Name: Why can I UNDERSTAND more English than I can SPEAK?
Uploaded: 2019-11-14T13:59:13.000Z
Duration: 8 min 1 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...

Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.

Modal verbs - A2

Can you understand English but you can't speak well?

The imperative

Have you ever wondered this why in the world can I understand English, but I can't speak

Today I'd like to have a little heart to heart conversation with you to talk about how this

Let's start by thinking about your English classes from elementary school, middle school,

What was the main thing that you did in those classes?

Did you write the correct verb tense in your grammar book?

Hopefully you could occasionally use your speaking muscles, but if there's 5, 10, 15,

even 20 people in your class, those opportunities to speak are going to be pretty formulated

Maybe the teacher asked you how many times per week do you go to the gym and you answered,

But if there's so many students, the teacher doesn't have the chance to have a natural

conversation for five minutes with each student.

And when the teacher asks you a question, even if it's a simple question, like how many

You're speaking in front of 14 other people in your class, that's like a presentation

And it's not what happens when you're just having a one on one conversation with someone

Giving a presentation, speaking in front of other people is often our biggest fear.

So starting like this in an English class can be really difficult and it's not a good

So the first reason why you can understand English, but you can't speak well, is well,

You weren't trained with a one-on-one kind English teacher who asked you questions and

patiently listened and made you feel comfortable.

It's not your fault that you didn't have this conversational training practice from the

Well, I'd like you to reflect on the ways that you learn English now.

How many of those activities include listening to English?

How many of those activities include speaking English?

If you need any ideas about how to have speaking activities, whether you live in an English

speaking country or whether you are just at home in your native country.

Check out this video I made up here about how to start speaking anywhere right now.

Even though those English classes weren't your fault, you do have some responsibility,

Have you ever talked with a two year old child?

I have a two year old son and it's beautiful to see the way his language skills are exploding.

He can say things like, I want to put my shoes on or let's go eat some tomatoes.

Those sentences are relatively simple, but do you know what?

He can understand more complex and incredibly fast sentences, but he doesn't necessarily

use them himself, but he can understand them.

So if I said to him, "All right, it's time to hop in the car and head over to the store

He would understand everything that I said.

He might not willingly go to the car, but he would understand everything I said and

he couldn't imitate exactly what I said, though.

This means that his listening comes first and then his speaking is following after that.

For the past two years, he's been listening and listening and listening just like you've

been doing, just like you're doing right now in this lesson.

He started off by making baby noises and then babbling nonsense words and then he started

saying some important words like mama, dada, kitty, milk.

That babies start off slow and then they incrementally increase their language skills.

Kids practice speaking for a long time before they actually can speak fluently.

For example, the other day he said, "I touch the cat with my apple."

He should've said, "I am touching the cat with my apple."

He was rubbing his apple on the cat's fur, but in this situation he didn't know how to

use the correct verb tense, but he was just trying.

Later, he said, "I see a bear chasing a dog" What he should have said was, "I saw a bear

Using this irregular past tense verb saw, but he used it in the present tense.

This is actually true, we saw a giant bear chasing our neighbor's dog across the front

This is the glories of living in the mountains.

I tell you those two stories because it's our biological way to learn language, to listen

So you just need to get beyond listening and go to speaking.

We can learn a lot from kids, especially their carefree attitude about making mistakes.

My son doesn't use the past tense often and he doesn't care.

He just tries to put sentences together and I hope that you can learn a lot from that.

Well, I want you to take the attitude of, I don't care if I make a mistake.

When you were in your classroom English classes and you made a mistake in front of the other

students, if you answered your teacher's question incorrectly, it is terrifying to be told,

You're being corrected in front of your peers, in front of your friends.

So even though you've been trained in school to fear making mistakes, you're here on YouTube