Lesson Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome to the Monthly Review!
The monthly show on language learning.
Where you discover new learning strategies, motivational tips, study tools, and resources.
By the way, all the free lessons and bonuses you’re about to see can be downloaded on our website.
So, click the link in the description right now to sign up for your free lifetime account.
Okay, today’s topic is:
The 3 Powerful Language Learning Lessons You'll Pick Up at the Gym
And today, you’re going to learn:
One: How to approach your goals
Two: How to find time to learn a language.
And three: Why you don’t need the best possible routine or learning program.
So, if you’ve ever spent time in the gym, you’ll quickly see how similar training and language learning are.
But first, listen up! Here are this month’s new lessons and resources.
First —Want to perfect your pronunciation?
Then get our new “Pronunciation” PDF Cheat sheet right now. You’ll learn how to sound like a native and how to practice your pronunciation.
Second — Do you know the 7 tested ways to learn language fast?
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Third — 20 Useful Phrases for a Hair Salon
Would you be able to get a haircut in your target language? If you said no, then this 1-minute lesson is just what you need.
Fourth — 20 Phrases for Doing Business Successfully. If you are learning the language for work, this 1-minute lesson is for you. You learn the 20 most common greetings, phrases, and questions for business meetings.
To get your free resources, click the link in the description below right now. They’re yours to keep forever. Ok, let’s jump into today’s topic:
The 3 Powerful Language Learning Lessons You'll Pick Up at the Gym.
The first lesson is...
“How to approach your goals and language learning.”
So, why are we talking about the Gym? The Gym is a great example because it’s filled with people working on their goals. And it gives you a snapshot of where most people are with their goals.
And everyone there has one goal - to be fit.
But not everyone is there yet. You have a few people that look like fitness models.
Then you have around 20 or 30 people that have good, respectable physiques — the middle group.
And then, the rest of the people are still.... working their way up.
It’s motivating because everyone has a chance of succeeding. If you’ve been to the Gym, you understand the importance of repetitions — reps. A rep is the number of times you do a certain exercise.
Like 15 pushups is 15 reps of pushups.
So, even those still working toward their goals have a chance of succeeding… if they put in the reps.
If they do a little bit a day, over a long period of time, they’ll get there.
The process is simple. The more you do, the longer you stick with it, the more progress you make.
And the same goes with learning language or any goal in life. It’s about putting in the reps a little bit a day, consistently, for a long period of time.
If you want to get bigger muscles, you pick up a dumbbell, and you do reps.
If you want to learn more words, you do the reps. Five new words a day.
Now, what can you do right now? For example… if you’re using our program, just do 1 lesson a day. If you have a textbook, do 1 page a day. If you’re using an app, put in 5 minutes a day.
Again, everyone has a chance to succeed, they just need to put in the reps, and they need to make the time. This is where the second lesson comes in.
You learn… how to find and make time to learn a language.
There’s a reason the people you see at the Gym daily (and especially the people you see at 10 PM on a Friday) are the ones with above-average results. They’re the most consistent.
But how do they get that level of consistency?
There tend to be three types of people:
First: The people that have plenty of free time, so it’s a non-issue for them.
Second: The busier people; they make time regardless of what their schedule is like. Meaning, they show up at 1 AM just to fit in a session, or they cancel other plans to make time. And Third: The people running on autopilot. They’re so in the habit of going that they don’t have to think about it.
Ideally, you want to be in the third group with language learning — the autopilot group.
But most people fall into the 2nd group. The truth is that to make time, they have to cancel other plans.
Some wake up earlier to squeeze in a session in the AM. Some go late at night. It’s the same exact thing with language learning. You make time.
The good news with language learning is, you don’t need to open up a lesson at 1 AM and put in an hour.
With our learning program, you get our quick but powerful 3-15 minute audio and video lessons. And because the lessons are quick, you can easily MAKE time. You can do a lesson on your commute or while walking somewhere. Imagine learning a quick conversation while on your walk to the store.
