Effortless English Club Blog

Effortless English Torrents

2009-08-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

Download Effortless English Torrent Downloads-- full files. Your favorite effortless english lesson torrent downloads.

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Speak English Fluently And Easily

2009-06-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

Speak English fluently. You can do when you change the way you study English. Speak English like a native speaker, without translating, without thinking about grammar. You will speak English fluently in 6 months or less using the methods in my email course "7 Rules For Excellent English Speaking".

I'm A.J Hoge and I will teach you 7 rules for speaking Excellent English.

In my FREE email course you learn how to :

Learn Vocabulary Quickly And Remember It Forever

Speak English Fast By Thinking In English

Learn Grammar Like A Child, Not By Studying Grammar Rules

Learn 3-5 Times Faster Using New Learning Techniques

And More....

Enter your email and name below and click "submit" to join my FREE email course.

The Best System!

“Let me congratulate you. I have tried your method for a week and I feel this is the best English learning system I have found!”
--Laszlo Tolladi, Hungary

Speak English Fluently and Automatically

To speak English fluently, you must have speed. That is the main difference between written and spoken English. Spoken English is fast-- very fast. To be fluent, you must understand native speakers instantly. You don't have time to think or translate. To be fluent, you must speak automatically- no thinking about grammar rules, no translating, no pausing.

Fluent speech require confidence, speed, and effortless understanding.

In school, you learned written English. Now you are going to learn how to speak English fluently. Just join my free email course now and speak fluent English in 6 months or less.

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Fluent English Squidoo Page

2009-05-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

We have a new Squidoo page called Speak English Fluently. It's a brief introduction to our 7 Rules email course and includes a couple of videos.

You can link to it at: http://www.squidoo.com/speak-english-fluently

Enjoy!

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Speaking English Fast

2009-05-24T14:28:00.001-07:00

I'm now making a series of videos about how to speak English fluently. Each video gives a new suggestion about how to study in order to speak fluent English.

Of course, the number one key to English fluency is speed. That's the main difficulty of spoken English-- it's fast. With reading and writing you can relax and go slowly. In school, you learned how to read and write. That's why you feel more comfortable reading English than listening to it and speaking it.

But if your goal is fluent speech, it's time to change how you study English. Watch my new video series to learn a new way to learn English-- and learn how to speak fluent English!

Enjoy and take care.

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Effortless English Questions

2009-05-12T09:43:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone.

I just want to clear some confusion. Sometimes our members/customers will leave a comment on the blog when they have a problem or question.

If you have bought our lessons and need any kind of help, please email us. For example, if you are having trouble downloading we need to know the details: what kind of computer do you have, what kind of connection, etc... This will help us solve your problem.

Also, this blog is an old one that we do not check often.

Our new, current blog is at: www.EffortlessEnglishClub.com

See you there!

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Learn English Tip

2009-04-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

Learn English Conversation using a very simple formula called the Mastery Formula. Really, the mastery formula is a system-- a way of learning anything thoroughly and completely.

The learn English mastery formula is described completely on the Effortless English main page- in a blog post titled "learn English mastery formula".

Here I will discuss just the first step in the mastery formula: get an outstanding teacher.

This seems obvious but in fact most students fail to do this first step. They key word here is "outstanding". You need an "outstanding" teacher-- not an average one, not a "good" one, not a "qualified" one. To truly master English, you need to find a completely remarkable teacher, mentor, role model, or coach.

So how do you choose a teacher? What is important and what is not important?

First, degrees and education are NOT important. A TEFL certificate or a Masters degree or a Phd. mean absolutely nothing when it comes to teaching ability. Sadly, most schools fool students with this nonsense. Schools absolutely love to talk about certificates and degrees-- because that is their game and their industry.

However, the truth is that the more "educated" a teacher is, the more likely they are to be a bad teacher. A Phd. doesn't guarantee that a teacher will be horrible,.. but it increases the odds.

So what is important? The most important thing to look for in a teacher is leadership ability. In other words, a great teacher will have a vision and they will inspire you. Do you get excited when you talk to the teacher? Do they make you excited about learning English? Do they make you want to try harder, study more, and succeed faster? If they don't, it means they have poor leadership skills and you don't want them.

Next, look for a teacher who also has a clear and powerful teaching system-- not just a collection of textbooks and exercises. Most teachers, sadly, rely on textbooks and have no real system at all. If a teacher is focused on textbooks, it's a bad sign and you should look for another teacher. Furthermore, the teacher should explain their system to you clearly-- and they should be able to discuss some basic research that supports their system.

Next, watch a class. Is the class highly energetic? Is it interesting? Do the students seem super-enthusiastic and alert? If yes, that's a good sign. On the other hand, if the students seem bored, tired, or distracted it means the teacher lacks leadership skills-- find another teacher.

Finally, ask the teacher for testimonials and references. An outstanding teacher will be able to refer you to many students who have succeeded in their class. Great teachers have a lot of very enthusiastic and very successful past and present students. If the teacher does not have student references, or seems annoyed or surprised by your request-- find another teacher. When you talk to the references, ask them directly-- did their speaking improve as a result of the teacher's lessons? They should tell you "YES!" directly and powerfully.

Remember, you the student are the customer. You are the one spending money. You have a right to DEMAND incredible results. Don't waste your money on average or "good" schools. Don't waste your time with average or "good" teachers. Shop carefully, ask a lot of questions, observe,.. and then choose a truly outstanding teacher!

Good luck!

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Effortless Business English

2009-03-23T01:13:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. I just wrote an article for Squidoo titled "Learn Effortless Business English".

It's a nice summary page about how to learn business English, and also has a short video from me talking about Effortless business English lessons.

One of the key points made in the article is that business English must come after general English. In other words, there's no point focusing on business English until your general speaking skills are excellent. Otherwise, you'll know a lot of business vocabulary, but you won't be able to use it.

So focus first on learning English conversation, and once you have mastered that, then turn your attention to business English-- if that is your goal.

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English Club

2009-03-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

One of the most powerful ways to learn English is to join an English club. A club is an informal group of people who share a common purpose.

Because they are informal, English clubs are much more fun than school. You don't need to worry about tough teachers, or a lot of homework, or boring textbooks, or a rigid schedule. English clubs are a more fun and flexible way to meet other English learners.

I highly recommend the Effortless English Club because membership in the club is exclusive. Most international online English clubs are open to everyone. That means a lot of immature, negative, insulting people join the club. If you look on the forums of most clubs, you find a lot of insults and a lot of arguing.

What I love about the Effortless English Club is that everyone CANNOT join. The club is only open to people who first buy the Effortless English Club lessons. This means that only serious students, who are dedicated to improving their speaking, actually join the club.

Another great thing about the club is that the forums are monitored very closely. Any member who is insulting or negative towards other members is immediately and permanently removed from the club. The result is a club full of tremendous people-- super-energetic, super-friendly English learners who are very happy to answer your questions, talk to you (on Skype), and help you in any way they can.

I highly recommend getting the Effortless English lessons and joining this club. You will learn English much faster, and improve your speaking much faster, when you join the club.

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Learn English With a Mac

2009-03-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

I must say that I think Macs are vastly superior to Windows computers for use learning English. We always get a lot of computer questions from members about how to use audio files, how to open files, etc.

These computer questions are ALWAYS from Windows users. The reason-- on a Mac, all of these things happen easily and automatically. English mp3 lessons go straight to iTunes and are easy to organize and use. Text guides are easily opened with TextEdit or Adobe Acrobat. And all Macs have an automatic zip file opener.

Macs are intuitive and easy to use, so I always recommend Macs for students who learn English with a computer.

Of course, Windows is still the most common operating system, and all our lessons work very well with Windows. I do recommend, however, that all Windows users download Apple's iTunes (for free at www.apple.com/itunes ) for Windows-- it will make organizing your mp3s very easy!

Read more about learning English, and this topic: Learn English Mac

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How To Learn English

2009-01-30T02:19:00.000-08:00

How should you learn English? What's the best way to learn English-- especially spoken English?

Most students have no idea. So, they continue to use the methods they learned in school. But those methods were failures. Most students, in most countries in the world, study English for at least 4 years.

After 4 years, they can take tests, but they cannot speak English easily and fluently. Obviously, there's a problem.

And luckily, there is a solution. But the solution requires very different methods of study.

Learn more about these methods now and learn How To Learn English.

Spoken English Seminar A Huge Success!

2009-01-27T03:55:00.000-08:00

The first Spoken English Seminar in Bangkok, Thailand was a huge success. We rocked the Royal Hotel for 5 straight hours. The students were fantastic! They jumped. They yelled. They gave all their heart, energy, and passion to learning English!

This was our first "real" Effortless English Seminar. We'll be doing our next one at The Royal Hotel again, on March 29th, with registration starting at 10am and ending at 10:30am. The cost is 300 Baht.

The March 29th Seminar will be longer-- starting at 10:45am and finishing at 18:30pm. There will be a lunch break this time!

The seminar will focus specifically on how to learn spoken English quickly and easily. Participants will learn revolutionary new methods for studying spoken English in a way that accelerates their learning and multiplies their improvements.

While the Effortless English Lessons are excellent, there is nothing like the power and intensity of a live seminar.

If you live in SE Asia... come to Bangkok on March 29th and have the most powerful English learning experience you have ever had!

We hope to see you at the next Learn Spoken English Seminar!

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Learn Spoken English:
Spoken English Lessons.

Spoken English

2008-12-03T23:42:00.000-08:00

Learn spoken English at the Effortless English Club.

Join our free 7 Rules to Excellent English course or use our lessons to speak English easily and fast.

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New Home For The Blog

2008-07-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

OK... we finally have a new home for the blog & podcast-- on our main Effortless English Club website!

The new Blog address is: www.EffortlessEnglishClub.com

New blog posts and new podcasts are on the right sidebar.

I add new ones almost every week :)

Why So Quiet On The Blog & Podcast?

2008-07-15T22:17:00.000-07:00

Why have I been so quiet?

Why so few blog and podcast posts recently?

Well, I'm currently working to move the blog (again!!)-- this time to the EffortlessEnglishClub.com URL.

So I uploaded Wordpress and am trying to learn how to use it. Another system to learn-- ugh :(

But I think Wordpress will have advantages long term. Ill be able to do a lot more with the site... and be able to integrate the lesson pages, the blog posts, and the podcast.

Wordpress also makes it easy to create special "members-only" pages-- pages that require a password. So I may add more bonus material, such as bonus lessons, short videos, etc. for members-only.

Meanwhile, its a lot of work to learn the new system, and all the various plug-ins I need.

I'm also working to put many of our main web pages on Wordpress.

Hopefully, you'll like the result once I'm finished.

Oh.. and I haven't forgotten about the Transcript Contest.

I have started to read some of the entries-- a winner will be chosen soon :P

Really ;)

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The Transcript

2008-07-07T23:12:00.000-07:00

Here's the transcript for the contest, I'll choose a winner soon:

----------------------------------------

Hello, this is AJ and today we have a special podcast. Today we have a contest. This is a transcription contest so I’m going to speak about a subject and you need to listen and write down what I say and then you need to send me your transcripts. Send me the text from this podcast. Send it as a personal message to my forum. So send it to me in the Effortless English forums and send it as a personal message. So this is obviously for members. So here we go. I’m just going to talk for probably about five minutes spontaneously. You need to write down the text of what I say.

What I’m going to talk about is an idea that Tomoe and I have been talking about and that is we are going to start a physical Effortless English club or actually, it won’t be an Effortless English club, it will be an Effortless Language club. So, excuse me, the idea is that we’re going to get a little room or a little building, some physical space, and we’re going to teach some language classes using the Effortless English method or the Effortless method.

So I’m going to teach some English classes and she’s going to teach some Japanese classes. I’m also going to train some teachers, train some volunteers to teach them the method so that it doesn’t just depend on me. So it will be kind of be like a school but I don’t want to call it a school. I want it to be an interesting environment, a club in the sense of like a membership club or a social club or even a country club, but you know, not for rich people.

Dammit, excuse me, got a cough. So anyway, I’m not sure what the name exactly will be but something probably like the San Francisco Effortless Language Club and of course we’ll have language programs as I just said but we’re also going to have social programs and motivational programs.

I’ve often thought about having my own school and there are kind of some main points that I always think would be important for a physical school. One of course are the lessons or the teaching method and I already have that. That’s the Effortless English method. But there are other important parts and the second important part for a school is the atmosphere, the physical environment. I think schools are ugly, butt ugly in fact and I’ve always thought I wanted to create a space that had mojo, that had some special quality, an interesting atmosphere, an atmosphere that was kind of transcendent or transformational so that when you walk in to this school or club or room, instantly your feeling changes, you have some kind of shift in your emotional state.

Maybe you were tired, maybe you were bored, maybe you were stressed before, but just by walking into this physical space, you change and get some more energy and you feel a little bit better. All of us can think of certain spaces like that.

Sorry, I’ve had this cough for about two weeks, excuse me, and I can’t seem to get rid of it. So anyway we can all think of these sort of kind of spaces. For example, some temples or churches are like this. You walk in and there’s instantly some kind of magical quality. Even sometimes a coffee shop or a restaurant can have that quality. You walk in and just by going into this physical space because of the decorations, the colors, the sound and the way it’s painted, what’s hanging on the walls, all of that, even the smells, create a change in you. So that’s powerful and I think we should use it in education. I think we should make schools that are beautiful and inspiring. We don’t have much money so I’m going to have to do this on a small budget but that’s one of the requirements for me.

Another requirement is a motivational curriculum and this is something that all schools neglect or almost all schools neglect. You know, they have their teaching method which is usually bad. They have their physical space which is usually ugly and then they totally neglect the whole idea of motivation. But I think that motivation, emotion, is equally important to teaching method because the biggest problem with language students, any language, any foreign language, is that they quit, right, because they get bored or they get discouraged and they give up. So we have to support, help, and teach learners how to manage their emotions, how to build their motivation, how to build their enthusiasm, how to support and build and increase their passion and energy for learning the language. So I want that to be a component of our club, our school, our program as well, helping our members increase and support their emotion, enthusiasm, and passion for learning the language. Those will be the three main parts of our new San Francisco Effortless Language Club and I’ll be talking more about that as we develop it.

Alright, well get working. You’re going to have to listen to this many times and type or write this and I guess you’re going to have to type it because you have to send it to me in the forums as a personal message. I will check and the best transcript, the text that is the closest to what I actually said in my audio, you’ll be the winner and everybody will love you, yay! Ok, good luck. You have one week, you have seven days to finish your transcript and send it to me. Bye.

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English Class

2008-06-25T20:56:00.000-07:00

English Class. How do we make it Remarkable? How do we create an incredible English Class?

I'm asking myself that question everyday now, because we are starting a San Francisco Effortless Language Club-- An English conversation club.

But not only English. We'll also teach Japanese. Hopefully, we'll soon add Spanish and maybe other languages too.

But I don't want a normal English Class. Most English classes are boring and ineffective. Ours will be effective. I already know that because I'll be using the same Effortless English method I use in my mp3 English Lessons.

But I think that a great teaching method is only part of being remarkable. A truly great class needs more.

To be great, an English class needs to support students' emotions. It needs to inspire them, motivate them, energize them, and entertain them.

A great English class must also be a true community-- a place of friendship, where meaningful connections are made between learners, and between teachers and learners.

A great English class must be a beautiful place. The room must be decorated beautifully-- in a way that instantly and automatically makes learners feel both relaxed and alert.

Of course, all of this will evolve. We're starting small... with a tiny office space and a couple of students.

But our goal is big, and its absolutely not modest: Our goal is to have the Greatest English Class in the world!

PS: A great side-benefit of the SF Effortless English Class is that we'll have more mp3 English lessons. I will record myself teaching every class... and every few months we'll sell the new collection of lessons!

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MP3 English Lessons Are More Relaxing

2008-06-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

Relax. Really :) When you learn English,.. relax. Relaxation is very important. Bored and stressed students learn much more slowly. Relaxed and happy students learn FASTER. This is not just my opinion-- its what the research shows.

But are most English classes relaxing? No.
Most have the following basic goal: Speak Dammit!

That's right. Most schools are trying to force, coerce, trick, bribe, pressure, or beg their students to speak. There is a lot of pressure on students to speak.

Often, the teacher will directly ask questions to one student. Everyone looks at the student. The student's heart beats faster. Do they feel relaxed?

This is why I love mp3 English Classes. With an mp3 English Class, there is no pressure. MP3 English Lessons are no-stress.

With our Effortless English Lessons, you just relax and listen. If you want to, you can answer the easy questions in the Mini-Story lessons. But you don't have to.

Effortless English is a listen-first approach. The key to great speaking is great listening! You shouldn't force yourself to speak... and no one else should force you to speak.

When you listen enough and when you listen correctly to good lessons, you will eventually speak automatically. The words will come out of your mouth and you won't think, you won't feel stress.

Until that happens, don't worry about speaking. Don't force it. Just listen to our mp3 English Lessons. Learn to speak by LISTENING-- that is the Effortless English key to success!

You can do it.

Relax. Listen.

Smile.

Laugh.

Enjoy your English learning.

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Listen To This Article at:
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Transcribe Contest 1

2008-06-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

You write the text for this podcast!

Send it to me as a Personal Message in the Forums!

Listen To This Article at:
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New mp3 English Squidoo Lens

2008-06-20T07:30:00.001-07:00

Hi. I just created a Squidoo Lens for mp3 English speaking lessons.

What is a Squidoo lens?

Well, its a super-simple web page that's designed to summarize key information on a topic.

My Squidoo lens, for example, summarizes all the mp3 English speaking lessons that I recommend. I have links to all of our lessons, our email course, and other great sources for English listening mp3s.

By using all the mp3s that I recommend, you improve your English speaking very very fast.

Look at my Squidoo Lens, and link to it, at:
http://www.squidoo.com/effortlessenglishclub

And then, why not create your own Squidoo lens. Make a list of YOUR favorite english speaking lessons, websites, podcasts, and books. Its super easy to make one!

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Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

The New English Speaking Forums Are Great!

2008-06-19T21:48:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone! I'm happy to say that our new Forums are ready and going strong.

In fact, the new Forums are very active right now. Lots of new members are joining the discussions. Its great to meet so many interesting people from so many interesting places! Very exciting :)

The new Forums have a lot of great features. Members can now create detailed profiles, with pictures, avatars, Friends lists, web links, hobbies, and anything else they want to include. Also, members can rate each other--- so we all know who the super-helpful members are ;)

Another fun thing about the new Forums is we can now create polls and votes. At the moment, for example, we are voting about where to meet in Europe this year.

Sri is organizing an Effortless English Club gathering/party in Europe this Fall. She's definitely one of our Super-Members!

We plan to meet somewhere in Europe and get to know each other face to face. I'm excited to make new friends with our European members.

And I plan to invite Chris (the partner teacher on the Flow English Lessons) and Kristin (our customer service manager.. and my partner for the upcoming Movie Lessons) and maybe Kim (who will be helping me create some Effortless Healthcare Conversations). Of course, my wife Tomoe will also be coming.

It should be a great party!

In between partying, I also hope to discuss future plans and ideas with the members. I'd like to discuss the following topics:

* How to reach more people and get more members
* What kind of new mp3 English Lessons I should create
* How to make the new Forums even better
* How to encourage more communication and more friendship between members

All of this is very exciting. The Effortless English Club is growing into a very fun, interesting, and active international community.

I hope more of you will buy our English Speaking Lessons and join us in the Club. We hope you will join our community!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Learn English With MP3 Players

2008-06-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

MP3s are great. MP3s are a revolution in English learning. That's why all of our audio lessons use MP3 files.

With MP3 English lessons, you can take your English learning anywhere. You can learn English on the bus as you go to work and return home. You can learn English on the train. You can learn English while exercising or walking. You can learn English while shopping. You can learn English while sitting at a coffee shop.

