How To Be A Leader and Build A Team

I'm AJ Hoag, the author of Effortless English, Learn to Speak English Like a Native. Join my VIP program. at EffortlessEnglishClub.com EffortlessEnglishClub.com Join now.

You want to be a leader. You want to help other people. You want to persuade other people. I get a lot of questions about this. How can I be a leader?

How can I persuade people? I get a lot of questions actually about persuading or leading people friends or family to use effortless English? So I get this question a lot, actually, where someone will tell me, say, I love effortless English.

I have improved a lot. I have made big improvements with my English. And I want to convince... I want to convince my friend. I want to convince my brother, my sister, somebody in the family or a good friend.

I want to convince them to try effortless English, but they won't do it. They won't do it. They just continue to go to the same classes and use the same textbooks. So how?

How do I do it? This is really a leadership question and a persuasion question. By the way, we are live on Facebook for this video show. Those of you who only listen on the audio podcast, you'll be listening to a recording.

But at the moment, I'm live on Facebook. And I'll get to the questions on Facebook later. First, this topic. How do you do it? Well, you know, one of our values of the Effortless English family, our Effortless English community of learners, family of learners around the world, international.

You know, we have a code. We have... a mission, and we have values. And one of those values is positive leadership. Positive leadership. What does that mean?

Well, when I say positive leadership, mostly what I'm talking about is being optimistic and leading by example. Leading by example. It's a common phrase in English. Lead by example.

This means that For leadership, there are many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many techniques of leadership, right? You can go to a bookstore, go to the business section. You will find many books about this topic of leadership, leadership and management.

Thousands of books about this topic and lots of different techniques. You can look for books about persuasion. You'll get even more information, methods and techniques of for changing someone's mind, for leading one person or groups of people.

So it's a big topic with a lot of techniques and methods. And it can take, you know, years to become really good at it. But there's one simple technique, this positive leadership technique or method or really even it's just a mindset.

And that is to lead by example. That the easiest and best way to lead is to show other people, show them what you want them to do. Instead of telling them, instead of persuading them and arguing and having all these great techniques, you simply do it yourself. You show them yourself.

You show them what to do. And then you show them the success. You show them the results through your own life, through your own actions. And when you do that, you persuade many people without any words at all.

So... Effortless English. Let's say you're trying to convince people around you to try effortless English. Just keep improving. Just keep doing effortless English.

Keep using the courses. Keep doing the lessons. Keep listening every day. Continue to improve your English in this way. Every month getting better and better and better and better and better and better and over years getting better and better and better and better and becoming an excellent speaker, fluent, powerful, and persuasive in English.

Guess what? Just by doing that, eventually other people around you will start to notice. Even if you say nothing, people will start to notice. Well, your English is getting much better.

Your confidence with English has improved a lot. And eventually, eventually, many people will start to ask you questions. How did you do it? How are you doing it?

What did you do? What did you change? They will want to know. They will see your success. Your success. And they will naturally be curious. They will naturally be attracted to your success.

To your confidence. Your confidence. Your success. That's the most powerful leadership of all. It is kind of effortless. There's really no technique involved.

You're just becoming... better and that attracts people and then when they come to you when they ask you when they're looking to you for help and advice then it's very easy to just tell them well i used this power english course i joined this vip program i Listen to podcasts two hours a day. Whatever you're doing, you just... Then you tell them and they will listen.

Then they are ready to hear it because they see you doing it. They see your results and they want the same success that you have, that you created. And then it's not difficult. You don't have to have any arguments.

You don't need to try to persuade them in any way. You don't have to use little tricky techniques. Nothing. You just show them and... It does take time.

This is a slower method, but it's very, very, very, very powerful. And that's what positive leadership is. You will see it every day on my Twitter, people following me on Twitter, the Effortless English family, you know, our most successful people.

Automatically, other people, newer members, newer family members, start to ask them questions, right? Sergey and Max and Kaula and... Maddie, of course, and Carol, and it's growing more and more and more. Do we have these great leaders in our effortless English family?

And new people will come and immediately start asking them questions. Not even me. They will directly ask, these great superstar members, I call them, because they see the success they have.

