5 Grammar Rules to FORGET for English Fluency (Stop Studying These NOW!)

English for years five grammar rules forget them all you study grammar for years but can't speak fluently today I'm giving you five grammar rules to forget because they are blocking your English fluency you know the feeling someone asks you a question You start to give an answer, and then your brain starts to analyze. Maybe it's an article, like the or and. Is this noun, is it countable or uncountable?

Do I say a or no article? Do I use the? And while you're doing that, the other person is just staring at you. Your speech has all of these long, unnatural pauses.

It's terrible. Your fluency gets killed. So today I'm telling you the five grammar rules to forget and what to do instead. School's taught you wrong. This is the effortless English show.

We're the world's number one English teacher. N.J. Hope. Your breakthrough starts now. And I'm back. Playing with some new things on here, on my camera here.

So, excuse me for the delays. I got to change the camera setting here. We're going to talk about the five grammar rules and why these grammar rules are killing your fluency. Because they do.

They're fluency killers. They stop you from speaking naturally and automatically. Now, let me just do my settings real quick on my video. Looks like...

Sorry, guys. Here we go. Well, that's why. Okay. Let's see. Can you see me? Looks like you guys are watching. All right. So just make sure you guys can see me.

All right. Here we go. All right, so why grammar kills fluency? So here's the problem. You guys know it, right? It's the thing I talk about all the time is when you are thinking about grammar rules, it just kills your speaking.

Native speakers don't think about grammar rules. You don't think about grammar rules in your language when you're speaking to someone, right? You don't do it. Absolutely not.

Kids don't do it. Kids don't learn grammar rules, right? They don't sit there and go, uh... My seven-year-old kids don't even know any grammar rules. They could not tell you.

They don't know what subject-verb agreement is. They don't know any of it, but they use it correctly. And if you are doing that, if you're thinking about grammar and grammar rules while you're speaking, your speaking is probably terrible.

In my book, I describe grammar. a story of two of my students. This is back when I was teaching in San Francisco. Jeannie and Jackie, both Korean, both about the same age, both starting my class at about the same level, about the same level of ability.

And what happened? They both started and I told them, hey, look, here's the deal. Don't study grammar rules, right? I said, don't do it. Don't study grammar rules.

Instead, here's what I want you to do. I want you to just learn naturally. This was the beginning. This was when I was just developing the effortless English system.

So Jeannie took my advice and she stopped studying grammar rules. And Jackie, these were their nicknames, Jackie said, continued to go crazy with grammar study. All these books, she would always bring me all these books, test preparation books, grammar study books, studied and studied and studied.

Just, I don't know, you know, I think she was just trained in school, trained back in Korea to obsess over grammar, to go crazy, focusing on grammar. And she just, you know, she didn't want to listen to me. She thought my advice sounded crazy. So she didn't listen to me.

We fast forward six months later. No surprise here. Jeannie had improved tremendously. Her speaking fluency, her ability to communicate, to speak quickly and automatically and effortlessly was much, much, much better.

Huge improvements. And Jackie, her speaking did not improve at all. I'm sure her linguistic knowledge, she could probably discuss that. grammar rules very well she probably could analyze English better than Jeannie probably better than me but uh but none of that helped her actual speaking none of that helped her actual fluency okay that's why grammar rules kill fluency so let's talk about I think these are the five that people in my experience that students focus on too much these are the five most common grammar rules that cause this destruction

of fluency. Alright, number one, articles. I like to share this story all the time because in my last video I talked about this. One day this was in Georgia in the United States.

I was teaching immigrants English. This was way before Effortless English and I would just go to the textbook and teach whatever the lesson was, right? Like everybody else.

And the Lesson was articles. Articles are a, or a, an, and the, right, which in English we use very, very, very, very frequently. Some languages don't have these.

Some have them, but they have genders, like, you know, el or la in Spanish, for example. Japanese doesn't have these at all. So I was teaching, you know, this lesson on articles. I was preparing for the lesson, and I'm reading it, and it's two pages of rules for the word the.

In fact, let me just pull this up. Let me see if I can pull this up now on the Internet. Let's see. Grammar rules for using the article the. How to use the.

All right. Here's one from a university, Purdue. That's actually in Indiana. All right, let's pull it up. What is an article? Basically, an article is an adjective.

Like adjectives, articles modify nouns. English has two articles, the and a or an. The is used to refer to specific or particular nouns. A and an are used to modify non-specific or non-particular nouns.

We call the the definitive article. A and an are the indefinite articles. Definite and not definitive. Definite and indefinite. For example, if I say let's read the book, I mean a specific book.

If I say let's read a book, I mean any book. Remember, using a or an depends on the sound that begins the next word. So now you've got to think about the sound of the next word, right? Definitive article.

Definite. I keep saying definitive. Definite article. The definite article is used before singular and plural nouns when the noun is specific or particular.

The signals that the noun is definite and it refers to a particular member. Count and non-count nouns. Oh, now it gets more complicated. The can be used with non-count nouns or the article can be omitted entirely.

So we can use it or we can omit it, not use it. Most of the time you can't say she wants a water. I'll talk about a story about that. Geographical use of the.

There are some specific rules for using the with geographical nouns. Do not use the before, and it gives countries, cities, streets, mountains, continents, islands. Do use before rivers, points on the globe, geographical areas, Deserts, forests, omission of articles, some common types.

Good Lord. Good Lord. Can you remember all of that? Are you confused? You know, comment confused if you're confused because that confuses me. And that was my reaction preparing for that lesson.

I was confused. It was on and on. That's actually a pretty short one. The textbook I was using had two pages of rules for the when to use it, when not to use it, when you can sometimes use it.

I mean, I can use it for rivers, but not mountains or countries. Oh, my God. So there's no way you can remember all that when you're speaking. There's no way you're speaking.

Someone says, you know, where'd you go on your vacation? You have no time to think, I went to the, I went to the Mexico or I went to Mexico. You just got to say something.

Okay. And the truth is, it doesn't matter. Okay. If you make a mistake, what does matter is if you go, uh, because you're trying to think about articles, you know, terrible, terrible, absolutely terrible.

The next one, perfect tenses. This gets a lot of people. Some languages don't have these. Perfect tenses, or it's done in a different way. Perfect tense is like, you know, I have been to the store.

