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RealLife English: Learn and Speak Confident, Natural English
#459 - The 3 KEYS to Focus On If You're STUCK at the Same English Level Forever
00:17:36
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- [00:00]
A
You've been studying English already for at least a few years, right? You can understand most of what I'm saying, probably even read and write quite well. But do you ever feel like you've been stuck at the same level? Like you're not improving anymore? Well, I'm Ethan, your reallife English fluency coach. And I totally get how that feels. I've been there myself. As I was learning six other languages and teaching thousands of English learners around the world, I kept seeing seeing the same pattern. We study so much, try everything, and still feel stuck. The thing is, it's not just about studying harder. It's about being smart and focusing on the few things that will actually help you to level up from intermediate to advanced. So today we're bringing back a classic reallife English lesson that we first published a few years ago. You'll see that I was still rocking my top knot. That's the hairstyle I had back then. And this is one of our most beloved lessons because it really gets straight to the point, point the keys that you need to finally use your English confidently and naturally. So, without any further ado, let's jump in.
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So today I will give you the three fundamental topics that I recommend you focus on, which are phrasal verbs, idioms, and word formation, which I like to call the 8020 of vocabulary learning. The 8020 is the idea that 80% of your results come from only 20% of what you do. So in this lesson, I'll give you some simple tips that will help you learn more English vocabulary in less time. Alright, so take a look at this sentence and see if you can understand it. John was going to push back the meeting, but ended up calling it off instead. Now, notice that we have three phrasal verbs. Push back, end up and call off. Now the funny thing is, is that when we look at the individual words that make up these phrasal verbs, they're pretty easy, aren't they? So we have push back, end up, call off. But when we actually combine these different words, the meaning changes significantly. Let's go back to the sentence. So John was going to push back the meeting, but he ended up calling it off instead. So to push back means to postpone, or in other words, to change it to a future date. And up is used to talk about the result of something. Like for example, when you have a plan and you end up changing it to a different plan. So for example, we were going to go to the beach, but ended up going to the movie theater instead. And finally, call off is Just another way to say to cancel. So what would this sentence sound like without phrasal verbs? Let's take a look. John was going to postpone the meaning, but in the end canceled it instead. Do you see the difference? In fact, this is how many intermediate and even some advanced learners would say this. And this is exactly why phrasal verbs are so important. If you didn't know these phrasal verbs, it would have been near impossible for you to understand the sentence in the first place. And when you speak, you can get by by using the alternatives to these phrasal verbs. But natives hardly ever use them. So if you are using them in your speech, it could make you sound kind of unnatural. So let me give you four tips that will help you to learn phrasal verbs a lot faster. Start with the phrasal verbs that are the easiest and the most common. These are phrasal verbs like wake up, sit down, stand up. Categorize the phrasal verbs that you learn by when you need to use them. So you could have a list of phrasal verbs for your daily routine. You could have a list of business or at work phrasal verbs. You could have phrasal verbs that you need at the restaurant, when traveling, etc. Google Phrasal verbs that are splittable. So this could be like burn the building down versus burn down the building or put away your clothes versus put your clothes away. And finally find one word or short phrase that can describe the phrasal verb that you're learning. So to give you some examples, the really common phrasal verb hang out, which we natives use all the time, could also be translated in a way to spend time with or spend time doing or come back. Could also be said as return. Put up with something could mean to tolerate something. Check out this tip that Thiago, one of our fluency coaches and an amazing English speaker, said on one of our recent podcast episodes.
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Let's say you watch a TV show in English, right? For sure, you will see a lot of phrasal verbs being used there. But the point is, you don't have to learn all of those at that time. You know, you can just focus on one or two that stand out to you that you like best. And then you focus on those. Yeah. And then if you do that every single day, it stacks up, it adds up, you know, so you don't have to learn a bunch of new phrasal verbs in one sitting.
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By the way, with so many phrase overs in English, it can feel really frustrating trying to remember and use them if you want to speak naturally. It's not enough just to take note of them, you need to actually practice them until they're automatic. Well, with the hundreds of lessons on our app, you can learn new phrasal verbs and expressions every week and never forget them with our magic flashcards. They use smart technology that brings back words for review right when you're about to forget them. And even if you're busy, you can
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learn in as little as 10 minutes a day.
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Super easy. So if you're ready to get unstuck and really impress people with your fluent native like English, then give the RealLife English app a try. You can get this lesson for free by clicking that link down below.