They can see the confidence. Even in just Twitter, just these little short tweets, they can feel it and see the confidence with English, the success. And automatically that creates a kind of leadership and automatically people start to ask them questions, ask for advice, ask for help, looking for leadership from them. They have become natural leaders.

simply through this positive leadership, by doing, by showing, by taking actions every day. That's powerful, and it happens in a very natural and automatic way. So this is why, with our Effortless English family, I tell everybody this is one of our values, is this kind of positive leadership, positive leadership, leading by example.

Now, you can... Learn more leadership methods and techniques. I mean, my VIP program teaches them Power English. My Power English course has some of them.

I talk about them in my podcast. So there are other methods and techniques, but this is really the foundation of leadership that anybody can do, even if you're not an outgoing person, right? You're not an extrovert. You don't like talking to people very much.

You're a little shy. Just by doing this, by leading by example, you can show the way. And you can imagine this would work for anything, like health and fitness, right?

Um... The best way to lead with, let's say, fitness is just become really fit. If you're a man, you start working out, you get strong, you get muscles, you look great, you're powerful.

Then other guys, other men in your social circle, friends and family, if they're interested in getting fit also, they'll start to ask you questions because they'll see the results.

Or if you were heavy and you lose weight, Other people who want to lose weight, they'll start asking you questions. You become a natural leader through your success.

So it doesn't matter. You can be shy. You can not be shy. It doesn't matter. This is a very, very powerful form of leadership, probably the most powerful, really.

Now, the second thing I usually say to people who ask about how can I convince someone to try effortless English, I remind them and remind you That Effortless English is not for everyone. It's not for everyone.

The reason we have this special community internationally, this special international family, is because we are not for everybody. Who do we want? We want people who are positive.

people who are motivated. We attract people who are enthusiastic. It's positive leadership. It's not negative leadership of criticizing and forcing people.

No, it's positive leadership of showing and encouraging. Independent learners. That's who we have in our Effortless English family. And that's who we want to continue to have.

That's what Effortless English is for. That's who Effortless English is for. Effortless English is not for negative people. It's not for pessimists. It's not for lazy people.

It's not for people who are always doubting and criticizing. It's not for people who are super focused on grammar, grammar, grammar, memorizing grammar rules all the time.

It's not for people who are afraid to make mistakes. It's not for people who are passive, who don't want to do anything themselves. Right? It's not for those people.

So if you have people in your life that or learning English, but maybe they're lazy, maybe they're super focused on grammar, maybe they're kind of passive, maybe they're negative, maybe you like them or they're in your family or something, but you have to admit, yeah, they're kind of negative, they're criticizing all the time, they're not enthusiastic, they're not motivated, well then, honestly, don't try to bring them to Effortless English, because they will not fit

We don't want those kind of people and they will not be happy with Everless English. It won't fit. So you won't be helping them. You won't be helping us.

On the other hand, of course, if you have people, friends or family or whatever, co-workers who are enthusiastic, they're enthusiastic, they're positive, they're motivated, they're energetic, they're independent, they're then of course encourage them to try Effortless English because they will fit. They will fit very well with Effortless English. They probably will enjoy it.

They probably will get great success with it. And this is also another key point of leadership in general, not just for Effortless English, is that you have to build your team and build your groups to have shared values.

If your group does not share values, right? What's important, what's not important, you know, what's good, what's not good. If everybody in the group has different ideas about these things, completely different values, they're not going to work together very well. It will not be a very good team.

And you will have a very, very difficult time leading them. So it's... it's important actually to build your teams have shared values we see this even in sports that the the all-star teams right if you just take sometimes people think like okay let's imagine a football team a soccer team say soccer because it's the world cup happening now so soccer team we think oh if we put the very best person in the world at each position right the best goalie, the best forward, the best strikers, right?

Everybody, each individual position, we get the best person in the world. That would be the best team in the world, right? We think that's true, that that would create the number one team. They would be unbeatable.

But what we see, actually, in professional sports is often this is not the case, that when we bring in the very best of everybody in each position and

They might be best individually, but they don't work together. Their egos are too big. They can't work together as a team. Their values are not working together, shared.

And that actually, even though individually they're the best, as a team they're not the best. And they get beaten by other teams, right? I know more about baseball, since I'm American, and a great example of this is that I can give you a specific example is the New York Yankees. The New York Yankees are the, they've got the most money.