I have been to Russia. Or I had eaten. Or, you know, you get it. Or I will have eaten. by five o'clock today you know something like that right so again so this is extremely confusing if you have to think about it i'm not going to read you more boring grammar rules don't worry i can't handle it okay but it's the same thing you'll find in grammar textbooks in english learning textbooks in english classes you probably learned pages and pages of rules for when to use the different perfect tenses the problem is again

You have no time in speaking. These rules might be helpful in writing. I think even in writing on your first draft, the first time you're writing an essay, an article, anything, I don't think you want to be thinking about all this stuff because you'll never get it done.

You'll never finish it. Even with writing, I suggest, you just write it as fast as you can. And then with writing, the nice thing about writing is you can do it slowly so then afterwards you go back and then you can think about grammar if you want to and check it and you know use apps or whatever to try to correct your grammar that's fine but in speaking can't do that at all you just got to talk okay you got to talk so how do you learn perfect tenses so that you use them correctly and point of view stories the stories that i use in my lessons and my courses this is the best way why because i

These are stories that are designed to teach you spoken grammar, especially the most common ones, including the perfect tenses, but to do it in the natural way. The natural way, the way kids learn, the way you must learn to use it in speech fluently is you just you hearing.

It used correctly, okay? So I'll tell a story first in the present tense, you know. John went to, I mean, in the present. John goes to the store, and John buys ice cream, and the story continues.

So you have a whole version talking about the story happening now. Then I'll tell the same story. The next lesson will be, I'll tell the same story again, but now I'm describing it in the past. John went to the store.

He bought an ice cream. It was good, you know. I don't discuss the simple past tense. I don't discuss the present perfect tense or the past perfect tense or other tenses that are used in the story.

I just tell the story naturally, shifting the time point of view. And then I'll tell the story again as if it's going to happen in the future, like I'm imagining it. I imagine that tomorrow...

Tomorrow John's going to go to the store. Gonna. That's a going to. We often say gonna in real speech. Not in writing, but in real speech. So anyway, I'll tell the story as if it's going to happen in the future, right?

So by listening to each of these versions of the same exact story, but you'll hear, you'll notice the changes. The verbs will change. Sometimes other phrases will change. Other grammar might change.

But you do not need to think about all the rules. You do not even need to think about why. In fact, I recommend don't think about why the changes are happening. It's just going to confuse you.

It just creates an extra step in your brain. Just listen and repeat, listen and repeat, listen and repeat. And eventually you get a feeling. Dr. Stephen Krashen, great language researcher, describes this as a feeling for correctness.

It's what you have in your own native language. It's what I have in English. It just means... You just know when it's right because it just sounds right.

It sounds right. It feels right. Why? Because you've heard these natural, real stories and other input, other audios, so you know when it sounds correct.

And then you'll start to actually use it when you speak without trying to remember any rules. You've got to do it this way. Okay, number three, number three, grammar...

Rule number three to forget. Stop worrying about modal verbs. Modal verbs. Even the name. What the heck is a modal verb? Ask most native speakers. They won't even be able to tell you what this is.

What's a modal verb? I have no idea. Okay. Should, would, could, must, might, may. Another one that creates tons of confusion, and you need to use this one quite commonly, for example, ordering something.

You go to Starbucks. I've seen people do it, students. Again, in San Francisco, I would take them out. We'd go to coffee, for example, and I'd see some of them just kind of freeze up when they're standing in front of the Starbucks worker.

And they're like, What are they doing? They're trying to think, do I say, can I have iced coffee? Could I get an iced coffee? May I have an iced coffee?

Would it trouble you, sir, to give me an iced coffee, right? It's super formal. They get all crazy about this and try to remember rules and guidelines for which ones are more formal, which ones they use. It's crazy.

It doesn't matter. The truth is, any of them are fine, okay? I think, you know, Just be casual. Just say, can I have? Can I have? You can use this in any restaurant, even a five-star Michelin restaurant that's $500 per meal.

You can still say, yeah, can I have the steak, okay? It's no big deal. You do not want to be thinking about these rules. Again, it just creates all this unnecessary stress and hesitation for no reason, okay?

For no reason. It doesn't matter. You don't need to analyze all these levels of formality. First of all, in English, certainly American English, is not so concerned with levels of formality.

You don't want to be rude. You don't want to say, yeah, give me. A lot of it's just tone of voice. Give me a steak, right? That's rude. But steak, please.

You could just say that. You don't even have to use a modal verb, okay? So you just focus on communication, not these rules. Again, you'll start to get these.

You listen to the mini stories. You listen to even just podcasts. You listen to movies, all these things, the more and more and more. You start to get these natural phrases.

I mean, that's rule number one of the Effortless English Method is to learn phrases. And this is how you're going to get these natural phrases that will just come out

And you don't need to think about any of this. There's no need for stress. And really, it doesn't matter. Nobody cares, okay? If you want to get all formal like a British lord from 200 years ago, you know, would it trouble you, sir, if I ordered a steak, please?

You know, something like that. Not necessary. All right. The next rule to forget, stop worrying about conditionals, another one that drives people crazy.

I've seen people, students, go crazy analyzing this, right? First, second, third, mixed conditionals, right? What would you do if? What would you do if you won the lottery?

So again, people get, oh, they start trying to analyze these little charts in the textbook. And, oh, my God, what do I do? And again, it just kills your fluency. And, you know, the theme, the thing you can see with each of these is that you're switching your brain from natural fluency, letting things just come out, focusing on communication.

Instead, you're turning over to analyzing, becoming a linguist and trying to analyze the structure of the language. which is maybe interesting for some people, but it doesn't help you speak fluently.

All right, so someone just says, what would you do if you won the lottery? What would a native speaker do? Oh, I'd buy a new car, right? There's no pause.

There's no thinking about rules. They just instantly just come out. And they don't worry about trying to answer in big, long sentences, right? If I won the lottery, then I would...

buy a new car this is maybe what they'll expect on some kind of test in school but for real conversation you can just say buy a car you don't even have to say I would if you're confused about that don't even say it just answer the question okay or just guess and say it okay just get it out get it out focus on fluency fluency fluency right getting things out quickly stop focusing on worrying about mistakes, and do not think about the rules at all. Forget them. Really, I'm saying it.

Forget it. So how will you get better with this? How will you improve, just like with all the other rules? My listen and answer. Many stories are great for this.

