Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles [singing] "The eye of the tiger." Hi. James from www.engvid.com, singing one of my favourite workout songs: Rocky Balboa, "Eye of the Tiger". You'll notice that Mr. E has on a cape, a spit curl -- you know, curl -- from Superman. That's coming out June 14 -- advertisement. But anyway, he's working out. Look at those chest muscles -- pectorals, chest muscles. And those arms -- biceps. He's a super worm because today we're going to "Work out your English with Mr. E." Okay. Anyway, why are we doing a workout for something that's mental, right? It's not physical -- "physical" is body; "mental" is mind. Well, really they have something in common: they're both good for you. A workout changes your body and makes it something you want it to be. Learning a language is the same. You're actually changing the structure of your mind. You're changing things in your brain so you can get a certain result: a new language or a new way of thinking. The principles, or the way we go about it, are almost the same. I'm going to break it down because sometimes people get confused with ideas for learning and think it's difficult, but they understand, you know... you run: your heart is good. You lift heavy weight: your arms get big. Same thing. Let's go to the board. Okay, "R", "W", "N": three basic blocks of any workout. Anybody who's very big and strong will tell you you need these three things in order to get in good shape and to be strong. Well, what are they? Let's start off with the one that everybody knows best: A workout -- a "workout" versus a "program". Now, I have this on the board for a reason. "Working out" in English means to exercise or do actions to change your body -- make it stronger. In this case, a "workout" is like a lesson. This is a lesson. This would be a "workout". It's one time -- you go in. You do it, right? But it's not the same as a "program". A "program" is a few workouts put together with an idea. You want to get to somewhere, all right? In this case, to get there, we want to learn English. That's what we want to do. That would be the "program". The "workout" would be the lessons that we take in order to learn the program. Simple enough? You're saying, "Okay, I know this. Why are you teaching me?" Well, what most people don't know, to get the most out of a workout, there are three variables -- three variables or three things -- that you must do. There is "intensity", "duration", and "workload", okay? So "intensity": How much you do. Sorry, "intensity" is how hard you work. "Workload" is how much you do. And "duration" is for how long. Well, in learning a language, there are three answers to this. So if we start off with, let's say, intensity. Do you passively -- and passive means just sit there and watch. You're not speaking. You're not active. You're not doing anything. You just listen, or you just read: that's passive. We can really make it more intense by taking the information that you hear and you read and using it right away by writing something like writing a response on www.engvid.com -- you know, send us a comment -- or talking to somebody. You learn a lesson -- automatically going out and talking about it. That's really intense, okay? So that's the "intensity". You can change it from being passive to active or both. The second one we can look at, as I said, is "workload". What is the "workload"? How much are you doing, right? Are you doing a page or are you doing grammar? Are you doing verbs -- sorry, are you doing, you know, vocabulary? What are you doing? Each subpart of it is harder. Writing is harder. It's a big workload -- right? -- versus learning ten vocabulary words. What's your workload like? And the other one is "duration". Personally, when I study, or if I'm studying a language, I like to put in at least 30 minutes. I don't have to do ten hours. In fact, sometimes doing too much is not good. But how long are you doing? Five minutes, and you say you're studying? You're not studying. 30 minutes is like the bare minimum, you know, just the smallest amount. Maybe an hour is good, maybe two hours. So let's look at those three variables in a workout, and as you change them you'll notice your ability to learn English gets better and better or goes down, right? So remember what we said: There's "intensity", which is how hard you're studying; "workload", how much you're studying; and "duration", how much -- how often -- not how often, but how long do you study. Five minutes? Ten minutes? An hour? Okay? An hour a day is great. You don't need more. Watch a few of our videos. Okay, next: "Program". I told you the "program" is a large thing. A "workout" is one thing; the "program" is all the things. What do you want? You want to learn English, so you need a program. You need to put it in such a way that it works. Well, there are also three variables for this. "What?" Yeah, there're three variables. Number one, you have to -- when you're looking at a program for learning something, for -- let's talk about language. You have to be consistent. You study today, but not for six months? That's not consistent. Your workouts are no good. They're not going to help you if you do them every five months. It's got to be consistent. Daily is best. What about review? Well, once you learn something, you've got to review it, right? You've got to review what you're learning, go over it. That's why teachers have tests. I did a video where I talked about the testing method and why they tested in a certain way. You have to go over. What did I learn? Review it. Review it. Go over it. It'll help your memory. And finally, you've got to clean up the garbage, like, correct your mistakes. When you make a mistake, correct it, okay? Over the long term, if you're correcting the mistakes, you'll find that the consistency -- the reviewing and the correcting of the mistakes -- your English will just improve and flower. Before you know it, you're speaking the language, not learning the language. I know you like that. I do, too. All right, so we talked about a workout. Now, everybody thinks that's it. You work out. You just lift these huge heavy weights, and you run, and everything's good. Sorry to tell you: The human body doesn't work like that and nor does your mind. You work out, but you need something called "fuel", or something to make it work. When I was talking to you about your workload, in learning lessons or learning methodology -- method -- what we're talking about here is nutrition. Nutrition is the food you put in. If you work out and you eat bad food, you will get a bad result -- lots of work; no return. But with