They've got huge amounts of money because they're in New York. They're a very old team. Now, they do win often, but I'd say especially over the last couple decades,

There have been many times when they've just tried to buy the best team, where they just go buy the very best players at every position, and yet they still don't win the championship. They get beaten by other teams that play better together.

It's sort of this idea. So this is why when you're putting together a group or a family or a community or a team, yes, you want each person to be good at what they do,

But it's also important that they share values, that they can work together as a team, that they'll be loyal to each other. All of these things. Very, very, very important part of leadership is who comes into your group and who do you not let in your group? Or who do you kick out of your group?

Who do you invite in and who do you push out? This is important for any group. For any group, this has to happen because you need shared values and teamwork. Absolutely necessary.

That's also a super important and fundamental part of leadership. And when you do just those two things, if you get the right people and you lead by example, leadership can become quite easy, right? It's not such a fight. It's not so tough.

But if you have a group that has a lot of people that don't share your values and then you're not leading by example at all, then it can become quite difficult.

All right, so let's go to our questions on Facebook, questions and comments. I'll take a few. Not so long tonight. It's a little bit hot in here tonight, so I'm going to have a little bit shorter video, but let's go live and see questions and comments as always.

Usually while I'm talking, people are just saying hello where they're from. So we've got people saying hello from Iraq, Jordan, Kurdistan, Puerto Rico, Iraq. Let's see. There's lots of countries.

Thailand. Lots of different countries. Croatia, Iran. Hello, Mr. Wonderful. You know, there's a Mr. Wonderful already, a guy named Mr. Wonderful. He's a business guy.

There's an American TV show called Shark Tank, which is about business and entrepreneurs. And they have... It's like one of these kind of reality type shows. People come in with a business idea and they have to give a presentation to...

I think it's usually four judges, right? These four really rich people, successful business people. And they're trying to get money, right? They're trying to get investment from these people.

So it's kind of a famous show, Shark Tank. And one of the judges, his nickname is Mr. Wonderful. And it's kind of a joke because he's really kind of tough.

He's really tough. And I wouldn't say he's not mean, but he's tough. He's very tough about money. He's a good business guy. Myanmar, Senegal, lots of countries.

Okay, here's an English question. I'd like to know how can I know my English level when I should learn grammar? I'm guessing if you're listening to me and you took English classes already in school, probably for many years, probably you have already studied enough grammar. This is why I say don't study grammar rules.

You've done it enough already. Okay? Studying it one more time probably is not going to help at all. What you really need is lots and lots and lots of real-world listening that is understandable, plus lots of reading that's understandable, and then maybe some just, you know, relaxed chatting and talking if you have a chance.

If you don't have a chance to do that, just relax about it. Don't worry, because large amounts of listening and reading will be enough. So, my advice to you in terms of learning grammar is really Don't.

Until maybe you're getting into academic writing, then you maybe just have a... The best thing for grammar, it's kind of useless when you're speaking. But if you're writing, and you're writing, and you write a sentence, and you're like, oh, you're not sure about some grammar point, if you have a grammar book, you could just quickly open it up and look up a rule and then close it. That's it.

Don't try to memorize a bunch of the rules. You just use it like you would a dictionary. That's okay for when you're writing. That can be useful. Ah. Talal, you ask good questions.

What's the difference between persuading and giving someone advice? Well, my joke answer is the result. Okay. The result. These two things actually mean something different.

Persuading means changing someone's mind. So it means you change their belief. And in my opinion, you change their action. So you get a result when you persuade.

In a business example, you want someone to buy your product. They're not sure. So you give a sales presentation and they buy. They take an action. You've changed their mind.

You've convinced them, persuaded them to do something, to give you money, to buy the product, to change their... If it's not business, then you convince them to take some action, do something differently.

Giving advice is just telling your opinion. You're just telling them what you think they should do. But do you persuade them or not? It depends on the result.

You can give advice. Usually when people give advice, guess what? It gets ignored. Advice is usually ignored. So it's not persuasion. It's only persuasion when it works, okay?

When they do something differently, when you get the result, then you are persuading. And this is a problem. Too many people give advice, but they don't persuade.