Again, you're hearing a story. I'm asking you questions. These questions, I use this in a specific way, this technique. The way I say the questions, and then your answers you give as you listen, they're designed to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat,

target grammar that I'm trying to teach you. But in the lesson, I'm teaching you in a natural way. I don't want you even thinking about that. I hope you don't even notice.

I just hope it just goes in there and it becomes unconscious and automatic. I don't want you even noticing. Oh, he's using a conditional. Please don't even think about that.

You just listen to the story. Follow how I tell you to do it. Shout your answers as I tell you to do and repeat, repeat, repeat with deep learning. And then you're going to get this grammar.

It is going to get in there. You will improve without focusing on it. Sometimes in life, some things are better when you learn them naturally and you don't focus on them.

You'll see this in sports a lot, right? Sometimes in sports, the worst thing to do is to focus on your technique too much, to analyze it too much. Golfers, I use golfers as an example because it's such a common example. That golfers, when they're practicing swings, right, they go to a coach and the coach starts giving them all these things to think about.

Oh, your grip, you know, you got to move your finger more this way. And then, oh, your wrist is too tight. Make a looser wrist. Make sure you, when you bring it back up, you bring it up straight this angle, not too far back.

And as you're coming down, your hips should move first. And so then they have like five things to think about when they're hitting the ball. And actually, they start hitting it worse. It gets worse.

Their swing gets worse because now they're analyzing. There's no feeling. They're not focused on how the swing feels, right? They're focused on all these things in their brain, and then it actually causes them to get stiffer, and they hit the ball worse, okay?

That's what it's like when you focus on grammar rules. All right, the last one, subject-verb agreement. This is maybe the most common one that people worry about the most, right?

He go, he goes, right? Is it he go, he goes, right? And it can get confusing. I even get confusing sometimes with a long sentence because, you know, sometimes you'll have a clause or a part where it's singular and then you add a plural part and then the verb comes and you're like, which one is it?

Again, don't think about it. Because if you start analyzing it and worrying it, what does it do? It stops you again. Stopping is the killer of fluency.

It's the opposite of fluency. It causes that when you're speaking. Which is terrible. Kills your communication. Truth number one, it doesn't matter. Nobody cares if you make a mistake.

If you say, yesterday I go to the store. If you say, he go... He go to the store tomorrow. Is it wrong? Of course, it's wrong. So what? Nobody cares, right?

Nobody's going to laugh. Ha, ha, ha. You conjugated the verb wrong. Oh, ha, ha. The subject doesn't agree with the verb. Oh, my God. Nobody cares. Nobody cares, all right?

What they do care is, do they still understand what you're saying? Do they understand the information? Are you still communicating well? Yes, even with the mistake, it's still clear and understandable.

So who cares? It doesn't matter. Relax. Just get it out. Now, I know you do want to have more correctness. And again, where does this come from? Deep, deep, deep listening.

That's where this repetition, repetition, repeating, repeating, repeating your audios many, many, many times. That's how all those natural phrases start to sink in.

Inside those phrases are correct. Correct subject-verb agreement inside the sentences you're listening to. So you're getting huge amounts of repetition where the subject and the verb do agree.

And by listening to one audio 30 times, let's say, over two weeks, those will sink in. They'll start to become part of your natural... speaking vocabulary your natural fluency and they'll just start coming out more and more and more naturally and more and more correctly he goes to work they go to work she has a car everyone is ready right it just pops out pops out pops out that's what you want and if a mistake comes out who cares doesn't matter okay you will get better you will improve just trust it you will improve so stop worrying about mistakes

I make mistakes like this sometimes too, especially with long, long sentences, and it can get confusing. It doesn't matter. Here's what I want you to do.

Your action plan. At least, at least a six-month grammar holiday starting today. Starting today. Forget all grammar. I said in the last video, you know, to burn your grammar books.

Yeah, that's fun. Do it. Send me a, share me a video on Instagram or something and say, you know, here's me burning my grammar book and tag me on Instagram. Effortless English Club on Instagram.

All right. Oh, and by the way, if you want my book, you know, I'm drawing from my book a lot. If you want my full book, I'm now giving my book away. Where is it?

Oh, right here, here. For free, you can get my book free on Instagram. Comment book, B-O-O-K, and I'll send you the link. Look on YouTube. Look down in the description.

I'll include the link where you can get my book for free. All right. Six-month grammar holiday starting now for six months. Trust me. This is the challenge I gave to my students, Jeannie and Jackie.

Way back when I was teaching in San Francisco. I gave them the same challenge. Stop studying grammar rules. Just stop. Stop, stop, stop. Do these things I said.

Focusing on phrases. Listening to the stories. Deep, deep learning. And Jeannie said, okay, I'll do it. And Jackie did not do it. And after six months, there was a big difference between the two.

They started about the same. Six months later, Jeannie speaking fluently. Jackie knocked. So I encourage you, I'm challenging you to do this six-month grammar holiday.

After that, if you see no improvement, and if you don't believe me, fine, go back and study your grammar rules, okay? So during the first month, it will feel weird if you're really used to focusing on grammar, okay? A lot of people are kind of grammar Nazis, okay? They spend all their lives in school, grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar, and it's really hard for them to let go.

So it might feel weird. After month two, you're going to notice that you're understanding more. You're still in the listening phase. Month three, you'll notice that you're not translating as much.

You're not as stressed. You're thinking less and just talking more freely. Maybe still making a lot of mistakes, but at least it's coming out more effortlessly.

And then in months four and five is when you really start to see your confidence going up. You'll start to realize that, ah, my fluency is improving. And by month six, you'll notice your fluency is improving, but you'll also notice that your grammar is improving automatically, even though you're not focusing on it.

So that's the magic of doing this. I encourage you, just try for six months, okay? All right, let's get into our live comments and questions now. We're live on YouTube, trying a little bit of some new software and things, so every now and then I have some technical issues.

In a couple more shows, I'll be better, and this will be fine. Thanks for your patience. All right. Just a lot of people saying, thank you, AJ. Good morning.

Really happy to see you again, to watch live. Ibrahim Ali, one of our great, great VIP members. Hello. Good morning from Egypt. It's 3 a.m. You're up late, Ibrahim.

Good Lord. Good to see you. I hope to talk to your group soon okay okay some of these profiles I can't it's really hard to read them Mahama for I'm not listening to you only for English I'm listening to you for how to live in life I appreciate your way and your podcasts thank you very much very kind okay

Fernando Diaz, good to see you as well. Hi from Brazil, says Fatima. Good. People saying where they're from. I am from India. Dayamson said, I went to grammar land.