Its so easy. With Effortless English, all you need to do is listen. Just listen. Yes, its great if you can give short answers to the questions in the mini-story lessons. But its not necessary. Its perfectly fine to just listen silently.

Remember, listening is the key to better English speaking. Effortless English is a Listen First method because Listen First methods are the most successful.

You don't need to feel stress when you learn English. You can relax and listen to your iPod or MP3 player.

You don't need textbooks. You don't need difficult and boring lessons. You can learn English quickly and easily, during your short free times every day.

So, go get an MP3 player and start learning English the easy way!

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Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Festival Season In SF

2008-06-03T13:31:00.000-07:00

Its my favorite time of year in San Francisco-- festival season. Summer is the time when San Franciscans love to party!

The season kicked off with Bay To Breakers last month. Bay To Breakers started as a normal running race. It was started after the 1906 earthquake as a way to cheer up the city. Well, it has certainly evolved into a cheerful event.

Bay To Breakers still has a running race. Professional runners, followed by amateur runners, start the race.

However, most of the 65,000 people who participated this year were not runners. Rather, Bay To Breakers is now one huge moving party! People wear crazy costumes. They build and push huge rolling floats, bars, and other structures. Some people walk or run naked. Many people push or pull full kegs of beer, or coolers full of bottles.

The party starts at the Bay, on the east side of the city, and winds through the Hayes Street neighborhood, then through Golden Gate Park, to the ocean. Along the way, houses next to the route play loud music and host house parties. Only in San Francisco will 65,000 people walk 7 miles and party at the same time!

Another huge festival is the annual Gay Pride Festival. Of course, its probably the biggest in the world, as San Francisco has long been a center for Gay Rights. There is a huge Gay Pride parade... with tens of thousands of people. The San Francisco mayor, city council members, police, and fire department all join the parade. While gay rights may be controversial in other parts of America, in San Francisco there is no controversy.

This year promises to be especially big, because California just approved Gay marriages-- and the government of San Francisco strongly supports gay marriage. So we expect a lot of tourists this year-- coming to get married. Of course, there will be a lot of crazy costumes and parties-- which is a San Francisco tradition.

A more relaxed Festival is the Haight Street Festival. Haight Street, during the 1960s, was the center for hippies, radicals, and anti-war activities. Its a lot more mainstream now, but still a fun place. The Haight Street festival has live musicians, good food, and plenty of art for sale on the street. Its a fun time to stroll around the Haight area.

Another summer tradition in San Francisco is the Stern Grove Music Festival. The best part about Stern Grove is that its free! Every weekend, different musicians perform at Stern Grove Park. People bring blankets and food and have picnics while they listen to the music. This continues all summer. There are salsa bands, rock bands, classic orchestras, bluegrass bands, etc.... Something for everyone.

And these are just the big festivals. It seems that every weekend there is a street festival or music festival somewhere in the city. Its certainly hard to be bored in San Francisco!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Success Mini-Album Coming In June

2008-05-17T10:46:00.000-07:00

I get two big requests all the time:

* Please make Business English Lessons, and...
* Please record real conversations and make Conversation Lessons

Well, I'm working on a mini-album with a business theme. The topic of the mini-album is "Success". In these lessons, I introduce my system for financial success. I discuss how I started and created a successful business, and how you can succeed too-- in your career or in your business.

I decided to do a mini-album this time so that I could charge less-- hopefully encouraging a lot of people to try our system for the first time. If the Success Mini-Album is successful ;) I will create a full Business English album afterwards.

The Success Mini-Album of lessons will be available in June. I will email all my subscribers when it is ready.

See you next time,....

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Google Checkout

2008-05-07T16:47:00.000-07:00

As many members know, we have had a lot of problems with PayPal-- the company that processes our credit card orders.

This has been very frustrating for us, and very frustrating for many of our members. We apologize for the problems some of you have had with PayPal.

We do have some good news. Yesterday, we switched to a different system. We are now trying Google Checkout.

In general, Google is a much better company with much better customer service. We have talked to them about our needs and concerns and we are hopeful that Google's Checkout system will be a big improvement.

We plan to test Google Checkout for two weeks, then decide whether to switch permanently.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

New Free Report-- English Trauma

2008-05-03T13:46:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone!

I'm finally back in San Francisco. I have been super busy since I arrived, which is why I haven't added more podcast and blog posts recently.

However, I'm finally getting caught up with work and I will be doing regular podcasts and blog posts again soon :)

In fact, today I have a special treat: a new Free Report!

This report is called "English Trauma".

The report explains the reasons why so many students feel nervous when they speak English, and why so many students feel that English is difficult, boring, and stressful.

Send this report (or a link to the download page) to your friends who feel bad about English... maybe you will help them feel better :)

Download the new Free Report (English Trauma) at:

http://www.EffortlessEnglishClub.com/trauma.html

Also, the report has both text and audio, so you can listen to it and improve your English!

I hope you enjoy it and share it with others :)

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Spiritual Authority 2

2008-04-18T18:42:00.000-07:00

So as the process goes on, you find there is something awkward about all this, and this awkwardness can be expressed in many different ways. One of them is this. How on Earth are you to get at yourself to do something about yourself? Because it’s a project not unlike trying to pierce the point of the pen with the point of the same pen. In other words, if you feel that you could do with some sort of psychological or spiritual improvement, obviously you are the character who’s going to have to bring this about. But if you are the one who needs to be improved, how are you going to accomplish the improvement? You’re in the predicament of trying to lift yourself up off the floor by pulling at your own boot straps, and as you all know, that cannot be done. And if you attempt to do so, you are likely to land with a bang on your fanny and be lower down than you were in the first place.

So that problem continually arises and it has arisen historically in all the great religious traditions. We find it in Christianity, in the debate between St. Augustine and Pelagius. And Pelagius said that if God had given us a commandment to love him and to love our neighbors, he would not have done so unless we could obey it. St. Augustine countered and said, “Yes, but the commandment was not given in order for it to be obeyed, God never expected that it would be obeyed, because we were incapable of loving anyone but ourselves. The commandment was therefore given to convince us of our sinfulness from which we could be rescued only by divine grace, that is to say by the infusion of our souls with a power beyond them.” And that was more or less the doctrine of which the judge settled.

The puzzle has always been therefore, how to get grace, because grace is apparently freely offered to all, but some people seem to get it and some don’t. With some the medicine takes, and with others it doesn’t. Why? Well, apparently you have the power to resist grace, but if you do, you also have the power not to resist it. We would like therefore to know how not to resist it and to be open. And there you see we are back at exactly the same problem with which we began. It’s like saying you must relax damn you. Let go. Give in. And I know I ought give in. I know I ought to let go and abandoned my will to the divine will, but his son Paul put it so well, “The will is present with me. But how to do that which is good, I find hard, for the good that I would I do not and the evil that I would not, that I do.”

In other words, we all come down to a basis in ourselves which we will call, so first of all since we are in a Jewish Temple, the Yetzer HaRah, or the wayward spirit which God is supposed to have put into the soul of Adam or in my translation, our element of the irreducible rascality, where we're all basically scamps. And if you haven’t found that, you’re very unconscious. I know all sorts of people who are full of outward love, but of course, it always turns out that they need money. And when it comes to money, virtue flies out of the window. So we do have the element in ourselves. We know it very well. And the question is therefore once again, how can it be transformed.

But if the transformer is the one who’s inflicted, who transforms the transformer, it’s the old problem of who guards the guards, who polices the policeman, who governs the governor? And it seems perfectly insoluble for the reason alone that it is a vicious circle.

There’s a great deal of talk about two-selves. We love ourselves (called ego), the higher self called the spirit or the atman, and the duty of the atman seems to be to transform the wretched little ego. Well sometimes it does, but a lot of times it doesn’t. So we ask why doesn’t so and so's atman succeed in getting through? Is his ego too strong? If so, who will weaken it? Is his atman too weak? And if so, why for surely aren’t all atmans the same? The puzzle remains.

So let’s take a look at what we’re trying to accomplish. We’re trying to get better. We are out after that type of experience which we will call the positive, the good, the light, the living, and to get away from the negative, the evil, the dark, and the dead. Unfortunately, however, human experience, human consciousness knows by contrast-- we are equipped with a nervous system where the neurons either fire or don’t fire. All that we are aware of, is made up of an extremely complicated arrangement of yes and no. And by a recording on magnetic tape it impulses there are areas where there is a pulse and there are areas where there’s not a pulse. And by so doing, we can tape almost any form of human experience.

In other words, we can put colored television on the tape so that it is all reduced to a matter of yes and no. And you will understand of course, that that is the philosophy of the Chinese book of changes, the I-Ching, which represents all the situations of life in terms of combinations of the yang, or positive principle, and the yin, or the negative principle. Interestingly enough, a Latin translation of the I-Ching was read by the philosopher Leibniz and from this he invented binary arithmetic wherein all numbers can be represented by zero and one. And that is the number system used by the digital computers, which lies behind all our electronic ingenuity. This great extension of the number system which is based on the same principle.

But you see what we are trying to do. We are trying to have yang without yin. We are trying to arrange a life game in which there is winning without losing. Now how can you arrange such a state of affairs? A game in which everybody wins would end up as W.S. Gilbert put it, “When everybody’s somebody, then no one’s anybody.” If we are all equally happy, it is impossible to know that we are happy because a certain flatness comes over everything. If we lifted up all valleys and lowered all mountains, we should have the sort of thing they’re attempting to do with bulldozers in the Hollywood Hills to the destruction of the ecology, in ghastly fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy that every – every valley should be exhaled and every mountain laid low and the rough places made plain.

And I’m sorry to say it was Isaiah whom was tempted – was dedicated – who made that remark. But the same Isaiah also said something that at least Christians do not often quote, which is this following sentence, “I am the Lord and there is none others. I form the light and create the darkness. I make peace and I create evil. I the Lord, do all these things." In spite of which everybody is busy trying to be good not realizing that we would not recognize saints unless there were sinners, or saviors unless there were fools.

And there is no way out of that dilemma. That is why Buddhism represents existence in terms of a wheel called the Bhavacakra, the wheel of becoming, of birth and death. And on the top of that wheel, there are deva people whom we would call angels. And at the bottom of the wheel, there are Naraka or tormented people in purgatory. And you go round and round, now this way, now that way. It’s really like a squirrel cage where you’re running and running and running to get to the top and yet you have to run faster and faster to stay where you are. And that’s why there is always the sense of the more you succeed in any scale of either worldly or spiritual progress, the more you have the haunting feeling that you’re still in the same place.

So you think now, there must be some way out of that. Perhaps there’s something ambitious and proud and wrong in aspiring to be enlightened or compassionate. Perhaps there’s a great dose of spiritual pride in that I, by my efforts, could make myself into a Buddha or a saint. And therefore, perhaps the thing to do is to try to eliminate all desire, not only the desire for worldly success, but likewise the desire for spiritual success. For the Buddha proposed that desire was the root of suffering and therefore suggested to his arhats that if they eliminated desire or clinging, they might cease from suffering. But you must realize that the circle of teachings of the Buddha are not doctrines in the sense that the Jews and Christians and the Muslims have doctrines. They are proposals. They are the opening steps in a dialogue and if you go away and try not to desire in any way, you will very quickly discover that you are desiring not to desire.

And so we very rapidly come to a situation where you discover that with regard to your own transformation, everything you try to do about it doesn’t work. It may have some sort of temporary success to make you feel better, but again and again we come back to the same old gnawing problem and that is why people interested in spiritual things tend to move from one sect to another, from one teacher to another, always hoping that they will meet one who has the answer. Of course, then there are many teachers who say, indeed, there is nothing you can do and therefore you have to practice non-doing as the Taoist call it wu wei, non-striving.

But then you find in turn that it’s extraordinarily difficult not to strive. It’s like trying not to think of a green elephant and immediately you think of it. And so you come to the dismal conclusion that you can neither achieve what you want to achieve, that is to say liberation from the alternation of the opposites by striving, nor can you achieve it by not striving. And thereby you have learned that you cannot concentrate on purpose. It’s like trying to be unselfconscious on purpose or to be genuine on purpose or to love on purpose, when you say I ought to love, well that puts you in a double bind. And we say to the person, well he’s trained himself to be deliberately unselfconscious or he has very disciplined spontaneity. What we were looking for was somebody whose spontaneity was genuine so that the scaffolding didn’t show. And we believe that there are such people like children, but they don’t know how interesting they are. And when they find out, they become brats.

You have been listening to Alan Watts from the Spoken Word Library of the Electronic University. For copies of this and other Alan Watts programs, please go to alanwatts.com on the World Wide Web or call us toll free at 1-800-W-O-WATTS. That’s A-L-A-N-W-A-T-T-S.com or 1-800-W-O-W-A-T-T-S. The Watts website features free audio downloads, program lists, and information on Watts life and works. Once again, that’s alanwatts.com or 1-800-W-O-WATTS.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Spiritual Authority 1

2008-04-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

[This is part one of a lecture by Alan Watts]

I may take the liberty of beginning by saying something about myself and my role in talking to you about philosophical matters, because I wanted to be understood perfectly clearly that I’m not a guru. In other words, I talk about what we call these things and that comprises a multitude of interests concerning oriental philosophy, psychotherapy, religion, mysticism, et cetera. I talk about these things because I’m interested in them and because I enjoy talking about them. And every sensible person makes his living by doing what he enjoys doing, and that explains me.

Now in saying therefore that I am not a guru, that means also that I’m not trying to help you or improve you. I accept you as you are. I am not out there to save the world. Of course, when a stream, a bubbling spring flows out from the mountains it’s doing it’s thing. And if a thirsty traveler helps himself, well that’s fine. When a bird sings, it doesn’t sing for the advancement of music. But if somebody stops to listen and is delighted, that’s fine.

And so I talk in the same spirit. I don’t have a group of followers. I’m not trying to make disciples, because I work on the principle of a physician rather than a clergyman. A physician is always trying to get rid of his patients and send them away healthy to stand on their own feet, whereas a clergyman is trying to get them as members of a religious organization so that they will continue to pay their pledges, pay off the mortgage on an expensive building, and generally belong to the church, boost its membership, and thereby prove by sheer weight of numbers the veracity of it’s tenants. And my objective is really to get rid of you so that you won’t need me or any other teacher. I’m afraid some of my colleagues would not approve of that attitude, because it is widely believed and said that in order to advance in the spiritual life, whatever that is, it is essential that you have a guru, and that you accord to that guru perfect obedience.

And so I’m often asked the question, is it really necessary to have a guru? I can answer that only by saying, yes, it is necessary if you think so. In the same spirit as it is said that anybody who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. Of course, there is more in that saying than meets the ear, because if you really are sincerely concerned with yourself and are in such confusion that you feel you have to go to a psychiatrist to talk over your state, then of course you need to go. Likewise, if you are in need of someone to tell you what to do to practice meditation of to attain a state of liberation, nirvana, moksha, or whatever it may be called, and you feel that necessity very strongly, then you must have it, because as the poet William Blake said, “The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”

However, I do want to point this out. What is the source of a guru's authority? He can tell you that he can speak from experience. That he has experienced states of consciousness which have made him profoundly blissful or understanding or compassionate or whatever it may be. And you have his word for it. You have the word of other people who likewise agree with him. But each one of them and you in turn, agree with him out of your own opinion and by your own judgment. And so it is you that are the source of the teacher’s authority. And that is true whether he speaks as an individual or whether he speaks as the representative of a tradition or a church. You may say that you take the Bible as your authority or the Roman Catholic Church. And the Roman Catholic following very often says that the individual mystical experience is not to be trusted because of it’s liability to be interpreted in a whimsical and purely personal way, and that it has to be guarded against excess by the substantial and objective traditions of the church. But those traditions are held to be substantial and objective, only because those who follow believe it to be so. They say so. And if you follow it, you say so.

So the question comes back to you. Why do you believe, why do you form this opinion? Upon what basis does all this rest? Well of course, almost everybody is looking for help, and thus when I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody’s help in any way. But there is this feeling of a certain helplessness of being alone and somewhat confused in an unpredictable wayward external world of happenings. And this world of happenings includes an enormous amount of suffering, tragedy, and we wonder why we’re here, how we got here, and in short, what to do about the capital “P” Problem of capital “L” Life, to which should be added death. Because it seems to be certain that we are all going to die and that death may be a painful process. That those we love are going to die and so what about it? Is there anyway in which we can become masters of the situation?

Well there are all sorts of ways of trying to escape from the human predicament of being a lonely, isolated consciousness in the midst of this enormous and wayward not-self. We can of course, try to beat the game on a material basis by becoming very wealthy or very powerful. We may resort to all kinds of technology to get rid of our sufferings, hunger, pain, sickness, and so forth. But it will be noticed that as we succeed in these enterprises, we’re not satisfied. In other words, if you feel at this moment that an increase in income would solve your problems, and you got an increase in income, this would give you a pleasant feeling for a few weeks.

But then, as you well know if that’s ever happened to you, the feeling wears off and you may stop worrying about paying your debts and start worrying about whether you will get sick. There is always something to worry about. And if you are very rich indeed, you’ve still got the anxiety about sickness and death and also anxieties about revolution and about whether the Internal Revenue Service will take it all away from you or catch you for cheating on your taxes, or put you in prison for no good reason. Now there is always this worry. And so you realize that the problem of life does not really consist in your external circumstances, because you worry whatever they are. The problem consists rather in what you call your mind.

Could you by some method control your mind so that you won’t worry, and how on Earth would you do that? Well, there are those people who tell you that the best answer is to think positive thoughts, to be peaceful, to breathe slowly, and hum gently, and get yourself into a peaceful state of mind by repeating affirmations such as all is light, all is God, all is good, or whatever it may be. But unfortunately, it doesn’t always work because you have a nagging suspicion in the back of your mind that you’re simply hypnotizing yourself and whistling in the dark. What the Germans call a "hinterdanker", which is the thought concealed way, way back behind your intellect, but has annoying persistence. What if?

And so you realize that this matter of controlling the mind is no superficial undertaking, because although you may be able to smooth the ruffles of your consciousness, there is beneath that a vast area of unconsciousness which erupts as unpredictably as events in the external world. And so you consider seriously the possibilities of psychoanalysis to go down and get into those depths and see if oil can be put on those troubled waters. And then of course, you get into the guru business. You have to go to someone against who’s mirror you can reflect those aspects of yourself of which you are not directly aware.

You’ve been listening to Alan Watts from the Spoken Word Library of the Electronic University. For copies of this and other Alan Watts programs, please go to alanwatts.com on the World Wide Web or call us toll free at 1-800-WOWATTS. That’s A-L-A-N W-A-T-T-S.com or 1-800-W-O-W-A-T-T-S. The Watts website features free audio downloads, program lists, and information on Watts life and works. Once again that’s Alan Watts.com or 1-800-W-O-WATTS.

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The Effortless English Podcast.

Fun In Osaka

2008-04-07T07:29:00.000-07:00

The Osaka demonstration was great fun. I particularly enjoyed meeting some of our Effortless English members in Japan! My only regret is that I didn’t have time to talk to everyone longer. Next time, we’ll schedule more time to just sit and chat.

Since the Osaka demonstration went well, we’ll be doing more workshops and seminars in the future.

My plan is to develop two kinds of seminars-- one for English teachers, and one for English learners.

There is a huge need for teacher training- as most English teachers either have no training at all, or they are trained in grammar-analysis-practice methods (in other words, they are only trained to use textbooks).

Likewise, I believe there is a need for student training. Most students don’t know about the research. They don’t know there are other ways to learn English. They only know what they have experienced in school-- usually boring, grammar-based, textbook teaching. My goal for student seminars is to teach students a new way to learn—independently.

The Osaka seminar was my first one. It went well, but I felt it was a bit rough and needs improvement. When I get back to San Francisco, I will start doing regular seminars in the city. In this way, I can practice and improve both versions of the seminar. Once I’m satisfied with the quality, we will go “on tour” and do seminars in different cities around the world.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Conversation With My Sister Pt. 2

2008-03-30T06:46:00.000-07:00

[In part 2 of my conversation with my sister, we talk about Todd's motorcycle accident}

Tiffany: So what else have you been up to? Anything much?