My advice is give less advice to people in your life And lead more by just showing them and persuading them. Again, as I mentioned, it's a lot easier to persuade people when they are attracted to you already. When they're asking you for advice or when they're coming to you for advice.

It's easy for me to persuade people because I just have a podcast and videos. And You choose to watch. You come, you click, you watch, and then you continue.

If people don't like it, some people don't like me or what I'm saying, and they're not interested, whatever, what do they do? They just click away. So they just go away.

I didn't persuade them, and that's fine. But then those who stay, there's an attraction, there's a connection with me, and therefore... It's easier for me to persuade people to try effortless English, to try the seven rules, to not focus on grammar, to focus on listening, all the things that I suggest. It's much easier for me to persuade people because I'm persuading by attracting people.

But if I just had some person, if I just walked up to a person on the street in Japan and just said, don't study grammar and do this and do that, and I just interrupted them and started telling them and giving them advice, they probably would just say, go away. They're not asking for my advice.

They don't want it. So very hard to persuade someone if they're not asking, if they're not interested. So I don't believe in trying to force it on people, right? Interrupting and trying to push.

It doesn't work as well as attracting. Hmm. Okay. Okay. When will the site Effortless English be available again? Well, I don't know. It should be up now.

Let's check. If it's down, I should know about it. Let's check it. Effortless English. Someone's saying my website's down, but it's up. You can go to EffortlessEnglish.com is my website for my book.

Effortless English Club is my course's website. Please tell me, what do you think about 4,000 Essential Words by Paul Nation? I don't know who Paul Nation is. I'm guessing this means he's saying there are 4,000 core, like high-frequency words, the most frequent, the most common words used in English.

There are a lot of people, this is a common idea. Some people say 2,000, some people say 4, 3, 5, 7, whatever, right? But the idea is there's all these studies where they Usually they're using writing.

I think there are some that have used audio, possibly from radio or television. I'm not sure. I'd have to look into it, but this is kind of a common idea.

But it's a big mistake to try to memorize those from a list. Since they're the most common, if you just read and listen to real things, you will naturally get those words. repeated the most. They will naturally be repeated the most because they are the most common in English.

So if you get a book and just try to memorize them from a list, you'll forget them. And it's super, super boring. But if you just read books and listen to audio books and listen to podcasts and listen to stories and all these natural things, you're naturally going to get that repetition. You're going to get those same words repeated the most.

I mean, that's how they make those lists. They study writing. They study books and newspapers. And if they're using audio sources, they'll study transcripts of television or possibly radio.

I think they use TV sometimes. I have to look. It depends. There's lots of different lists. They don't all agree. And it's different if you look at which words are most common.

It depends if you're looking at writing or speaking. It's different. Okay, because a different kind of vocabulary is used for writing... than speaking.

This is one of the problems people have when they study English in school. You're usually focusing on written English. It's a written style. It's more formal.

And if you really want to be specific, you're getting a lot more vocabulary that has a Latin root or a French root. It's really from French through Latin.

But for speaking, especially casual, normal conversation, you're getting more words that have like an old English roots, more Germanic. So which one's most common, right? Well, so some of them, there is overlap, of course, where many of the words are common in both writing and in speaking, but there are some differences too.

Luisa says, oh, this is nice. Hello, AJ. I've been listening to you daily from November last year, and I understand everything you say. Woo-hoo. I love you.

Thank you so much. That's great. Excellent. AJ, are you planning to visit London? No plans for London at the moment. Possibly somewhere else in Europe.

next year maybe i'll let you know thanks aj you are the best in the world thank you thank you so much um oh yeah so adrian you asked this question on twitter so why not i'll I'll answer now. What's up, coach? What is your positive reason?

What is your reason below? Cultures all over the world are becoming more similar now. What are the reasons for this? I think that media and Internet probably are the biggest reasons, right?

Because suddenly, you know, anywhere in the I mean, my look at my show, like look at my podcast, right? I can look at the statistics to see where are people listening to my podcast? Where are people watching this show? Right now on Facebook or later the recording on YouTube.

It's everywhere. Everywhere. Every continent. Maybe not Antarctica. But North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia. All of those places, right?