Sounds like a bad place to go. All right. Okay, Mahmoudul Hassan says, how to retain a confidence in speaking? I'm facing this problem with confidence.

Sometimes I feel better, sometimes not. Why is it happening frequently? Ah, okay, so this is a psychology issue. This is not really about language. Okay, the truth is you can be a confident speaker even if your English is not great.

You can make mistakes but still be confident, right? Definitely possible. So, you know, in my book I have a whole section about the psychology. I call it the engine of effortless English.

It's about training, practicing your emotions and your peak emotions. It's the way you do things. so that you can create this strong feeling of confidence every time you listen to English and every time you speak English. So it's kind of a big topic, but the key point is this.

We can use our bodies, we can use our voice, we can use our movement and actions to create a feeling of energy and positive confidence. So if you're hunched over looking down,

It looks like you're not confident. And in fact, if you stay this way a long time, your energy and your confidence can actually drop. You're feeling, right?

I've got a loud ambulance or something outside. I'm in the city now, guys. I'm back in the city, so it's noisy. All right. The opposite is also true. Shoulders back, head up.

I say this in every one of my lessons. Those of you who have my Power English course, you know, right? You're used to hearing me say this all the time. But by using your body and your voice, and when you practice English, you do it with a nice, loud, strong, confident voice.

You do it with that same confident body position, even the way your face, you smile. you feel strong you train it you practice it daily every day every day every day every day you're practicing English every day you're listening when you're answering my mini story questions in my lessons it's always done in this way with this strong confident voice body position and movement and then over time after 30 days of doing that every day it becomes more automatic so that any situation where you hear or speak English

You kind of automatically get that confident feeling, that confident position, that confident voice. So you have to train it. It doesn't happen automatically.

You need to practice it every day. Dayomson says, grammar is for language nerds. Yeah, exactly. It is, right? There are people who love grammar. They like to analyze grammar.

I mean, there are people whose job it is. who have PhDs in linguistics, right? And they love analyzing the grammar and they can talk about it. I mean, I've been lectured to about grammar.

I've had so many students over the years lecture me about grammar, okay? Give me long explanations for why something, you know, saying something was wrong, even though they were wrong.

Oh, my example from, I was playing around with an AI app, and I talked about this in my last show too, and I was pretending to be in a restaurant, and I was doing it in English, because I was testing it, and so the AI waiter says, would you like to drink? And I said, yeah, I'll have a water, and give me a minute to look at the menu.

Totally natural, normal, everyday response. The AI immediately tells me, oh no, you do not use a word. with the word water because you know water is an uncountable noun blah blah blah blah but totally wrong why is it wrong because in speech we cut things we use short phrases you know if you are writing it you would say in some formal situation you might write you know give me a glass of water but in real speaking we'll just say give me a water I'll have a water please

It's totally normal. It's totally correct. And yet I'll have students say, no, no, A.J. But. And they start telling me all these rules and trying to explain to them that, look, in natural speaking, we don't follow all these technical rules all the time.

In fact, most of the time we ignore them, but people get stuck. They're kind of grammar nerds. It's OK if you want to be a grammar nerd, but. You need to do that separately from your actual speaking practice.

Abraham Ali says, Arabic grammar is more complex. So as a native speaker, I know barely any grammar, right? Even in Arabic, which is more complex. This proves that studying grammar doesn't help speaking.

I wonder who invented the idea of studying grammar? Professors and universities and teachers and schools, because it gives them lots and lots and lots to do and to sound very intellectual and to sound very knowledgeable, right?

And because a lot of these people had a background in linguistics and not in language teaching, right? So someone like Noam Chomsky famously, okay, he's famous for analyzing the grammar and structure of different languages, not teaching people how to actually talk, right? No, writing, you know, papers about the structure of it, right?

It's very academic. Okay, Nigar Abasova says, you're an amazing teacher. I bought your power English course. Check the description below for a link to that.

When I speak at home, I actually feel a lot of improvement, but I feel nervous when I speak with native speakers. So back to the issue of nervousness, not feeling confident. Get the book. Get my free book and read that section about psychology and confidence because...

There's a lot there, and you just focus on that for 30 days. I think you'll notice a big improvement after 30 days of practicing it daily. You've got to do it, though. You've got to practice it.

It's not something just to know. You actually have to do it. All right. Fernando Diaz says, here in the past, they used to teach complicated and unreal English, like intellectual vocabulary.

or complex structures like the conditional perfect. Yeah, what is the condition? I don't even know what that is. I have to think about it. To ask for something so easy, like watching TV.

Yeah, exactly. They overcomplicated. I sat in a universe. One time I watched an English class at a university in Thailand. So at that time I was getting my master's degree.

So I was watching someone else, a professor, teach English. a Thai professor, in fact, teach to these university students. And oh, my God, I was there going, I was confused.

All right. Graduate student in teaching English, native speaker. I was confused. His explanations were so, so, so complicated, so complicated about the most simple things.

And the students are all writing their notes down, pages and pages of notes. Crazy. I'm like, who's this for? They're not going to learn to speak from this.

There's no way they can remember any of that. And there's absolutely no way they can use it when they speak. When you speak, someone asks you a question. Where did you go yesterday?

You've got less than a second to answer if you want to sound natural. Maybe five seconds. maximum or before you start sounding where the conversation starts sounding really weird and probably is going to stop right someone says where'd you go yesterday and you go five seconds i went to okay it sounds a little it's a little unnatural it's breaking the communication a bit it's probably about the maximum you start pausing longer than that and the person's not going to want to talk to you anymore

Yeah, Abdul Aziz says, I'm a teacher of English. The thing we teach most to students is grammar, and they feel bored. Well, that's the other additional thing.

These five rules I talked about today, and grammar in general, is it's boring as hell for most people. There are grammar nerds who like it, but I'd say 90-plus percent of people do not like it. I don't like it. It's boring, boring, boring, boring.

Because you're focused on real world goals that you want to use English in the real world. Business, meetings, travel, friends. And you don't, oh, this stuff is so boring and it doesn't help anyway.

Okay, Mickim says, AJ, can you please tell us a little more about the interviews and Zoom calls you're planning to do? Yeah, I'm going to do some Zoom calls with some of my students, just interviewing them about their success stories. So I did that one. I just showed recently the one from Hadi that Hadi sent.

