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  • Hi, I’m AJ Hoge, one of the teachers of Learn Real English. And welcome to our video

  • course.

  • Now, let’s get started with Rule # 1 or Secret # 1. And Rule # 1 is to always learn

  • English phrases, and to never, never study just individual words.

  • So in this course were going to teach you a totally new way to

  • learn English, a totally new way to study English, so that you can speak English quickly,

  • easily, automatically, powerfully, confidently.

  • So what’s the old way of learning English? You know it because you learned it in school.

  • Youve been using it for years and years and years. You

  • sit in a classroom. Youve got a textbook. You memorize

  • lists of vocabulary words. You study lots and lots and lots of grammar rules. You do

  • lots of reading and little fake conversation drills and activities.

  • And this is the traditional old way of learning English but we

  • have a totally new and different way of learning it. And were going to teach you each part

  • of that, one part every day for a full seven days.

  • So let’s start with Part 1, Secret 1, Rule # 1…learn phrases, not individual words.

  • Now, of course, a phrase is a group of words. It’s a group

  • of words that naturally go together. This is very important. You

  • see, when you only study individual words, you are doing a number of things that make

  • learning difficult. Number one, when you study just an individual

  • word like a vocabulary, something in a vocabulary list, or

  • even in your notebook you write one single word and then you write the meaning or the

  • translation, here’s the problem. That word has no connections

  • to anything else. Therefore, it’s difficult for your brain to

  • remember it.

  • That’s why you have to keep repeating again and again. You look at that list and you try

  • to memorize it. And then the next day you forget and then

  • you go back and you try to memorize it again and again and

  • again and again and again. And maybe after a very long time you might remember it. But

  • most likely youre going to forget it, especially long-term.

  • And yet that’s the way most students are learning English

  • and studying vocabulary.

  • Here’s another problem with just learning single words. When you study just single words,

  • youre not learning any grammar. But when you study phrases,

  • you are actually learning grammar. It’s kind of an

  • effortless, easy way to learn grammar. You don’t need to think about rules. You don’t

  • need to think about anything. And yet, you will be learning

  • correct grammar when you study groups of words instead of

  • phrases.

  • Let me give you an example of this. Let’s just, y’know, take any phraselike, um,

  • a simple, simple sentence. He was a bad dog. He was a bad dog.

  • Now, let’s imagine that youre a new English student

  • and the word bad is new for you. Of course, I know you know it, but let’s just imagine

  • you go way back to the very beginning and your first year of

  • learning English and bad is a new word. Now the normal way of

  • studying that, you would write it down, bad, it would be in a little, y’know, a list.

  • And then you would study bad means not good, bad means not good. You’d probably translate

  • it to your own language. And then after lots and lots and lots of time, maybe

  • you would remember it.

  • Well using our system, you do something very different. You would write down that whole

  • phrase. He was a bad dog. That’s actually a full sentence.

  • Or you could just write down was a bad dog or he was a

  • bad dog, whatever. And then every single time you study or review, you would always, always,

  • always study the full complete phrase. You would

  • never just study that word, bad. You would study the whole

  • thing.

  • Now by doing that youre getting free grammar. How do you know? Well, because first of all

  • youre getting that verb, was, right? Was, and that’s

  • just going to stick in your brain, he was, he was, he was.

  • Youre also learning articles. You don’t need to remember what that means. You don’t

  • have to even worry about it. And yet you know that it’s

  • correct to say, in this situation, a bad dog. He was a bad dog.

  • Some people say a, he was a bad dog. Both pronunciations are correct. So he was a bad

  • dog. He was a bad dog.

  • A lot of students have problems. When do I use a, or a? When do I not? When do I use

  • the? And youre trying to memorize all these super

  • complicated rules and situations for it. Forget that. It’s too

  • complicated. Youll never remember it. Just study phrases and youll start to feel when

  • to use it, when it’s correct, when it sounds correct and

  • when it sounds strange, when it’s not correct to use those things.

  • And, of course, this is true for all grammar; all phrases; all vocabulary. By studying a

  • full phrase or even a full sentence, always, always, always, youre

  • going to get lots of grammar. Youre going to learn which

  • vocabulary words go together naturally. And youre going to know when to use them in

  • which situations. Because sometimes, for example, there might

  • be a situation where there are many words that mean the

  • same thing. And yet we typically use one of them.

  • Like, we might say he was a bad dog. That’s a common phrase, a bad dog, bad dog. We use

  • that word bad to describe a dog who’s naughty, who’s

  • not good. But we don’t usually say horrendous. Now

  • horrendous means super super bad, really terrible. And yet we don’t usually say he was a horrendous

  • dog. It sounds strange, even though the meaning is basically correct. Yet, in normal real

  • English, not textbooks, but real English, we just don’t

  • use that word to describe dogs, not usually. I don’t know why.

