The Rocket Launch Method

Small Talk Superhero

Small Talk Superhero

Do you translate everything in your head?

Because if you do, there’s a good chance that what you’re doing to improve your English is actually making it worse and not better.

Watch on.

If you are stuck thinking in your native language, translating everything in your head word by word, rule by rule, painstakingly computing your English sentences as you go, there’s a good chance what are you doing to improve your English is making the situation worse and not better.

You see, we get good at what we practise and many people, although they think they are doing what they should be doing to improve their English, are actually practicing these mental gymnastics that make you do what you are doing.

First of all, let’s think about what you probably did when you were at school.

If you had English classes and if you didn’t like the classes that typically people in Japan have and certainly what I had when I studied French in the UK, there’s a good chance that you learned by memorising lists of vocabulary, studying grammar rules, translating sentences back and forth.

Learning to take the grammar that you learned, slot in words, and construct and compute sentences.

And of course, your teacher would put you on the spot.

Hey, Julian!

She would say, stand up, tell me how to say

“I have a green apple” in French.

And then I would be expected to produce the sentence, which of course I had no fucking clue how to do anyway, but in my head, I would try to make it work.

And I would all be a total mess in them.

Most people have English lessons like this.

What you are actually doing there is practicing thinking about what you’re saying as you’re saying it.

And of course in that situation, if you get it wrong, what happens? Your teacher punishes you by saying no, that’s wrong! Or by giving you bad scores on a test.

So that reinforces the feeling that you’ve got to spend more time thinking about these things, more carefully to compute them properly.

And then we get older, we struggle with our English. We start thinking in our native language, translating, not speaking as fluently as we’d like.

So what do we do? We think well okay, obviously I need to memorise more words.

I need to study more grammar.

And a little bit at a time you train yourself to think about everything as you are saying it.

The way you are learning, although you think you are doing what you need to do to get more fluent, you’re actually making the problem worse, because what you are practising is not what you need to be able to do and that is to be able to speak fluently and spontaneously without all the mental gymnastics going on in your head that are slowing you down in the first place.

And the first thing that you need to do is to understand that very fact that what you are doing is probably making the problem worse, so that you are able to let go and to start training yourself a little bit over time to start speaking directly in English without thinking in your native language or having to you know, having to construct and compute, and gymnasti-cize these sentences and all words.

It doesn’t matter. You get the idea as you go.

I recommend you check out my book Think English, Speak English: How to Stop Performing Mental Gymnastics Every Time You Speak English.

It’s on Kindle. It also comes in paperback. Also via Amazon.

If you wanna fix this problem that you are struggling with, if you are struggling with it, go to Think English, Speak English and check that out.

Best,
Julian

Here’s a question I often get in one form or another —

“Can I listen my way to fluency?”

Short fast answer: unlikely.

A while ago I went to a lecture by Roy Lyster.

He’s one of the leading names in immersion education. Learning a language by “immersion” has been popular for decades. It started with lots of ideas in the 60s, 70s and 80s about learning a second language in what was considered a “natural” way. The idea was you’d study, say, history, and get English for free. But as Peter Skehan points out in his book A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning, kids in Immersion schools get really good at understanding. But not much else. They never get that good at speaking.

You see, it turns out we never just “pick up” a language.

And the reason why is, the brain is really good at using whatever information it can to understand…

EVEN WHEN YOU DON’T.

Many of the things you hear…

… you actually don’t hear.

And so you never learn them. And many of the other things you hear…

… you actually don’t understand them correctly.

But your brain just goes ahead and fills in the gaps. And so you never really learn them.

In order to get better at English, two things have to happen repeatedly:

1. Learning
2. Focused use and practice

You’ve gotta learn it, then use it.

And that means taking the time to study English conversation, the phrases, expressions and chunks we use, what they mean, how we use them and importantly ー WHY we use them in the way we do. That is, the intention behind what we say.

Best,
Julian

Yesterday I was talking to one of my coaching clients.

She’s living in the UK, and has seen an enormous amount of progress over the last 90 days or so. But one thing she said to me, is that she used to think of English as just being a kind of tool to use to speak to people… and that’s it.

But now she sees it as something greater than that. She said she sees the connection between the language—the words, phrases and expressions we use—and the way we think about the world.

“Improving my English”, she said, “has changed my identity”.

She not only speaks in a different way…

… but thinks and behaves in a different way.

Language, culture and knowledge are all mixed together. And one of the big mistakes people make is thinking that to speak great English all they need to do is memorise more words and expressions.

But this doesn’t work.

You’ve got to consider how those words and expressions are USED. The context. And how people are going to understand the things you say… based on how they THINK, which may be very, very different to how you think.

Great example —

An American man walks into a bar in Amsterdam, sits down and orders a beer. He gets chatting to a Dutch lady sitting near him at the bar.

They chat, and then—because he doesn’t know what else to say—he asks, “So, what do you do?”

Instead of answering, the woman gets offended!

“What difference does it make? Would you think less of me if I was a janitor, or more of me if I was a CEO?”

To the American, this was a perfectly innocent question — but he asked it based on his own way of thinking, without realising that this is somewhat of a rude thing to ask in the Netherlands (or so I’m told).

Culture defines the things we say.

And therefore, the things we say define our culture.

It’s a two-way process…

… and not only do you need to learn to think differently in English, but speaking English will change the way you think.

And if you’re struggling to speak well in English conversation?

That is, at an “advanced” level…

My book, “Advanced English Conversation” will show you step by step what you need to do. I teach you everything you need to know to reach an advanced level when it comes to speaking in everyday casual and business conversation (you can get it here).

The place to get your copy is here.

Best
Julian

P.S. This book is also available on as a part of the complete “Advanced English” series. You can find information about that here.