And a lot of people like that. And a lot of our effortless English members said, oh, you should do more of those. I have more I'm going to share in future shows. But I thought, well, those are a little bit old.

So I just on our in our community, on our. community website I just I posted and said hey anybody who would like to talk to me about your effortless English success story I can do a zoom call with you I'll record it and then I'll share it here on YouTube so if you are a member if you've got one of my courses go get on the community site and tell me and I'll be happy to we'll figure out a time and I'll chat with you and interview you about your English success story and then show it to on YouTube

Oseto says, I'd like to translate your book into French. Just message me. You can message me in Instagram, Effortless English Club, on Instagram, or look down in the description here on the YouTube video. You'll see there's an email.

Message me. Send me an email there, and we can talk about it. It'd be great if you translate my book into French. Wonderful. Okay, good. Othaga says, I'm studying your English courses for speaking.

At the same time, I need to prepare for the IELTS exam. And I'm focusing on learning grammar for writing. Will that slow down my overall English improvement?

That's fine. That's okay. We do need good grammar in writing. You know, as native speakers, so just say to me, when did I start to learn grammar or study grammar rules?

And I learned this Mostly at about the high school level. So let's say age 15 in my English classes. I remember then, we don't go, we certainly don't talk about verb tenses and all that stuff so much.

But then we do talk about some written grammar at that age. To be honest, even that, I never even needed that. And according to the research of Dr. Krashen and the research he has studied, even that is not very helpful.

It can be helpful, as I said, when you go back and check what you wrote, maybe adjust things a little bit. But even then, you don't want to do it too much. So I'd say it's okay, but just try to separate it and forget it when you're speaking.

Even for writing, I'd say forget it when you're first writing and try to do it quickly. Don't over-focus on it, even for writing. Cheers from Brazil. We're lots of Brazilians here.

I have a lot, a lot, a lot of Brazilian students. So hello, hello to all of you. Ahmed Salman says, my tie looks nice. Thank you. Amina, good to see you.

Good morning, AJ. Nice to see you again. It's now dawn in the United Arab Emirates. Yeah, you're up early over there. I bet dawn is better time to learn English.

Yeah, you know, I used to be a night person. I did everything at night. Now I like to have the most focus and energy early morning. I agree with you. Okay, here's a good answer.

So the person who asked about IELTS from Ibrahim Ali, who's one of our top, top, top VIP members. Abraham says, you don't need to study grammar to pass the test. I'm speaking from experience. I passed a test called TOEIC.

I didn't study any grammar. You can even do some mock, some practice exams. I agree with him. How's your friend Chris Moses? I've not heard about him since 2008.

Yeah, I've lost contact with him. I haven't talked to him in years and years and years. I don't know. Hopefully he's doing well. Fernando Diaz says, as a beginner in other languages, so not only studying English, he's very advanced now.

In fact, Fernando's one of the people I'm going to interview. So learning German now, I believe, right? As a beginner in other languages, I'm convinced grammar is counterproductive, meaning not helpful.

Do you think at some point higher levels could be necessary to understand better? I don't think for speaking, no. I think it's a writing thing. I agree with, you know, Blaine Ray calls it pop-up grammar.

This is where you have like a, you're reading something, you're listening to something, you hear something that sounds weird, you don't understand, what is that? It's some kind of grammar, some structure that sounds weird, you're confused by it. Fine, you know, type it in, do a quick search, AI or whatever, and oh, it tells you what it is. Okay, good, got it.

Maybe make a quick note and then keep going. That's all. Not Pages and pages of grammar books and lessons and drills and activities. No, no, no. I think that pop-up grammar at more advanced levels is the best way.

You just see something that seems new. You're not quite sure about it. Sure, check it out. Search about it. That's it. And then keep going. Don't stay stuck on it.

Lots of Brazilians today. Brazil! Ole, ole, ole, ole. Amina says, like, for example, would have is a difficult one. I would have gone to the store if I hadn't been hit on the head.

Okay. It's complicated. It is complicated. So you're going to have to, you know, trying to overanalyze that. You'll never be able to think, do it in a conversation.

I would have gone to the store if I hadn't been hit on the head. Right? Like, right? So the only way you're going to be able to get that is by, you could generate, you could even ask an AI to generate

you know, 10 sample phrases or sentences using this structure. I don't even like to call them rules. I like to call them structures. They're just patterns, really.

They're not rules, okay? There's not a rule book. God didn't write a rule book and said, this is the rules of English and you can never break them. No.

These are just common patterns, the patterns that most speakers agree on. Okay? And they do change over time. They can change. And they change with the situation.

It depends. In casual conversation, we use certain language patterns and we might not use those in a more formal academic written situation. These are just language patterns. You won't go to hell if you break these or make a mistake.

So relax. If you got one that's kind of sticking like you feel like it's useful, it would be useful for your communication, but using it is tough. You could do something like this and then you could practice maybe every day just saying out loud those sample sentences or phrases.

If you can get an audio and listen to them again and again and again, that would be great. And especially if you had like a whole article or story that used them a lot. And then you could start to get that feeling. You want the feeling for correctness.

This is what you're aiming for. For any kind of grammar, you're always trying to get the feeling for correctness. Not, not, not thinking about a rule, a so-called rule.

When are you coming to South America, specifically Argentina? Eduardo Donitsa asks, I would love to go to South America. I've never been to South America. The farthest south I've been from the United States is, we think, Honduras.

I've been to Mexico and Honduras. Oh, and did I go to Guatemala? Yeah, I did go to Guatemala a little bit. So Central America. I've never been south of that in the Americas.

I would love to go to South America, but just go to Costa Rica, too, and Panama and Nicaragua. But and then, you know, you know, romantically, I'd love to do a huge tour of Canada.

South America, and absolutely Brazil and Argentina, and then maybe go up Chile and, you know, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela. Let's see them all. But we'll see. I have no plans right now.

