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  • - Today, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna talk a little bit

  • about what my own research tells us

  • about good English learning materials.

  • (powerful tune)

  • (powerful crackling) (logo swooshes)

  • Hello, I'm Julian Northbrook from DoingEnglish.com,

  • here today to talk to you once again

  • a little bit about good English learning materials.

  • There's this idea,

  • kind of a silly one, really, when you think about it,

  • but a pervasive one,

  • this idea that you learnt English at school.

  • Therefore, all you've got to do now is activate it

  • by practise, practise, practising .

  • Yeah, it makes sense, kind of.

  • And it is true

  • that you do have to use your English,

  • whether practising or just doing it in the real world

  • to activate it and make it into a habit,

  • that is, an automated skill that just happens

  • without you having to think about it.

  • Yes, this is correct.

  • And yes, it is correct that first,

  • you have to learn the English

  • that you are going to automate

  • via this doing of the English.

  • That much is correct.

  • Where you go wrong, however,

  • is in thinking that you learned English at school.

  • Newsflash, you almost definitely didn't.

  • These things change,

  • differ from country to country to country.

  • My own research, my own experience,

  • is mostly with the Asian countries,

  • so I am really talking

  • from that perspective here in this video.

  • However, I would imagine the same is true

  • for pretty much everywhere.

  • The English you learned at school wasn't really English.

  • It was supposed to be.

  • It was supposed to be something representative

  • of day-to-day, basic, general English,

  • but it almost definitely wasn't.

  • It was actually something else,

  • an approximation of English,

  • something that uses English words and English grammar,

  • but was actually something fundamentally different.

  • One of my own research projects published in a top journal,

  • I will add reference and link in the description,

  • found that Japanese secondary school English textbooks

  • used completely different phrases and expressions

  • and chunks of English in their,

  • quote, unquote, conversational dialogues to real English,

  • to the extent where the only conclusion

  • that we could come to

  • was that the textbooks were representative

  • not of general English conversation,

  • but of nothing other than themselves.

  • Or to put it more simply,

  • the expressions, phrases, and dialogues

  • contained in the textbooks were all but useless

  • in the real world.

  • This is a problem.

  • I did a second research project

  • that I will add is now published

  • in the number one journal in my field,

  • also referenced and linked in the description.

  • In this study, I measured Japanese secondary school

  • student's fluency using a special kind

  • of psychometric testing

  • to measure how they process the chunks of language

  • taken from the textbooks that they used.

  • I found that they were highly fluent in this language,

  • which would have been a really, really good thing

  • if the language tested

  • was in any way useful in the real world,

  • which my original study had already shown was not the case.

  • So, as you can see,

  • the idea that you learned English in school

  • and all you've got to do is activate it via practise

  • actually doesn't really make much sense

  • because the students that I studied,

  • they were already pretty damn good

  • at the English they had learned.

  • They just didn't realise it

  • because it was not the English they needed, the real world.

  • So, just practising , practising , practising

  • would do nothing for them because the stuff that they need,

  • not in here.

  • The materials that you use and study matter a lot.

  • They are, after all, the samples of English

  • that you put into your head.

  • And just like building a house

  • with poor quality building materials

  • will only result in a shitty house,

  • learning from poor quality English learning materials

  • will only result in shitty English

  • being spoken by you.

  • Now, if you're not too sure

  • what the best kind of English learning materials are

  • or simply want me to cut away the hassle

  • and give you everything that you need,

  • you're going to wanna consider joining

  • my prestigious English Mastery group,

  • the Extraordinary English Speakers.

  • Among other benefits, each and every week,

  • you are going to get a brand new lesson from me to study

  • that's gonna give you samples of English to use

  • in any situation you want,

  • whether you'll use English in business context,

  • in social situations,

  • or you live in an English-speaking country,

  • we've got you covered with everything that you need

  • to get out there and speak English,

  • confident that you are sounding natural

  • and fluent when you do it.

  • Of course, the design

  • of the Extraordinary English Speakers lessons

  • is based on my own research,

  • years of testing and tweaking have gone

  • into the design and writing of the lessons,

  • to, again, ensure that you can get out there

  • and just get on with speaking the English language

  • with less hassle, less stress, and fewer headaches.

  • The place to go is DoingEnglish.com/EES,

  • link in the description.

  • And because it is just so much easier

  • to demonstrate how the lessons work

  • than it is to explain it,

  • what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you

  • the very first lesson for free, lesson zero,

  • which talks about the method that we use

  • alongside actually doing one of the lessons.

  • So, just head over to DoingEnglish.com/EES

  • and grab your free lesson.

  • Now, I will see you on the other side.

  • With that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

  • this is me Julian Northbrook,

  • signing out from another video.

  • Thanks for watching.

  • If you found this useful, give it a nice, big old thumbs-up.

  • If you hated it, give it a thumbs-up anyway.

  • And I'll see you, my friend, in the next one.

  • Goodbye.

  • (lively music)

- Today, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna talk a little bit

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