So... It's that connection. And especially with cell phones, which are pretty cheap, fairly cheap, people all over the world now have access and this connection to video and audio and writing, TV shows, movies, books.

And then, of course, when you also add English, so that there's... People all over the world now learning English everywhere has become this kind of international language.

When you combine those two things, I think that that's probably the big reason. The big, big reason. Now, whether that's good or bad, it has its good and bad points. You know, I value local and national culture.

So I hope every country will continue. keep its own culture. I think it's special and it's good. So I don't want Japan to be America. I want Japan to be Japanese because the Japanese have their own special culture and history and traditions.

And that's true for every country. So, you know, hopefully we can do the best of both, right? We can learn and have this international connection while also keeping our local and our national cultures. I think that would be the best solution if we can manage it.

Okay, Shrook says, Hey Jay, thanks for everything you do. When I feel upset, I listen to you. I wait every day. Please don't stop. I'm not going to stop.

I take breaks sometimes, especially when I'm traveling, but I'm not going to stop. Don't worry. Okay, sometimes I'm a little bit shy when I speak. What's your advice?

This is from Abra again. Well, I think that first, it's natural, so don't get stressed about it. And second, you can use some of the, in my Power English course, I teach this. Also, if you look at some of my YouTube videos about public speaking, you'll find some techniques for overcoming that shyness and training yourself to be more confident, more strong when you're speaking.

All right. Take a couple more and then time to go. Okay, let's see. The speed that you're speaking now, is it normal or slower than normal in America?

Depends on the part of the country. This is my normal speaking voice, so this is my normal speaking speed. I'm not speaking slower or faster than usual for me.

Now, is my personal speaking style slow or fast? I don't know. Probably middle, probably somewhere in the middle. You will find people who speak faster.

And it also depends on, like I said, which part of the country and also city versus countryside. So, for example, the area, the city that is famous in America for fast speakers is New York City.

And it is true. You can look on YouTube. You can often find New Yorkers who speak very, very quickly. They're famous. It's sort of their reputation for being fast talkers.

Fast, fast, fast, fast, fast. And then where I'm from now in the south, the southeast part of the country, and even the southwest, I'd say, people are famous for speaking a little more slowly. So maybe I am a little more slow than average because of that. Right?

a little more laid back, a little casual. Also, you'll find generally everywhere that city people tend to speak a little faster and people in the country tend to speak a little slower.

So, you don't need to speak fast at all. So, if you can speak as fast as I am, then you're totally fine. If you want practice, you know, speeding up your understanding that you want practice with fast speakers, get on YouTube and find some fast speakers and see if you can follow them.

Sometimes if you want a little challenge, you can do that. Ah, good. Sandor says, your movie technique lessons are unbelievable. It was fantastic for me.

I got a huge improvement. Can you make a similar one? Yes, I'm planning to do that with my VIP program. As I've explained before, it's very difficult for me to do movie technique lessons on YouTube because of their copyright.

They're very strict about it. And even if I do something that is legal for copyrights, YouTube can still give me what's called a strike. Basically, they will punish you. If you get, I don't know, two or three strikes, they can...

suspend or delete your channel. So I have to be very, very, very, very, very careful about using anything from anyone else on YouTube. Facebook is probably similar. So I can do it a little more privately with my VIP program, and I am planning to do that.

In fact, our next lesson that's coming up in about two days, two or three days, is a movie technique lesson. So the new VIP members, you're about to get that. But in general, for me to do it just with YouTube or publicly, these companies have very, very, very strict rules that are even stricter, even tougher than American copyright law. So that's why I have to be very careful about it and can't do it very much.

All right. Can you recommend... Amani is asking, could you please recommend some American TV shows for watching to improve English? I would say for TV shows, really anything that is modern, number one.

So it's not about a thousand years ago, right? Because then they change the speaking sometimes. It's not natural. Not fantasy, not science fiction, because they...

I like science fiction personally, but if it's too science fiction, they can use a lot of strange words. Let me think of an example. Star Trek would do this a lot, for example. I like Star Trek, but they, especially the new one, the next generation, the newer one, it's kind of still pretty old now, but the Star Trek The Next Generation TV series, I liked it, but they would use all these weird, strange vocabulary words that were not real, right, to make it feel like the future, that were kind of, they would, like, imagine.

kind of fake scientific words so for an english learner that would be really difficult it would be super confusing so that's why i say in general generally avoid science fiction at least until you're quite advanced so what's left suspense drama

I would avoid comedies because sometimes the comedies are very cultural, right? They're talking about something unique, connected to American culture. So if you did not grow up in America, you might not understand the jokes. And again, it can be very confusing.