A.J.: No, not a lot. Let’s see – doing a little bit of work, you know, and let’s see, went out to Todd’s yesterday, rode my motorcycle out there. I’ve been riding my motorcycle a little bit.

Tiffany: You say you’ve been practicing on that?

A.J.: Yep, yep. And oh, I bought my ticket to Thailand.

Tiffany: Oh, so when you leaving?

A.J.: So I’ll be leaving at the end of this month, and then we’re gonna be staying there for – it looks like we’re gonna be traveling a couple months.

Tiffany: Okay.

A.J.: And then we’re gonna – at the end of the trip we’re gonna do a couple weeks in Japan, which will be fun.

Tiffany: Oh, okay. So when do you actually come home?

A.J.: Then we’ll be coming home in May sometime, I think.

Tiffany: In May; oh, okay. So then are you going anywhere between May and the end of the year, or just gonna be in San Francisco?

A.J.: We’ve talked about doing a little motorcycle tour of California, maybe.

Tiffany: Oh, okay.

A.J.: During the summer.

Tiffany: Now, Grandma said that someone – Mom told her one of your friends got in a motorcycle wreck?

A.J.: Yeah, Todd. Tiffany: Oh, man!

A.J.: He didn’t even leave the driveway. He had this thing, this little plastic piece on the accelerator that’s supposed to like be able to rest his hand, because his wrist hurts him, I guess.

Tiffany: Uh huh.

A.J.: Well, Wat had told him, you know, “Don’t use that thing. It’s dangerous.”

Tiffany: Uh huh.

A.J.: Well, he put it on there anyway, and sure enough, he started it up and he’s just, you know, in the driveway.

Tiffany: Uh huh.

A.J.: And he kind of hit the accelerator, and it – and then it got away from him, and he let go, but that plastic piece, you know, hit his, you know, kind of bumped against his wrist, and it kept the accelerator open.

Tiffany: Oh.

A.J.: So it ended up slamming his bike against a parked car with his leg in between-

Tiffany: Oh.

A.J.: And then falling down, and then it cut this huge massive gash in his calf.

Tiffany: Oh, God!

A.J.: You could see the muscle hanging out.

Tiffany: Oh, man! Could they even stitch it?

A.J.: Yeah, yeah. I took him to the ER, and they – it was, you know, of course an all-day ordeal, but they stitched him up.

Tiffany: Oh, yeah. So it was preventable if you don’t have that little thing on there.

A.J.: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think if he hadn’t had that thing on there he would’ve been okay.

Tiffany: Okay. I guess he should’ve listened to Wat.

A.J.: Yep. That’s what he said afterwards; he’s like, “Damn it, Wat told me not to use that thing. He said it was dangerous.” So –

Tiffany: Yeah.

A.J.: I guess we should listen to Wat. He’s the experienced rider in our group.

Tiffany: Oh, is he?

A.J.: Yeah.

Tiffany: Man, that sucks.

A.J.: Yeah, it was – oh, it was gruesome. When I saw it, at first my eyes were like –

Tiffany: Oh, man!

A.J.: Wide open. Because he hopped up really quick, and then he, he sort of hopped back into his house, and I didn’t see any blood or anything.

Tiffany: Uh huh.

A.J.: So I thought he – you know, I thought he was banged up, but I thought basically he was fine.

Tiffany: Well, he’s lucky that didn’t hit an artery or something.

A.J.: Yeah, yeah. He’s very lucky. Oh – it was –

Tiffany: Plus he didn’t hit it in a dangerous spot.

A.J.: Yep.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Conversation With My Sister Pt. 1

2008-03-17T06:25:00.000-07:00

In this conversation, my sister and I talk about the Super Bowl (the American Football Championship game). At the end we talk about Payton Manning (a famous player) and his brother Eli (whose team won the Super Bowl).

Tiffany: Hello.

A.J.: Hey.

Tiffany: Oh, hi! What are you doing?

A.J.: Oh, not much.

Tiffany: Oh, sorry I missed you. We – funny thing is we went to see a friend of ours, bought a house out in the country. We were just going on a little drive to see it. Well, the roads you’re on are all windy back there, and we got lost and ended up down in Brown County.

A.J.: Oh, no!

Tiffany: So that’s why we weren’t home till late.

A.J.: Oh, no – you got lost, huh?

Tiffany: Yeah, so at least little Missy got a nice nap out of it, so.

A.J.: Oh, that’s good. So she did okay in the car?

Tiffany: Oh, yeah; oh, yeah. So how are you doing?

A.J.: I’m fine. Yep, doing fine. How’s is it – what’d you think of the game?

Tiffany: Oh, man! I couldn’t believe it. I never in a million trillion years thought the Giants would beat them.

A.J.: No, I didn’t think –

Tiffany: Nope.

A.J.: I didn’t think the Patriots would lose either. I was pretty – pretty shocked.

Tiffany: I wonder what happened? I mean, they have been on a roll.

A.J.: Yeah, and they looked pretty flat, you know?

Tiffany: Yeah, they did.

A.J.: I have no idea what happened. It’s – huh.

Tiffany: Really weird. I bet those Dolphins are celebrating once again.

A.J.: Yeah, really.

Tiffany: Because I thought for sure they would win. Well, everybody did.

A.J.: Yeah, I know, I know. I don’t know if they just got, you know, complacent, you know?

Tiffany: That’s what I’m wondering, if they got kind of cocky like, “Oh, this isn’t gonna be a big deal,” and the Giants were really hungry for it, and –

A.J.: Yeah, yeah. I guess so. I don’t know. It was interesting, though, so yep, the Dolphins are still the only team ever to have a perfect season including the Superbowl.

Tiffany: Are they – so no one before them has even done it?

A.J.: No. Now, I don’t know about like pre-Superbowl times, you know – they –

Tiffany: Oh, okay.

A.J.: When they used to have just like some sort of a championship, but at least in the modern time, since they started the Superbowl, the Dolphins are the only team to have a perfect season including, you know, winning the Superbowl.

Tiffany: That’s pretty amazing. Well, and the thing is to be so close.

A.J.: Oh, and it’s heart-breaking!

Tiffany: To it; I mean, you know it’s gonna be almost impossible to do that again.

A.J.: I know; to make it all the way to the Superbowl without losing, and then to lose the last game. Oh, my God!

Tiffany: Yeah. I mean, those guys just – because you know they wanted that record.

A.J.: Oh, yeah!

Tiffany: They’d been playing all their starters all the time.

A.J.: That’s gotta be crushing.

Tiffany: Oh, yeah!

A.J.: I wonder how they’ll bounce back from that next season?

Tiffany: I don’t know. It should be interesting to see.

A.J.: Yeah, yeah.

Tiffany: But –

A.J.: I’d almost rather – you know, I’d almost just rather lose one beforehand, you know.

Tiffany: Oh, I know, than to make it all that way and then to lose. That seems almost crueler.

A.J.: I think sometimes, you know, at least you always hear in the interviews that, you know, teams that maybe lose one game or something, that it sort of toughens them up a little bit, you know? And so it’s sort of like it’s a reality check, and they’ve gotta – so maybe, you know, that’s what happened. They just never got that –

Tiffany: Uh huh.

A.J.: And maybe it was too hard to start believing all the hype that they were so incredible.

Tiffany: Right, and I’m wondering –

A.J.: So now, you guys’ little bro – I mean, Payton’s brother has got a ring.

Tiffany: I know – good for him! Poor guy, they crucified him for – he had so much to live up to.

A.J.: Yeah, well, he’s in New York, you know. I think it’s a lot rougher than Indiana to be a –

Tiffany: They’re pretty rough there.

A.J.: You know, a sports star there.

Tiffany: Are you there?

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Chat About Vegetarianism

2008-03-11T22:55:00.000-07:00

Interviewer (AJ): I just did a podcast about vegetarianism. On the forums there’s this super, super cool learner/member named Sri. She’s actually Indonesian.

Interviewee (Kristin): Um hm.

Interviewer: Anyway, she comments on my blog a lot, she’s really active on the forum, she helps other people out and answers their questions. She’s like the über-super-learner, you know?

Interviewee: Um hm.

Interviewer: It’s like I wish I could be like her with Spanish. I’d be fluent in a month. But anyway, she’s kind of – she’s not vegetarian, but it sounds like she eats sort of quasi-vegetarian.

Interviewee: Um hm.

Interviewer: Like she eats lots of vegetables, eats really well. Well, she started, like scheduled this whole Skype discussion with other members on the topic of vegetarianism.

Interviewee: Hm.

Interviewer: Yeah, it was kind of cool, and so that inspired me to, you know, maybe write a little, do a little podcast about being vegetarian. Maybe I should – I can interview you some time about – because I talked about my story, why I’m vegetarian, but yeah, maybe we could chat about that sometime and record it.

Interviewee: Okay.

Interviewer: Would you be interested in doing that? When did you become vegetarian?

Interviewee: Well, you know, honestly not strictly until some point in Thailand, because I was still occasionally eating fish.

Interviewer: So you were kind of mostly vegetarian, though, before that, right?

Interviewee: Well, yeah. Everything was cut out except for occasional fish when I was 22.

Interviewer: Wow. That’s quite a while.

Interviewee: Yeah.

Interviewer: Because I don’t remember you eating that much fish.

Interviewee: I did in the beginning, and it was more of a rebellious thing because I felt like Todd is the one that pressured me into quitting eating meat, and I wasn’t comfortable with that. And I was like, “Well, you know, I’ve already been thinking of moving along these lines.”

Interviewer: Yeah, but you don’t want somebody –

Interviewee: I was hesitant about giving up fish, and so therefore I’m not going to.

Interviewer: Well, of course you don’t want somebody pushing you. That’s not good.

Interviewee: Right. So in the beginning it was more, and it generally became less and less. But I think I still – you know, I honestly don’t remember ever eating it in Thailand, but I must have because it seemed like there was this turning point when I – when Wat and I went with Gene and Brandy down to Phuket and went out on the boat when they went deep sea fishing. And one of them reeled in this fish, and it’s a big fish and it’s flopping around, and somebody picked up this mallet type thing and hit it, and just knocked it, killed it, instantly. And when I saw that, I was like, “I’m done. I’m not even eating fish any more.”

Interviewer: Yeah, you sort of realize, “Oh, they are alive and sentient.”

Interviewee: Right. Yeah.

Interviewer: You know, they’re aware and they suffer.

Interviewee: Yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah. I kind of get that a little bit when I scuba dive. You realize how like fascinating and intelligent they are.

Interviewee: Um hm.

Interviewer: And it’s – it’s like, “You know, they’re not plants.”

Interviewee: I started realizing, I think, when I had my 75-gallon tank, actually.

Interviewer: Um hm, um hm. I think that’s always been for me, that, you know, the main thing. It’s like if they’re sentient beings with some sort of nervous system that’s capable of suffering, it’s like, yeah, don’t wanna cause that.

Interviewee: Yeah.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Osaka Demonstration: April 5th, 6-9:30pm

2008-03-05T03:37:00.000-08:00

Announcing The First Effortless English Demonstration!

On April 5th, we will demonstrate the Effortless English System in Osaka, Japan.

This is a Free demonstration, open to anyone. During the demonstration, I will teach a sample Mini-Story Lesson. I will also teach a sample Movie Technique Lesson.

We will explain the Effortless English System, and will give suggestions about how to study independently using our methods.

Details:
Location: Osaka Municipal Lifelong Learning Center (Osaka Shiritsu Sougo Shogai Gakushu Center)
1-2-2-500 Kitaku (Umeda) Osaka, Japan
Room: Number 3 (5th Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 21:30

To register for this demonstration (and to get information about future Osaka events), please enter your email below:

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Vegetarian Story

2008-03-04T23:48:00.000-08:00

Hello, and welcome to Effortless English. Today is another spontaneous podcast, spontaneous English. And of course spontaneous means “without a plan,” and it’s the most natural kind of speaking. It’s speaking without reading, without planning what you’re going to say. And it’s the way we speak when we have normal conversations, of course. So today I was trying to think about, you know, what should I talk about? I need a general topic at least, and I was reading our Effortless English forums and noticed they had some Skype discussions about being a vegetarian.

Sri, one of our really fantastic members, who – she’s got so much energy and enthusiasm and motivation – she started a Skype discussion on the topic of vegetarianism. And I thought, “Hey, hey! Why don’t I talk about that?” It’s a good podcast topic because, you know, some members know that I’m a vegetarian, and I sometimes get comments or emails asking me about when did I become a vegetarian, why, how? So I’ll quickly talk about that. How and why did I become a vegetarian?

Well, I became a vegetarian about 15 years ago, and it actually was not easy for me because before I became a vegetarian I used to eat lots and lots of meat. I was a carnivore. In fact, my favorite restaurant was McDonald’s, and I would go to McDonald’s all the time, many times every week. In fact, the McDonald’s employees knew my order. I would walk in and they already knew what I was going to order. They would just start typing it. But then, you know, something changed. A few things changed.

The first thing that changed was I got a job as a security guard. This was after I graduated from university with my first degree – my first of three degrees – my undergraduate degree, which is in journalism. And I graduated and could not find any good jobs, so I had a lot of bad jobs, and one of those bad jobs was a security guard at a chicken plant, this big chicken processing plant. And what that means, in fact, is it’s a place where they kill the chickens. They bring in these big trucks with all these chickens, and then they put them into the factory and the workers grab them and put them on these machines, and the machines kill them, and the blood goes everywhere, and it’s truly horrible.

And I walked around this place as part of my job; I worked on the weekends as a night guard. Well, I only lasted two weekends. After two weekends, I had enough. It was too much; oh, it was horrible. I hated it, and I saw how the chickens suffered, you know. I could see they were in pain. They’re screeching and screaming, and it was horrible, and that made a strong impression on me. And I thought, “Hm, maybe I don’t want to eat meat.” So I started trying to eat less meat.

Also I wanted to become a little more healthy, because, you know, I was generally healthy but I had started running. Running, you know, first 3 miles, 4 miles, 5-6 miles, but running was very tough for me, very hard. I got very tired, breathing very heavy when I ran, and I didn’t enjoy it so much. So I had read that actually a vegetarian diet was really healthy, and that a lot of runners have a vegetarian diet, and tri-athletes have a vegetarian diet, or an almost vegetarian diet.

So I started trying to reduce the amount of meat that I ate, but I wasn’t a vegetarian until, then, I got a book called Diet for a New America. A friend recommended it to me, a friend who was a vegetarian, in fact, and the book is by John Robbins. It’s an excellent book, and it’s called, again, Diet for a New America. So I read this book, and it’s a really good book. It’s a book that it’s not trying to convince people, you know, “You must be a vegetarian!” But it – it just reviews a lot of the scientific research behind vegetarian diets.

It also talks a lot about the food industry, especially the meat industry, which is just horrible; the factory farming industry, terrible, terrible. And it talks about the environmental impact of raising animals to eat them, to kill them and eat them. And the environmental impact of going vegetarian. So I read this book and it was a very powerful book. I was convinced. I thought, “You know, this is – it all makes sense, and I have already seen, you know, how the animals suffer.” And I knew that cows suffer just as much or more, and pigs, really horrible, and I don’t want to, you know, contribute to suffering for any being, any sentient being, any being with a mind and emotions and feelings. I don’t want them to suffer because of me because I wanna eat something that I like.

So for all these reasons I started changing and really getting serious that I wanted to become vegetarian. And then the final straw, the final convincer for me, was I read Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, and he talks a lot about his experiences with being a vegetarian. Of course, Mahatma Gandhi is just one of the great human beings of the modern era, maybe ever. A very deeply spiritual and ethical person, and that also affected me. And so, finally, I became a vegetarian. But after one month, I quit, because it was too difficult because I really loved meat and I had this strong habit of eating meat, and it was hard to change. So I started eating meat again.

But then I started thinking that this is a principle that’s important to me; I don’t want animals to suffer. I want to be healthier. So then I became vegetarian again. And then I quit again. And I did this back and forth, back and forth, for almost a year, until finally I completely became a vegetarian, and that was about 15 years ago, and I’ve been a vegetarian ever since. Something very interesting happened when I became a vegetarian related to my running. I noticed during that year when I was going back and forth, I noticed that when I was eating vegetarian I felt great when I was running, and when I would race in these races, like a 5K race, for example, I got faster times. But when I was eating meat, I felt more tired, it was more difficult to run, and my times in the races were slower.

So for me this was a bit of empirical kind of quantitative scientific evidence that hey, the vegetarian diet is healthier. I’m in better shape, and I can run faster and longer, and I feel better, when I’m vegetarian. And that was probably one of the things that was the kind of big thing that convinced me that you know what? This is the way to go; this is what I need to do. And as I said, that was 15 years ago, and I still have a lot of energy and I still feel good, and I’m still very happy to be a vegetarian. No meat for 15 years, and I feel great. So anyway, that’s my story of becoming a vegetarian.

If you’re interested in being a vegetarian – you know, I don’t try to convince people. I don’t try to tell people, “You should be vegetarian!” But if someone is interested, if they ask me, then I do recommend John Robbins’ book Diet for a New America. It’s a really great introduction to being a vegetarian. Okay then. So that’s my story of being a vegetarian. See you next time. Bye bye.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Slang Podcast

2008-02-18T20:17:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone. I'm happy to say that we are getting organized at Effortless English! As many of you know, my podcast and blog have had a wide variety of topics. I have talked about my personal life, about my teaching research and theories, about our lessons, about our company, and about our travels.

For a while, I was also doing podcasts about idioms and slang. This was quite popular, but I haven't done them in a while.

Well, Chris and I have had a lot of long conversations recently, and we decided that he would do a podcast that focuses on idioms and slang. Right now, he's doing a new slang podcast every week.

He just started, but already he has one show about sports slang and one about food slang. He'll continue to do these every week.

Meanwhile, my podcast will remain the "official" podcast of Effortless English. In other words, I'll focus on our teaching methods, research, and other related topics. I'll also continue to provide lots of spontaneous English for our members-- both monologues by me and also recorded spontaneous conversations.

If you are interested in learning slang, check out Chris' new podcast at:
http://www.FlowEnglish.libsyn.com

Enjoy!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Advance English Academy

2008-02-12T11:15:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone. As readers of my newsletter already know, a friend of mine has opened a new English school in San Francisco. Its called Advance English Academy.

The school has a central location-- downtown near Market street, near the main streetcar and bus lines. In fact, its not very far from my apartment.

Zachary is the owner and director of the new school. I worked with Zac when I was teaching here in San Francisco.

The school has several good points:

1. Its cheap. San Francisco can be an expensive place, but this school has very reasonable tuition-- only $250 a month. That's 16 hours of class per week for only $250 a month! I don't know of any other school with such affordable tuition.

2. They sponsor student visas. Zac's school will help you go through the immigration process and get into the United States (and stay here :)

3. Help with Accommodation. The school can arrange a homestay for you, or can help you find an apartment.

4. They are in San Francisco. As everyone knows, San Francisco is the best city in America ;)

If you are interested in studying English in the United States, I recommend Zac's new school. San Francisco is a great place to study and live. In my opinion, its the most interesting city in the U.S. (which is why I live here).

For more information, see the Advance English Academy website! And if you come to SF, email me-- I'd love to meet you :)

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Todd's Motorcycle Accident

2008-02-08T23:47:00.000-08:00

Hello, this is AJ. Welcome to the effortless English podcast. Now, today is going to be a spontaneous podcast, another spontaneous podcast. That means I will talk not read at all. I will just be talking and talking then I’ll send this to a company and they will transcribe it so you can read the text, but I think this is a more natural way for you to practice English. You can listen to my podcast and read my blog and hear a lot more kind of spontaneous English, which of course is exactly the kind of English we use in normal conversations.