Right now I'm in Japan. But we'll see. We'll see. Would love to do it. You know, ever since I saw that, the movie, The Motorcycle Diaries, I have had that kind of little bit of a romantic...

dream of traveling kind of like you know by i don't know car motorcycle whatever around uh south america it would be yeah it would be great so we'll see hopefully hopefully someday okay this is a very good question nessavati says i am 40 years old now do you think i'm still able to improve my english even learning a new language yes yes if you're over 40 over 40 you can still learn languages I have a lot a lot a lot of members and students in fact you know really my effortless English members and students tend to be older okay most of them are not in their 20s okay they're they're definitely over 30 I have a lot of members a lot of students who are over 40 many

Many and many who have succeeded, who started at 40 years old, 50 years old, their English speaking was terrible, no fluency. And then six months later, a year later, two years later, high, high level fluency, automatic, effortless English speaking.

So absolutely you can. In fact, this is, I think, the best method for you. Anyone who is, you know, over age 30, over age 40, The effortless English system, the effortless English method is the best for you.

Because all these problems of analyzing, studying, and memorizing, they get worse as you get older. So it's going to harm your speaking even more. So no worries. Yes, you're in the right place.

I tend to have a bit of an older audience. Ahmed Salman said, I listened to your Power English course. What a great course. Thank you. Yeah, I like this comment.

So Pau Video says, language is a tool for communication. Grammar is a tool for tests. Perfect. Hi, AJ. Is it good to use AI to correct grammar rules? I don't think so.

No. I've been playing around with AI. I've been talking to some people. I think, is it Fernando or Abraham uses it? I think Abraham uses AI. I think it's got some uses, but I think you don't ask it to correct your grammar.

Because you're just doing, you're just replacing a human grammar teacher or a grammar textbook with an AI grammar Nazi. It's the same problem, okay? As I gave that little example when the AI was correcting me as a native speaker, using a phrase, the most common way to order water or a drink, and it's correcting me. Now, of course, I'm a native speaker, so I know it's wrong, so no big deal, but for you all,

Because you're not native speakers, you won't know when the AI is making a mistake. You won't know when the AI is being too picky. You won't know when the AI is trying to give you advice for the wrong situation. So it's just going to start making you think and analyze more and more.

And it might even just give you wrong information. I think the way to use AI for practicing is just chat with it. Give it a situation. I think generally you should prompt the AI to...

use a conversational, casual style of English. If you don't tell the AI that, it's probably going to be very, very formal and academic, too. Not natural at all.

And then you could just say, you know, pretend you're a waiter at a restaurant and I'm your customer. And then go. And then just practice. Just use it as speaking fluency practice so the AI says, hi, I'm your waiter today.

Here's a menu. What would you like to drink? And you just give it an answer. Oh, I'll have a water and two Cokes. And then the AIs say, okay, well, do you know what you want to eat now?

Or do you need a few minutes to look at the menu? And you can respond, oh, give me a few minutes to look at the menu. What's your special today? Whatever.

Okay. Just practice chatting like that. I think it's great for that. Great. There are a lot of AIs out there that focus on language. I think you can just use chat GBT for this.

If you've got the audio ability. So I think just use it as a chat partner, not as a corrector. If you use it as a corrector, you're just training yourself to constantly stop and think about grammar while you're talking. It's a bad habit.

You want to break that habit, right? Just use it for chatting. Moha Productions, can I use your method to learn other language, for example, Japanese? Yes, the basic method works for any language.

Again, comment book on Instagram, and I'll send you the link to download my entire book for free. I'm giving it free to all my fans out there. If you're on YouTube, you can just look in the description down there. I'll have a link.

I'll put a pinned comment too that has a link where you can download my full book now. Isn't this interesting? Fernando Diaz says, when my daughter speaks in English, she knows how to use irregular verbs correctly.

But one day she had to do some homework about irregular verbs. To my surprise, she could not do the drills because she was thinking about the conjugations.

I had to start talking to her in English for her to remember again. Isn't this perfect? That's the perfect example how grammar rules destroy your fluency. Right.

So when speaking, when he's just chatting with his daughter, she uses the irregular verbs. She conjugates them correctly. It all is just flowing out. She's not thinking about any of that.

It's just flowing out naturally and automatically. Effortless English. But then when she has some school homework on the topic of irregular verbs and they ask her, conjugate the word go.

And then she has to... Right now, it's like the completely different part of her brain, analysis, linguistics. And she couldn't do it. She needed help until he just had her talk.

Well, how would you say I went to, you know, if you, how would you say go to the store yesterday? Oh, I went to the store. Right. That's it. That's the conjugation.

Went. It's a regular verb. Right. You don't. It's perfect. Perfect example. Let's see, how to study in your book. Well, get my book. I'm going to offer my audio book later, so we need to set up access, but I'll give my audio book away too, I think.

I think the audio book's even better than the book because you can listen to it. Having both is great because then you can just use my book. You could use my free book and my free audio book. read along, and listen to it.

You're getting English practice. My book is written in a fairly conversational, natural way, not too academic. So it's a great free resource. So get the book now, and maybe in a couple weeks, I'll have the free audiobook available for you guys.

Is it too late to watch live? Nope. Still on in the air now. Okay. Oh, cool. Ibrahim Ali says, Today I used a bunch of AI tools to create stories in German, audio and text.

I was impressed. I'm impressed. AI is going to replace us all. We're all doomed 10 years from now. I'm not optimistic, honestly. But for now, it's quite useful and very useful.

Brazil again. Mostafa says, I'm from Brazil. I'm 69 years old. I started with your Power English course maybe 10 years ago. He was 59. I'm a VIP member for 4 or 5 years.

So yes, it's possible to improve our English even over 50. Thank you for that comment, Mostafa. Thank you, thank you, thank you. From Brazil. Mostafa, over 50 years old.

Started. Started with Power English, then became a VIP member. Has improved his English tremendously. So there you go. Age, age, age. In fact, it's so good for you as you age.

Language, you know, any kind of learning challenge, we need to keep challenging our brains and our bodies. As we get older, it keeps us sharp and alive for the entire time of our lives. Right? So, yeah, don't get intimidated about, oh, I'm older, I can't do it.

I have so, so, so... Join in for the singles, you're going to see so many of my students, they're in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and some 70s. We probably have some, I know we've had a few in their 80s even.

Okay, Aronk says... Master. Oh, nice title. Can you list the future jobs or businesses to do in the era of AI? Well, you know, there's the short term, which is the next five years.

And there are a lot of possibilities. Then there's sort of the longer term, which let's say 10 years from now and after. In the short term, there are a lot of things. I think healthcare is a good one, being an entrepreneur, starting your own business, great.

