style="font-size:15px;"> – to remember words with your ears, not with your eyes.
– to leave behind boring English lessons and
– to create new positive and strong emotions, every time when you speak English.
Eventually, these stories teach you:
– to stop being afraid of making mistakes.
– to stop translating from your language to English.
– to understand that English can be easy and fun.
Second: The vocabulary lesson.
With these vocabulary lessons your pronunciation gets better, your understanding gets better and your listening abilities grow faster. This is a bridge between the story and the mini-story lesson. This lesson will help you build that bridge. The vocabulary lesson also teaches you one very important thing that all native speakers do. What is it? It teaches you to paraphrase. In other words, it provides you with the synonyms you need to say it differently. It teaches you to use them correctly and to speak English accurately.
It gives you freedom.
Third: The mini-story lesson.
These mini-story lessons are the most powerful, the most important and the funnies ones. With the mini-story lessons you teach your brain English grammar intuitively, playfully like a child by answering easy and simple questions. Yes, grammar is boring. Yes, grammar is difficult. Yes, grammar is very difficult. But if the input is so interesting and so comprehensible you forget that you are listening to English. The world disappears around you. You enjoy the process. You acquire the language. Grammar takes care of itself.
Forth: The POV Lessons.
What do the POV lessons mean? POV Lesson. They mean the Points of View Lessons.
In this lesson I am telling the same story, but from a different point of view. I mean, I use different time-frame. Usually it is the Perfect Tense and the Future Tense.
Too many students try to go ahead. They want advanced material, advanced grammar, advanced vocabulary, and they say, «I already know the beginning stuff.» Well, you know it intellectually, but you don’t really know it deeply. And most students really need to go back and focus more on the core, the basic, the fundamental parts of English: simple sentences, the past tense, the present tense, the future, the perfect tense, the stuff we use every day in conversations, you need to master that.
That is why the motto of this course is «Repetition is the mother of a skill»
Fifth: My comments
In this lesson I am going to talk briefly about the story. I am going to say just a few sentences or maybe more in order to support the message of the story. I am going to philosophize just quickly say a few sentences about the story itself – just a very short summery of the story. And then I am going to give you my own ideas on the story or I am going to offer other people’s ideas that can help you understand the story much better. And of course, I am going to focus on the moral of the story. In other words, what the story can teach us and what we can learn from the story to improve not only as an English speaker but also as a human being. All this, I am sure, will help you get the main idea or ideas, the message of the story and of course, you will listen to English more, you will learn more and you will enjoy it more.
To stay committed to learning English, to remain curious about learning English and to maintain your motivation for learning English, I encourage you visit my YouTube channel which is English is easy and fun.
Here is the QR Code with the direct access to the channel. Just scan it with your phone’s camera and it will take you there. I am sure you will be enjoying it. See you soon.
WHY DO WE LEARN STORIES HERE?
Why do we learn stories here? That is a great question. You know, how much I love the “Why-questions”. Let me tell you why all my books, why all my English courses have stories and why the method I use when I teach English is called a story-telling method.
Story-telling is one of the best methods for learning foreign languages.
We, human beings, are storytelling creatures. Our brains love stories and we all learn from stories. Stories are vital. We convey our feelings, our mood, our energy and the truth with stories. We convey the mystery of the language. And most importantly, we learn English grammar intuitively like children do. That’s why stories.
I don’t mean, don’t learn Grammar. No. Grammar is important. I am saying that Grammar is difficult. Grammar is very difficult. Grammar is boring. It is hard to say anything interesting and comprehensible to people when teaching them languages and you have to focus on Grammar rules a lot.
Now let me share with you what one of the greatest language teachers has to say on language learning and language acquisition. His name is Stephen Krashen. I totally agree with him.
“There is a big difference between language learning and language acquisition. When you learn a language, for example, you learn English. You learn grammar rules, right? You learn all about the sentences and how words work together. And when you want to say something in English you make the sentence in your own language first, and then you drag out of your memory the words you need and put them into the sentence. That is painful. That is difficult. That is boring and it takes time.
When you acquire the language you understand what you hear. You can only acquire the language when you understand the language, you understand the message. The message has to be interesting and comprehensible. The message has to be compelling and understandable. Only when you are totally involved in the story, the world disappears around you. You forget that it is in another language. You acquire the language. Language acquisition happens.
I don’t mean, don’t learn Grammar. I don’t mean, if you study Grammar, go to jail. No, Grammar is important. I am saying that Grammar is difficult. Grammar is very difficult. Grammar is boring. It is really hard to say anything interesting and comprehensible to people when teaching them languages and you have to focus on Grammar rules a lot. What I have to do as a teacher is say things that are interesting, comprehensible, and then Grammar will take care of itself. And this is hard enough. All I need, as a teacher, is to make sure that you are paying attention and you are interested in what I am saying. It’s a good story. That is what you need. My job is to spread the story.”
Yes, Steven Krashen is absolutely correct and I cannot but agree with him.
It is very easy to give people input, information that is comprehensible, which means understandable, but not interesting. That is school.
It is very easy to give people input, information that is interesting, but not comprehensible, not understandable. That is the outside world.
Some teachers in Universities devote their lives to giving us input that is neither comprehensible nor interesting.
My job