In normal conversations we don’t write down what we are going to say first and then read it. We just talk. We all do this in our native languages. And the thing is that this spontaneous speech, spontaneous language is quite different than the language we find in text books. It’s the same in Spanish. I struggle with Spanish because most of the Spanish I find unfortunately is not spontaneous; it’s not really actual conversational Spanish. Most of the Spanish I can find is either from books, audio books for example, or audio articles, so someone has written an article first, then they’re reading it. So I do get to hear the Spanish and certainly it helps me, but it’s not really a natural conversational style of Spanish. So when I go to Mexico or Honduras or Guatemala, I am overwhelmed and I can’t really quite understand what people are saying.

Another problem I have is maybe it’s just me, maybe just my personal problem, but I get bored with the more formal kinds of Spanish, these articles I’ve listened to, for example, from a magazine. And in the beginning, this audio magazine, I liked it. It was interesting enough, it was okay, but I’ve gotten bored with it. I’m kind of sick of it. I want something new and different. I’d like something a little more funny, something more like our mini stories in fact. But so far I can’t find any recorded mini stories in Spanish. They’re hard to find. Maybe they don’t exist. As far as I know, they don’t exist, and that’s unfortunate because I would like to use the effortless system with Spanish. But oh well.

So, my... best thing I can do then is just try to help you all, my students. I’ll try to help you at least learn spontaneous, real, fluent, conversational English both with my lessons, mini story lessons especially, and also with this podcast and the blog text. So today, what am I going to talk about? Today I want to talk about motorcycles, in fact I want to talk about a scary experience I had yesterday, a pretty terrible experience. Just this week, the beginning of this week, my friend and I, Todd is my friend's name, we bought motorcycles. I’ve been wanting a motorcycle for a long time. When I lived in Thailand in Bangkok I actually had a motorcycle and I drove around Bangkok. I learned to ride the motorcycle in Bangkok, which is kind of a crazy place to learn because Bangkok has just horrible traffic and anyone who’s been to Bangkok knows what I’m talking about. Well anyway, I moved here to San Francisco. I just walk. I don’t have a car here. I just walk everywhere, but I decided I’d like to get a motorcycle again. I really enjoyed it when I was in Thailand, and it would be helpful and useful here in the city. I don’t want a car. It’s too hard to park the car and too expensive.

So anyway, I finally decided to get a Suzuki SV650 which is a kind of a middle sized motorcycle in the United States. Well my friend Todd, he drove me to go get a motorcycle, he went with me, and he decided to also get a motorcycle, in fact he also got a Suzuki SV650. Now, the problem is Todd and I are quite different in personality. When he bought a motorcycle, actually, I was a little worried because Todd’s personality and his driving style are not so safe, in fact we kind of joke, his friends, my friends, all of us, we kind of joke about Todd’s driving. When he drives his car he’s always stopping suddenly and sometimes he misses a red light and he’ll be not paying attention. He doesn’t see things. So he’s kind of a dangerous driver to be honest. When you’re in a car, that’s not good, but you are protected in a car. But on a motorcycle it’s very, very dangerous because you have no protection at all. Motorcycles are dangerous for everybody. They make me nervous. I’m a little nervous every time I ride on my motorcycle.

But anyway, yesterday, this is the story, the sort of scary bad story. Yesterday Todd and I were going to go for a ride on our motorcycles. It was a sunny day, finally. In San Francisco we’ve had a lot of terrible rain lately and today again rainy and cloudy. So I’ve been kind of depressed. It’s horrible. I hate it. So anyway we finally had a nice sunny day yesterday. I drove out on my motorcycle, rode out to Todd’s house and he lives in the Sunset which is kind of the western section of San Francisco kind of near the ocean. And I went there and we got ready to get on our motorcycles and I got on my motorcycle, had my helmet on, was getting ready to start my motorcycle, and Todd was on his. Well suddenly I hear this vroom. I heard this loud sound and I look over and Todd is on the ground lying down and his motorcycle is down. This is just in the driveway, so we’re not even on the street yet. Todd jumped up very quickly and it looked like he was okay. He was kind of hopping on one leg, he hurt one leg a little, but he hopped on his one leg and he ran upstairs in to his house.

Now another friend of mine named Wat, Thai by the way, he was there and Wat and I lifted his motorcycle, Todd’s motorcycle and got it back up again and I thought “Okay, everything is fine.” His motorcycle was damaged a little bit but I thought “No problem.” Well suddenly I hear Todd yelling “AJ! AJ!” So I run up in to his house. It was terrible. I look and he shows me his leg and the back of his leg, the back of his right leg on his calf, the calf muscle which is the lower leg, there is a huge deep cut, not even a cut really, we would say a gash. A gash is like a really big cut. So it’s like it was cut and then pulled apart. I could see a piece of his muscle hanging out and there was blood everywhere. It was horrible. It looked terrible. So my eyes became really big and I went “Oh my God.” So we had to run. I had to kind of help carry him, got him in to his car and drove very fast to the emergency room at the nearest hospital, and he was in a lot of pain, very, very painful. It was really terrible, deep and wide open really terrible cut. I don’t even want to say cut. It was a big wound, a large wound as big as my hand. That’s how big it was. So it was maybe six or seven inches long, and it was open maybe three inches, four inches open, and like I said it cut deep all the way in to the muscle.

So anyway we got to the ER and they took him in immediately, but he had to wait a long time. The nurse looked at it first and he had to wait a long time and then finally they gave him some pain medication, they gave him some morphine and he started to calm down and feel a little better. Slowly one person would come in, a nurse would come in and look at it, then the doctor finally came and eventually they gave him more pain medication. They also gave him shots; they gave him little shots around the wound in order to numb it. They had to numb his leg. After they numbed his leg so he couldn’t feel his leg at all, a woman came in and had to wash out the wound with water, saline. Then finally the doctor, actually a doctor and a student came in and they sewed up the wound, they stitched it up. All of this took, man, like six hours.

This is once again another example of the terrible healthcare in the United States. It took six hours for this. It’s ridiculous. I have worked in an emergency room actually and in the past I was a social worker in an emergency room. They’re all similar. You have to wait a long time. The other problem, this is going to cost Todd a lot of money, which is terrible to have to think about money and have to worry about money when you’re hurt like this. I’m guessing, I don’t know exactly, but I’m guessing it will cost him $8,000.00, yesterday’s trip to the emergency room, which is absolutely horrible. If you want to learn more about the horrible American healthcare system, rent Michael Moore’s movie, Sicko. Watch Sicko, Michael Moore’s movie. It’s a pretty funny example of our terrible healthcare system. So anyway after about six hours finally they sewed up his leg and then, now he has this boot, this big boot thing he has to wear over his lower right leg and he can’t walk on it at all. So he has to use crutches when he walks. So we got him home last night.

I talked to him today. He’s doing okay. He’s taking pain medication of course and he’s also taking antibiotics. The doctor said his skin will probably heal in a couple weeks. He’ll have a scar of course, but the muscle, the deeper wound, probably won’t heal until two months, probably two months until he can walk normally again. So yesterday was a pretty stressful, difficult day for me, especially Todd. For me too. Coming home then last night from Todd’s house, I was really nervous on my motorcycle because Todd’s crash was not so terrible. Really, he was going very slowly. It was in his driveway so he just started his motorcycle and he lost control. He put on the gas and it zoomed suddenly and he lost control and hit a parked car. So it hit his leg against the car, that’s why it cut his leg open. Then he fell down. It happened very quickly and the speed was not fast, and still he got a very big injury.

It made me really nervous thinking how dangerous motorcycles can be and how terrible an injury can be if you were going faster, or if you were hit by a car. In the emergency room one of the nurses told us a story about a woman who had been in a motorcycle accident. She was just driving her motorcycle and somebody opened a car door suddenly. The car was parked on the side of the road and they suddenly opened the door and the door hit her knee and just tore open her knee and, ugh. Anyway, another scary motorcycle story. So now I’m quite nervous about riding my motorcycle, so I’m ordering more protective clothing and equipment. I already have a very good helmet and I have a pretty good jacket. The jacket is very nice and a tough jacket. It’s a motorcycle jacket and it had pads in the elbows and the shoulders and the back. So if you fall down it protects you.

But now I need to get some protection for my lower body so I’m going to order some motorcycle pants that also have pads in the hip, on the knee, the shin. I also have already, I just bought, it just arrived today, these Kevlar pant liners. Pant liners mean it’s kind of like long underwear. You wear them underneath your jeans for example. And Kevlar is bullet-proof material. It’s this very strong material. Supposedly if you fall down on the motorcycle and you slide normally your skin will be torn off, but supposedly these Kevlar pant liners will protect your skin.

So anyway, that’s my kind of scary story for today for the podcast. Spontaneous English about kind of a bad event that happened yesterday. I’ll let you know more about my motorcycle and hopefully I will be riding safely for a long time and will not need all this protective equipment. But anyway, I’m going to get it regardless if I need it or not. I’m going to get it because I’m quite nervous now. Alright, that’s it for today’s podcast. I’ve got a little bit of medical vocabulary in there. Just like with my lessons when you get these podcasts, listen to the podcast several times if you want to learn it deeply and of course you can use my blog to read the text and use a dictionary if you don’t know some of the words. Alright. I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Conversation: AJ & Chris, Part 2

2008-02-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

AJ: No problem.

Chris: Yeah, go.

AJ: Yeah looking forward to it.

Chris: Awesome man, well I think it’s been I don't know how many years has it been since we got together?

AJ: Good God –

Chris: Three or four huh?

AJ: Yeah. Yeah I guess it woulda been before I went to Thailand right? I think just before I went to Thailand –

Chris: I think so yeah.

AJ: Didn’t I – I drove up and yeah I think I – yeah so its been about three and a half years, almost four? Yeah. It’s been awhile.

Chris: About freekin time.

AJ: Yeah. Yeah and you know we’ll get this going and hopefully it won’t be a problem any more.

(Laughter)

AJ: You can – but we’ll both just be nomads.

Chris: Yeah man, sounds great. Well I appreciate it, it’s gonna be great to see you and I’m glad you’re carvin out some time to come hang out with me, it’s gonna make a big difference me getting these things done too so –

AJ: Yeah, yeah, I – you know I think it is the best way to do it if you can – especially you have someone to kinda – you keep each other on task but just try to do it in an intense burst you know really work hard for a couple weeks and – I’m hoping we can really, yeah get the whole thing done. You know at least the bulk of the recording done and –

Chris: Yeah I mean let’s shoot – I mean let’s definitely shoot for that then and you know we can sit down and try to even sort of figure out to sort of meet you know what goals you think we need to meet for a complete lesson set, you know how many we need to get done by here and here –

AJ: Yeah, yeah.

Chris: And I think I was sort of you know I’ve sorta been thinking geez I wish I could have carved out a little more time for your visit but at least having those 3-day weekends I think –

AJ: Yeah, yeah, we could get a lot of work on those days, that’s true.

Chris: Yeah, I think even if we’re not making the kind of progress we hope to during the week or maybe not quite making it then at least we’ll have you know, have nice 3-day sort of periods to do some of that so –

AJ: Yeah, yeah and you’ve got Audacity, right, on your computer?

Chris: I do. I’ve got that on my – I actually put it on both my work laptop as well as my desktop.

AJ: Okay good and you've got a good mic? Good microphone?

Chris: I don’t – I wouldn’t necessarily say that.

AJ: Okay, okay. Well I’m gonna bring mine with me.

Chris: Okay. I think you said you were and I just use the headset that I had to record that other and you probably noticed there was a little hiss in it.

AJ: Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah we can use mine, I’ll bring it. It’s really good and – cause I – in the beginning I used to use a headset and yeah, it’s actually quite a big difference. So yeah, that’s cool.

Chris: And I can get, you know I'll certainly get one at some point if it makes you know, it probably will make sense for me you know to get one at some point too so – I think you said you’ve got one you really like so –

AJ: Yeah, yeah it’s really nice, I know – do you have a – is there an Apple store in Chapel Hill?

Chris: There is. Well it’s not right in Chapel Hill but it’s just – it’s you know it’s like 12 minutes down the road.

AJ: Oh okay.

Chris: Sort of on the – sort of right into Durham.

AJ: Oh okay, cool, cool, great, there’s – yeah that’s where I got mine and it’s really nice. It just plugs in the USB.

Chris: So maybe they might even have them there huh?

AJ: Oh yeah, yeah, cause in fact I just bought one for Kristin to use so – and yeah, I’ll buy it, don’t worry about that. So maybe we can go by there and then – yeah we have two microphones, maybe at some point we can be in different rooms you know cranking out –

Chris: Yep.

AJ: Cranking out lessons at the same time.

Chris: Yeah that’s – that and that’s entirely possible and you know we’ll set up – I think you remember, you probably remember how my place is set up. I figure – I think you slept in the – that sort of study, spare room I have last time?

AJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris: You can do that again. I been trying to clean out some of my junk in there but that’s – you know that’s – I’ve got a couple sort of desks and tables in there so we can you know set up one studio up there if we want, we can set up one downstairs, I can clean my kitchen table off, you know whatever – whatever works for us so –

AJ: That sounds good, okay great. And so maybe we can or I could just get directions, I could do it while you’re at work, run by the Apple store and pick up another one.

Chris: Yeah, I mean I don’t – you know I don’t really expect you to buy that for me but you know if –

AJ: Yeah, no worries, no worries.

Chris: You’re comfortable do it.

AJ: Yeah, yeah, especially after this week man, no, no problem.

(Laughter)

Chris: Cool.

AJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah I’ll do that then and at least have, I guess probably during the week one will be enough but I’ll try to get it at least before the weekend so that we’ll have two on the weekend when you maybe you know –

Chris: That probably does make sense, yeah. Then we can be doing some simultaneous stuff.

AJ: Yeah. Exciting, cool!

Chris: Yeah. I think I’ve got – and I’ll let you – I’m not sure that I did send you – I think I sent you a second draft of the first part of that lesson I did but I’m not sure I sent you the second part of it cause basically I had like – I probably have like almost I don't know maybe a 20 – if you combine the two parts together, almost a 25 minute lesson.

AJ: Oh perfect, perfect.

Chris: So the other thing you might – yeah, if you don’t mind doing when you get here is listen through the both parts of that and decide if we should combine em or if you think I should do some more work on a particular section.

AJ: Okay, that sounds good.

Chris: But at least you know at least we might have at least one lesson to begin with so –

AJ: Oh good.

Chris: That’s 5% less work for us to do I figure.

AJ: Absolutely.

Chris: I did finish that book you had recommended to me, the – I guess it was Blaine Ray and Contee Seely?

AJ: Oh yeah, yeah the TPRS book?

Chris: Yeah, I finally – cause I had read maybe a third of it but I hadn’t finished it but I also worked my – the rest of the way through that and – over Christmas break so –

AJ: Oh good, good, so that gives you a nice overview of the storytelling technique and –

Chris: It does.

AJ: Kind of the rationale behind it.

Chris: Yep. Yeah it all looks good, it makes a lot of sense to me so I think it’s a great model.

AJ: Yeah, yeah, it’s fantastic, it’s the best I’ve found which is why I use it. Yeah, really nice. Cool, cool. And what was the – what other book did I send you – the marketing book was the Permission Marketing right?

Chris: Yes.

AJ: Stuff go – yeah that’s good stuff too.

Chris: And I’ll get to that.

AJ: Excellent.

Chris: Yeah man and I got plenty of DVD’s here so if you get bored during the day or whatever you’ll – I don’t have cable but I don’t suspect you’re a big cable television person anyways.

AJ: Nah. Yeah, DVD’s will be great. Cool. Yeah actually I gotta load up my ipod too with some videos for the flight. I’ve got like a 9 hour, 9 ½ hours.

Chris: Nine – so you have – is like – is that just like a big layover they have for you or –

AJ: Yeah there’s a – well there’s a 3-hour layover in Chicago, three, three and a half maybe in Chicago.

Chris: Now do you – do you – it’s so funny that you say that because I didn’t have an ipod until I saw the video ipod’s come out and it’s – for me it’s such a drag to hang out in airports twiddling my thumbs and one of the reasons I got it was so I could put videos on there and be entertained in the airport.

AJ: Exactly, that’s why I did it too cause I had –

Chris: But I don’t know anybody – I don’t know anybody else who’s got one for that reason.

(Laughter)

AJ: Yeah. No that’s exactly why I did it – I already had a little like old nano, one of the little ones you know, I used it with some Spanish stuff and a little bit of music and you know really that was fine for my normal use, I don’t need a big one but then as we started traveling more it’s like oh – this is – it’s just a pain in the ass, you know the – none of the American Airlines show movies any more or very rarely do they and you know yeah all the long layovers, I’m like it would be nice to have a, just download some you know, couple little movies or something and some you know. And I did that when we went to Indiana and it was, it was really nice so –

Chris: Cool. Have you – did you discover the – I can’t remember what it’s called, it’s not the Lego podcast but they were like these movies, these sort of movies they make with you know stop-action Legos?

AJ: Oh no I haven’t seen that. I think I’ve heard of it but I haven’t seen it.

Chris: Well you might wanna, you might wanna download one but they’re – some of them are pretty fun, especially the Star Wars one, you might check that one out sort of –

AJ: Oh okay, cool.

Chris: Yeah they’re sorta funny.

(Laughter)

Chris: Anyways. Get you all full up on your ipod.

AJ: Yeah.

Chris: But yeah there’s a Apple store’s around the corner and I’ll show you, the other thing I should do is show you around the area a little bit. So and there a couple restaurants right around here, you know for breakfast and lunch and that kind of thing and –

AJ: Oh nice. Yeah I remember I think your – the last time I was there I think it had just been built right? Your house and that area around it, I think it all seemed really new at that point.

Chris: Yup, you’ll have your car but you’ll certainly be able to find a lot of the basics just by walking around the neighborhood, the grocery store’s open 24 hours a day and –

AJ: Oh nice, that’s great.

Chris: So yeah, yeah we’ll try to make you as comfortable as you can be. Home away from home. Nomad man.

AJ: Awesome. Well I guess maybe if you go ahead and email just some basic directions from the airport and I’ll get on you know, print out a map or something too, I mean I’m sure it’ll be fine and I’ll call – if I get lost.

Chris: It will and I’ll – you’ll have my number and you’ll have your cell phone.

AJ: Yeah.

Chris: So I can always coach you into the last part of it. The other big thing is once you sort of turn into Meadowmont, the grocery store is there and you’ll – in our.... all these, you know the 32 units are right here so it’s almost gonna be impossible to miss actually.

AJ: Okay, great. Hey you know, I was just thinking, I’ll bring my video camera, maybe we can make some videos and put em on the blog, you know like introducing you –

Chris: Yeah man, yeah, let’s do that.

AJ: Introduce you and you know hey, this is Chris. The new teacher, da-ta-dah!

Chris: Yeah that sounds great. That’d be fun.

AJ: All right cool, great. Well all rightie then, I’ll give you a call you know once I’ve landed and in the car and –

Chris: Okay.

AJ: Yeah so see you tomorrow night.

Chris: Sounds great. Anything you want to plan to grab a bite when you get here or –

AJ: Yeah.

Chris: Well I guess we can figure that out.

AJ: Yeah, I imagine I may be hungry after a bunch of bad airline snacks and – they don’t – actually they don’t feed you at all actually now so yeah, actually that – I’ll probably be hungry.

Chris: Yeah I've been, I mean when I flew up over the holidays, they like the one flight they didn’t even give a drink so yeah.

AJ: Damn, not even a drink?

Chris: I know.

AJ: Stingy bastards. That’s why – the Asian airlines are so much better, God. That’s another one that Tomoe is always going on about, service, customer service and things like that. “I can’t believe it.” Like yes, it’s not Japan where they – they you know an army of people is running to serve you everywhere you go.

Chris: Do you have any – do you have like any video of her or anything?

AJ: Trying to think, do I have any video of Tomoe? I shot, she’s so, like kind – she’s a little camera shy.

Chris: Is she.

