Effortless English newsletter

7 RULES forEXCELLENTENGLISH

SpecialEdition #6

Use OnlyREALEnglish Materials

(And Burn Those Textbooks!)

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Effortl ssENGLISH

NEWS-LETTERSSSWWWSSSSSSSSSSSSS-------TER

Automatic English for the People Special Edition #6

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Rule #6:> > > > > > > > >

http://traffic.libsyn.com/effortlessenglish/rule6EE.mp3

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Effortless EnglishNewsletter Special Editions! Each of these seveneditions will guide you through my 7 Rules for

Excellent English step-by-step to help you become a betterEnglish speaker.

This program is a powerful new method for English learning.You’ll watch a video teaching a new rule every day for seven days.Each of my seven rules teaches you a totally different way to learnEnglish. After seven days, you’ll know the complete EffortlessEnglish system!

Every Special Edition of this newsletter containsthe text version of the daily video. You can down-load the free audios by clicking on the links thatsay “Download this Podcast!” This way, you canlisten as you read along. Each lesson will teachyou a powerful new rule, such as “The TruthAbout Grammar” (Rule 2) or “The Number OneKey to Faster Speaking” (Rule 7). Learninghow to speak better English is simple and fun!So let’s get started ...

AJGreetings from

Effortl ss ENGLISH newsletter 1Contents copyright Effortless English LLC © 2011

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http://EffortlessEnglishClub.com


Hi, it’s AJ, and welcometo rule number six.Rule number six is

simple, but very, very importantand very, very effective. In fact,you’ll have noticed that all ofthese rules are simple, butthey’re very powerful. In fact,

individually they’re very power-ful. Just using one of theserules can improve your Englishspeaking a lot, but the realpower comes when you use allseven of them to totally changethe way you learn English.

So, what’s number six? Num-

ber six is this. Only use authen-tic, real English materials.What does that mean? Well, toput it another way, don’t usetextbooks. I talked about this al-ready when I was talking aboutthrowing away your grammarbooks, but really, you need to

REAL English

Use ONLYRule #6:

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Materialsby AJ Hoge


http://traffic.libsyn.com/effortlessenglish/rule6EE.mp3


throw away all of your text-books, all of them. Get rid ofthem. They’re horrible. They’reboring. You know they’re boring.They’re useless.

You know, get rid of all thegrammar textbooks, all thosewith the little fake conversa-tions in them and all the nicelittle graphics and pictures theyput in to try to make them seeminteresting when, in fact, it’s re-ally boring. Because what dothose textbooks really have?They have a bunch of fake con-versations with boring actorsreading them and then theyhave a bunch of little boring ac-tivities and drills that are sup-posed to help you improve yourcommunication. It’s all bad. It’snot going to help you.

What you need to do insteadis use only authentic, real Eng-lish materials. What does thatmean? Well, when I say realhere’s what I mean. I mean thebest materials are the ones thatare for native speakers. In other

words, books and audios andvideos that are made for Cana-dians, Americans, British peo-ple, Australians. They’re notmade for foreigners learningEnglish. They’re made for thepeople actually living in thosecountries. That’s a real, authen-tic material; book, CD, video,whatever.

You can also use materialsthat are very, very, very, very

similar or very, very close to realmaterials. For example, thereare some really good books outthere, story books. They’reabout real stories. You know likelittle novels, little short novels,but they’re using a little bit sim-pler English so that people whoare learning English can under-stand them a little more easily.

It’s not a textbook. It’s a realstory. Some of them have audio

Get rid of all yourgrammar textbooks.They’re useless!

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so it’s like a real audio book,real interesting information. It’snot a bunch or rules and stupidactivities and fake conversa-tions. So, those kinds of materi-als are also quite good. That’swhat I mean when Isay real materials,real. Let me giveyou an example ofthis.

Let’s say youwanted to improveyour reading, yourEnglish readingskills. Now, there’stwo ways to do this.The old traditionalboring way, whichdoesn’t work, is togo out and get a bunch of faketests. For example, a bunch ofTOEFL tests and read all thoseextremely boring essays in theTOEFL book and then take abunch of tests with it or youcould get some reading compre-hension textbook.

