Name: Become a Better Learner: 5 things you can do to improve focus & memory
Uploaded: 2022-05-11T17:46:09.000Z
Duration: 17 min 27 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. Oh, hi. James from engVid. It's

a beautiful day out here. It's... no, it's not. It's cold. It's really cold.

Modal verbs - A2

Canada, in the fall, which I love, but it... it can get cold if you're not

dressed for it, and I am not dressed for it. Today's lesson is going to be on

language learning. Or better to put it this way: It's not going to be on

grammar, or conversation specifically; but I want to give you five things you

can do that you can actually make learning easier. Okay? Things people

don't usually mention, but they're really kind of important. These are the

background things. See, don't you love it? Look, gotta love nature. Anyway. So,

five things I'm gonna talk about are going to help make... prepare you, as an

individual, better, so you can actually be more efficient at learning. So, let's

take care of the machine; then we can take care of the learning afterwards.

So, where do we start when we do that? Well, the first thing I want to talk

about... well, the first thing I want you to do is: I'm going to give you a

list. Okay? And I want you to listen carefully to this list, because this is

what I call a test retest and lesson learning. You're going to listen to the

list, and then I'm going to give you a couple seconds, and I want you to see

how many of these words you can remember. And at the end of this lesson,

I'm going to redo the list, and we're going to see if you got an improvement.

Are you ready? So, don't write it down. Do not write it down. Hopefully you're

by a computer, so you can't. Put your fingers and hands up in the air. Okay?

Word number one: Sun. Number two: Socks. Number three: Traffic light. Number

four... and, sorry. That's words. But you know what I mean, because some

people go: "He said: 'traffic light' — it's two words." Whatever. Traffic

light. Number four: Car. Number five: Glove, which I wish I had some. Number

six: Soda. Number seven: Rainbow. Number eight: Octopus. Number nine: Cat. And

number ten: Toes. Okay? Take five seconds, and see how many of these words

you can actually remember. You got it? Now, repeat and see how many you got.

Don't worry if you didn't get them all; that's not the point. It's... we're

going to do a test retest, so let's see where you are and where we're going to

Now, now we got that out of the way, let's talk about the lesson for the day

— the five things we can look at. Number one — you probably heard this before —

food. "What? What? I thought we were doing English." We are. You should have

a good breakfast before you go to school. Some people say that, you

know... or a lot of kids should have that. And it's important. Food is

important for how we function — period. There's no difference when we talk about

that and when we talk about learning languages. If you don't eat properly, or

don't fuel your body — "fuel", like gas for your car — you can't learn properly.

But one of the things we don't really take into consideration is: What kind of

fuel is important? Now, I'm not going to talk about all foods, because there's

many theories on, you know... fat in your food, carbohydrates — all these

different things; or apples and oranges. I'm just going to talk about this one

thing that makes a big difference, and it's... it's becoming quite popular in

the news and magazines. You can check it out on... there's "The Obesity Code" by

Doctor Fung, and he's also got... there's a sugar... there's a couple of

books on these, where they talk about how sugar — and yeah, I'm talking about

sugar — sugary foods, specifically, lead to lots of problems. And one of those

problems they lead to, my friends, is learning. It seems what happens when we

take a lot of sugar... and, first of all, I should say: Sugar in small

amounts that we find in fruits, you know... like apples, oranges — is good

for us. In fact, our brain is only two percent of our bodies, but it uses

twenty percent of our energy. And when we get fruits, like oranges, and apples,

and berries — they have... they're full of sugar. But they also have something

called: "fibre" to slow how the sugar is brought into our bodies. And because of

that, our bodies can use the sugar and we don't have that bad in effect. But

you still can't eat twenty apples and twenty oranges. In fact, you'll get sick

if you do. That's the beauty of it. But when you're having chocolate bars, and

other things, like... and it's got a lot of sugar in it — well, it's not so good

So, a little bit of sugar helps us think really well. Okay? And that's what

nature gave us. And that's why we're here, building cars and buildings. Same

with language learning. A little bit of sugar gives you a little bit of a spike

to give you the energy to learn, but too much sugar causes what's called:

"inflammation". And if you want to know what "inflammation" is — if you've ever

got hit in the eye and your eye goes: "Bwoo" — that's "inflammation". Right?

But when it happens in your head and your brain: "Bwoo" — well, there's

nowhere for the brain, and the blood and that to go in your body. So, it takes up

that space, and it makes it harder for you to think. Okay? So, one of the first

things you want to do is: Stop eating so many sugary foods, and that will help

with memory and learning. All right? So, if you're sitting there, and I'm sure

you got a soda, going: "He's telling me a good idea. I should..." Put the soda

down. Put it down because it's full of sugar, which leads me to number two:

Water. You didn't see that coming, did you? Food, sugar, water. Sodas aren't

great for you because they're full of sugar, but one thing we do need and we

need a lot of it, is water. Your brain is 80% water, and a lot of us are

dehydrated. We walk around; we don't drink enough water.

Well, think of a sponge. Okay? If you put a sponge in water, and you know...

it's like this and you put it in, it goes: "Puchu" — it gets filled; it

grows. But it's absorbing. "Absorbing" — it means drawing in the liquid. Right?

It's taking... it's taking the... the water in the sponge, and the sponge

grows. Just like your brain when it's properly hydrated — it can suck in the

information. But you get a dry sponge, my friend — it's small and it doesn't do

very much. You got to get your uptake of water. Now, I'm not going to tell you

how much water, like: "You should have eight glasses a day. It should be

distilled. It should come from the Heavens themselves. Tears of the gods."

I'm not saying that. I'm just saying: Get good, clean water; put down the

soda. It'll help. What happens is water helps when it's fully... the brain is

hydrated. "Hydrated" means filled with water. It helps information flow a lot

better. Okay? Think of your toilet; stuff flows better when it's full,

right? Yeah, that's a bad example. I should have thought that went through.

Anyway, but you get the point. A hydrated brain that's filled with water

allows for electrolytes. I know, "electrolytes" — they're little...

whatever. You don't need to know. Science things. Things in your brain

that can... conveys information — they allow them to work better in the brain.

Right? We need to be hydrated. Okay? So, hydration helps with the body

circulating stuff, but really for the brain because it's 80% water. That was

So, what could be number three? Because we talked about food; we talked about

water. Here's one that probably, if you're sitting at the computer too

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Become a Better Learner: 5 things you can do to improve focus & memory

stuff

meditation

properly

effective