AJ: Let me think if I – I may actually have, I’ll bring my video from, I think there’s a little bit, like a couple tiny little snippets from our vacation on – in Honduras so I’ll –

Chris: Yeah bring some along, I’d like to – of course you said maybe a picture or two but that’d be interesting to see what she’s like.

AJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah I’ll do that.

Chris: Okay, cool. Well I’m looking forward to it man, it’ll be a good time and yeah give me a call when you get in and we’ll start figuring it out.

AJ: All rightie then, see you tomorrow night.

Chris: Okay.

AJ: Okay.

Chris: Okay great.

AJ: Okay.

Chris: Bye.

AJ: Bye.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

New Lessons at a Discount

2008-01-29T13:29:00.000-08:00

Hi.

This is it-- finally!

The new Flow English Lessons are now available to my podcast listeners and my blog readers.

Because you are part of my loyal audience, you get the new Flow English lessons at a discount-- for only $77. The normal price is $97.

This discount price is available until February 2nd. On that day, we will raise the price to $97. So if you want the new Flow English lessons, get them now :)

To get the new Flow English lessons, go to:
http://www.EffortlessEnglishClub.com/flowenglish.html

Enjoy them!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

New Lessons Finished!

2008-01-23T10:13:00.000-08:00

The new lessons are finished! Chris and I worked together for many long hours to get them finished before the end of this month.

The new lessons are called "Flow English Lessons". Flow, of course, describes the movement of water. And water, of course, moves easily and effortlessly. We want you to speak English easily and effortlessly.

The new Flow English lessons focus on the most common idioms, vocabulary, and grammar in English. You learn these very deeply. In some ways, they are easier than the Effortless English Club Lessons. However, I recommend the New Flow English Lessons for everyone who needs to speak faster, better, and automatically.

Another great thing about the new lessons-- they are good for adults and older children. I think the lessons would be fantastic for High School or even Middle School students. Of course all of our lessons are made for adults, but these lessons have a lot of funny and strange stories which would also be entertaining to HS & MS students.

A couple of days ago, I announced the new lessons to my email Newsletter subscribers. They got a very big discount-- but only for one day. It was amazing! So many people got the lessons in just 24 hours.

Today, we are sending an announcement to all subscribers to my 7 Rules Email course. If you subscribed to that course, you get the new lessons at a discount also. After three days, we'll raise the price again... so check your email soon!

Next week, I will officially announce the new lessons here-- on my podcast and blog. I'll include a link to the Flow English page, so you can get the new lessons immediately.

We're very excited about the new lessons. They fit perfectly with The Effortless English Club Lessons.

In a month or two, we hope to have our next album ready-- the album everyone has been asking about -- the Movie Lessons!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Conversation: AJ & Chris

2008-01-18T16:09:00.000-08:00

[I called Chris before visiting him. We talked about my coming visit, making new English lessons, Tomoe's trip to Japan, a new book we just finished (Prometheus Rising), travel, and the Effortless English business.]

[Telephone Ringing]

Chris: Hello, you’ve reached 932‑7708. Leave me a message. (Beep)

AJ: Hey, it’s AJ. What’s up? Well, I guess we’re gonna –

Chris: Hey, man.

AJ: Oh, hey, good. Gotcha.

Chris: (Laughs) How’s the new year treating ya?

AJ: Yeah, pretty good. Things are going well. Actually, it’s been a great beginning to the year so far.

Chris: How so?

AJ: I don’t know. I had a really good time New Year’s Eve. Went out with a bunch of friends to a party here in San Francisco, yeah, it was great.

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

AJ: A lot of good music, some kinda international music. There was a group from India, some from Africa, bunches of different ones; it was nice.

Chris: Alright.

AJ: Yeah. How ’bout yourself?

Chris: Pretty good, pretty good. A little bit busier. The vacation’s always nice and sometimes you come back to a few too many e‑mails and voice messages, but all in all, it hasn’t been too bad.

AJ: Good, good.

Chris: I finally got going with the gym memberships, so I’m even up to date with some of the resolutions and all.

AJ: Alright, good. Yeah, I’ve got a gym membership, but I need to use it. (Laughs)

Chris: (Laughs)

AJ: I guess that’s my resolution.

Chris: Yeah. Well, cool, man.

AJ: Yeah. So tomorrow I’m flying out. I’ll be there tomorrow.

Chris: Yeah. You’re getting in around 9:00 or so, assuming.....

AJ: Yeah, yeah. And then I’m gonna go ahead and rent a car.

Chris: Okay.

AJ: I guess I can probably just get like a Google map to your house from the Raleigh airport.

Chris: You can, and I can – that’s probably sensible, and I can also send you some directions to sort of maybe supplement that. It’s not gonna be too bad. I don’t think you’re gonna find it to be too difficult ’cause basically you’re gonna – 40 is sort of one of the big highways around here, and that’s gonna run pretty much straight from the airport, pretty close to where I live. And you’re gonna get off 40 onto 54, and then 54’s gonna bring you right into Meadowmont, where I live, so it’s not gonna be too bad. But I’ll send you some supplementary directions.

AJ: Okay, great.

Chris: Yeah.

[Crosstalk]

AJ: What’s the weather like out there?

Chris: It warmed up today. It’s like in the 50s today.

AJ: Oh, that’s not bad.

Chris: Yeah, it’s not bad. Actually last week, we had some surprisingly cold weather where it stayed sorta below freezing for a few days.

AJ: Alright, I guess I’ll pack –

[Crosstalk]

AJ: I was gonna say I’ll pack some warm clothes just in case. (Laughs)

Chris: Yeah, at least like a good warm pair of pants and good coat. So yeah, but, too, if you want to do some hiking and that, whatever you like to hike in. I just started this gym membership, but I have a few free passes, so if you wanna work out there, too, or try that out.

AJ: Yeah, actually, I’d like that. That’d be great.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, man.

AJ: Try to burn off some of the fat from Indiana. (Laughs)

Chris: Did you put in a winter’s layer over the holidays?

AJ: Yeah, damn. It’s frightening. Tomoe was pretty much horrified by the diet in Indiana. (Laughs)

Chris: Is that right?

AJ: Yeah. She’s like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe that they eat like this.” It’s like, “Welcome to America. Welcome to real America.”

Chris: (Laughs)

AJ: Yeah, you’re like cookies, cakes, just everything with tons of sugar.

Chris: Right.

AJ: Oh, man.

Chris: I’m almost sure I didn’t share this story with you, but I won’t keep it long now. I had all these holiday parties I went to- that was at the school and at the shelter before Christmas. And just was like basically just astounded at what people were gonna eat. There were like eight cakes there and three pies, and there were people who would try all eight cakes and three pies.

AJ: Wow.

Chris: And get one of these paper plates, and the paper plate collapsing under the weight of it. I was just like, “Wow. No wonder every other person I work with has diabetes.”

AJ: (Laughs) Yes. Well, two people in my family have diabetes. It didn’t stop ’em.

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

AJ: Yeah. So she’s [Tomoe] happy to be back in Japan right now eating healthy Japanese food.

Chris: Is she there now?

AJ: Yeah, she’s there for two months. She’s visiting her family for a couple months.

Chris: Oh, okay. Well, that’s a good long spell.

AJ: Yeah, yeah. She’s been pretty homesick, so –

Chris: I see.

AJ: – she’s quite happy. And then we’re gonna meet back up again actually in Thailand.

Chris: Oh, you are? Nice.

AJ: Yeah. In March, we’re taking a trip to Thailand and be there a few months. Hopefully I’m gonna do a dive master course as get the dive master certificate and then we’ll –

Chris: I think this is the one you were talking a little bit about.

AJ: Yeah, right, right.

Chris: Going to Thailand to do some diving, yeah, yeah.

AJ: Yeah, and visit our friend, Kenny, down in Malaysia, and just see Thailand again. I missed Thailand, so it’ll be nice.

Chris: Yeah. Well, it’s a little more globetrotting for you, huh?

AJ: Yeah. Can’t get enough.

Chris: (Laughs) You bastard.

AJ: (Laughs) Well, that’s why I’m coming. (Laughs) Right?

Chris: (Laughs)

AJ: To get these lessons finished and –

Chris: Yeah, I can’t really – if things go well, I won’t be able to call you bastard for long, right?

AJ: No, you won’t.

Chris: (Laughs)

AJ: So get it now while you can. (Laughs) And then other people will be calling you bastard.

[Laughter]

Chris: Cool.

AJ: Yeah.

Chris: Then I’ll really be a member of the club.

AJ: Yeah, that’s right. You’ll be able to make them feel bad with all your tales of vacation and relaxation and fun.

Chris: I know. It’s been- I’ve burnt out all my good old stories of traveling really pretty much, so I can’t really – it’s been hard to make people jealous lately, to be honest with you.

AJ: Yeah. You need some new ones.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

AJ: Yeah. Hopefully, we can make some good progress. We’ll have a couple weeks. I figure we can – especially once we get in the groove – do maybe two sets per day, one or two sets per day. I mean we may be able to –

Chris: Yeah. I mean, let’s see what we – I really don’t – to tell you the truth, I don’t know what to expect and you – yeah.

AJ: I mean, I can do ’em fast at this point, so –

Chris: Okay. (Laughs)

AJ: So I was thinking that at the very least, like while you’re at work, I would probably crank one out myself –

Chris: Okay.

AJ: – and then maybe when you got back, then we could crank – work on another together.

Chris: Yeah, that’d be great.

AJ: There’d be a mix of voices then on the lesson, mine and yours, and then that’d be nice for the students I think. So I mean I don’t know. I have the feeling we may be able to – if we’re shooting for about 20 or so sets, we may be able to get most or all of them done I think.

Chris: Yeah. That’d be pretty awesome.

AJ: Yeah. And that’s the bulk of the work. After that, we just pay somebody to do a Web site or just use the template I already have, etcetera, etcetera.

Chris: Yep, yep.

AJ: And I know that lots of people are wanting lessons. I get e‑mails asking me, “Do you have more lessons?”

Chris: Good. Keep ’em hungry, man. (Laughs)

AJ: Yeah, that’s right, keep ’em hungry. (Laughs) Say, “Not yet. You have to wait.”

Chris: “We want ’em to be so good this time that –”

AJ: That’s right. (Laughs) “They’re gonna be so good that your mind will explode with English after five minutes of listening.”

Chris: (Laughs) Yeah. I mean the future plan needs to be selling English microchips I think.

AJ: Yeah, that’s true. Just download the English language.

Chris: Straight into the brain.

AJ: Yeah, of course, at that point, we’re out of business. (Laughs)

Chris: (Laughs) We might be out of life units, too.

AJ: Yeah, that’s true. We’ll probably be dead, so it shouldn’t – we’ll be okay. (Laughs) We’ll have enough time to find another business.

Chris: Well, with all this Prometheus Rising stuff you have exposed me to, we gotta think of the future, right?

AJ: That’s true. That’s true. Yeah, pretty interesting, huh? It’s an interesting. He’s an interesting guy.

Chris: Yeah. I read it over break. I didn’t get to the marketing book, but I did finish his book. Yeah, it was really good. He’s a little spacey sometimes, but mostly I really liked it, yeah.

AJ: Yeah, yeah.

Chris: When did you stumble across him?

AJ: Let’s see. I stumbled across him a couple years go. This essay he wrote on the Internet called ePrime. Have you heard of that?

Chris: ePrime. I think that was stuff that – maybe I’m getting confused, but I almost think that was – that one of the guys that wrote a book that Albert Ellis was into that.

AJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That could be. I mean it’s not just this guy’s invention. It’s basically the idea that the English language is not – its structure is not kind of in line with scientists' thinking, especially the whole physics and uncertainty principle. And so basically the idea is that you remove the verb “to be” from the English language. So you never say, “He is black.” You say, “He seems to be black. He appears black. He looks black to me.” So you include the idea of perception in everything you say.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

AJ: And that gives it a more accurate – it basically introduces the uncertainty that it’s not something "is" something, it’s something "seems" or "appears" or –

Chris: And you’re also not essentializing things. Yeah, yeah.

AJ: Exactly, exactly. So you make it clear that you’re describing your perceptions or characteristics, that it’s not necessarily an inborn essence or –

Chris: Mm-hmm.

AJ: So interesting. Hard to do. I actually tried doing it just with writing where you can edit, but it’s pretty damn hard to eliminate “is” and “are” and “was” from the language. But it’s fascinating. I’ve read a couple things that he wrote in ePrime and it is, it does come across as far more rational and clear. You could see where if people would stick to that during discussions and debates that you really would be getting – there’d be much more room to find a common ground or at least to agree at what you’re talking about.

Chris: Right. And it’s good to not – I mean it really introduces sort of a healthy skepticism into what we’re all over confident about, too.

AJ: Exactly, yeah, exactly, ’cause you never – well, basically exactly that, that there’s always some degree of uncertainty, small or large, but it’s always there. So anyway, I found that essay by him and I was like, “Oh, this is really fascinating,” and then I ended up eventually getting that book Prometheus Rising which is also very interesting.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah, it’s good stuff. Well, we’ll have time to delve in, won’t we?

AJ: Yeah. Yes, we will.

Chris: Talk more about it. I’m trying to think what – is there anything else you need to know, anything you’d particularly like to do or make sure you get in while you’re here?

AJ: Nothing in particular. I mean I’m pretty much open for anything. Maybe I’ll bring my discs and we could maybe go out to your disc golf course again if you want. (Laughs)

Chris: Yeah, yeah, sure.

AJ: A little strolling out there.

Chris: I haven’t been out there since you were here. (Laughs)

AJ: Oh, yeah. (Laughs) Yeah. I’ll bring a disc or two, a couple of ’em I guess, and – yeah, I don’t know, just anything. Good veggie food and –

Chris: Yep.

AJ: Yeah. Looking forward to it. It’ll be, yeah, one of my secret motivations is to get this thing launched so that you’re free to come out and travel a lot, too.

Chris: And play, man.

AJ: And play, yeah. We can scuba dive and go to Thailand and India and Latin America and Europe –

Chris: (Laughs)

AJ: – and keeping working. That’s what I love about this business is that I can do it from anywhere. I go to Mexico and just bring the computer and keep on working.

Chris: Yeah.

AJ: It’s quite nice.

Chris: Well, I still have to get over my – get out of my own little box. It’s hard to sort of believe that that would be possible.

AJ: Well, you believe it when it happens.

Chris: (Laughs) It’s easier to believe it when it’s actually already happening?

AJ: Yeah. I was the same. I had this so irrational period that I just would never get anybody – I think it told you. That was my thing in my head for the longest time, for like a month as I was putting it all together. I just kept thinking, “What if I don’t get any person, not one? All this for nothing.”

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

AJ: And actually this week, I’m having a huge week this week. I don’t know. I guess everyone’s New Year’s resolution is to learn English, because –

Chris: Yep. I was sorta wondering if you would _____. You had mentioned that it had been sorta slow and I was like, “Yeah. I wonder if –” it might be slow but maybe it’ll pick up and even triple what you normal make up for the slow time.

AJ: Yeah. And that’s exactly what’s happened. This week has been unbelievable. It far exceeded my best week ever.

Chris: Awesome, really.

AJ: Yeah, oh, yeah. I think before – God, it’s probably 40‑50 percent more than my previous best week.

Chris: That’s great.

AJ: So, yeah, fantastic. Hope some of that continues.

Chris: (Laughs) Yeah, man.

AJ: So yeah, it’s fun when it’s growing, too. Kinda creates more of a critical mass of people who’ll be using the forums. I don’t know. Yeah, it just kinda a lot more fun, too. A little more of a community.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AJ: And one fun thing for me, too, is that with all these members all over the place, it’s kinda meeting one or two of ’em every time I travel which is what I’ve been – I did that in Mexico a little bit –

Chris: Right.

AJ: I know we’ve got a couple Thai members. I think maybe I’ll just post it on the forums wherever I’m traveling and try to meet up with some of the people. It’s kinda cool.

Chris: Yeah. And that’s all sort of one more thing that you can sort of build the community and then share that sort of community building with the blog and all, too, right?

AJ: Yeah.

[End of Audio]

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

More Spontaneous English Is Coming

2008-01-16T14:20:00.000-08:00

Hi.

I've got good news for my podcast listeners. This year, I will be adding a lot more spontaneous English to the podcast.

What is "spontaneous English". Its totally natural speaking-- no plan, no reading.

My recent post "Cool Stuff for 2008" was spontaneous. I hit the record button and just started to talk. I had a general topic in mind, but no plan. I wasn't reading anything.

This kind of English is great for you, because its the kind of English we use in real conversations.

In the past, I couldn't offer much spontaneous English. Why not? Because to help you understand, I always want to include text. I know it can be very difficult for some students to understand-- unless they can check text.

Well, I tried typing the text myself-- but I was much too slow and it took way too much time. Next, I searched for professional companies that could type the text. I found a few-- but they were all expensive.

So, I usually typed the text first, then read it. Its still great practice for you... just not the best.

Well, now that Effortless English is growing fast, I can finally afford to pay a professional to transcribe my speech. Its expensive-- but our growth makes it possible to do more often.

So, for you, I will be paying for more transcriptions. More of my podcasts will be spontaneous. Also, I'll be including more recorded conversations between two people.

In fact, I just sent a conversation between Chris and I to the transcription company. The text should be ready in 5-7 days.. then I'll post both the audio and the text.

I hope this helps you improve your English. I hope you enjoy it.

Have a great New Year!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Update on the New Lessons

2008-01-15T16:20:00.000-08:00

Good news!

Chris Moses and I have been making new lessons everyday. I'm currently in North Carolina, visiting him.

We now have 12 new lesson sets! By the end of the week, we should have 20 new sets. Then we will put them on the internet-- and you can buy them.

Wow, its taken a long time to get these finished.

This lesson album will be called "Flow English Lessons". "Flow" is a word that describes the movement of water. Of course, water moves easily and effortlessly. We want you to speak easily and effortlessly.

These lessons focus on the most common idioms and vocabulary. We want you to get a lot more repetition so you learn very deeply.

The Mini-Stories have been very fun to record. The Mini-Stories in "Flow English" are funnier (and easier) than the Mini-Stories in the "Effortless English Club" album. I hope you enjoy them. I have enjoyed making them.

I will make an official announcement very soon.

First I will send an email to my email newsletter subscribers-- and of course they will get a big discount on the new Flow English lessons.

Next, I'll send an email to my full email list-- all the people who have done my 7 Rules email course. They will also get a discount (though not as big as my newsletter subscribers ;)

Then I'll announce the new Flow English Lessons here-- on my blog & podcast. You'll get a discount too!

And finally, we will start advertising the lessons at the normal price. The full price will be around $97.

And now... I have to return to the office and record some more lessons!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Cool Stuff For 2008

2008-01-09T12:19:00.000-08:00

Hi, this is AJ. Today I want to talk a little bit about the coming year, about 2008, and what will be happening at Effortless English in the next year. I'm happy to say that we are working on new lessons. When I say "we," I mean myself, AJ Hoge, also Kristin Dodds, who is another one of our teachers, and Chris Moses, who is our newest teacher. We're all working on lessons right now, and I'm gonna talk a little bit about those.

Unfortunately, these things don't get finished as fast as we want them to. Now, I've been talking about making new lessons for a long time, actually. Some of our older members are probably thinking, "AJ, when are you finally going to finish? You've been talking about new lessons for months and months, and they're still not here!"

And it's true; I'm sorry. Unfortunately, I've been very busy. I'm really the only person who does Effortless English right now, and then when Kristin and Chris got involved, I've had to spend a lot of time teaching them and training them, especially with the storytelling method. So that's taking some time; and of course, I have to manage the business itself as well. The company is growing quickly, which is great. It's fantastic. I'm very happy that Effortless English Incorporated is growing, but that creates a lot of extra work for me that is not focused on teaching.