So I think dramas and suspense, you know, police type shows, those kind of shows usually work quite well. For a while, I'm going to recommend one of my favorites, Breaking Bad, that... Max in Italy, Kaula. We had several people watching Breaking Bad.

It was probably about a year ago, maybe two years ago, where we were all watching Breaking Bad at the same time. That's a good one. You can get that one. That's pretty funny because there's one character who uses a lot of slang and he speaks like a teenager.

And then there's an older guy who speaks kind of more like a normal adult. So you get a lot of slang from the teenager guy and then you get sort of more normal stuff from the other characters.

And it's a pretty interesting show. Why don't you visit North Africa? You can visit Algeria. I know of Algeria, of course, but someday, I hope, we'll see.

I get invited to lots of countries, but I don't have time to visit everywhere. Okay, this is a common question. I understand my listening is better than my speaking, basically is what the question is from Bilal. And that's normal, totally normal.

If you think of small children, that's normal for them too. They will understand much, much more than they can say. It's normal for you to understand many, many, many more words than you will actually use in speaking. This is called passive and active vocabulary.

Also, totally normal, so nothing to worry about. Just keep improving your listening better and better and better. And if you feel like you need to work on speaking a bit, if you feel like it's time, then you can... I just did a show about this.

So you can give speeches, you can talk to yourself, or if you have the opportunity, you can talk to someone else in English. Work on your pronunciation. All of these things can be helpful.

But don't worry, listening being better than speaking is actually very normal and totally fine. It's probably the good one. Ah, that's interesting. This is a little reference.

Mayan says, I recommend the persuasion courses by Jordan Belfort. And I don't know, do you guys know who Jordan Belfort is? But there was a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio about him.

Wolf of Wall Street. Wolf of Wall Street. I'm not, you know, I've kind of, I saw the movie. I think I've read maybe an article about his persuasion techniques.

But, you know, obviously he was a persuasive guy. Unfortunately, he did it in illegal ways. So, don't copy everything he did. Can you, related question, can you tell me which genre of book is good to learn vocabulary and grammar?

So it's basically the same answer as my TV show answer. So I would avoid what are called historical books, at least historical fiction I would avoid. Historical fiction. So it's like fiction about old, old, old times.

Some of them actually are fine for vocabulary, but the problem is some of them might use a lot of vocabulary that is I would say is kind of old style you know that we don't really use much now so I think generally more modern stories are better because the vocabulary will be closer to what we use every day other than that and again I would avoid probably avoid science fiction and probably fantasy even like I love Lord of the Rings but it's not the first book I would recommend for English learning same with you know Harry Potter yeah I don't know some people like that but there are a lot of kind of strange words in Harry Potter that are not real English words so you could try it if you want to but I think overall like spy stuff and spy books rather he's just plain history books non-fiction books romance is fine those kind of things

Ah, this is a good suggestion for our book club. Please do, for the book club, please do The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. That's a great suggestion. I like Mark Twain.

And excellent writer. American. And a great book. All right, that one probably goes on the list. Uncle Barry Finn. Your no-belief article was the best one.

It changed my life. Oh, that's great. Have you visited Sri Lanka? I have not visited Sri Lanka. I've been to your neighbor up there in India, but I have not visited Sri Lanka.

Hello from Brazil. Renato again. Hello. Have you ever been to Brazil? I have not been to Brazil. Ciao from Giuliano in Italy. Hello. I left preparing lunch to watch you.

Thank you. Oh, good. Amani says, right now I'm watching Breaking Bad. It is fantastic. It is. Which season are you doing? Breaking Bad's a good one. It's very dramatic.

It's a little violent. So be warned if you don't like violence. It's fairly old now, but those of you probably know it's about drug dealers in America.

It's a crazy show. It's some very strong, strong drama, but there is some violence in some of it. So, you know, if you don't like that kind of thing, if you want something a little more peaceful, that's fine.