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Now I'll share a story with you. You will see four idioms highlighted. Try to understand what they mean so let me tell you a story about a young marketing professional. He was fired from his previous job and had been without work for six months. He was down and out. If he didn't get a new position soon, he would have to move back into his parents house. But then he was invited to participate in a selection process to work as head of advertising at one of the largest tech companies of the country. The salary would be 10 times higher than what he was earning at his previous job. So he did the interview and everything went well. As the final step of the process, he was asked to give a 10 minute presentation on a topic he knew absolutely nothing about. He only had 30 minutes to prepare. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and decided to bite the bullet. And then after the 30 minutes were up, he got up in of front of the hiring executives and started his presentation. In the middle of his talk, he forgot what he was supposed to say next. When he felt like things were starting to get out of hand, he quickly thought of something off the cuff. After he was done, the hiring executives asked him to wait outside while they reviewed his application. The young man left the room and waited the reception for just about five minutes. But those were the longest five minutes of his life. Then one of the hiring executives showed up and asked him to get back in the room. He had gotten the job. So the idioms used in this story were to be down and out, to bite the bullet, to get out of hand off the cuff. Now why should you even learn idioms? Because of course you could always just explain it in a different way rather than using the idiom. But the great thing about idioms is that they really add a life and richness to the things you say, plus they're directly related to the culture that they come out of. To give you an example of this, there's the expression that something is not my cup of tea, meaning that something isn't really something that you're used to doing or something that you enjoy. Now, in the States, we don't use this one so much, and this is probably because we don't drink much tea like they do over in the uk. So here are some tips to learn idioms faster. So first, try to learn the literal meaning of the idiom. So you could say if it's raining outside a lot, that it's raining cats and dogs. Now, obviously, if someone says this, you can imagine in your head what that would be like. It might be actually quite a brutal thing to see. But obviously, if they're saying that, it doesn't mean that cats and dogs are actually falling outside. It just means that it is raining a ton. It's raining like crazy. When you think about it literally first, like this, you kind of create an image in your head for this idiom. So that anytime it's raining outside a ton, which, depending where you are, this could be the case, and you're wanting a more creative way to be able to say that in your head. It'll pop that image of cats and dogs falling outside, and you'll say, like, oh, man, it's really raining cats and dogs outside, isn't it? And that leads perfectly into tip number two, which is to remember that idioms are very visual. So if you can visualize first off that literal meaning, then try to memorize the figurative meaning of it. This won't always be so easy. Like with the expression terrain cats and dogs, sometimes it could be something that's a little bit more of a stretch. So, for example, we had off the cuff before. Right now, a cuff is, I'm not wearing one, obviously, but if you're wearing a long shirt, it's the part that closes around your wrist. Now, off the cuff basically means that you're pulling something out of nowhere without any preparation. So for me at least, I think that this might be related to something that magicians do, you know, as they're able to make something appear out of nowhere, but they're probably pulling it off the cuff. And my final tip is to use the context to help you. So don't panic when you hear a new idiom. Like before, when you heard that he quickly thought of something off the cuff, you could probably try to think a little bit, put together the whole story, and. And Imagine that that meant that he was able to think of something without any preparation. For example, if you're reading a book, I know the first time I tried to read a book in German, I think this was the first time I was ever reading a book in a foreign language. At first, my strategy was that anytime I saw a new word or expression, I would look it up in the dictionary. But then it's like I'd finish one page and I would forget, you know, what it was even about. I changed my strategy, and I would read an entire chapter and just underline things, and then when I finished it, I could go look things up. But the great thing was that with so many of the different words and idioms that I was encountering, because I had enough base in the language, I could understand most of them already through the context. And oftentimes when I didn't understand it, it didn't prevent me from actually understanding, you know, the whole paragraph or the whole page of the story. Okay, so let's actually learn a new idiom and put all these tips together to understand it. So the idiom we're going to look at is bury the hatchet. So first off, let's understand the literal meaning of this. So maybe you already know the verb to bury something. For example, in most cultures, when someone dies, you bury their body. It's to put something under the ground, right? And a hatchet is simply a small axe that was used as a weapon fighting in wars many years ago. So now that you know the two parts, can you actually visualize the literal meaning of this expression? Now let's look at a sentence with this idiom and try to understand it through the context. So after 10 years of not talking to each other, the brothers decided to bury the hatchet and became friends again. To stop fighting or arguing, to stop talking with someone, to stop seeing someone. And to add to the explanation, did you know that many idioms have historical backgrounds or backstories? So in the case of to bury the hatchet, this is believed to come from Native American culture. Now, it's