So I'm trying to juggle and trying to handle all these different things, and that's why it's taking longer than normal — longer than I want — to get more lessons finished, so my message is please be patient! People are emailing all the time. "AJ, we want more lessons! AJ, we want more lessons!" I've gotten a lot of good ideas about different kinds of lessons that people would like, and they've been fantastic ideas. I think our members are very creative and have a lot of great ideas; and I hope to do most of them or all of them at some time in the future, but right now we're where we have to go a little bit slowly, little by little.

So let me talk about what we are actually doing now, what we're actually working on now, and what will hopefully be finished- I'm hoping in the next few months. So first let me talk about Kristin.

Kristin Dodds. Kristin Dodds is an excellent English teacher. I have taught with her, actually, at several different schools. We taught together in Korea way back in 1997. We taught small children, actually, we taught English to small children. Kristin is an excellent teacher. We are very good friends; we've known each other a long time. So she's already started helping me. Kristin is actually our customer service manager right now, so if you email — you have a question, you have a problem, if you email Effortless English — probably she's the one reading your email. Sometimes she sends an email to me if there's a big problem that I have to take care of, but normally she solves the problems. She takes care of them. So she is our customer service manager, and she's also a teacher.

She is working on the movie lessons. Now, all of you who bought my lessons have a sample movie lesson. I think there are actually two sample movie lessons on there, the beginning of a romantic comedy, a real movie; and we use the dialog, right? We use the talking, we use the story, the English in the movie to make our lessons. Why are we using movies? Well, because movies are excellent for learning real, spoken English. Okay, there's a difference between written English, the English you see in a book, and spoken, the English you hear on a street in America or England or Australia.

The style is different, the phrases are different, and even the vocabulary can be different. So movies are much better for learning spoken English. They're better than books. If you want to learn to really speak, if you want to — for example, if you want to come to the United States, and you want to come to San Francisco and walk around, and you want to talk to people on the street and talk to Americans and make friends, and you want to understand what everyone is saying, and you want them to understand you, well, then movies are better for that kind of English.

If you read a lot of textbooks, they're not gonna help you. In fact, I see it all the time here. When I was teaching at my school in San Francisco, so many people — so many students came from Asia, Latin America and Europe; and they knew a lot of textbook English, but they were very upset because here in San Francisco they could not understand anybody. They would sit at the bus stop, and they didn't know what people were saying. People were talking quickly, people were using strange phrases, strange vocabulary, different kind of pronunciation, nothing like the textbooks. So I feel bad because so many students have this experience. They come to the United States, for example, they think they know English well, they've studied many years with textbooks in schools, and then they're very frustrated because they can't actually communicate.

So that's why we chose movies as one of our next lesson sets because movies are really great for learning common phrases, common pronunciation, the way we actually speak to one another. Movies are closer. They're not exactly the same, but they're closer than a book.

So Kristin is working to finish the movies. We are about 70% finished with those lessons, so we have 30% more to do. We're working together, she's recording some of the new lessons, I'm still recording a few of them also, and I'm hoping by the end of February, maybe the end of March, that those will be finished.

We'll create a new website to sell them, and I will announce those lessons here on my Podcast and on my blog, and also those of you who get my email newsletter, I'll send out a message on that also. So keep reading the newsletter, keep listening to this Podcast, keep reading the blog. You will find out about the new lessons first. In fact, as a little bonus, you'll get a chance to buy those lessons at a discount. I will — when I announce the new lessons to the Podcast and to my newsletter, actually I'll announce it to my newsletter first — and the newsletter readers will get a very, very good discount on those lessons.

I want to reward my newsletter readers because I appreciate your attention, I appreciate that you let me keep sending you emails about learning English and about my lessons, so I appreciate that. I want to reward you, so I will be giving you a chance — you'll probably have one week. I'll send — first I will send a message to the newsletter; you have one week, and you can get a very, very good discount.

After that, I'll send another message on my blog and Podcast, and maybe my general email course, and that'll be a discount, too. You'll buy them at a discount but a smaller discount. Finally, we'll do the big announcement, we'll run some advertisements, and that will be normal price. So anyway, if you're listening to this, you'll have a chance to get those new lessons at a discount.

So that's the first set of lessons, the movie lessons. The second set of lessons that we're doing are being done by Chris Moses, who I mentioned. He's also a very good friend of mine, and excellent teacher, and in fact he also taught English in Korea way back in 1997. So Kristin, Chris and I, we kind of started together. We knew each other way back in '97, and we all taught in Seoul, Korea.

So Chris is making a set of lessons for lower level learners and also for people who want the most common phrases, grammar and vocabulary. So we're gonna call this "high-frequency English." That means the most common English. His lessons will focus on the most commons words, and phrases, and grammar. The things you hear in America, for example, every day. The things we say every day, the idioms that we use, the phrases that we use every day and the slang that we use every day. The words we use every day. So this is designed, these lessons are designed, to give you fluency practice so that you can practice these words and phrases, this common English, so that it can go deep into your brain.

Many of you, if you're listening to this, you might say, "I already know these common words." Probably you know them; if we gave you a test, you could tell the definition. You would choose the correct A, B, C or D. But the question is- do you use them correctly? Do you still make mistakes with the simple past tense? Probably. Most very advanced learners that I saw in my school, for example, that came from another country, they were — quote — "advanced". Very good test scores. Yet when they spoke, they made simple, simple errors, simple mistakes. They would use the past tense in the wrong situation or they would use the present tense instead of using the past.

So this is a common problem, actually, it's a very common problem because people know about English, they study the rules, they do well on tests; but that's a different kind of knowing. It's a different kind of knowledge than deep knowledge. Deep knowledge means you know it automatically, you use it instantly, you use it correctly without thinking. For that, you need a lot of repetition; you need a lot of learning in a natural way with stories, with articles, with a lot of listening,... not reading rules. So that will be the focus of Chris' lessons.

I'm going to North Carolina this week; North Carolina is in the southeast part of the United States. That's where Chris lives, so I'm going to visit Chris with my computer and my microphone, and we are going to start making his lessons starting next Monday, actually. I will be there for two weeks in North Carolina, working with Chris to get a start on these lessons. Now, we probably won't finish in just two weeks, but I'm hoping we can make a lot of progress and get started, and I can train him with the storytelling method — that's the main thing I need to teach him. Once we do that, then he can continue, and he can finish the lessons, and again I hope he can finish his lessons maybe end of March, possibly April or May. So we'll have another set. When he finishes, we'll make a website for him, and again, I will announce his lessons first to my newsletter subscribers, second to the email course people, and finally to the blog and the Podcast.

Okay, and third, finally, I am working on my own new set of lessons. Now, I have a different idea about what I want to do with my next lesson set, my next lesson album. It's going to be different than the ones that you all have now. I've been thinking a lot, and I want to create a set of lessons, an album of lessons, that is very powerful, that helps you learn totally unconsciously. It means you don't have to think at all; it happens totally automatically. How I want this to happen is I want to create a story — okay, like a small book, a small novel, or maybe a small movie if you want to think about it in that way — but it'll be one big story. There'll be 10, 15, maybe 20 chapters. Each chapter will include the basic story, we'll have the story; and then there'll also be a mini-story, the normal listen-and-answer lessons for that chapter as well.

The idea is that — what I hope — is that you will focus totally on the story, not on the English language. I want the story to be so interesting, so different, that you focus on the story. You're focusing on the information, not on the English language, not on the grammar, not on the vocabulary. I want you to focus only on the story. What's happening? Who are these characters? Why, why did that happen? Who is this? I want you to be asking a lot of questions about the story, focused on the story, interested in the story.

If that happens, you will learn the vocabulary automatically. You'll learn the grammar automatically. You won't even know you're doing it. You'll think, "I'm just listening to this cool story in English," but in fact, you'll also be learning new words, new phrases, and getter grammar. But you'll never think about the grammar, you'll never think about the words if I do it well. That's my goal. Can I do that 100%? I don't know; I'll try, but that's my goal. More and more, I want my lessons to become invisible so that the English becomes invisible. I want you to forget that it's happening in English. I want you to be so into the story, you forget it's in English, that it's just like it's happening in your native language.

That's how the most powerful learning happens. That's how the deepest learning happens. When you forget that you're actually listening to English because you're so focused on the story and because you understand everything, that's when you really learn deeply, automatically. That's when you'll be able to use English, and you won't even think. You won't translate. It just comes out of your mouth. It's like, "HUH!" and then you say, "Wow, how did I do that? How did I say that? What happened?" That's what I want for you.

Now, my current lessons will give you that power also, but I want the next lessons to be even better. Much better. Much more focused on story and information, and let me do the the — let me do the English part, okay? If I'm smart, if I do the mini-story lessons correctly, you won't realize that you're learning English. It'll happen without you trying at all. That's the most powerful form of learning, and that's my goal for my own next lesson set.

Okay. Well, that's it, and those are our big plans for the beginning of this year, 2008. We've got three possible sets of lessons coming. We've got the movie lessons, which we're working on now; we've got the high-frequency, most common English lessons, which I will start with Chris next week; and then we've got my own lessons. They'll probably be at a high intermediate and low advanced level, and I am just now starting to outline and create the story.

So thank you for joining me. I really enjoy Effortless English. I've just had a fantastic time emailing you guys, talking to you, doing this Podcast. I've met some of the members when I've traveled, and in general, it's just been a fantastic experience this first year of Effortless English. I look forward to us growing even more in 2008, I look forward to meeting more of you in 2008, and please keep commenting on my blog, keep giving me your ideas. I love hearing from you, and my blog is the best place to contact me directly.

Okay. Have a great 2008. This is the year you will be fluent in English; this is the year you will speak English automatically without trying, without thinking, and without translating. You can do it. See you next time. Bye-bye.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Success Stories

2008-01-06T22:55:00.000-08:00

"I would like to say you're fanstastic. Just through a few lessons I feel more confident in speaking English. Two weeks ago we had a party celebrating Christmas Eve, and I met two Canadians and I said hello to them. You know they turned around and asked me : "Where did you learn to speak English?"

I think that my pronunciation was the same as theirs so they were surprised. And one more thing, I watched TV on an Australia network and can you imagine that I was able to understand what they said-- almost all of the news about an ancient culture... and recent news about the new coach for England's football team (Capello). I am so happy and am enjoying my natural improvement. Thank you so much. God bless you."

--Ha Nguyen

I love success stories! Every week, we get emails from excited English learners. I really appreciate these emails.

To be honest, they make me very happy-- and they motivate me to keep improving. When you send me an email like this, I feel very happy. It feels good knowing that so many people are using our English conversation lessons to speak excellent English! Its great! Congratulations to all of you!

This is why I started my own English teaching company. I wanted to help enthusiastic students. I wanted to make and sell my own lessons. I wanted to encourage students to enjoy English, to improve quickly, and to feel happy.

Because Im very busy now, I sometimes don't realize how much we are helping. Your emails help me to remember. Your happy emails energize and excite me... and make me want to help more students.

In the future, I will include more member emails on this blog. I try to put member comments on the Effortless English Homepage, but we get too many emails to include them all. So I'll start adding them here.

If you have an English success story, email me! Tell me what you did and how you improved. If your email is great-- I'll include it here on my blog. If you send a picture of yourself, I'll also include your picture :)

Thanks for all your great emails.

Email your success stories to me at: ajhoge@effortlessenglish.org
Put "Success Story" in the subject line.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

A Mobile Company

2008-01-05T13:00:00.001-08:00

This is a picture of me in my "office". In fact, I run Effortless English , Inc.... the whole company, from a mobile office. Effortless English is not a normal company-- we are filled with nomadic people who love to travel.

Because of this, and because Im the most enthusiastic traveler of all-- I decided to structure our company as a nomadic unit. In other words, Effortless English does not have an office building. Each of us (Tomoe, Chris, Kristin, and I) works from a laptop computer, a professional microphone, and an internet connection.

These tools allow us to work almost anywhere in the world. So, in November, my office was in Guatemala, and later moved to Honduras. The above picture was taken in a Guatemalan coffee shop. Now I'm in San Francisco, and next week my "office" will be in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Tomoe is currently in Osaka, Japan-- but continues to work on her Japanese language blog and continues to translate our emails and web pages into Japanese.

Tomorrow I fly to North Carolina (in the Southeast part of the United States) to visit Chris. We will be working together on a new album of lessons.

Being a mobile company has many advantages. First, it allows us to meet members around the world. Also, travel exposes us to new people and new ideas. Instead of being stuck in a boring office, we are constantly visiting new places and meeting new people. I believe this makes us more interesting as individuals and as a company.

Another advantage to having a mobile company is that it makes us sensitive to you, our members. When we travel, we are often forced to use other languages. For example, in November I had to use Spanish everyday. My Spanish is terrible, but the experience reminded me what its like to learn and use a foreign language. This helps me to understand you and your experience with English.

Our mobile company is also fun. Its much more fun to work in a coffee shop, or in another country, or even in our own apartments. Because we are having more fun, we have more energy and enthusiasm. We love what we are doing-- and hopefully you can hear that in our mp3 english lessons!

Finally, creating a mobile company has allowed me to choose only the very best people. Because I don't care where people live, I can focus on recruiting only the best possible people. We communicate with each other using email, and Skype conferences. Of course, I visit everyone in person too.

For us, international travel and communication is a lifestyle-- it is a lifestyle that everyone in the company lives... and its a lifestyle that is built into the essential structure of Effortless English, Inc.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Kick Ass With English!

2008-01-03T15:18:00.000-08:00

I want you to kick ass with English!

"Kick ass" is a very common slang phrase, and one of my favorites. It has two meanings, depending on the situation.

In this situation, it means to succeed or to do a fantastic job. For example, if you do very well on a test, you can say, "I kicked ass on that test".

So, to "kick ass" with English means you do very well with English-- you have a big success with English.

"Kick ass" can also mean to beat or defeat someone. For this meaning, we usually add an object. For example, if Arsenal beats Manchester United, we can say "Arsenal kicked ManU's ass".

If I play a video game with my friend and I win, I might laugh and say, "I just kicked your ass"! This means that I just defeated him.

So, this year, I want you to "kick ass" with English!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Happy New Year!

2007-12-26T13:13:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to all Effortless English Club members!

As you know, it is a tradition to make resolutions at the beginning of the year. The word "resolution" has a couple of meanings, but here it means "a strong decision".

Basically, a New Year's resolution is a goal for the next year.

Hopefully, one of your resolutions is to be an excellent English speaker!

How will you do it? Here are a few links and resources to help you get started on this important goal for 2008:

The 7 Rules Email Course
http://www.EffortlessEnglishClub.com/free.html
This is my free email course. In the course, I tell you 7 methods for improving your English speaking fast. The 7 Rules focus on fluency-- which means speaking and understanding English easily and automatically. Use the 7 Rules when you create your English study plan.

Lingq
http://www.lingq.com
Lingq is run by my friends Steve and Mark Kaufman. They have an excellent system, some of it is free and some you have to pay for. The free system allows you to save and review new vocabulary... which is a great service. When you pay, you can talk to their tutors on the internet (using Skype) and also submit writing for correction. I'm using Lingq now to improve my Spanish-- they offer many different languages! Last week I had my first Spanish Skype chat (Ill be writing more about my experiences with Lingq in the future).

KanTalk
http://www.kantalk.com
This is a great language exchange and social site. At Kantalk, you meet other English learners and speakers. You can sign up for group chats, make friends, and schedule individual talks with other members. The great thing is-- its all free :) Like Lingq, Kantalk members use Skype to communicate with each other.

Those three services will give you a strong start in 2008. This is the year you become an excellent English speaker!

Good luck.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

American Accent Training- Review

2007-12-18T12:36:00.000-08:00

"American Accent Training" is a book and CD set by Ann Cook. You can buy it on Amazon.com. As the title suggests, this is a pronunciation-only system. It is designed for one thing-- to improve your English pronunciation and get you to speak more like an American.

This system has two major strengths. First, it focuses mostly on intonation rather than individual sounds.

Most pronunciation books and CDs focus on the sounds of difficult letters. For example, they spend a lot of time on pronouncing "r" and "l". The result is that students improve these sounds a little, but their overall pronunciation is still terrible.

For most students, INTONATION, not the sounds of letters, is their big problem. Poor intonation is the reason native speakers cannot understand you. Which is why I like American Accent Training-- the program focuses on the most important pronunciation skill.

The second strength of this program is that it is listening based. Surprisingly, many pronunciation programs focus on the EYES instead of the ears. I've seen a lot of books with complicated drawings of the mouth and tongue, for example. All these complicated drawings are useless.

American Accent Training includes 5 CDs, so it is listening focused. And as all Effortless English members know, you learn to speak by listening. You improve speaking with your ears, not your eyes. This is true for pronunciation, as well as fluency, grammar, and vocabulary.

American Accent Training, however, does have one big weakness. It is boring. There are a lot of word lists and sentences to practice, but not of them has any meaning. You spend your time practicing random words and sentences. So, the biggest challenge with this program is finishing it.

I recommend American Accent Training only for students who are advanced and who want to focus all of their energy on pronunciation. If you are very motivated to improve your pronunciation, and can endure some boredom, the program will help you.

For everyone else, I recommend using movies and my english conversation lessons to improve pronunciation. These are much more interesting to use. Simply listen carefully, pause after each sentence, and copy the speaker's pronunciation. Make it a game-- pretend you are an actor!

Good luck with your English learning :)

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Goosebumps

2007-12-12T00:04:00.000-08:00

I often write about the benefits of easy, fun reading. In fact, reading easy novels is the best way to improve your vocabulary. If you can listen to audio books of the same novels, you'll improve your speaking too!

The very best approach is to choose a series of novels. By doing this, you get both the benefits of easy reading AND the benefits of narrow reading. The same is true for audio books and listening

Members often email and ask me, "Can you suggest a series of easy novels".... so here are a few that I recommend:

Goosebumps by R.L. Stine
These are scary novels for children. They are about monsters and mysteries and other fun stuff. The reading level is at an intermediate level- about a 3rd or 4th grade level. The Goosebumps series is a perfect one to start with. In fact, I just started reading my first Goosebumps novel in Spanish-- and I have ordered many more from Amazon.com

The Hardy Boys
The Hardy Boys is a very old series-- I read the books when I was a kid. The novels are about two boys who are private detectives. All of the stories are mysteries.

Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew novels are very similar to the Hardy Boys books, but are targeted to a female audience.

Sweet Valley Kids; Sweet Valley High
This is a very big series of romance books. The Sweet Valley Kids books are the easiest and are written for children. The Sweet Valley High books are for High School level readers, but are not too difficult. I recommend starting with the Kids books and reading a lot of them. Of course, read them only if you like romance novels!

All of these series can be found on Amazon.com

I highly recommend reading a lot of them. Fun, easy reading is a great supplement to my english mp3 lessons. Even if you are an advanced English learner, start the habit of reading easy novels. Then gradually read novels that are a little more difficult.

Choose series whenever possible, because "narrow" and concentrated reading produces faster improvement.

This kind of reading, combined with my english mp3 lessons, will produce amazingly fast improvement in your English. Try it for 6 months-- you will be amazed!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

The Power of Narrow Reading and Listening

2007-12-05T15:10:00.000-08:00

Dr. Stephen Krashen is the top language learning expert in the world. He just published a new paper with Dr. Clara Lee Brown titled, "What is Academic Language Proficiency?"

In the article, Drs. Krashen and Brown discuss the best strategies for learning "academic English". Academic English is basically Advanced English. Its the English you need to succeed in universities and professional jobs.

Academic English is the next step after fluency.

So, how do you learn academic fluency? What does the research show?

1. Narrow Reading and Listening
"The narrow reading strategy is to read texts by one author, which helps ensure comprehension and natural repetition of vocabulary and grammar." (Krashen, 2004b).

Many students believe that they must listen to MANY different speakers and read many different authors. But, in fact, this is a less successful method. Picking just one speaker or writer is much better. Why?

Because speakers and writers naturally repeat many words and phrases. Each speaker has their favorite set of phrases. In speech, they naturally use these many times. By focusing on just one speaker, you will automatically get a lot of repetition of new vocabulary and grammar.

