while and you'll get used to the accent.

It's not, you'll get used to it. It takes a little time, but if you already understand the American accent

quite well, I think that you can understand British pretty easily. You just would need some effort for a

few months focusing more on the British audios, basically. See, Ramadan says in French, they say

seventh sky, seventh, like seventh heaven. Yeah, cloud nine, seventh heaven. The cloud part is

obvious, but why the number? Right? Why is it cloud number nine? Let's look it up. I'm curious. Let's

see if I can find. Okay, what does cloud nine mean? All right, can we get an answer? Cloud nine, I

know it's being good, but why? The meaning and origin of this phrase. Hey, hey, look at this. What's

the origin? Oh, basically nobody knows. There's all these different guesses, basically. One

explanation is it's from Buddhism that cloud nine is one of the stages of progress to enlightenment,

to become a bodhisattva. I've never heard that, but but then they've got, so basically we don't know

because there's about, it looks like there's about 15 explanations on this website. So I'd say we don't

really know where it comes from. This happens with idioms. This can make idioms in slang very

difficult. If it's new, then usually like I know where it came from. That comes from a movie or

something. But the old ones, those old idioms, sometimes they come from something in the culture,

but what happens is something in the culture and we create an idiom and then the culture changes
and we forget about that part of the culture, but we continue to use the idiom. And so you're saying

like, yeah, I'm on cloud nine and someone asked, well, why, why, why, why do you say cloud nine?

Why does that mean happiness? And if you ask people, then nobody knows, nobody knows where it

came from, right? Cause that idiom was created like a long time ago, a long time ago, everybody

knew, but now we don't remember why we say that. We know the meaning, but we don't remember

why. Native English speaker says, uh, the whole nine yards is another one with nine. I think

probably comes from football, American football. That one makes more sense to me. Cloud nine, I

don't know. Cool. Rooney Dominguez says, I still remember watching your videos three and four

times a day. Nice. I love your videos. Very nice. Very nice. Yes. Great. Exactly. That repetition is

important. The key is learning how to enjoy the repetition to repeat, repeat, repeat, but keep it

interesting. You're repeating, but it's different. I just read a book about this. It's about coaching. I'm

really, I'm very interested in coaching as you probably know. And uh, so I've been reading and

listening to recently, I've been focusing a lot on different, especially sports coaching. And uh, uh,

there's, there's some quite interesting ideas about sports coaching that some soccer coaches are

using, some wrestling coaches are using, basketball, golf, anyway, but it's this idea they call it

repetition without repetition. What does that mean? It means you repeating something, a skill, a

situation, but you're repeating the main thing again and again and again, but every time it's a little bit

different. So it's not exactly the same every time. Right. And this is how you keep it interesting. And

this is how you teach your brain to repeat skills, but also be flexible. No, it's just like a robot. And so

that's what, like what Carol was doing. She's repeating the same VIP lesson every single day,

listening to the exact same audio, but her brain is focusing on different things. She's practicing

different things each day. So it's repetition without repetition. It's repetition, but different repetition

and yet something different also. It's a little tricky to do that. It's a little, you know, a little difficult

sometimes to figure out how to do that, but um, that's kind of the magical way of practicing. And

magical, I mean, it's going to give you the best improvement, the best results. Right. So it's different

than mindless repetition. Mindless means you're not thinking, it's just exactly the same. Like in golf,

you could imagine this, you're just swinging the golf club and you're not really thinking it's just swing
again. You could do that a thousand times. And you might improve and you might not. You might

just create bad habits. Right. So each time you swing or at least each day you're practicing your

swing, you've got maybe a different focus. It's the same, but a little different too. In Thailand, they

used to say same, same, but different. Okay. Take a couple more in time to go, almost to an hour. Is

it necessary to join the VIP course if you're, if my level is already fluent? No, probably not. I mean, if

you're already very advanced and you're, then you just let's do the movie technique and read lots of

books, you know, to keep going, but you're, you know, that's my goal as a English coach for you.

My, my, what I hope is I help you become totally independent. So my courses are designed and my

VIP program is designed, created to help you go from a kind of intermediate level where you're not

quite ready, you know, just to watch movies and completely, you know, talk to native speakers. And

I want to get you to that point. Once you hit that point, now you can just do it yourself. You don't

need courses anymore. Right? Like Carol doesn't really need a course anymore. She can just, you

know, read books, read the same books I read in English. She can listen to the same movies I listen

to. She can talk to, you know, anybody in English she wants to, and she's naturally will continue

improving and growing her English. She doesn't need courses anymore. So of course there is, of

course, there is a point, hopefully, where you graduate and you don't need anymore, no more

courses. You just learn from the world. Hey, Sriracha, good to see you. Yeah, same, same, but

different. You've probably heard that. Thailand, same, same, but different. Nice. Atsub says, I listen,