Once again, reading a bunchof boring stories written by bor-ing people and then take abunch of boring tests or answera bunch of boring questions atthe end of it. It’s not very funand it’s not effective.

You could also go out and buysome vocabulary books and tryto memorize all this new vocab-ulary, these huge lists. None ofthat works very well. I mean

you can improve that way, butit’s very slow and it’s painfullyboring.

A much better way, and theresearch shows a much moreeffective and powerful way, is to

read easy stories, toread easy novels.Now what does easymean? Well, it de-pends on your level.For some peopleeasy means chil-dren’s books, right,books that are madefor American chil-dren or British chil-dren or Australianchildren, whatever.They’re not made for

foreign students. They’re madefor the local people, but they’rean easier level because they’refor children.

For you, for a lot of peoplewatching this video, probably, Iwould say easy novels for youngadults, for older elementaryschool children or middle schoolchildren or high school level, itdepends on what your level is.So, when I say easy, I usuallymean you should understandabout 95% of the words withouta dictionary so then you caneasily guess the other five per-cent. I’ve mentioned this before.

So, if you wanted to improveyour reading, what you woulddo is you’d go out and you

Reading a bunchof boring storiesthen takingboring tests atthe end ... It’snot very fun,and it’s NOTvery effective.

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would read as many of thesenovels as you could. You couldread magazines, easy magazinesfor kids or for young adults andread lots of them. You couldread a lot of novels. There’s lotsof those novels for adolescents;adventure novels, romance nov-els. And, you know, they’re foryoung adults so they might be alittle bit not really for totaladults, but it’s much more in-teresting to read those thantextbooks. I promise you.

You would read lots and lotsand lots of them and as you didthat your vocabulary would in-crease. Your reading compre-hension would increase veryquickly. Your reading speed inEnglish would improve very,very quickly. And soon, in just afew months, those kinds ofbooks would be super easy foryou and then you could startreading more difficult material.Maybe you would start readinghigh school level novels andstories and you’d read lots andlots and lots of those.

If you like romance, you’dread romance books. If you likeadventure, you’d read adven-ture. If you like science fictionor fantasy, you’d read those kindof books. If you like nonfiction,well you’d read a lot of nonfic-tion. But it would be real booksand then, eventually, thosewould feel easy.


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science fiction,adventure,fantasy, romance,whatever youlike ... but NOTtextbooks!



It happens quite quickly, infact. If you read every single daylike that you improve quicklyand then you could go up toadult level novels. You couldread books by famous best-selling authors; John Grisham,Stephen King. Again, it dependson your interest, but alwayschoose things that you person-ally like and enjoy.

By reading lots and lots andlots of those books, reading lotsand lots and lots of StephenKing books, for example, orJohn Grisham books, your read-ing would improve so fast, sopowerfully and so much faster,so much more powerfully thansomeone who’s trying to learnfrom textbooks and readingcomprehension books and vo-cabulary books. This is a muchfaster, more powerful way toimprove your reading.

Now, of course, in these ruleswe’re talking about speakingand listening. So, how do youdo that? Well, it’s the same idea.It’s exactly the same idea. In-stead of using books, you woulduse audios. So, you want to lis-ten to as many easy real audiosas you can every day. You wantto listen to audio stories. Youwant to listen to easy audiobooks. You want to listen topodcasts, audio podcasts, audioradio shows, easy audios on top-ics that you enjoy, that are en-

tertaining. It’s real stuff and youfollow that same thing.

For a while those really easyones, maybe they would feel alittle difficult to you, but afterlistening to them again andagain and again they quickly be-

come easy. Then you go up to ahigher level and then you do itagain, again, again and againand soon you’re listening to realaudios, real audio books foradults, for American adults, forBritish adults or real radioshows for Americans or Canadi-ans or British or Australians.You can mix all of those. Itdoesn’t matter.