In other words, you will learn English deeply. If you want to learn academic English, you should listen to a speaker who discusses advanced topics. For example, in my level 3. lessons, you hear me discuss many academic-level topics related to culture, politics, human rights, and relationships.

By listening to all of the lessons, you naturally get a lot of repetition of common academic words, phrases, and grammar. You learn these deeply, but you don't need to try to memorize them. You learn deeply and automatically. You learn them effortlessly.

2. Don't Study Word Lists or Grammar Rules
We acquire language and develop literacy by understanding messages, not by consciously learning about language and not by deliberate memorization of rules of grammar and vocabulary (Krashen, 1981, 2003).

This is a very important point. To learn Academic Level English, you do not study grammar rules.... and you do not memorize vocabulary lists. As Dr. Krashen says, these strategies are failures. They are not successful.

To learn Academic Level English, you must listen to and read a lot of academic English-- and you must understand it. This seems simple, right?

The important point is that you MUST understand what you hear and read. How do you do that if the English is difficult? First, you can use interesting and fun lessons that help you understand more difficult articles and speeches.

Second, you can start with easy speeches and books, then slowly find more difficult ones. For example, you start listening to easy audiobooks for children. You pick one writer-speaker and listen to all of their books.

Soon, these will seem easy, so you find some books and audiobooks that are a little more difficult. You keep repeating this process, and within a year, you are reading adult novels.... and listening to adult audiobooks.

Finally, you choose academic level books, magazines, and audiobooks that interest you, and you listen to them everyday.

By following these methods, you will learn Academic English. You will understand Advanced vocabulary and grammar. You will correctly use advanced vocabulary and grammar.

And you will never again study grammar rules and vocabulary lists!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Deep Learning

2007-11-29T12:32:00.000-08:00

My Effortless English Lessons contain three levels. Level 1 lesson sets are at a low intermediate level. The audio and text articles are shorter, and I speak more slowly in the Mini-Story lessons.

Even though these are "intermediate" level lessons, all learners should use them-- even advanced learners. Why? Because advanced learners usually have a lot of basic problems. They may know a lot of vocabulary, for example, but may not know many common phrases that native speakers use.

Advanced learners also have another BIG problem- they often "know" very difficult grammar, but when they speak, they make very simple grammar mistakes. This is because they learned with old methods- they learned to analyze English grammar but they never learned to "feel" correct grammar. They didn't learn it deeply.

So, even advanced learners need to practice the level 1 lessons-- all of them.

Next are the level 2 lesson sets. These still contain fairly short text and audio articles, but I speak faster. The Mini-Story lessons are much faster... and there are some Point of View lessons too. The level 2 lessons increase your "processing speed". You also learn a lot of idioms and phrases.

What is processing speed? Its how fast you understand (and speak) English. For example, you might "know" a lot of vocabulary, but when you hear native speakers you still can't understand. Why not? Probably because your processing speed is slow. Your brain can't understand whole phrases and sentences and it cant understand them quickly. Level 2 lesson sets help you improve.

Finally, there are the level 3 lesson sets. This is the biggest group of lessons. These lesson sets include much more difficult text and audio articles. The Mini-Stories are much more difficult too... I speak quite quickly-- at a quick (but normal) native rate of speech.

When you finish all of the level 3 lesson sets, your processing speed is fast. Also, you know a lot of vocabulary, including common idioms, phrases, and slang.

For all students, it is important to do ALL of the lesson sets. Whatever your level, start with the level 1 lesson sets, and do all of them (one set per week). Then go to the level 2 sets, and then to the level 3 sets. Do not skip any sets or any levels.

You listen to one set every day-- for one week (or more). In this way, you learn everything deeply. You learn to understand quickly. You learn to speak fast-- and effortlessly. You are a fluent English speaker!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Exciting Things

2007-11-27T12:47:00.000-08:00

At the moment, I am on vacation in Honduras. Im on Roatan Island, SCUBA diving for the next week. So far, the diving has been fantastic. I have gotten my Advanced certification, and also certification in Enriched Air Diving (Nitrox).

When I return to San Francisco, we'll be working on several new exciting things. At the moment, our two new teachers, Kristin and Chris, are working on new lesson "albums". Kristin and I are finishing the movie lessons.

As you know, my Effortless English Club lessons include two sample movie lessons. In these lessons, you have the text from a real Hollywood movie. For each scene, there is also a Vocabulary lesson-- I explain difficult phrases, especially idioms and slang. Then there is a Listen & Answer Mini-Story lesson (or more than one). This is the most powerful lesson. In the Mini-Story, we ask a lot of questions while telling a story. You answer the questions. As you hear the questions and answer them, you effortlessly learn vocabulary and grammar.... and you learn them deeply.

Some lesson sets also include a Point of View Lesson-- in which we tell the same story using different grammar (past, future, etc).

Chris and I are working on a Core Fluency Lesson album. These lessons focus on the most common English words, phrases, and grammar. When you finish these lessons, you will master the most common English-- allowing you to speak easily to native speakers. The Core Fluency lessons will be great for learners who want to strengthen their fluency, or for learners who are lower level.

The Movie Lessons will be a great addition to my Effortless English Club Lessons-- you will continue to improve while learning more idioms and common American slang!

So, continue to check this blog for more news about the new lessons.

Meanwhile, the best way to get started is with my Effortless English Lessons. Enjoy English!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Greek Family Lessons

2007-11-17T10:16:00.000-08:00

"Greek Family" is one of my intermediate level lesson sets. The set has several parts:

1. A real letter from a woman who is married to a Greek man. The woman writes about her problems with his family. Because she is not Greek, they do not accept her. Even worse, they don't accept her children either. The couple lives in America. In many ways, the letter sounds like it was written about the family in the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"

2. An audio version of the letter. All lesson sets include both a text article and an audio version. Audio is very important because you improve your speaking by listening. Listening to native speakers is the best way to improve your speech: your pronunciation, your spoken grammar, your spoken vocabulary, and your understanding.

3. A Vocabulary Lesson: In the vocabulary lesson, I explain difficult vocabulary. I especially focus on difficult phrases and idioms. Individual words are easy to find in a dictionary, but phrases and idioms are often difficult to understand-- unless a native speaker explains them.

4. A Listen & Answer Mini-Story: The Listen & Answer Story is the most important lesson. In this lesson, I tell a story with questions. I ask many, many questions. Most are quite easy. You answer every question with a loud voice. If necessary, you pause your computer or iPod and then answer.

The question technique I use is very powerful, for two reasons. First, the questions create a lot of repetition of important structures (grammar) and vocabulary. Its not enough to hear something one time-- you will forget it. But in these lessons, you hear the important phrases MANY times. You learn them deeply-- so you understand them instantly and automatically.

Secondly, the question technique is powerful because you must participate. You must respond. You must answer. This is like a real conversation. In real conversations, someone asks you a question, and you answer. Most textbooks and tapes don't ask enough questions.. and the student just sits there (or even worse... the teacher says, "repeat after me"-- terrible). In my Listen and Answer lessons, you learn to think in English. You hear a lot of questions and you answer all of them. After using all of my lessons, you will be ready for real conversations!

4. Point of View Stories. The Point of View stories tell the exact same Mini-Story... but each one uses different grammar. By listening to all of them, you practice the Past tenses, the Perfect tenses, and the Future. But don't worry-- you never study boring grammar rules. You don't even need to know the names of the verb tenses. You learn to understand and use them naturally-- without thinking-- just like a native speaker.

By using all parts of the lesson set, you learn English deeply. You learn to use English automatically. You learn effortlessly.

Enjoy!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Passion is Important

2007-11-12T16:34:00.000-08:00

This week I have a new teacher at the Casa Xelaju Spanish school. She is much better.

Last week, my old teacher never smiled. She had no passion for teaching. But my new teacher smiles often. She enjoys talking. She enjoys communicating. When I talk, she looks at me. She listens. It seems like she likes her job.

At Effortless English, we talk a lot about methods. Teaching methods are very important. We use the best learning methods. We use the most successful methods. We always choose methods based on independent research, so you learn easily and quickly.

However, method is not the only important thing. Passion and enthusiasm are equally important. The teacher must LOVE teaching. The teacher must have passion. The teacher must be interested in teaching.

If the teacher does not have passion, the student will feel it. The student will quickly become bored and tired. The student will lose motivation. This happened to me last week. After only one week with a bored teacher, I was ready to quit the school. On the other hand, after only one day with a good teacher, I feel motivated and happy about learning Spanish.

Our attitudes are very important-- both as teachers and students. We must be passionate, positive, and enthusiastic. As students, we must find teachers who LOVE teaching. We must find materials that are interesting to us. We must take care of our emotions and motivations.

That's why I try to be enthusiastic and excited in my lessons. Sometimes I even shout! Feel my energy! Become more excited about English! Enjoy the stories and ideas and don't focus on grammar!

This is probably the most important "method" of Effortless English: Passion!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Basic Flaws of Language Education

2007-11-07T15:22:00.000-08:00

My terrible experience at the Casa Xelaju school does have one benefit-- its an opportunity to analyze the failures of traditional language education.

As you know, language programs have a failure rate of over 95%-- which is terrible. Why do they fail so much? What is wrong with language education all over the world?

Of course, I know many of the reasons because I know the research on this topic.

But its interesting to experience this failure again as a student. Its interesting to analyze what the schools do and how they think. In fact, I believe the fundamental problems are mental. The reason language schools fail is that they hold certain incorrect beliefs. These beliefs effect their teaching methods, their attitudes, and their behaviour.

So, what are the basic wrong beliefs that most language schools and teachers hold?

1. "Teachers can (and should) force students to speak"

This is also called the "output" belief. Most teachers think that output (speaking and writing) is most important in language education. Therefore, they try to force their students to speak and write frequently. They do this even with beginning students-- forcing them to speak the language before they are ready.

The problem is, this belief is totally wrong. We don't learn language by speaking or writing. We learn from "input"-- listening and reading. Research shows that understandable input (listening and reading) is the fastest, most efficient, and indeed.. the only way to learn a language.

Does this mean speaking and writing are not important? Of course not. It means that in a classroom, listening and reading must be the primary activities. It means that forcing students to speak is a waste of time.

This belief is really a sign of teachers' impatience. They don't have patience, so they try to push the student to speak, speak, speak before they are ready.

Its also a sign of teachers' laziness. When the students speak, the teacher can do nothing (just nod their head and pretend to listen). But if the students are going to listen, the teacher has to talk and must try hard to help the students understand.

Effortless English is a Listen First method. Our lessons use listening primarily (with some reading). We do this because the research is clear-- listening is the key to learning a language and listening is the key to speaking well.

2. "Teachers can force students to be perfect"

This is another sign of teachers' impatience. They believe that the students must be perfect. Teachers believe that errors are bad, and must therefore be corrected constantly.

They force their students to think ABOUT the language-- about "the rules". And what happens? Their students become nervous and slow. They can't communicate because they are so worried about perfection. They constantly translate and analyze grammar "rules". Their speaking is terrible-- absolutely terrible.

This belief is wrong. Perfection is a lie, and it is not possible. Language learning is a process-- a long process. During most of that process, errors are NECESSARY and NORMAL. Children do not speak their native language perfectly. Even highly educated adults make occasional mistakes.

To learn quickly... to speak well, students absolutely must make mistakes. The research is clear about this-- students who focus on communication, not perfection, learn faster, speak better, and eventually MAKE FEWER ERRORS than students who focus on grammar "rules".

For this reason, we never focus on perfection with Effortless English lessons. We encourage students to communicate. We never analyze grammar rules and we never teach grammar rules. You learn grammar naturally, like a child.

You also enjoy the language. You relax. You smile. You laugh. You think. You learn English by focusing on ideas, stories, and communication.

3. "Error correction helps students speak better"

This is a very common lie. Most teachers think that error correction helps students speak better. Unfortunately, many students also think this helps-- they actually ask the teacher (or a friend) to correct their errors while they speak.

This seems logical,.. but its totally wrong. There is a lot of research about this. In the research, they have two groups. One group receives a lot of error correction. The other group receives none (the teacher never corrects their spoken errors).

After some time (3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years), they test each group. There is NO difference. Both groups still make the exact same number of errors when speaking.

So, obviously error correction is a waste of time. But its worse than that-- because when the teacher corrects your speech, you become nervous. You start thinking ABOUT English. Your speech becomes slower.

So, both groups make the same number of mistakes still-- but the error-correction group speaks slower, understands slower, and enjoys the language less! A terrible result.

This belief comes from the idea of "no pain, no gain". Many teachers think that students must suffer to succeed. They think the pain of correcting errors will make the students better and stronger. They are totally wrong. In language learning its "pain= no gain".

With Effortless English lessons, you are never corrected. Also, we encourage students NEVER to have their speech corrected. Instead, focus on LISTENING TO correct English from native speakers. Your errors will improve when you listen a lot to correct English.

Even better, your speech will improve automatically! You don't need to think about it. You don't need to be nervous. You relax, you listen a lot to the lessons, and your grammar & pronunciation improve automatically-- and effortlessly. That's why we call it "Effortless English".

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

A Typical Language School

2007-11-06T16:17:00.001-08:00

I arrive at Casa Xelaju (the Spanish school) at 8am. I come into class and sit down. I'm very enthusiastic about learning Spanish. Last night, I did all of my homework, plus I studied extra.

The teacher says, "hola". She doesn't smile. She already looks bored. She wastes about 10 minutes going through papers while I wait. I'm the only student in the class, so I have no one to talk to. Finally, she asks for my homework. She reads the essay I wrote and corrects it. This is useful, I'm happy to get feedback on my writing.

Next, she asks me to talk a little about what I did yesterday. I start talking, but she gets a call on her cell phone. She takes the call and starts chatting! She hangs up and then says, "I need to get some coffee, I'll be right back". Ten minutes later she comes back. I suspect she was actually talking on the phone.

She asks me to start talking again. She looks totally bored... no smile, no interest in what I'm trying to say.

Next, she gives me a picture and tells me to describe it. I do my best while she sits in the corner looking bored. Occasionally she corrects my mistakes.

After this, she tells me to read a paragraph. Then I have to do a worksheet and fill in the missing words. Then I do another worksheet, writing answers to short questions. While I write, she stands and looks out the window. She leaves the room several times.

Finally, we have a 30 minute break. I started today with lots of enthusiasm, but now Im bored and annoyed. I'm happy to have a break.

When I come back from the break, she gives me a Word Search and a Crossword Puzzle. A Word Search and a Crossword Puzzle! I can't believe it. I have been teaching for over ten years, and I know that this is a total waste of time. Its a useless way for the teacher to do nothing while the student wastes time looking for words in a block of letters.

Now I know for sure-- my teacher doesn't care at all. She is bored with her job. She has no motivation, no energy, no enthusiasm, and no method.

At the end of the day I must admit that this school is mostly a waste of time. The one good point is that I get to talk in Spanish for the last 45 minutes... which helps boost my confidence and motivation and enthusiasm again.

As I walk home, I'm reminded of Steve Kaufman's words-- you cannot depend on schools to teach you. Learning is your responsibility.

And so it is. I won't let this school destroy my motivation. I know, in fact, that this school is a very normal and typical language school. I have seen these same behaviours at many English schools I've worked at. Of course, I know that every teacher gets tired sometimes. But even on a bad day, I tried to at least have energy and enthusiasm.

After this experience, I finally understand the majority of comments I get from my students. Many people write me and thank me for the lessons. They like my teaching method. The improve their English speaking.

But the most common comment I get is something like, "Thanks so much for your energy and enthusiasm. I love listening to your voice. You make me excited to study English. You make English fun." They like the lessons, but what they really LOVE is the energy and enthusiasm.

After today, I totally understand. Today, I didn't care about teaching methods-- I just wanted her to show some interest in me. I wanted her to enjoy teaching me, and enjoy helping me learn Spanish. Instead, she almost destroyed my excitement for the language.

But this is not the end. I will focus on the few good points of the class (an opportunity to talk in Spanish)... and I will spend my free time listening to interesting Spanish, reading interesting Spanish, and writing Spanish.

I will enjoy the language, and learn it myself!

And finally, I will remember this experience-- to motivate myself to continue improving as a teacher... and to always LOVE teaching English.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Disappointing First Day

2007-11-05T17:22:00.000-08:00

I was very excited to start Spanish classes today. Why?

Because the school in Xela said they used TPR-Storytelling to teach Spanish. As you know, my Listen & Answer Lessons use the TPR-Storytelling technique. This technique is the most powerful, the most effective, and the most efficient language teaching method I know. It is awesome!

Like many English learners, in the past I suffered through terrible Spanish lessons. In school, we rarely listened. We never read anything natural or interesting. In my High School Spanish class, we only studied grammar rules and memorized vocabulary. And so, I never learned to speak Spanish.

Last year, I started studying Spanish by myself. Unfortunately, I haven't studied much. In fact, I haven't studied at all during the last 6 months.

When I did study, I just listened to interesting articles and read interesting mini-novellas. It helped. I learned more from doing this than from one full year of Spanish classes.

But what I've always dreamed of is to learn Spanish with my own Effortless English methods... especially Listen & Answer Lessons.

So... I came to class today full of excitement! Finally, I was going to learn with a great method!

But I was disappointed. While the school claims to use "TPR-Storytelling", in fact they do not understand the method. They also don't use it very much. So what did we do in class today-- we reviewed conjugations of past tense verbs! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Back to High School.

So I guess I'm not going to get much help with Spanish-- I'll just have to continue learning on my own. If I ever do become fluent, maybe I will create my own
Effortless Spanish" lessons-- to help others avoid the frustration I have experienced.

Meanwhile, I am even more committed to helping English students learn with the best methods possible at Effortless English!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Sunday Xela

2007-11-04T16:42:00.000-08:00

Sunday in Xela was a relaxing day. The Parque Central was filled with people. Every Sunday there is a market there, with people selling clothes and other handicrafts. Also, the main catholic church is in the Parque, and its quite large.

In the video I shot, you can see people streaming out of the church. Some (mostly women) are wearing traditional Guatemalan (indigenous) clothing. After church, many people strolled around the market. Ice cream was a very popular treat.. it seemed that everywhere we looked, there were people eating ice cream. Vendors pushed small ice cream carts around the square.

Surprisingly, I didn't get any ice cream. Its a surprise because, as my friends know, I really like ice cream. Maybe I'll avoid gaining weight on this trip!

In general, Sunday was a nice relaxed day. This seems to be the overall vibe of Xela-- relaxed and easygoing. Its a good place to focus on learning Spanish.

I'm also thinking a lot about future lessons and practicing my teaching technique. Being a language student always helps me as a language teacher!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Microsoft Censorship Lessons

2007-11-04T15:18:00.000-08:00

"Microsoft Censorship" is the title of one of my lesson sets. Its about internet companies who are helping China censor the internet.

Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google all censor results in China. If you do a search for "democracy" or "Tibet" or "Falun Gong" in China, you will not get honest and accurate results about these topics. Most websites related to these topics are blocked.

In other words, these companies are assisting a totalitarian government that squashes democracy, murders protesters, tortures political prisoners, and strongly censors free speech. As such, these companies are, in my mind, active human rights abusers.

This issue, and the issue of human rights in general, is very important to me. The Effortless English Club actively supports human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. We strongly support freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly. We believe these are universal human rights.

We also believe that businesses should actively support human rights instead of helping governments murder, imprison, and intimidate people. These internet companies are just a small example.... all over the world, companies are profiting by partnering with brutal governments.

This is happening here in the USA as well-- where AT&T is helping the US government spy on their customers' phone conversations and emails. Many people seem willing to do anything to make money.

That, to my mind, is a crime. In our own small way, I hope Effortless English can be a counter-example-- a company that supports human rights, ecology, and sustainable economics.

The "Microsoft Censorship" lesson set is my first small attempt to help-- by increasing awareness of what's happening and by talking about universal human rights.