Finally, the 3rd language learning lesson you’ll learn at the Gym is...
Why You Don’t Need the Best Possible Routine to Get Results.
Have you ever heard a friend say, “I have to start the right way. It has to be perfect.”
Well, this is a disastrous way to start anything - whether fitness or language learning.
And most learners spend a lot of time worrying about starting right, instead of just starting and keeping at it.
But the point is, if you start learning from a textbook and stick with it. You will get results. You’ll improve your reading, vocabulary, and grammar. Of course, it won’t get you speaking. You only get good at what you focus on, but the fact is, you still make progress.
Same with the Gym, if you start off with bicep curls, you’ll see progress in time. But at some point, you’ll need to add in legs as well. You can’t skip leg day.
So here’s what you can learn. Here’s what smart beginners do. They don’t look for the best way to start. They just start and keep going.
And once they have a consistent routine, they start optimizing. They improve their routine.
If you start taking 1 lesson a day... and can easily maintain that routine, then, you might eventually realize that you want to practice speaking. You need to shadow that lesson’s conversation.
So, you add shadowing to your routine. And that’s how you grow.
Same thing with the Gym. The smart beginners make sure they do their reps and come in as much as possible.
And doing the basics is enough for them to build muscle.
And later on, they start adjusting their exercises and adding new ones.
But, you will NEVER get to that point if you overthink yourself into inaction and don’t build that habit.
So as long as you start AND continue, most starting routines and learning methods are good enough.
You don’t need the best possible one right now.
You could have the best possible language learning program, but if you don’t consistently use it, it’s useless.
Alright, so today, you learned:
One: How to approach your goals
Two: How to find time to learn a language.
And three: Why you don’t need the best possible routine or learning program.
All right everyone, in the last monthly review, we asked you to submit a video or audio file of yourself speaking the language -- introducing yourself or talking about your country in the language.
So, thank you to all of you that sent in submissions! You’ve all received a Premium PLUS subscription as a reward.
Now let’s take a look at some of the entries!
Okay, so I've got a few of your audio and video submissions. I think it's three audio submissions, so I'm gonna have a listen. Let's get started. Play.
Hi, Alicia!
Hi!
How are you?
Good!
I am from Bangladesh.
From Bangladesh.
And first, I want to give you a big thanks-
Sure!
-for all of your videos. And I am very grateful to you because you are making lot of videos for us and it’s really appreciated.
Cool.
And today, I want to be… I want to tell you some of my problems in my study.
Okay.
And you should give, you should give me some advice and suggestions to improve myself.
Okay.
Okay? Now, my first problem is that I am not consistent in my study, but I always try to keep me in motivation and I always try to motivate myself, but I can’t. What can I do to be consistent-
Sure.
-in my study?
And, another problem is that when I, well, when I try to speak, I can’t make a sentence so… and I always make mistake like in tense, in tense so… And you are… you are listening my speaking already and my pronunciation is not good so what can I do to-
Okay.
-to improve myself, all kind of field?
Right.
And how can improve all of my many problems? Okay, thank you so much.
Sure.
And at last, I want… I wanna tell you… I want to compliment, I want to give a compliment for you.
Okay.
You are so sweet and cute girl.
All right. Woah, thanks for the long message. He was describing some of his problems with his study. So, it sounded to me like your main issues you talked about were consistency, trying to be consistent, and finding motivation, and also like when making sentences like, you know, worrying about the correct tenses to use, and finally, worrying about pronunciation.
So first, my feedback just from hearing your message, your message was very clear like you had no communication problems, like I think that everything you wanted to say was very clearly communicated. So I think, as long as you continue to make efforts like this, to practice your speaking and, like, you recognize that you need to work on your pronunciation, I think if you work a little bit on working on your pronunciation like finding those points where maybe you don't sound very similar to a native speaker, if you focus in on those sounds, you can work to improve your pronunciation a bit.