believed that this comes from a tradition that when two tribes were at war and then became peaceful, the two leaders of those two tribes would bury their weapons to symbolize that the fighting was over and they need to honor that peace agreement. So that said, another tip that I can give you is to Google the idiom plus the word origin. And this should bring up the backstory of that idiom, like how it came to be. Now, a really great thing about this is that it might add to help you to better remember it, just knowing the story of where it came from. And another great thing is that it helps you to learn more about the culture. So by learning more idioms like the ones that we've seen so far today, you will add more color to your English. Another great bonus is that you'll be able to express your ideas in fewer words. And it's great for your comprehension of media like TV series, movies, or if you're reading the news or a book, because we natives use these idioms all the time. So before we move on to the final piece of learning more vocabulary in less time, I want to let you know that if you are new here, every single week we make lessons like this that help you to go from being a lost and insecure English learner to being a confident and natural English speaker. So if that sounds like what you want for your English, then why don't you join our community of of hundreds of thousands of learners who are doing exactly this by hitting that subscribe button and the bell down below. We can't wait to see you commenting on our future lessons. All right, so take a look at these words and see if you can understand them. Now, there might be one or two of these that you don't think that you understand, but did you know that these words are full formed from words that you probably already know? First off, shortage is the noun form of short. So when there's a shortage of something, it just means that there's not enough of that thing. So, for example, some people believe that there's been a shortage of jobs lately. And then closure is simply the noun form of the verb to close. So it's what we call it when something closes. So, for example, the pandemic and the rise of remote work resulted in the closure of many offices. And fatherhood is another noun form of the word father. So it's the state or condition of being a father. So, for example, When Mark turned 30, he decided that he was finally ready for fatherhood and decided to start trying having a baby.
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So as you can see, word formation
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is a really useful way for you to expand on your vocabulary because it takes the words that you already know and allows you to build upon them to really learn tons and tons of new words. In fact, this could result in you just having thousands more words at your disposal. So if you want to learn more about word formation and how you can put it to use so you can greatly expand on your vocabulary, we've made two lessons that people absolutely loved and found super helpful, so why don't you check those out next? We'll be sure to link them down in the description for you to find after you finish this video. And let me give you some tips that will help you to master word formation faster. So word formation is all about adding prefixes and suffixes to words. So prefixes go before the word, and suffixes come at the end of the word. So if you can master a handful of these, it will really go a long way in helping you to create new words even when you don't already know them. Break down the words into the forming categories, which are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, of course. And learn the suffixes for each of these word classes because there are specific suffixes for nouns, for adjectives, etc. Learn the different prefixes and how they change the meaning of the word. So just to give you an example, re means again. So if you say redo, it means to do it again. Over means too much of something. So if you overwork, you've worked so much and maybe you've burnt yourself out, use a dictionary or Google to find other words with the same same ending. So for example, we saw fatherhood earlier and you could look up the suffix hood and you have other words like motherhood, childhood, neighborhood, etc. And you can do exactly the same thing with prefixes. So we had overwork, but you can also have overeat, overcook, overreact.
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All right, so in a nutshell, the
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three things that you need to focus on if you want to drastically increase your vocabulary are phrasal verbs, idioms, and word formation. Trust me, by focusing just on these, your English has become so much more advanced and now we want to hear from you. Which of these three topics would you like to learn more about? Leave us a note down in the comments below saying I want to learn more about and we might just make a video for you all about that.
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Hey, thanks so much for watching and I hope that this classic lesson helped you to realize that the key to getting unstuck and leveling up your English isn't about necessarily studying harder, but focusing on the key aspects of reallife English that really matter. And if you want to master the new expressions that you learned today, like to put up with something and off the cuff, then I highly recommend that you practice them with the RealLife English app. It's the best way to expand your vocabulary and become a natural English speaker in just 10 to 50 minutes a day. Until next time. And remember that no matter what divides us. That which unites us is far greater.
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Aw, yeah.
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Hey, let me ask you something. Have you ever been in the middle of an important conversation, like maybe with your boss or a new friend, and
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you suddenly realized that you're saying, that's very good for the 10th time.
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Or maybe you catch yourself using I'm
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not sure, to respond to too many questions?