Of course, this is also a great lesson set-- with a powerful Listen & Answer Mini-Story Lesson, great vocabulary, and, of course, a REAL English text & audio article.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Day of the Dead

2007-11-04T15:06:00.000-08:00

We went by the school and got to our host family. The host family is very nice-- a mom and her college student daughter. They were both super patient with my Spanish (even though they speak English, they stuck with Spanish). In fact, Ana (the mom) said she loves to study English. I told her about my Effortless English lessons!

Ana provides three meals a day, which is great. Lunch was black beans, tortillas, salsa, boiled potatoes, and cucumber & onion salad. Quite nice.

After lunch the school had a short tour of the local cemetery. There were 5 of us. The student coordinator (whose name is Kristin) showed us all around. Yesterday was the Day of the Dead, so almost all the tombs and graves had flowers. There were a lot of families there, taking care of the graves, having picnics.. kids flying kites. The families take care of their ancestors' graves on this day.

The front section of the cemetary was full of large tombs.. like they have in New Orleans. Its where the richer families are buried. They have to pay rent for the tombs... if they don't pay, the body is exhumed and cremated and the tomb is rented to someone else!

Many of the tombs had been robbed of their marble, because it can be sold. Almost all the angels on the tombs were missing heads-- they'd been chopped off and sold. However, a couple of tombs had an "angel of death" (a scary looking angel) on top and these were untouched because people feared being cursed if they damaged them.

PS: I am experimenting with video-- trying to get the sound and video quality decent without creating huge files that are slow to download. Any suggestions?

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Long Trip to Xela

2007-11-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

We decided to go to Xela, Guatemala to investigate a Spanish school. I'm very interested in this school because they claim to use a method similar to my Listen & Answer Lessons. So, I want to try this school for two weeks and see how they teach Spanish.

We flew out of San Francisco after midnight, at 1:30am. It was a miserable flight. I couldn't sleep, even though I was very tired. My legs hurt and I was crammed into a little seat for over 5 hours. I was reminded, again, how much I hate overnight flights and buses. I've made too many of these miserable trips in my life and really dread them now.

After a grueling night, we arrived in Guatemala City. At first I wanted to immediately get a hotel. But I got a second wind and so we took a taxi to the bus station. I paid too much for the taxi. I always do this when I'm really tired after a long trip-- I get ripped off by taxis and hotels.

The bus ride was over 4 hours and my legs hurt even more. My lower legs swelled and still I couldn't sleep. The bus wound around curves, up and down mountains-- I was constantly jerked left and right in my seat.. my head bouncing with the curves.

We finally made it to Xela, Guatemala (official name of the town is Quetzaltenango). My legs were killing me and my neck hurt too. At the bus stop we got another taxi into the center of town.. and I paid too much again. I was too tired to argue.

The center of town was almost totally empty-- no cars, no people. It was weird. Xela (Quetzaltenango) is supposed to be the second largest city in Guatemala, but it felt like a ghost town.

Using a guidebook map, we walked around and finally found a guesthouse. Luckily it was a very nice place-- a small building with a courtyard. The room was nice and they had a good restaurant too.

Totally exhausted and sore, I finally went to bed. I slept over 12 hours.

The next day in Xela I woke up feeling much better after sleeping over 12 hours. Had breakfast at the guesthouse.... then went outside to look at the town. If was much more active. There were people and cars! It turns out that we arrived on the Day of the Dead-- a national holiday-- which is why the town was empty. Xela is still a quiet town, but not a ghost town after all! We went around the Parque Central, and shot some video.

In general, I think this will be a nice place to relax and focus on studying both Spanish and teaching methods.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Effortless Japanese Update

2007-10-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

Some of our longtime members know that Tomoe and I have wanted to do Effortless Japanese lessons for a long time. In fact, Tomoe actually started working on lessons at one point.

But she stopped. She realized that most customers would be total beginners in Japanese. We talked a lot about the best way to teach total beginners and realized that beginning with TPR (Total Physical Response) would be best.

But there was a problem-- TPR requires video, not just audio. In TPR, the teacher gives commands, and the student responds with actions. For example, a super-simple lesson might start with "Stand Up". The students then stands up.

Of course, the commands get more and more complex as vocabulary and grammar builds... for example, "Walk slowly to the door, knock 4 times, turn around, then return quickly to your chair". The power of TPR is that you learn a lot of vocabulary VERY quickly. Even more powerful-- you learn the vocabulary without translation. Because of this, you learn it deeply, naturally, and understand it instantly.

Once past the complete beginner stage, Tomoe will use TPR-Storytelling-- just as we do in Effortless English.

The good news-- we bought a video camera and microphone! We are currently planning the set and lighting. Tomoe is planning the lessons. When we return from Central America, we will start shooting. Our plan is to shoot the lessons as quickly as possible,... then I will edit them later.

We'll offer the lessons as download videos (similar to the way Effortless English Lessons are sold). You'll watch them on your computer-- or iPod.

I'm very excited about these lessons because I know they will be the best Japanese lessons available anywhere in the world. I know a little Japanese-- very little ;) I tried textbooks, and found them difficult and boring. I tried Pimsleur tapes, liked them, but learned only a very small amount of vocabulary and phrases. I listened to Japanese podcasts-- but found they are mostly talking in English.

To say it simply-- the Japanese lessons currently available suck! They are terrible.

So I am doubly excited about Tomoe's Effortless Japanese lessons. I'm excited to help her with this new project. And I'm excited as a student, to finally learn with fun, powerful, effortless Japanese lessons!

Look for more updates in December about Effortless Japanese.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Sigmund

2007-10-26T15:52:00.000-07:00

Sigmund died yesterday. Those of you who listened to my old podcasts will remember him. He is Kristin's cat, who was diagnosed with cancer over 14 months ago.

At the time, we were told he had only 3-4 more months to live. But Kristin gave him alternative treatments, nutritional supplements, acupuncture, and herbs. He lived for 14 months. During that time, he got love and attention and was able to be with Kristin, with whom he has a special bond.

He died yesterday in their apartment; Kristin was with him.

He was a very sweet and affectionate cat. He loved to put his head on Kristin's shoulder, cover his face with her long hair, and purr.

Kristin has had him since we was a kitten, so of course she is very sad now... as am I. We have been meditating and praying for him, and have been reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying-- a wise and beautiful book about life and death.

Through all of this, I am reminded that love and compassion are for all sentient beings. Its the reason I became a vegetarian, for I do not wish to contribute to the suffering of ANY being.

I believe that animals, in fact, are wonderful teachers and companions. Their innocence and relative helplessness challenge us to expand our loving-kindness to embrace all. For this, I am grateful.

Most of all, I'm grateful for the happiness that Sigmund gave Kristin, and myself.

[I'll post a picture of Sigmund once I get home to San Francisco].

[Audio for this podcast will be available for this post in the future... at the moment I'm out of town and can't record audio].

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Bad Choices Lessons

2007-10-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

"Bad Choices" is one of my Lesson Sets.

The lessons use a real letter from an advice column/article. In American newspapers, there are many different advice articles. People write about their problems and ask for advice. The author (of the advice article) then tells them what they should do.

"Bad Choices" is a letter from a woman who always dates the "wrong" man. She has a bad habit of dating bad guys. She says she wants to meet nice guys, but instead she always has boyfriends who are bad. She then asks Dr. Tracy, the author, for advice.

I use a lot of Advice Letters in my lessons. Why?

1. They are REAL. These letters are written by real native speakers, about real problems, using real English. You learn REAL English. No fake textbook English.

2. They are CONVERSATIONAL. The style of these letters is very casual and conversational. You do NOT learn formal written English, you learn the English we use in everyday conversations.

3. They have a lot of IDIOMS. Because the letters use conversational English, they always include several common idioms. You learn the common idioms used by native speakers.

4. They are INTERESTING. These are real people and real problems. These letters are interesting (and sometimes funny too :) You enjoy reading and listening to them.

5. They show American CULTURE. You learn a lot about American culture-- especially families, dating, and work-- by reading these letters.

As you know, each Lesson Set contains several lessons. You read the original letter. Also, you listen to the letter because I give you an audio version too.

You also listen to a Vocabulary Lesson-- where I explain the vocabulary (especially the idioms) used in the letter.

Finally, you listen to the Mini-Story. In the Mini-Story, I take key vocabulary (especially idioms) from the letter, and then use them in a completely different story. Why?

Because you remember more when you hear the same phrase in different situations. For example, you first read the idiom in the letter. Then you hear it several times in the Vocabulary lesson. Then you hear it in the Audio version of the letter.

Then you listen to the Mini-Story. In "Bad Choices", I tell a crazy story about a short guy who always fights big tall guys. In the story, I use idioms like "no matter how you slice it"... which come from the original Advice letter. So you hear that vocabulary again, but this time in a very different situation.

In this way, you understand it better. But that's not all, because I use a lot of questions to help you remember this new phrase forever. You don't just listen, you listen and ANSWER.

By the time you finish using the lessons in the set, you know the phrases, vocabulary, and grammar very DEEPLY.

[Note-- Audio is unavailabe for this post right now. I am currently in Indiana, visiting my family (and dog). I'm unable to record audio at this time, but when I return to San Francisco, I will record audio for this post and put it on the podcast]

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Idioms

2007-10-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

Idioms are phrases that have a different meaning than the individual words in them. Often, it is difficult to guess the meaning of an idiom-- though sometimes you can.

Idioms, however, are VERY important. Normal American speech is full of idioms. Most Americans don't realize that you didn't learn idioms in school. They will use idioms constantly when they talk to you.

This frustrates many students. Even students with high TOEFL scores and big vocabularies have trouble with normal conversation... because they don't understand the idioms.

You must learn idioms. Unfortunately, schools and textbooks don't teach them. I don't know why they don't-- its just another example of how textbook English is NOT real English. Also, you won't learn many idioms from reading-- we use them much more in speech than in writing.

How can you learn idioms?

1. Get a Dictionary of American Idioms
2. Review the 80 Most Frequent Idioms
3. Use American movies to learn idioms.
4. Get Lessons That Use Idioms and real English.

If you want to SPEAK and UNDERSTAND English, not just read it, you must learn idioms. Without idioms, you will never understand normal speech. Without idioms, you will never understand native speakers.

But when you learn idioms, speech suddenly is easy. You understand native speakers! They understand you! Its a great feeling!

Idioms are the key to real English conversation.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

A Kiss

2007-10-20T17:45:00.000-07:00

"A Kiss" is the name of the first Lesson Set on the Effortless English Club Album. The central story for "A Kiss" is about a boy who gives his car to a girl to get a kiss from her.

"A Kiss" is a mid-beginner level lesson. The vocabulary is simple. I speak quite slowly in this lesson set. I pronounce more carefully and clearly.

Many intermediate and advanced members may want to skip this lesson. They might think, "This is much too easy for me." But I think that is a mistake.

In my experience, most advanced English students NEED simple practice with very basic English. I have taught many students, for example, who have large vocabularies and great TOEFL scores-- but who constantly make mistakes with common past tense verbs.

For example, many advanced students will use "go" when they should use "went". They know that "went" is correct, but "go" is stuck deep in their brain. They know the grammar rules, but they do not FEEL the grammar automatically.

To correct these very basic speaking problems, you need to use the easy lessons. These lessons will teach you to use correct grammar automatically. You'll also learn to use common vocabulary in the correct way-- without thinking.

Remember, Effortless English is a DEEP LEARNING system. Just knowing a rule or definition isn't enough. You probably know most of the rules, but you still constantly make mistakes when you speak. You don't need to know rules, you need to FEEL the correct forms Deeply and Automatically.

I recommend that ALL members start with The "A Kiss" Lesson Set. And I recommend that ALL members use every Lesson Set for a full week (or more). By listening to the lessons and answering the questions, you learn deeply, and teach yourself to speak correctly without thinking. English speaking becomes AUTOMATIC.

So, whether you are a beginner... or have a huge English vocabulary... start with "A Kiss"!

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.

Listen and Answer

2007-10-18T23:42:00.000-07:00

Today Kristin, Tomoe, and I went to a TPR-Storytelling (TPRS) workshop. TPRS is the central technique of Effortless English. It is the technique we use in all of our Listen & Answer Stories and Point of View Lessons.

The workshop was taught by Blaine Ray-- the creator of TPRS. He is a master. It was great to get more training from him. It was great to be reminded, again, of the most important principles of language learning.

What are those principles. In my free 7 Day Email Course, I discuss the 7 secrets to speaking English easily, and fast.

But what are the principles-- the MOST basic rules that are behind these secrets? What are the MOST basic principles of Effortless English?

There are three:

1. Understanding (Comprehension). To be powerful, a lesson MUST be understandable. This seems obvious, right? If you don't understand the lesson, you won't learn anything. Yet textbooks and schools are filled with lessons that are hard to understand. Sometimes I even have trouble understanding the grammar explanations in textbooks! I'm a native speaker with 2 Masters degrees, including one in Teaching English... yet these books confuse me! Imagine how a normal English student feels.

At Effortless English, when we say a lesson is understandable, we mean that you understand 99% of it. Not 50%. Not 80%. 99%.

After listening to our Vocabulary lesson, our Listen & Answer lessons, our Point of View lesson, and reading the Text... you understand ALL of the main article or story. And when you understand, you learn-- you learn deeply and you never forget.

2. Repetitive. To be powerful, a lesson MUST be repetitive. This means you hear the vocabulary and grammar many, many, many, many times! As you know, hearing a sentence a few times is not enough. To learn deeply, to understand immediately (without translation), to speak quickly... you must hear words and sentences many times. You must hear them hundreds of times, until they are automatic.

This is deep learning. You forgot most of your textbook lessons. Why? Because there wasn't enough repetition. You learned it, you took a test, then you forgot. Because Effortless English Lessons use a lot of repetition, you learn English and NEVER forget.

3. Interesting. Finally, To be powerful, a lesson MUST be interesting. Obviously! If the lesson is boring, you won't learn. So why are textbooks and schools so boring?!?

Effortless English lessons are interesting, funny, crazy, and controversial. You laugh, you learn, you are excited when you listen to our lessons. Because they are interesting, it is fun to use them. You enjoy English. Its fun!

These are the three Basic Principles we discussed today at the TPRS workshop. We learned a lot and hope to improve as teachers-- so that our lessons always get better.

Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast

Learn English With Movies

2007-10-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

Members of The Effortless English Club have asked me,
"What do I do after I finish the lessons? My speaking is much better, but I want to continue learning. Do you have more lessons?"

Unfortunately, I don't yet-- however, Kristin and I are working on new lessons right now. These lessons use an American movie to teach you real English.

Every scene of the movie has a lesson set that includes: Text of the script, a Vocabulary Lesson, 2 or more Mini-Story Lessons (including some Point of View Lessons), and Audio from the scene. Some scenes also have Commentaries.

By using all the lessons, you understand all of an American movie. Also, you learn a lot of slang & idioms from the movie-- the kind used everyday by Americans.

But you don't have to wait for our lessons. You can use this same method yourself, with any movie. Movies are a great way to learn-- but you must use them correctly.

Most English students don't use movies correctly. They rent a lot of American movies, watch them, return them, and then rent more. They may understand the basic story of each movie, but they don't improve their English.

Here's a better method for learning with movies:

1. Rent or buy ONE movie

2. Watch all of it, with subtitles in your own language

3. Next, watch only one scene of the movie (a scene is usually 2-4 minutes long). Use ENGLISH subtitles.

4. Rewind. Watch the same scene again. This time, pause for every sentence. Write down phrases/words you don't understand.

5. Use your dictionary to learn these new words. Search the internet for strange phrases (probably slang or idioms).

6. Watch the scene again at normal speed-- 2-3 times. Turn the subtitles OFF. Try to hear and understand the new phrases.

7. Watch the scene again-- 2-3 times. Pause after every sentence, then say the sentence yourself. Don't just "say" it. Copy the actor! Try to sound and move exactly like them. Copy their emotion. Copy their face movements. Copy their voice. This will improve your pronunciation.

Using this method, you can probably learn 1-3 scenes per week. Don't go too fast. Learn deeply. Repeat steps 3-7 everyday. If a scene is difficult, you can do this again and again for several days. Its important to learn every scene very deeply.

It may feel slow, but when you finally finish a whole movie, your English is fantastically better! Use this method, it is very powerful.

Guatemala & Honduras

2007-10-14T23:55:00.000-07:00

Next month, Tomoe and I will be going to Guatemala and Honduras. I'm excited about both places.

In Guatemala, we will go to an intensive Spanish school. The school advertises that they use TPR-Storytelling, so I'm quite excited. I may finally be able to learn with a method that is close to the way I teach English. I hope they really use the method in the correct way-- because when used correctly, it is the best language learning method I know. That's why I use this method in most of my lessons at Effortless English.

The name of the school is Casa Xelaju, and its located in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. We'll stay with a host family, enjoy the town, and study Spanish 4 hours a day.

Unfortunately, we're only staying a couple of weeks-- not enough time to become fluent in Spanish. Mostly, this is a test trip... I want to test their teaching methods and see if they are really using TPR-Storytelling. If so, we will return again for a much longer time.

The Honduras trip is pure fun-- we're going SCUBA diving. Tomoe just got her open water certification. I got mine in Thailand. We will spend over 10 days diving off the island of Roatan. Its supposed to be great-- lots of beautiful coral reefs.

I love diving. Floating underwater is a lot like meditation-- it calms your mind and body. I feel a little like an astronaut when I dive-- floating weightless in a strange new world.

On Roatan, we're planning to get our Advanced Open Water certification. That will allow us to dive to 35 meters. Also, we'll be able to do night dives.

Which is important, because we are planning a big diving trip to Thailand next March. Many of my friends will be going-- we're planning to get a live-aboard boat and spend several days diving in the Similan and Surin Islands (some of the best diving in the world-- as most Thai people will tell you :)

I'm also looking forward to visiting Thailand again-- I miss it. Part of our visit will be business. I want to eventually open an "English Resort" (not a "school" ;) in South Thailand.... a place where people could come from all over the world to learn English and enjoy it. We'd learn using Effortless English methods... in a beautiful tropical area, while learning about Thai culture and ecology, Muay Thai, and SCUBA diving. That's my dream project-- to build an Effortless English Resort where learning English is so fun, you do it as a vacation!

But first, we're off to Guatemala and Honduras.

Read My Old Articles...

2007-10-14T23:01:00.000-07:00

New readers of my blog can find my old articles at:

The Effortless English Archives

You'll find my story, my experiences with schools in Thailand, Japan, and the United States. You'll also learn how my teaching methods have grown over the years. And you'll find a lot of useful links.

Heroes

2007-10-14T22:47:00.000-07:00

I want to express my support and admiration for the heroes in Burma-- the monks, the students, the men & women who are fighting, non-violently, for freedom, democracy, human rights, and the true dharma.

Thousands of these brave and peaceful people have been killed by the horrible military government. The people in Burma knew what the military would do. They know their lives were at risk. They knew the government would imprison, torture, burn, and kill any who stood against them. Yet, the monks and people stood anyway.

The events in Burma remind us what is truly important. Let us support the Burmese people any way we can-- with our thoughts, by giving to Human Rights groups, and by pressuring our own governments (and companies) to cut support for the military government.

To this effect, I am working on a new policy for Effortless English. We will give a percentage of every membership fee to Human Rights organizations.

Meanwhile, please support these Recommended Burma and Human Rights Groups:

Amnesty International
Campaign For Burma
Democratic Voice of Burma
Human Rights Watch

Take care... AJ

Welcome To The New Blog

2007-10-14T21:59:00.000-07:00

Hi. My name is A.J. Hoge and this is the new Effortless English Club blog. In this blog, I'll write about learning English, teaching English, member's stories, cool stuff for English learners, and myself.

I hope those who have bought my lessons and those who have joined my free
7 Day Email Course, will enjoy this blog. I will continue to give you suggestions and tips for learning to speak English better.

I will also share more about myself, and the Effortless English story.

Welcome!