That is how you learn realEnglish. Because, see, in thetextbooks it’s not real English.It’s very unnatural. Those fakeconversations are unnatural andwe don’t really speak that way,

right? What’s lesson one inmost textbooks? “Hello, hi, howare you? I’m fine and you?” Youhave these actors reading thatconversation in a very unnaturalway. The pronunciation is verystrange, because nobody reallytalks like that.

In fact, in the United Stateswhen you meet someone thefirst time, you will almost neverhear that kind of conversation.People really say things like“How ya doin? What’s up? Niceto meet ya.” You don’t find thoselittle phrases in most textbooks;yet, those are the most commonreal ways of greeting people.

You know, you learn all thistextbook English and then yougo to a country and you can’tunderstand anybody. Eventhough you know 10,000 wordsor 20,000 words or somethingand you know all this grammar,you can’t understand the realpeople having real conversa-tions. Why? Because youlearned textbook English. Youdid not learn from real Englishmaterials, authentic Englishmaterials.

So, if you want to be able tobe able to function with realEnglish, especially if you wantto talk to people who are fromCanada or the United States orthe UK or Australia, then youmust learn from real materials.It’s very important.

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Listen to real audiobooks for Americanadults, or real radioshows. That’s how tolearn real English!The English in text-books is unnatural.It’s NOT real English.



And, you know, once again,this is how children learn,right? Children do not studytextbooks to learn their ownlanguage. Little two-year-oldsand one-year-olds and three-year-olds are not studying Eng-lish textbooks in the UnitedStates. They’re learning fromstories and real conversationsand real communication aboutreal ideas or real emotions.That’s how they learn and that’swhy they speak so naturally andeffortlessly.

If you bring a foreign child, achild from another country tothe Untied States and you putthem with a bunch of Americanchildren who speak English allthe time, that child will learnEnglish perfectly, with no text-books, with no grammar study.How do they do it? Well, theydo it with real stories, real play-ing, playing with the other chil-dren, real communication, realEnglish.

What you need to do is, num-ber one, go out and get real ma-

terials. And, of course, our les-sons, that’s what I do. I tell youstories and I give you a lot ofteachings. My lessons are notfocused on the little parts ofEnglish, because I don’t wantyou to think about that at all. Iwant you to think about inter-esting ideas. I want you to feelentertained. I want you to focuson the emotions and the ideasof what I’m saying, of what’s in-side the audio.

So, most of my main lessonsare on personal growth topics,about being more healthy, hav-ing more energy, being moresuccessful in all parts of yourlife. I want you focused onthose ideas. You’re learningEnglish at the same time, but Idon’t want you thinking aboutevery little word. I don’t wantyou thinking about the gram-mar rules. I want you focusingon the ideas, on powerful ideas,interesting ideas. As you focuson those real ideas, real emo-tions, you will learn the Englishautomatically.

It’s the same with the stories.I make them funny and crazy sothat you remember them sothat you are entertained. You’refocused on the emotions andthe crazy ideas in the story andthe grammar and the vocabu-lary and the pronunciation justhappen automatically. You’re fo-cused on being entertained. t

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You’re focused on getting inter-esting information, useful infor-mation. That’s what makes realmaterials so powerful and somuch better than some terrible,boring, useless textbook, whichwill not teach you real Englishanyway.So, use real materials in order

to improve much, much, muchfaster to understand real speechso that when you go to a coun-try or you talk to someone froman English-speaking countryyou will actually understandthem. You’ll understand the realEnglish they use in conversa-tions, not some textbook thatnobody uses.I think another big reason to

use real materials is you’ll enjoyit more. It’s just more fun. It’smore interesting. Instead oflearning a bunch of boring junkin a textbook that’s just uselessand not real, you get to learnreal interesting ideas or you getto be entertained. You get tohave interesting emotions. It’sreal stuff. It’s the kind of thingsyou might enjoy in your ownlanguage, so important, so pow-erful.So, rule number six is this.

Use only authentic, real Englishmaterials. And that’s rule six.Tomorrow is our last rule, solook for the next email tomor-row, last rule. See you again, bye-bye. ■

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