High level strategy, thinking, management, leadership, all those are fine. The problem is after about 10 years from now, I think the AI, sales also good, but I think after 10 years, AI is going to replace all of that too, mostly. I think 99% of jobs,

are going to be replaced by AI and robotics. And unfortunately, I'm not confident that the people controlling all this are good people that care about humanity. So I'm quite pessimistic and worried, and since I have two young children, it actually scares me quite a lot.

Trying not to be too pessimistic and scary, but, you know, we'll see. AI cannot steal our conscious or our souls, says Arunct. Yeah, well, that is true.

We always have that. And that's important. The most important thing. But for now, he says, same person, we need to use it as a tool to support our work and creativity.

Yeah, for now, it's incredible. I've been jumping into AI the last couple of weeks. And I'm getting so much more done. Many of you noticing that I'm suddenly more active again.

Well, it's because the AI can help me. I'm using all these AI tools now. So stuff I would have to do all myself, like uploading, like take a long video, cut it into shorts, and then put them on. I never would do that.

That's why I never did short videos before. Now the AI can help me do that much faster. The video editing is quicker. This is a small example. Yeah, absolutely.

Right now, it's a good thing. But we'll see. How are your kids? Are you still homeschooling? We are still homeschooling. And always will. Okay, a couple more.

How long have I been going? Where's the time? We're just over an hour now, so I think we're almost done. Yeah, you can, so this is, was that Abraham or Fernanda?

Fernanda Diaz was saying that he uses AI to create stories for vocabulary he can't remember. So instead of flashcards, which are boring, right? Just flashcards, things like Anki, a lot of the like, you know, language learners that people like to learn a lot of languages, they love those Anki cards and it's called spaced repetition. I always found it

dreadfully boring, but you could instead ask the AI to use these 20 vocabulary words I'm trying to remember, put them into a story, and make an audio for it. And then you could listen to that audio again and again and again. You're still reviewing the same vocab, but in a way that's, I think, far more interesting than just looking at flashcards.

Cool. Mohaw Production says, thank you. As a Ukrainian, I used your 2014 effortless English speaking program. It gave me better results than school. You're the goat of English learning.

I hope most of you guys know what goat means, right? Not the animal. That's a sheep. What does the goat say? GOAT means greatest of all time, G-O-A-T.

Thank you so much. I'm happy for your success. I really, I love it. I'm looking forward to doing some of our success story interviews. So, great. So, Ukraine.

Okay, this is a good question. Ahmed Salman says, I have a question, if you don't mind. My hero, thank you. Why is my understanding better than my speaking?

That's normal. Don't worry about that. That's what it should be. Your listening and understanding should always be higher than your speaking. I mean, it almost has to be.

The opposite would be almost impossible. I can understand your speaking when I listen to you in your courses. When I try to speak, I face some trouble. Okay, well, here's what I recommend.

There's kind of phases. Again, I always say for six months, listening, listening, intense listening, deep listening, really just only listening. After that, most people are going to be ready to start focusing on speaking again. Try shadowing.

Now we've got AI. Get on ChatGPT, any AI tool. that has audio abilities and just tell you know you got to learn how to tell it but just give it a situation and give it a character who to be right so you say you're an American 30 years old in a business office you use use casual conversational English

and chat with me about planning a presentation. Go, right? And then it'll start doing it. Like, you know, well, what should the topic of our presentation be?

And then you just go and just role play, right? You can go back and forth, back and forth, and you start doing this. The thing I like about the AI chat practices is there's no pressure at all, okay? Because I've done, even with my friend, okay, back,

Eleven years ago, when I was trying to learn Spanish for my Camino de Santiago trip, I did some online chats with my friend Oscar, who makes unlimited Spanish. Oscar's a good friend of mine.

I'm not worried. Oscar's not going to laugh at me or do anything bad. But I still found there was a little bit of pressure. He was talking to me in Spanish and asking me questions.

I was a little nervous, right? There's just a little bit of pressure or something there talking to him. And I was a beginner level, maybe high beginner.

So... You don't have that with AI. It's a computer. So I played around with it. I tried it in a language I know almost none, zero, like Italian. I was playing with the AI, and I know, I can't even remember how many, probably like five words of Italian.

So I just started role-playing a little simple thing. No pressure, none, zero, because it's a computer, who cares? It can wait as long as, there's no pressure to answer fast. I can just relax.

And it just waits. And so I think that when you're ready to start the beginning of your speaking, practice a lot with the AIs. It's great. You could do that for six more months.

So that's month 12. And then after that, then chat partners. Then you could get on our community, join some of the chat groups with other members and start, you know, you could talk on Zoom every month, whatever you want to do, or every week if you want to.

Or you can even pay people to be conversation partners. So I think that AI is a nice way to do it where there's no pressure. You can do it anytime you want. There's no schedule or anything.

You don't have to worry about that. You can do it every single day. You can give it any situation you want. It's a good way to play around. And then along with that shadowing, shadowing helps the fluency because it forces you to go fast.

So the combo of doing some shadowing for that quick fluency, getting those words out faster, just moving your mouth fast enough. And also AI for having to think and respond to questions and not knowing what's coming next.

It's a good combo. Fernando Diaz says, a friend from Poland says you changed because now you're talking about AI a lot. I've just done a few topics. It's only been this week.

I don't know how much have I changed in one week. Ten days ago, I started jumping in. When I jump into something, I usually jump in big. If I get interested in something and I want to learn about it, I don't want to go slowly.

Right now, I'm quite interested in all this AI stuff because it's changing our entire world. I need to know about it. so i i don't think ai is the only way i think ai has a lot of limitations i think as i said i think long term it's very very very frightening and i'm pretty negative about the future with it but right now i think it's kind of in a magic spot the next five years where it's actually can do some really great things

Moha Production says, as for AI, do you think it will be possible in the future for people to download the skill of any language by a chip installed in their brain? God, don't do that. Then you're giving people the ability to download malware and all kinds of evil stuff into your brain directly. Never do it.

Oh, God, I hope not. I hope there are people who would never let that happen. It's not necessary anyway. Just... Let me tell you what happened to me three days ago.

I'm out on the playground. This little kid, little Japanese kid comes up. I'm with my two children and he's really, really sweet kid. He's really curious.

He wants to talk to me. And, uh, you know, we start talking a little in Japanese and not struggling to communicate. He just whips out his phone. This kid's like nine years old, opens up Google translate.

