The Effortless English Vision

I've been contemplating this question over and over. At first, I had the usual education answers. Make a podcast and study guide to help people learn English.

But that answer never satisfied me. Of course, that's part of the answer. I do hope to make better and better podcasts and better and better learning guides. But in truth, I have a much bigger vision for the club.

What I really want is to create an international community of learners founded on the principles of lifelong learning, autonomy, and independence hospitality mutual encouragement equality and respect I envision a community in which every member is both a learner and a teacher I envision a community in which members help each other encourage each other support each other I envision a community that offers mutual respect and hospitality to one another I envision a community that encourages independent learning

I envision a community that supports curiosity, engagement, and a passion for communication. In many ways, this vision is born from my frustrations with traditional schools and education.

Schools, in many cases, are actively opposed to these principles. Most schools are bastions of authority, isolation, humiliation, and boredom. Schools tend to kill passion, kill curiosity, and kill the love of learning.

Schools foster an authoritarian social model in which the teacher and administrator are believed to have more power and influence than the students. My vision for the Effortless English Club was born from the many negative stories I hear from students.

Many students talk about the trauma of their English classes. They tell tales of being corrected and embarrassed in front of their class. They tell stories of feeling foolish and stupid because they struggled with tests and grades.

Many have deeply negative feelings about the English language as a result of their terrible school experiences. I want to change that. More than providing audio and learning guides, I hope the Effortless English Club will grow into a positive, enthusiastic, supportive community of learners.

I hope members will help and encourage each other. I hope they will chat, trade emails, and start Skype discussion groups. I even hope they'll visit each other and offer hospitality to one another, so when one member travels to a new country, he or she will have a place to stay with other members.

I envision the Effortless English Club as a positive force, a community of motivated, independent, passionate learners who dedicated to lifelong independent learning, hospitality, mutual respect, and mutual support.

In short, I hope to undo the trauma and boredom caused by wretched school systems and help adults rediscover the amazing thrill of learning, connecting, and communicating.

Okay, that's the main podcast. Let's review some of the vocabulary. And the title, the title is The Effortless English Vision. In this case, vision means idea for the future, a future you are imagining.

So that's what it means. It doesn't literally mean your eyes. And also up near the beginning, I talk about Contemplating. I've been contemplating the meaning of this club.

What should it do? Contemplating means to think seriously about something. Think a long time. Think deeply about something. That's contemplating. So in general, guide means to help.

All right, I talk about founding or creating a community based on principles of autonomy, hospitality, etc. Okay, a community is a group of people who share certain values, certain ideas, or certain goals.

And principles are kind of like rules to live by, but it's more serious than rules, much deeper. So honesty, that is a principle, or simplicity, or love, or compassion. These are principles. These are values.

One of the principles I mentioned is autonomy. Autonomy basically means freedom. It means freedom and self-reliance. It means you depend on yourself. And I think that that's the future for learning, not depending on a teacher, but doing it yourself, having autonomy.

I also mentioned that I want to encourage hospitality with this club. Hospitality basically means to welcome people Somebody, usually a traveler, maybe a friend. So someone comes to visit, and you're very friendly to them.

You invite them to your home. You give them some food. You give them a place to stay. That's hospitality. And I'm from the south, the southeast part of America.

And that part of America, we feel that we are famous for our hospitality, southern hospitality, southern friendliness. So I want to encourage that in the Effortless English group.

All right, I mentioned that I envision a community that encourages passion for learning. To envision, this is using it as a verb, to envision means to imagine. It means to see something in your mind.

And passion means emotion and excitement for something. It's a positive word. If you have passion for English... It means you love English. You really love it.

You have a lot of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a similar word, similar meaning. Enthusiasm and passion. Okay, I mentioned a little later on that I started this club, the Effortless English Club, because of my frustrations with traditional schools and education.

Frustration basically means annoyance or anger. It means you keep struggling, you keep trying to succeed or change something, but you can't. And that's how I feel with traditional schools, normal schools.

they just have these same ways of thinking, and it's hard to change them. So I finally decided, forget changing them, just create my own club. All right, and I mentioned that traditional schools are bastions of authority and isolation.

A bastion of something means a place where it is accepted, where it is encouraged. So a bastion of isolation means is a place where isolation is encouraged. And isolation basically means loneliness.

It means you're separate from other people. So in many schools, the students are kind of lonely. They don't really communicate. They come to class... They listen to the teacher and then they go home.

They're a little lonely, a little isolated. And there's also humiliation. Humiliation means embarrassment, deep embarrassment, very serious embarrassment. It's a negative word.

So many students feel humiliated or they feel humiliation. Humiliated is the adjective. Humiliation is the noun. Because their mistakes are corrected in front of other students.

Maybe the teacher yells at them. And it's a very negative thing. Alright, and I say schools foster an authoritarian model. Authoritarian means... unequal not equal so there's a big boss or bosses and then there are lots of people underneath them and that's basically how a school works you know you've got the teachers the big boss and the students are under the teacher they're not equal and of course there's usually a principal or administrator also all right later on i mentioned that i'm

hoping to create a club that does more than provide audio. And audio means sound, of course. So an audio file is a sound file. And I also mentioned that I hope members will communicate with each other.

They'll chat and trade emails and start Skype discussions. If you don't know already, Skype is a great program. It's free. It's a free podcast. internet phone program so you can talk to people anywhere in the world for free it's fantastic I can talk to friends in Thailand or Japan or Europe or students in these countries and it's totally free go to www.skype.com if you would like to get this free software and start talking to people everywhere ok and finally

So, trauma... is pain, basically, very deep pain. Many students feel a lot of pain with English. They hate English. When they imagine English or they imagine English class, they think, oh my God, boredom, humiliation, struggle, difficulty.

I want to undo those feelings. I want to change those feelings. And these feelings are caused by wretched school systems. Wretched means terrible, horrible, suffering.

So school systems cause a lot of suffering, and I feel most of them are quite terrible, so it's something I want to change. Okay, well that's it for today's podcast and explanation.

As usual, you can get the full text, the full transcripts, the full script, For every podcast, by joining the Effortless English Club, go to www.effortlessenglish.com

Right now, we are in beta testing. It means we're not completely ready yet. We're improving as fast as possible. So you can join for $18 for two months and get all the study guides with the words, the transcripts, the text, and the vocabulary for every podcast, every audio file.

Okay, hope to see you again soon. Have a great time. Enjoy your English study. And I'll see you again next time. Thanks and goodbye.