nutrition, what we want to talk about is -- well, what's "nutrition"? What you put in. What are you studying? Okay. I often tell people study what you like. It makes more sense. Now, that's at the beginning, okay? But I also have to look at, when I'm talking about nutrition -- it's what type of information you're taking. There are two types of English, really. There's what I call "bar English" and "business English". And I would teach this to my students because they would come in and say "I'm studying for IELTS and TOEFL, and I need to know all this academic stuff." And I went, "Great, so are you not going to ever go out in a foreign country and talk to English people? You're just going to sit in a room and sign documents?" -"Why, yes, I'm going to have beer with them." -"No, you're not because you don't know 'bar English'." "Bar English" isn't just you go to the bar and you drink and you say, "Hey man, give me another beer, or, "Dos cervezas, por favor." You know, it's not that. It's what we call "social English". It's the contractions: "I wanna go" or "I'm gonna" that you shouldn't use when you're using formal English, especially when writing. No. No, no, no, no, no. But you do when you speak, and it makes people more comfortable -- the idiomatic speech, which isn't necessarily good for an office environment, but it's quite acceptable and expected when you're at a bar, at a beach, and with your family. Okay? This is what I put "nutrition" in. Stuff you should take in. You should balance off the academic with a little bit of the social. It'll make your life more whole, and you'll find that you can actually go out, talk to people, and that will enhance your learning, okay? Cool? You like that? Why do I have "out"? I've always said when people work out -- because sometimes I dabble. "Dabble" means to play in something. It's not also what you put in, it's what doesn't come out. So in layman's terms, which means common people terms: No poo poo; no good. Okay? So you're taking all this stuff in, the bar room and the business and that, right? But what are -- what are you taking out? I touched on it on the workout. You've got to correct your mistakes. A lot of people take in bad English because they study something badly or they don't correct anything, and continue with it. Well, those mistakes build up, just like bad food builds up and creates a bad body. After a while, you've studied a year. You have so many mistakes. It's almost impossible to fix. So you give up, saying, "I will never be good." In computer words or language, parlance -- "parlance" means wording -- "garbage in, garbage out". I'm telling you take in -- know what you're taking in. You need the academic. You need some social. Work on those aspects. You also need to watch what you don't throw out -- things that are useless to you -- you may never even use. Why are you learning medical terminology? You're not a doctor; you're a garbage man, right? Know how the garbage machine works. Cool? Anyway, and the final one is "Rest". Everybody knows -- not everyone; silly to say. But a lot of people who work out realize quite quickly that you can work out, and you can eat the right food, but if you don't get adequate -- and "adequate" means "enough". If you don't get enough rest, the problem is your muscles won't grow because your body is always repairing or fixing itself, okay? So that's what we're looking at here when we talk about rest. You need to grow. You need to get bigger. And you need the time to grow. People grow over time. Things grow over time -- so do muscles. Language is the same. You need a break. You're like, "What? You told me I have to work out hard and all this intensity and all this. I've got to watch the garbage I put in and all" -- yeah. But you need to rest. You need two forms of rest. You notice I have "breaks" and "time out". Breaks: when you're learning, if you learn in chunks, take 20 or 30 minutes. Work on something. Take a break. Five minutes, ten minutes, take some air. Walk around. Let it sit, okay? What do I mean, "let it sit"? Let the information go into your brain, and then come back. Don't always cram. "Cram" means taking something and pushing it in again and again into something, okay? Don't cram. That's bad. It's not enjoyable either. Don't cram information. What you want to do is put the information. Give it time to settle. Come in a little bit, then come back to it. You'll find that you understand it a little bit better. So take breaks in your learning. After 15 minutes of learning, 30 minutes, 45 -- take breaks. They've found that in learning language, 20 to 30 minutes is very good for the brain to get the information and learn from it. Now, that's a break while you're learning a lesson or in a workout. But in a program -- see I'm coming back to this again. In a program, take a time out. Now, what I mean by "time out" is going to sound funny. Take a time out from actually learning, sitting in front, reading books, being in class. Take a break. Don't do any language. But when you go outside, try and use your language. Try and use it in a natural environment. I know for some of you, I know don't live in countries where English is a primary language, that will be a little difficult. So people like, a Spanish person in America -- United States -- they would find it easier, or a German person because there're so many English tourists. But take a break from actually active learning. The "learning curve", we call it -- what I found with students was that they'd come in here, and they would go up, up, up, up, up, and then there would be called a "plateau" -- a place where they would stay -- and then they would say "my English is going down". And I would say, "Actually, it's not going down. Your brain is analyzing and learning. It seems to you down. So one day when you go, 'Now my English better', it was always here, and it was always going up. You just didn't see it until it came here. Your brain needs time and so do you. So what I want you to do is -- I want you to take a break right now. That's right, take a break because I'm finished this lesson. But before I do, let's do the review. People always say the most important part of the workout is actually the rest so you can get the information. But to go over it again, work out. There's a difference between a "workout" and a "program". A "workout" is the lesson you're studying, okay? Work on the process in that lesson. There's a video on that process. Go check it out. You'll see it -- another learning lesson. The "program" is the end goal, what do you want, and what workouts or what lessons are you going to study to get to that end goal