So start saying, Oh, where are you from? And why are you here? And then he, you know, It says it in English. And then I say back in English, oh, I'm from America.

We're visiting Japan now. Visiting some family. Plays it to him. So you won't need a chip in your brain. You'll just have something like that. You know, right now you can do it with your phone and they'll just make, you know, they can just make a device.

If you're really translating, you just pin it, maybe something really small right there on your, put it on your shirt or your collar. and it would just automatically translate back and forth, right?

There'd be no need to install a chip. Okay, last question. Everyone's asking about AI now. Hazem Aliyaar, do you think artificial intelligence will take people's jobs?

Absolutely. It's already taking people's jobs. It's going to replace... Millions, you know, I talked about in a recent show, the McKinsey report predicted up to 1 billion, with a B, jobs lost to AI.

Other groups have predicted different numbers, but they're all in the hundreds of millions. That's just in the next 10 years. After that, yeah, I think it's going to replace most jobs.

So what happens to all of us after that? That's the frightening part. Abraham Ali says, I think I see some people online say language learning is obsolete. You don't need to do it because of AI and instant translation apps.

Yeah, well, I don't think so. I think it's a certainly for the next 10 years, it's actually going to give you an advantage. Because a lot of people will have this mindset because they want to be lazy about it. Let's face it, it takes a lot of work.

So this is an area you can stand out and be different. For basic lower-level tasks, yes, you can just use your Google Translate thing. But for higher-level jobs where you really need fluency, you've got to communicate with international teams at your job. right you got an international team you got to get on zoom calls and chat in real time you've got to make human connections maybe face-to-face conversations right it's that human connection where you're making deals you're doing projects together you're negotiating well talking to a little phone or translation thing where you're getting this

ai thing it's it kills the human connection so the people who have real fluency will be able to get those higher level higher paying jobs and more secure jobs more safe jobs and let's face it if someone if if the ai translation app can replace them they can probably replace the rest of their job too and they're just those people are just going to be eliminated completely

So a lot of these higher level skills, you've got to come, that's again the reason you've got to focus on communication and not just English, but these other communication skills with English. Sales, negotiation, connection, emotional intelligence, you know, building that human connection and rapport, making deals, management, leadership. When you combine those things with English, that at least, you know, as far ahead as I can see, which is let's say 10 years is the most. After that, I don't know what happens.

But in the next 10 years, I think real fluency gives you a big, big jump. Because these lower level jobs are going to be replaced in the next, over the next 10 years, they're just going to be eliminated completely.

You don't need a human using the app. They'll just have the AI doing all of it. So that's my opinion. Right, and there's something AI will never replace the real human connections.

Yeah, and in fact, as I said, in the next 10 years, I think because AI, social media, it's the same, it's going to be flooded with AI content, right? It's all ready. Get on something like Twitter, X, half the comments and posts are just bots, right?

Powered by AI. YouTube now is getting more and more and more content that is pure AI. There's no human at all, right? And that's going to increase more and more and more.

So as The Internet gets flooded with AI as jobs get replaced by AI, where everywhere around us are all these robotics and AI. People are going to value reality, real humans, real connection, real emotion, face-to-face, real, more and more and more. It will give you...

The better you are at those things will give you an advantage in that AI age. The people who are stiff, who are not good at communication, who don't know how to connect with other people, they're in trouble.

They can just be replaced. Let's just take the simplest example would be like a low-level job working at McDonald's, right? Just working at McDonald's, right? You used to have a person there at the counter.

You walk up, they say, Can I help you? Yeah, I'd like a hamburger and French fries and a Coke. Oh, would you? What size Coke would you like? Do you want to supersize that?

Make it big? Yeah, okay. All right, that'll be, you know, $5. The problem is that McDonald's, and I'm talking about the United States. Japan is different.

Some place is different. But in the United States, McDonald's had a harder and harder time, and restaurants in general, hiring people with basic social skills.

People who would just look at the person, smile, be pleasant. Instead, more and more and more, they're hiring these workers. Let's say, and they'd come up and they'd have this little bored look on their face. This happens to me all the time at Starbucks still in the United States.

I hate Starbucks now because their customer service is garbage. Their workers are lazy and rude. in america in japan is very different but in america so they just have this attitude they ignore you for a while well in that case they replace them replace them right now they're replacing them with touch screens and in a little while longer with probably like a robot with you know, AI voice activated because right now it's a little, you got having people type in their thing on the giant touchscreen at McDonald's.

It's okay. That's what I do it. It's fine. But, um, they'll make it easier. It'll be easier and easier. And eventually you'll just walk up and just speak it.

Okay. I'd like three hamburgers, you know, two Cokes and, uh, a large French fry. And then the, the little, you know, the voice AI will just say, okay, well, what size fries would you like? And do you want to add this?

And that's $4. whatever that's ten dollars right so more and more and more of those kind of jobs will be replaced from the business standpoint the motivation for the businesses is well i can replace these difficult uh rude workers with this thing that the customers like better and it's cheaper long term over many years so

And then, you know, eventually they might do robots that actually have kind of, you know, human-like faces. And so you go back to, you got a cashier again, but now it's like, it's got a face, right? Or it might just be a screen, but there'll be like an AI avatar talking, you know, that'll look more and more human until it looks perfectly human.

Something like that, I guess. All right, I think that is enough for today. We're over an hour, almost an hour and 20 minutes today. Nice. Okay, let's recap.

So I told you the five rules, stop studying those grammar rules, and really stop studying grammar completely. Today, I just wanted to go over five of the most common ones that I've seen with students over the many years. I've been doing this since...

Well, since 1996 was my first teaching job, teaching English. So quite a while, 30 years or more. And people focus a lot on those five. But in general, you just want to relax about the grammar.

Go back, listen to this. The recording of this live stream will be on YouTube. Look in the description below. I have links to get my book for free. Get my entire book.

This one is falling down. Effortless English, learn to speak English like a native. Ah, don't fall. You get the whole book for free now, the e-book version.

You can download it for free, so just look in the description below. If you're on Instagram, you can just put a comment, just comment book in the comments to get my book for free.

Interested in my other courses? Also in the description below on YouTube. And in a few weeks, I'll get my audio book ready. And I'll give you my full audio book to go with the book you're getting now.

And I'll give you that for free, too. All right. Lots of love to you. I will see you next time. If you have any questions, put them in the comments below.

Bye for now. Thank you.