  • There’s no real rule about it. It’s just that’s what we usually do. And every language

  • has these kind of word combinations that are more common, and

  • other word combinations which just aren’t used typically.

  • How do you learn that? Well you can’t learn it from any rules because there are no rules

  • about that. You have to learn it by studying phrases always.

  • Always, always, always study phrases. Review phrases.

  • Whenever you learn a new word don’t just write down that individual word. Write down

  • the full phrase, or even better, the full sentence that it’s

  • in. Always include the words that are around it. This is going to

  • help you improve your English speaking ability much, much, much faster Even better, when

  • you write down the phrase, also write down where the phrase came from to remind

  • yourself of the whole situation. So you might, let’s say you find a new word in a newspaper

  • article. Well first of all, let’s say the word horrendous.

  • Youre reading a newspaper article or youre listening to the

  • radio and you hear that word horrendous. Hm, that’s new, what is that? And you write

  • it down. But youre not going to write down just that

  • single word.

  • Youre going to write down the whole phrase that it was in. And then youre also going

  • to make a note, youre going to put down, y’know, this

  • came from a newspaper article about the economy. And this is

  • going to trigger you, it’s going to remind you, give you a memory cue, a memory reminder,

  • of the full situation. So now youre not only getting

  • just this single word. Youre getting the full phrase or sentence

  • that it’s in and youre also reminding yourself where that sentence came from. What

  • was the general topic, what was the general situation.

  • And in this way youre getting a lot of extra grammar which youre learning unconsciously,

  • easily. You don’t have to think about it but youre

  • learning it anyway. Your brain is learning it, even though you might

  • not know that. And youre also learning when certain phrases and certain words are

  • used and when theyre not used. Youre learning which

  • situations it’s used, or they are used in. And youll, of course,

  • know that in other situations you don’t use.

  • Because as you learn more and more and more phrases, you begin to get this feeling of

  • correctness. And you begin to know when to use certain

  • words, how to use them, and youre also, how to use the

  • grammar correctly as well.

  • This is so important. It’s such a simple, simple little secret, a simple little trick,

  • a simple little rule. And yet it can totally change the way you speak English

  • and learn English. It’s very, very important. So never,

  • never, never study just an individual word, one word, always study the phrase or the sentence.

  • And always, always, always make a note where it

  • came from. And you want those phrases and sentences to

  • come from real English, which well talk about more later, not from textbooks.

  • Here’s another advantage of studying phrases and full sentences and always knowing the

  • situation that they came from. Phrasal verbs, you guys know

  • about them. You know all about phrasal verbs that are a

  • frustration for so many students, right? Y’know, to be knocked out or knocked up, have totally

  • different meaning, right? Knocked out is a phrasal verb,

  • it’s a two-word verb, it’s a verb phrase. And to be

  • knocked out means to like, it’s like in boxing or sports, you get hit and ugh, it’s

  • like youre asleep, right? Boom, knocked out on the floor. To be knocked

  • up means to become pregnant. We use that for women.

  • Now there’s no way if you just look at the individual words to know the meaning, right,

  • knocked out, knocked up. It’s not logical. You just have

  • to learn each one individually. But if you just try to study lists and lists and lists

  • of phrasal verbs, youre going to become very confused.

  • Youll start confusing one with the other. Youre going to forget and it’s horrible

  • and you don’t want to do that. It’s not effective. It doesn’t work.

  • But if you learn those phrasal verbs from real situations, real

  • sentences, real articles, real audios, real speech, and then you always study them in

  • the whole sentence. So then you know the situation, right?

  • If you, if you get the whole sentence, the fighter knocked out the other fighter. And

  • youre always studying that full phrase or sentence, the

  • fighter knocked out the other fighter. Youre going to just

  • naturally know. Y’know, youve got that word fighter in there, helps you to remember

  • the situation. And it helps you to remember the meaning of that

  • phrase, knocked out.

  • Or you could say the woman got knocked up by her boyfriend, right? So now youre like,

  • ah yeah, boyfriend, it gives youit gives you a clue.

  • It gives you an idea of the meaning of that phrase. And youll

  • know that you always use that phrase in situations that describe pregnancy. This is much better

  • than studying lists and lists and lists of phrasal

  • verbs.

  • So what’s our first rule, what’s our first secret? Always, always, always study phrases,

  • groups of words. Always write down a note about where the phrase

  • came from to remind you of the situation. And no

  • more, never again, study just individual words. And that’s all. That is powerful Secret

  • # 1, Rule # 1 for learning to speak fantastic amazing English.

  • Start using this rule immediately today, okay?

  • Well see you tomorrow for Rule 2. Bye-bye

Hi, I’m AJ Hoge, one of the teachers of Learn Real English. And welcome to our video

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