In terms of consistency, like you already recognize consistency is a problem. So, maybe you can start to think about, maybe, a time every day like 10 or 15 minutes in the morniing and 10 or 15 minutes at night that you can use for your study time, or find some, like kind of schedule that works for you, to help you be more consistent.
For the motivation thing, I would say find something that you want to be able to do in English. So I know that that’s tough. Maybe, it's like reading a book or watching a movie or like attending a class or something that’s only in English, but I would suggest maybe finding even just a small goal, something you want to be able to do in English.
So, just from your quick short message, I hope that, I hope that that feedback is helpful for you, and thank you again for sending all of your nice comments to our team and good luck in your continued studies. Thanks very much!
Okay, I’m gonna go to the next one…
Hi, everybody!
Hi!
I’m Adriana and I’m Italian.
From Italy.
My hobbies are listening to music and reading. One of my favorite book is The Third Twin written by Ken Follett.
Okay.
It deals with genetic engineering and the debate through the subject of identical twins raised apart. Furthermore, I love learning new languages or improving the ones that I have already known. This is the reason why I’ve started this lesson with you.
Cool!
So thank you.
Cool!
That’s awesome! So, reading books and learning new languages are your hobbies. The book that you mentioned sounds very interesting, genetic engineering-based book. Are you ready… I'm curious, are you reading that in English or are you reading it in your native language? I wonder, but that was cool! Thank you for sharing about your hobbies. That was very clear and easy to understand and I hope that you continue enjoying learning new languages and thanks very much for participating with this. That was awesome.
Okay, let’s go to the last one for this month.
Okay.
Hi, there! I’m Julian-
Hi!
-from Columbia.
Columbia, hi!
Well, I have three main hobbies; I love to play basketball and tennis. Some days, I love to play basketball and on weekends, I prefer to play tennis.
Okay.
Another hobby is the cinema. I really love to go to cinema at least once a week.
Cinema.
Mainly on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Okay.
And my main hobby is to teach and be a speaker on conference.
Oh!
I’m a software engineer, so I love to talk about technology, give conferences, small talks or simply move with some friends to teach them about what I have been learning and practicing about software development.
Cool!
And that’s it! And obviously, I’m learning English, not as a hobby, but as my main goal for this year.
Awesome!
Thank you!
Awesome.
Woah, that’s super cool! Thanks for sharing about your hobbies. It sounds like you're a very active person. So, you have a couple sports that you play, so tennis on the weekends only. It sounds like you have a very, like specific schedule for it. And then you talked about like doing speaking activities too. That’s really great, that’s cool. And going to the cinema as well, awesome! It sounds like you're a very busy person with many interesting things to do, in addition to being software engineer. Awesome! So thanks very much for learning English with us. Thanks for that nice comment at the end too and good luck as you work on your goals of improving your English again this year. So, that was awesome! Thanks very much for this message and thank you to everybody who sent us audio and video files this month.
So, which entry did you like the best? Leave a comment below.
Or, do you think you can do better?
Here’s a challenge for you. Yes, everyone watching this.
Record a 30 second to 1 minute video or audio clip.
Tell us … what are your plans for the summer?
...and you’ll win a 1 month Premium PLUS subscription!
To submit, click on the link in the description.
Sign up for your free lifetime account.
Then fill out the form.
Attach the audio or video file.
And press submit.
We may feature you in next month’s episode. So, a lot of learners will see you and your progress, and will hopefully get inspired to improve and master the language.
To submit a recording, click the link in the description and follow the instructions on the page.
So, thank you for watching this episode of Monthly Review
Next time, we’ll talk about:
How to Start Conversations: Talking Points for Language Learners
If you enjoyed these tips, hit the “like” button, share the video with anyone who's trying to learn a language, and subscribe to our channel. We release new videos every week!
And, if you’re ready to finally learn language the fast, fun and easy way and start speaking from your very first lesson, get our complete learning program. Sign up for your free lifetime account right now. Click the link in the description.
See you next time! Bye!

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