But some people like, I loved Breaking Bad. I thought it was really, and a lot of people like Breaking Bad. It was very popular. If you have, you know, anyone else, if you're watching movies or TV that you enjoy, that you want to suggest for learning English and

that are good. You can just put them in the comments here and I'm happy to read them. Oh yeah, Stranger Things. Now that's an interesting one. I watched that.

Now that's a little science fiction, but not too much. It's set, Stranger Things is on Netflix. And it's just a little bit of science fiction. It certainly has some sci-fi in it, a little bit of horror and sci-fi scary, but not too much.

Most of it's set in the modern world, like the normal world of the 1980s, I believe. So, yes, I've only watched season one of Stranger Things, but I think that would be totally fine for learning English.

Okay, this is a good question. It asks, can I speak by using my books from my field, electrical books? So can I improve my English by technical books? Well, yeah, you will improve your technical English that's focused on your field or your industry.

So that's actually the best way to do that, right? Is to focus on books. And if you can find podcasts about your field, your industry, that's also helpful. Because, you know, each industry is called jargon.

Each industry has its own special vocabulary. So, like, I probably would not understand the vocabulary, much of the vocabulary, from electrical engineering. Because I'm not an electrical engineer.

I probably would not understand a lot of that vocab because I don't use it, right? It's specialized vocabulary. And there's certain parts of business have specialized vocabulary and science and just lots of areas have this. So you have to learn this, yes, from reading a lot of the books in your field or your industry, listening to podcasts in your industry.

If you can find videos, interviews, you know, whatever you can find, that's how you learn it. Ah, okay. There's a kind of a slang question. Could you get, what's the, can you give the answer, what is the difference between crash and sleep?

To crash and to sleep. So, to sleep is obvious, right? You go to sleep. I think everybody knows the meaning of that one. To sleep. So, what does it mean to crash?

To crash is a little bit of a, eh, kind of, not an idiom, but it's a little slang, but it's casual, very casual. You say, ah, I crashed last night. I was, So crash has the idea of falling asleep very fast, very quickly, because you're so tired.

When you crash, it means all your energy just disappears very fast, very suddenly. So sleep, you know, you might go to sleep nice and gently and slowly.

But if you crash, you just kind of... Crash is the idea that maybe you were working hard, you were really tired, and Boom. Immediately. To sleep. That's what crashing means.

Crashing also can even mean, sometimes we just mean, sometimes it doesn't mean even sleep. It just means you lose all of your energy. So you might even still be awake.

And sometimes we'll still use this word to crash as a verb. So for example, let's say you're a runner and you're running in a race. Run, you run, you run, you run, and you run, you run 10 miles. And then suddenly, boom, you crash.

It means you just stop and you sit down on the road and all your energy's gone. You're totally exhausted. You can't keep going. You might just say, oh, I crashed.

I crashed at mile number 11. I crashed at mile 11, right? All your energy, your blood sugar dropped. And you have no energy and you can't keep going. Same idea.

Okay, this is the last one. And then it's time to go because I did talk about this. So Bao says, can you talk something about Independence Day in America? I did in my audio podcast, which I will be uploading right after this show.

I'm going to put it on the audio podcast. So it's audio podcast only. As always with my audio podcast, you have to subscribe to it or follow it somewhere. You can use the TuneIn app.

I recommend the TuneIn app for my podcast, but you can also use Podcast Addict, OutKast, iTunes. There are many, many, many, many podcasting apps. Most of them are free.

I recommend TuneIn just because they have apps for many devices. T-U-N-E-I-N, all together. So, on my audio podcast, I talked about exactly that, Independence Day, and I talked about this idea of independence in general and why it's so important to Americans. It's kind of a very special American value, and we have a very special way of looking at it.

So, a little bit of American culture in today's audio podcast. It's called Coffee and Talk. That's when I talk casually about topics. I talk about culture.

Sometimes I talk about idioms, slang, Japan, where I am right now, any topic, almost every topic. And that's only on my audio podcast, so get it and subscribe.

All right, that's it for me tonight. Time to go. As always, join my VIP program. Join my VIP program at Effortless. EffortlessEnglishClub.com EffortlessEnglishClub.com See you next time.