I live in the USA. I listen to AJ's podcast every damn day in my work. Little smiley face. Nice. Very

nice. And, yeah, Khalid, a Khalid, Yakuza says, I used to make it like a game. I think that's another

way it's very interesting you say that, that word game is important too. Make it like a game. Make it

like a game. Exactly. You make it like a game. You can play games. You can create games for your

practice so that each practice, you make the game a little different. This is the other way to think

about it, like what Carol's doing. One day she's listening vocab and she makes a game of, I'm going

to learn as many new words as I can. I'm going to write down all the new words or I'm going to focus

on the new words. And then another day, she's going to do the game of shadowing, where she's

listening and saying it at the same time, no pausing. So you make different rules for your practice
each time. So you're making kind of like a game. We do this in jujitsu, also practicing fighting. We

don't just fight all the time. So sometimes maybe we're focusing on one or a couple techniques. So

we'll do like a little small game of jujitsu where I can only do two things and the other guy can only

do two things. Of course, he's trying to stop me and I'm trying to stop him. But it's only two things.

We limit it. We make it more limited. So we're focusing on something more specific. And it's like a

little small game. And then later we do full fighting and you know, in English, full fighting would be

like full conversation, right? Just talking to somebody and just know, you don't know what the topic's

going to be. You just start chatting and you don't know what's going to happen. That can be kind of

difficult when you're learning sometimes. So sometimes it can help to focus on something smaller

and just focus on this smaller topic or just this one skill like just listening. That's why sometimes just

listening helps. I'm just going to focus on listening for a while. Just listening. I'm not going to worry

about speaking. I'm not going to worry about grammar. I'm not going to worry about anything else.

Just listening. Get my listening really good. Then I'll start focusing on speaking. But maybe I just

focus on pronunciation first. So you're doing just making these little games. This keeps it interesting.

It helps you focus on something smaller for a while. All of these things help. Oh, someone says

something about Thomas Sutton. Thomas Sutton University 2006. That's you, isn't it 2006? Let me

think. Was it 2006? Anyway, yes. I was at Thomas Sutton for a little while. Yeah, probably around

that time. I'd have to think back and try to think of the time period. But yes, Thomas Sutton is a

university in Bangkok, Thailand. Yes, I was a teacher there for a while. One of my last, it was my

second to last job as a teacher in a school. My last job was in San Francisco. And then I started

effortless English. So wait, 2006. No, that would be wrong then. Because I started effortless English

in 2006. So I was at Thomas Sutton before that. Before that. Anyway, I doubt anyone cares. Cool.

Surajah says, today's topic is very powerful. I love this about that you're emphasizing this again. I'll

do it again and again, focusing only on one lesson per time. Yep, it's gay. It's that deep learning, but

keep it interesting by focusing on different things. Right? Making little games. Do anything you need

to do to make it interesting. Right? Make you create your own little games to make it fun and

interesting for you. I think it's very important to do that. Okay, last one. We're over an hour, so I'm
going to go now. Okay. Okay. This is a good question. Can I move on to using movies after the

Power English course? Yeah, you can try. You can even do movies while you're doing the Power

English course. If you have time, you could do both. Right? So this kind of thing is up to you. It's

really, it's just based on what's working for you. This again, some of the great things about

independent learning. So I would recommend just try it. Some, you might try it and find like, ah, this

is too difficult. Maybe you get, start getting very frustrated, right? With the movies. You're like, it's

just too much. You can't, you're not really understanding enough. So many slang and idioms, too

much vocabulary, and you're just getting frustrated. And that means just wait. Don't force yourself,

right? Just focus on the lessons, Power English, and maybe, maybe after Power English. Try again

with some movies. Again, how does it feel? Does it feel easier now? And now you're really enjoying

it. It's working for you. Great. Yes, you could do that. If not, maybe join, you should focus on VIP

next first. Do VIP. And then, then you could start adding other things like Carol did with your VIP

lessons. So first, you just do VIP lessons, then you start finding extra listening, extra reading

connected to the same topic as the VIP lesson. And then eventually, you can graduate completely

and you're just out there in the real world of English. That's what I want you all to get to. Okay, join

my VIP program at effortlessenglishclub.com. We've got our VIP webinar coming up, less than a

week now, just a few days. So if you're a VIP member, watch your email, send one more reminder

with the link. If you're not, you can join at effortlessenglishclub.com. Join my VIP program at

effortlessenglishclub.com. Also, listen to those, go listen to Carol's full video. I'll put the link, if you're

on YouTube, I'll put the link down here to her video. Go to my YouTube channel. I'll put her video on

my website also, same website, effortlessenglishclub.com. But listen to the whole thing because it's

really great. Thanks Carol. Alright, lots of love to you all. See you next time. Bye for now.